Triton.
Son of Poseidon (Neptune) and the Nereid Amphitrite, Triton was a merman, with a human body and a fish’s tail. Although Hesiod calls him a powerful god of the sea, Triton has little mythology and is often portrayed collectively. Pau-sanias refers to several tritons, who may have been sea monsters. The figure is commonly depicted blowing on a conch shell and frolicking in the waves, either with Nereids or in the train of Poseidon, as well as in sea-triumphs of Amphitrite, Galatea, and Aphrodite (Venus).
      
       Classical Sources. Hesiod, Theogony 930-33- Pindar, Pythian Odes 4.i9ff. Herodotus, History 4.179,188. Euripides, The Cyclops 263ff. Apollonius Bhodïus, Argonautica 4.1550-1622,1741-54. Vigil, Aeneid 6.171-78. Ovid, Heroides 7.49; Metamorphoses 1.330-47. Apollodorus, Biblioteca 1.4.4-6, 3.12.3. Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.22.8ff., 8.2.7, 9-20.4-21.1, 9.33.7. Lucian, Dialogues of the Sea Gods, “Triton and Poseidon,” ‘Triton and Nereids.”
      
       See also Amphitrite; Aphrodite, Birth; Galatea; Poseidon, General List.