Triton was the great merman of Greek myth — the son and herald of Poseidon, a god from the waist up and a fish below, who calmed or raised the seas by blowing on his great conch-shell trumpet. He is the original merman, the figure who gave his name to a whole class of fish-tailed sea-beings (the “tritons”) and to a moon of Neptune.
The Herald of the Sea King
Triton was the son of Poseidon, lord of the sea, and his queen Amphitrite. He dwelt with his parents in a golden palace beneath the waves, and served as his father's herald and trumpeter. His body was that of a powerful merman: a man above, joined to the muscular, scaled tail of a great fish below.
The Conch That Commands the Waves
His signature was a great twisted conch-shell, which he blew like a trumpet. When Triton sounded his conch loud and rough, the waves rose and the seas roared; when he blew it soft, the waters calmed. After the great flood, it was Triton's conch, sounded at Poseidon's command, that called the floodwaters to retreat back into their channels. The sound of his shell was the voice of the sea itself, commanding the tides.
The Many Tritons
In time, the single Triton multiplied in the Greek imagination into a whole race of Tritons — merfolk who escorted the sea-gods, riding the waves on the backs of sea-creatures, blowing their conches, and frolicking in the wake of Poseidon's chariot. They became a standard feature of any grand depiction of the sea-god's realm, the mer-people of classical art.
The First Merman
Triton endures as the prototype of the merman — the male counterpart to the mermaid, the fish-tailed sea-being who blows the conch — an image that has flowed through art, heraldry, and fantasy ever since. His name graces a moon of the sea-god's planet Neptune, and a class of large sea-snails (“triton shells”) prized for the trumpeting sound they make — just like the conch of the merman who first sounded it beneath the waves.
When the sea suddenly calms or suddenly rages, the old Greeks heard it: the merman's conch, sounding the will of the deep.