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Dromo's Den
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[Up] [Dromo's Den] Neptune Biography NEPTUNE (Lat. Neptunus); or POSEIDON (Many connect the Greek name with Gk. pontos, the open sea, and potamos, a river). In classical mythology, a brother of Zeus and lord of the sea. In legend he is the son of Cronus and Rhea. His home is a splendid palace in the depths of the sea near Ægæ, though which town of this name was meant caused much dispute. His wife in Hesiod is Amphitrite, and she shared his cult on the isthmus. As a lover he rivals his brother Zeus, and many legends traced local heroes to Poseidon and some nymph or daughter of an early king. So Neleus and Pelias were sons of Poseidon and Tyro. In his nature Poseidon is always wild and implacable, never becoming a guardian of higher virtues. He is the shaker of the earth, a natural conclusion from the frequency with which disturbances of the sea accompany the shocks on land; but be is, above all, the master of the sea, who sends the dreaded storms and at his will controls the waves, which are called his swift horses. His attribute is the trident, or three-pronged harpoon of the Ægean fisherman, with which he controls the waves or brings springs from rocks. Closely associated with him is the horse. He was the horse tamer and was honored with horse races at many points; horses were frequently sacrificed to him, and there are traces of a belief that he was in the form of a horse. His worship was chiefly confined to the coast, though he had temples even in the inland country of Arcadia; and it is not at all improbable that he was originally a god of water and moisture in general. There is some evidence for a decline in Poseidon worship, which seems reflected in the legends of his contest with Athena for Attica and with Hera for Argos. At Athens he was worshiped in the Erechtheum, and some have held that Erechtheus was in essence identical with Poseidon, or a form of Poseidon, and that this deity Poseidon-Erechtheus, overpowered by Athena, was converted into an agricultural deity. From him was also named the Attic month Poseideon (about December). He was a great Ionian divinity, and the Panionia were celebrated by the 12 Ionic cities at his sanctuary at Mycale. His temple on the island of Calauria, where Demosthenes died, was in very early times the centre of an amphictyony or league of maritime states. His most famous cult, however, was on the Isthmus of Corinth, where the Isthmian Games (see ISTHMUS) were celebrated in his honor. In art Poseidon has much the same type as Zeus, but without the dignity and benignity of the latter. Statues of him are by no means common. Two of the best are the Poseidon of Melos, now in Athens, and the fine statue in the Lateran, which many regard as derived from the famous bronze on the isthmus, by Lysippus. At Rome the old Italian or Roman water god,. who appears dimly in religious tradition, seems to have been early identified with Poseidon, and during the historical period Neptune is scarcely distinguishable from the Greek god of the sea. A temple to Neptune stood near the Circus Flaminius; his festival, the Neptunalia, was held on July 23. Consult: W. W. Fowler, Roman Festivals (London, 1899); 0. Grupple, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte (2 vols., Munich, 1906); L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, vol. iv (Oxford, 1907); Georg Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer (2d ed. Munich, 1912. The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XVI (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 723. |