Neptune

Neptune (*Neptunus*) is the Roman god of the sea, son of Saturn and Ops and brother of Jupiter and Pluto. According to the myth, after the victory over the titans the three brothers divided the cosmos by lot: to Jupiter the sky corresponded, to Pluto the underworld and to Neptune the waters. In his Italic origin, however, Neptune was not a marine divinity, but a god of the fresh waters, the springs and the fountains, essential in an agricultural Rome concerned with drought; only later, by effect of the *interpretatio romana* that identified him with the Greek Poseidon, he assumed the dominion of the sea, the earthquakes and the horses. His consort is Salacia, personification of the salt water, Roman equivalent of Amphitrite.

As lord of the waters, Neptune unleashes or calms the storms, makes the earth tremble (hence his Greek epithet of «earth shaker») and is considered creator and patron of horses, for which he was also venerated as *Neptunus Equester*, protector of equestrian races. His unmistakable attribute is the **trident**, with which he strikes the waters and rocks to raise waves or make springs gush forth. He is represented as a mature, bearded and powerful man, often on a chariot pulled by hippocampi (sea horses) and accompanied by tritons and nereids. The dolphin and the horse are his sacred animals, and his image presides over numerous mosaics and fountains of the Roman world.

In Virgil's *Aeneid*, Neptune intervenes with authority to calm the storm that Juno had unleashed against Aeneas's fleet, rebuking the winds for invading his domain: one of the most celebrated scenes in the poem. His festival, the **Neptunalia**, was celebrated on July 23, in the middle of summer, when drought was most feared, and the Romans erected huts of branches by the water to celebrate. He had a temple in the Campus Martius and an altar in the Circus Flaminius. With the expansion of the Empire, his figure spread throughout the Mediterranean, and in later art (from the Renaissance to the great Baroque fountains, such as the Fontana di Trevi) Neptune with his trident became the quintessential image of the power of the sea, even giving his name to the eighth planet of the solar system.