ἐπεὶ οὔ κεν ἀνιδρωτί γ’ ἐτελέσθη[365].
We have now clearly enough before us the very singular combination of ideas that entered into the conception of the Homeric Neptune, and we may pronounce, with tolerable confidence, upon the manner in which each one of them acquired its place there. They are these:
1. As one of the trine brotherhood, who are jointly possessed of the highest power over the regions of creation, he is part-representative of the primeval tradition respecting the Divine Nature and Persons.
2. As god of the Sea, he provides an impersonation to take charge of one of the great domains of external nature.
3. As the eldest and strongest, next to Jupiter, of the Immortal family, he represents the nucleus of rivalry and material, or main-force, opposition to the head of the Olympian family.
His traits chiefly mythological.
With respect to the first, the proposition itself seems to contain nearly all that can be said to belong to Neptune in right of primitive tradition, except indeed as to certain stray relics. One of these seems to hang about him, in the form of an extraordinary respect paid to him by the children of Jupiter. Apollo is restrained by this feeling (αἰδὼς) from coming to blows with him[366]: a similar sentiment restrains Minerva, not only from appearing to Ulysses in her own Phæacian ἄλσος[367], but even, as she says, from assisting him at all during his previous adventures[368]. But this is all. The prerogatives which are so conspicuous in Apollo and Minerva, and which establish their origin as something set higher than the lust of pure human invention, are but rarely and slightly discernible in Neptune. In simple strength he stands with Homer next to Jupiter, for to no other deity would Jupiter have paid the compliment of declaring it a serious matter to coerce him. But there is no sign of intellectual or moral elevation about him. Of the former we may judge from his speeches; for the speeches of gods are in Homer nearly as characteristic as those of heroes. As to the latter, his numerous human children show that he did not rise above the mythological standard; and his implacable resentment against Ulysses was occasioned by a retribution that the monster Polyphemus had received, not only just in itself, but even relatively slight.
It does not appear that prayer is addressed to him except in connection with particular places, or in virtue of special titles; as when the Neleids, his descendants, offer sacrifice to him on the Pylian shore[369], or the Phæacians[370] seek to avert threatened disaster, or when Polyphemus his son roars to him for help[371]. The sacrifices to him have apparently a local character: at Onchestus is his ἄλσος[372], and Juno appeals to him in the name of the offerings made to him by the Greeks at Helice and Ægæ[373]. The Envoys of the Ninth Iliad pray to him for the success of their enterprise; but it is while their mission is leading them along the sea-beach[374]. He can assume the form of a man; can carry off his friends in vapour, or lift them through the air[375]; can inspire fire and vigour into heroes, yet this is done only through a sensible medium, namely, by a stroke of his staff[376]. He blunts, too, the point of an hostile spear[377]. But none of these operations are of the highest order of power. And when Polyphemus faintly expresses the idea that Neptune can restore his eye, (which however he does not ask in prayer,) Ulysses taunts him in reply with it as an undoubted certainty, that the god can do no such thing. With this we may contrast the remarkable bodily changes operated by Minerva upon Ulysses: they do not indeed involve the precise point of restoring a destroyed member; but they are far beyond anything which Homer has ascribed to his Neptune. Nor does the Poet ever speak of any operation of this kind as exceeding the power of Minerva; who enjoyed in a larger form, and by a general title, something like that power of transformation, which was the special gift and function of Circe and the Sirens. The discussion of the prerogatives of that half-sorceress, half-goddess, will throw some further light upon the rank of Neptune.