ὥσπερ Κύκλωπές τε καὶ ἄγρια φῦλα Γιγάντων.
Neptune was the father of Nausithous and the royal house of Scheria, through Peribœa: but she was daughter of Eurymedon, and Eurymedon was king of the Giants, and was the king who led them, with himself, evidently by rebellion, into ruin[393];
ἀλλ’ ὁ μὲν ὤλεσε λαὸν ἀτάσθαλον, ὤλετο δ’ αὐτός.
Thus we have Neptune placed in the relation of ancestor to the rebellious race, whom it is scarcely possible to consider as other than identical with the Titans condemned to Tartarus[394].
But we have one yet more pointed passage for the establishment of this strange relationship. In the νεκυΐα of the Eleventh Odyssey, Ulysses sees, among other Shades, Iphimedea, the wife of Aloeus, who bore to Neptune two children[395], Otus and Ephialtes; hugest of all creatures upon earth, and also most beautiful, after Orion. They, the sons of Neptune, while yet children, threatened war against Olympus, and planned the piling of the mountains: but Apollo slew them. Thus this, the most characteristic of all the traditions in Homer relating to the Evil One, hangs upon the person of Neptune, doubtless because his mythological place best fitted him for the point of junction. It must be observed, that Homer has, in bringing these young giants before us, used a somewhat artificial arrangement. He does not place them in the realm of Aides and Persephone, though he describes them to us, in connection with the figures in that gloomy scene, as the children of Iphimedea, who appears there in the first or feminine division. That he does not bring them before us in conjunction with Tityus and the other sufferers of that region, can only be because he did not intend them to be understood as belonging to it: and it is clear, therefore, that he means us to conceive of them as having their abode in Tartarus, among the Titans, doubtless by the side of Eurymedon and his followers.
We may perceive with peculiar clearness, in the case of Neptune, the distinction between the elevated prerogatives of such a deity within his own province, and his comparative insignificance beyond it. When he traverses the sea, it exults to open a path for him, and the huge creatures from its depths sport along his wake. Such is its sympathy with him, that when he is exciting the Greeks to war, it too boils and foams upon the shore of the Hellespont. And not only is maritime nature thus at his feet, but he has the gift of vision almost without limit of space, and of knowledge of coming events, so long as they are maritime. He who knows nothing of the woes of his son Polyphemus till he is invoked from the sea-shore, yet can discern Ulysses on his raft from the far Solyman mountains, and even is aware that he will escape from his present danger (ὀϊζὺς ἥ μιν ἱκάνει) by reaching the shore of Scheria. This knowledge is shared by the minor goddess Leucothee: and doubtless on the same principle, namely, that it is marine knowledge. So he can predict to Tyro that there will be more than one child born to her: here, too, he speaks of what is personal to himself. When we take Neptune out of his province, we find none of these extraordinary gifts, no sign of a peculiar subjugation of nature or of man to him. He shares in the government of the world only as a vast force, which it will cost Jupiter trouble to subdue. Even within his own domain some stubborn phenomena of nature impose limits on his power: for we are told he would not be able, even were he willing, to save Ulysses from Charybdis[396].
Thus it was that the sublime idea of one Governor of the universe, omnipotent over all its parts, was shivered into many fragments, and these high prerogatives, distributed and held in severalty, are the fragments of a conception too weighty and too comprehensive for the unassisted human mind to carry in its entireness.
His grandeur is material.
Upon the whole, the intellectual spark in Neptune is feeble, and the conception is much materialized. Ideally he has the relation to Jupiter, which the statue of the Nile bears to one of Jupiter’s statues. Within these limits, his position is grand. The ceaseless motion, the unconquerable might, the wide extent, of the θάλασσα, compose for him a noble monarchy. At first sight, when we read of the lottery of the universe, we are startled at finding the earth left without an owner. It was not so in the Asiatic religions. But mark here the influence of external circumstances. The nations of Asia inhabited a vast continent; for them land was greater by far than sea. The Greeks knew of nothing but islands and peninsulas of limited extent, whereas the Sea for them was infinite; since, except round the Ægean, they knew little or nothing of its farther shores. Thus the sceptre of Neptune reaches over the whole of the Outer Geography; while Earth, as commonly understood, had long been left behind upon the course of the adventurous Ulysses.