Neptune (mythology)
Neptune (Latin: Neptūnus) is the god of the sea in Roman mythology. He was a relative of Ceres. He is analogous but not identical to the god Poseidon of Greek mythology. The Roman conception of Neptune owed a great deal to the Etruscan god Nethuns.
Originally he was an Italic god paired with Salacia, possibly the goddess of the salt water. At an early date (399 B.C.E.) he was identified with the Greek Poseidon, when the Sibylline books ordered a lectisternium in his honour (Livy v. 13).
In earlier times it was the god Fortunus who was thanked for naval victories, but Neptune supplanted him in this role by at least the 1st century B.C.E., when Sextus Pompeius called himself "son of Neptune".
His festival, Neptunalia, at which tents were made from the branches of trees, July 23. He had two temples in Rome. The first, built in 25 B.C.E., stood near the Circus Flaminius, the Roman racetrack, and contained a famous sculpture of a marine group by Scopas. The second, the Basilica Neptuni, was built on the Campus Martius and dedicated by Agrippa in honour of the naval victory of Actium.
Neptune was associated as well with fresh water, as opposede to Oceanus, god of the world-ocean.
Like Poseidon, Neptune was also worshipped by the Romans as a horse god, under the name Neptune Equester, patron of horse-racing.
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- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
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