Cult of Gods

Neptune

Roman tradition. See the whole pantheon.

Domains
the sea, horses
Symbols and attributes
Trident
Parents (per the sources used)
Saturn and Ops
Giacomo Caneva, photograph of a statue of Jupiter in the Campana collection, 1850s.
Giacomo Caneva, photograph of a statue of Jupiter in the Campana collection, 1850s.

Key myth

Roman god of water and horses; his early festival, the Neptunalia, was in high summer.

Where sources differ or caution applies. His Roman identity before the Greek is thin; the mythic stories are Poseidon's.

Greek counterpart: Poseidon on thegreekgods.org. Roman and Greek versions share names and stories in many places but began as different cults.

Primary sources

  • Varro, De lingua Latina VI.19
  • Virgil, Aeneid

All sources for the Roman pantheon

Lineage in the sources used: Saturn, Ops.

Place in the family graph

Choose a deity to see where it comes from. Dashed lines are links the sources describe that are not parent and child.

SaturnOpsJanusJupiterJunoNeptunePluto / Dis PaterCeresVestaQuirinusMinervaApolloDianaMercuryBacchus / LiberMarsVulcanVenus

More traditions

Odin rides to Hel, W. G. Collingwood, after the Poetic Edda.NorsePapyrus of Ani, British Museum (New Kingdom), a Book of the Dead.EgyptianA chaos monster and a sun god, drawn by L. Gruner for A. H. Layard's Monuments of Nineveh.MesopotamianVishvarupa Vishnu, Kashmir or Himachal, in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art collection.Hindu

Elsewhere in the world

Deities in other traditions who share a theme with Neptune: sea and waters. This is overlap in one area only.

Norse

Ægir

the sea, brewer of the gods' ale

Norse

Rán

drowning, the sea's net

Egyptian

Nun

the primeval waters

Egyptian

Sobek

Nile, fertility, kingship

Mesopotamian

Nammu

the primeval sea, mother of the gods

Mesopotamian

Apsu

fresh water below the earth

Mesopotamian

Tiamat

salt water, primordial mother

Compare across cultures