Neptune

Neptune, the Italian god of the sea. Attempts have been made to show that his worship goes back to Aryan times, by identifying his name with the Sanskrit and Iranian Apám Napát, 'offspring of the water.' But this is one of those unfortunate identifications which show that comparative mythologists are not always comparative philologists. Further, as there is nothing whatever to make it in the least probable that Neptune was ever anything but a sea-god, and as the primitive Aryans were not acquainted with the sea, it is evident that he cannot have been an Aryan deity. Indeed, as it was not until after the Italians had entered Italy that they became at all familiar with the sea, it was probably not until after they had settled in Italy that they made acquaintance with Neptune. Nor in all probability was he their own invention. We may conjecture that he was borrowed by them from the Etruscans, a maritime nation, who worshipped as their sea-god Nethuns or Nethunus. Had the Italians never come in contact in historical times with the Greeks, Nethunus or Neptunus would have remained a mere abstraction, like all other Italian deities, who were rather numina than personal beings. But communication with Greece resulted in the Italians identifying their god of the sea with Poseidon (q.v.), the Greeks' god of the sea.—For the planet Neptune, see PLANETS; for the Neptunist theory, see GEOLOGY, Vol. V. p. 148.