Priest Of Neptune. Options

[Violentilla]

I'm looking for all information I can find about priesthoods, sacrifices, and festivals to Neptune.

I've read of the festivals where Romans would picnic near springs, and i've read of course about his actions in The Odyssey. The only priest I've read about is Laocoon, and the only sacrifice I've come across is bulls, but I know that there are historians far more knowledgeable here. I am hoping to find out just what a priest of Neptune might deal with.

This post has been edited by Violentilla: Apr 24 2006, 06:17 AM

[Pantagathus]

This should be of some help to you: Neptunalia

At a later period it probably had a lot in common with the Isthmian Games of Corinth.

[Violentilla]

This should be of some help to you: Neptunalia

At a later period it probably had a lot in common with the Isthmian Games of Corinth.

Thank you, that has a few things I've not read before!

[Ursus]

If I have time this weekend I'll break out my books and look for some more info.

Nothing comes off the top of my head ... despite officially being one of the twelve "Di Consentes" , the god of waters and horses wasn't critical to the Roman religious landscape. The Romans weren't as found of maritime adventures as the Greeks were. They were, however, found of chariot racing, and it was in this capacity Neptune found his true place in Rome.

[Ursus]

Neptune. Ancient Italic god of waters. Identified with Greek Poseidon and thus became god of oceans and horses. Identified with another Italian god Consus, also associated with horses. A female companion deity by name of Salacia or Venilia. Temple dedicated in the Circus Flaminius in the Campus Martius. Neptune one of only three gods to whom a bull could be sacrificed. Main festival: Neptunalia on July 23, concerned with propitiating the god for sufficient water during the hot summer. Another festival on December 1. Neptune linked with Mercury insofar as both gods protected travel and trade (Neptune by sea, Mercury by land).

[AEGYPTUS]

He was also God of Earthquakes. As the Greeks in some books i read sometimes refer to him as Poseidon the earth shaker.

[Violentilla]

Neptune. Ancient Italic god of waters. Identified with Greek Poseidon and thus became god of oceans and horses. Identified with another Italian god Consus, also associated with horses. A female companion deity by name of Salacia or Venilia. Temple dedicated in the Circus Flaminius in the Campus Martius. Neptune one of only three gods to whom a bull could be sacrificed. Main festival: Neptunalia on July 23, concerned with propitiating the god for sufficient water during the hot summer. Another festival on December 1. Neptune linked with Mercury insofar as both gods protected travel and trade (Neptune by sea, Mercury by land).

This is incredibly helpful, thank you.

[Pantagathus]

He was also God of Earthquakes. As the Greeks in some books i read sometimes refer to him as Poseidon the earth shaker.

That is Poseidon not Neptune & that is one feature not attributed to Neptune.

[Pantagathus]

Neptune linked with Mercury insofar as both gods protected travel and trade (Neptune by sea, Mercury by land).

However, all indications seem to lead one to the conclusion that Pirapus was more revered as a patron to sailors than Neptune...

You know what's funny is that when one really looks into it, I think us moderns give more credit to Neptune (at least in his seaborne capacity) than the Romans did.

For one, his temple/alters (Neptunus Aedes Delubrum, Basilica Neptuni) don't seem to have been built until mostly the late Republican - early Imperial period.

Secondly, a Roman was more likely to give an offering to Portunes when departing on a sea journey than Neptune as his temple was in a prominent position on the Tiber along the road that lead to Ostia. Neptune's were not so convenient!

[Violentilla]

Neptune linked with Mercury insofar as both gods protected travel and trade (Neptune by sea, Mercury by land).

However, all indications seem to lead one to the conclusion that Pirapus was more revered as a patron to sailors than Neptune...

You know what's funny is that when one really looks into it, I think us moderns give more credit to Neptune (at least in his seaborne capacity) than the Romans did.

For one, his temple/alters (Neptunus Aedes Delubrum, Basilica Neptuni) don't seem to have been built until mostly the late Republican - early Imperial period.

Secondly, a Roman was more likely to give an offering to Portunes when departing on a sea journey than Neptune as his temple was in a prominent position on the Tiber along the road that lead to Ostia. Neptune's were not so convenient!

So in his sweet water and equine aspects, would you say he was better known? Has anyone come across anything done with horses, prayers or whatever?

[Pantagathus]

So in his sweet water and equine aspects, would you say he was better known? Has anyone come across anything done with horses, prayers or whatever?

Depends on if you look at it from an individual level or State sponsored cult level. On an individual level there is still ample evidence of prayers to Neptune for safe return from seaborne mercantile adventure as stated by Ursus.

From a State sponsored aspect, he seems to have had more focus on freshwater supplies and horses as they relate to games which was an attribute carried over when Neptune took on the larger aspects of Poseidon.

Contrary to what many may think, horses weren't used prolifically by the Romans outside of warfare, hunting, & the games. This has a lot to do with that fact that as work animals, the Romans never figured out things like horse shoes (as we know them not the limited use vestigium used occasionally by the Romans), horse collars (for harnessing in teams) & stirrups that made horses so indispensable in later ages.

Moving into the Imperial period, even in warfare the Gallo-Roman deity Epona seems to have been favored as the patron of the calvary soldier. So Neptune may have retained through Poseidon’s myths the right to epithets like Hippodamus -or- “Horse Tamer” (which of course as a word is almost unchanged from Greek) but by at least the 2nd Century CE, it was Epona that showed up riding a horse near Jupiter & Minerva in murals & inscriptions around the Empire not Lord Neptune. Furthermore, I’ve never seen Neptune & Epona even mentioned in the same breath even though they supposedly overlapped as deities of horses.

Back to prayers however, it seems that he never lost his mojo as the ruler of all water. In that capacity, his worship on the individual level seems to have been very strong at sacred water sites.

This seems to have even gotten stronger attention in the ‘Celtic’ areas as those people had always held these sites in esteem and had offered watery depositions to the natural forces for millennia.

Here is an interesting link in regards to written tablets deposited in springs & rivers where people would call on Neptune to curse someone or help them regain lost property: A Corpus of Writing-Tablets from Roman Britain

[Violentilla]

This is extremely helpful, thank you for taking the time to type it out. I am in the process of dedicating a sacred space to offer prayer and sacrifice to Neptunus, and this is all a great help. Anything else that you come across is well appreciated.

This post has been edited by Violentilla: May 2 2006, 12:52 AM

[Ursus]

http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/numa/index.htm
http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/numa/numa05.htm

We have already seen how the rise of the grain trade brought four new deities to Rome, but there is one more chapter to our story. The grain itself and the trade itself had now obtained their divine complements, but the sea had not yet received its due; it too must have its parallel among the gods of Rome. And so it came to pass that again under the influence of the fateful books, though exactly when or how we cannot say, the Greek Poseidon came into Rome.

The sea had always meant much to the Greeks, and the joyful shout of Xenophon's troops "The sea! the sea!" finds an echo all through the centuries of Greek history before and after the Anabasis. But the multitude of islands and harbours in Greece is in marked contrast to the dearth of them in Italy, where even to-day there is no good port of call on the west coast between Naples and Civitavecchia--and the latter would be useless, were it not for Trajan's mole.

In Italy accordingly the sea-god Poseidon was worshipped only in the Greek colonies, where however he had two famous cults, one at Tarentum, later called Colonia Neptunia, and one at Paestum, whose old name was Poseidonia. The Romans had worshipped deities of water in abundance, as became an agricultural people, for water meant life, and drought, death; but their deities were those of the sweet waters of springs and rivers, they knew no god of the sea. But when the oracles brought Poseidon to Rome he was identified with an old Roman water-god Neptune, whose cult henceforward included the sea. We do not know where the shrine of the old sweet-water Neptune had been, but his old festival had occurred on July 23.

The new Poseidon-Neptune was given a temple outside the pomerium in the Campus Martius, but the new was connected with the old in so far at least that the dedication day of the new temple was July 23, the day of the old Neptune festival.

With the introduction of Neptune, the sea-god,the state had accomplished, as it were, a sort of divine marine insurance; the transport of the grain was now watched over by a Roman god; but it was not to be expected that the cult of a sea-god would ever mean very much to the Romans. The maritime commerce of the Eternal City was very slow in developing, and it grew to its subsequent proportions, not because the Romans of Italy engaged in it, but because those foreigners who took to the sea by nature later became Romans. Nor did naval warfare fall to her lot until the First Punic War, and even then her victories were gained by the tactics of land fighting transferred to the decks of two ships, her own and the enemy's, fastened together by landing-bridges, and the glory of victory was due not to Neptune but to Mars.

It was not until the civil wars at the close of the republic that real naval battles occurred, and that Neptune received his share of glory for the victory at Actium in B.C. 31, and later over Sextus Pompeius, in a temple erected by Agrippa in the Campus Martius, behind the beautiful columns of which the Roman Stock-Exchange transacts its business to-day.

In the first decade of the republic therefore, as we have seen, a group of Greek gods was introduced by the Sibylline oracles, no one of whom can be said to have been really needed, no one of whom except the sea-element in Neptune represented any new and vital principles not already present in the religious world, if not of Numa, at least of Servius. The best that can be said of these gods is that one or two of them, notably Mercury and Neptune, exerted no positively detrimental influences on later generations.

From an essay written a century ago. Dated of course, but essentially correct. Carter does give evidence that as Mercury was introduced as "divine insurance" for the growing grain supply over land, Neptune was introduced for the same reason, only by sea - even if the Romans were not great sailors like the Greeks. I also think Augustus giving Neptune some credit for his military exploits against Antony and Sextus Pompeius is well taken...

[Pantagathus]

I also think Augustus giving Neptune some credit for his military exploits against Antony and Sextus Pompeius is well taken...

Absolutely!

But as that was one of the last great naval victories for the Romans poor ole Neptune didn't have much to do other than watch over the grain from then on it seems...