uted in honour of
Poseidon.

He was more especially worshipped in the Peloponnesus, though universally
revered throughout Greece and in the south of Italy. His sacrifices were
generally black and white bulls, also wild boars and rams. His usual
attributes are the trident, horse, and dolphin.

In some parts of Greece this divinity was identified with the sea-god
Nereus, for which reason the Nereides, or daughters of Nereus, are
represented as accompanying him.

NEPTUNE.

The Romans worshipped Poseidon under the name of Neptune, and invested him
with all the attributes which belong to the Greek divinity.

The Roman commanders never undertook any naval expedition without
propitiating Neptune by a sacrifice.

His temple at Rome was in the Campus Martius, and the festivals
commemorated in his honour were called Neptunalia.

* * * * *

SEA DIVINITIES.

OCEANUS.

Oceanus was the son of Uranus and Gaea. He was the personification of the
ever-flowing stream, which, according to the primitive notions of the early
Greeks, encircled the world, and from which sprang all the rivers and
streams that watered the earth. He was married to Tethys, one of the
Titans, and was the father of a {108} numerous progeny called the
Oceanides, who are said to have been three thousand in number. He alone, of
all the Titans, refrained from taking part against Zeus in the
Titanomachia, and was, on that account, the only one of the primeval
divinities permitted to retain his dominion under the new dynasty.

NEREUS.

Nereus appears to have been the personification of the sea in its calm and
placid moods, and was, after Poseidon, the most important of the
sea-deities. He is represented as a kind and benevolent old man, possessing
the gift of prophecy, and presiding more particularly over the AEgean Sea,
of which he was considered to be the protecting spirit. There he dwelt with
his wife Doris and their fifty blooming daughters, the Nereides, beneath
the waves in a beautiful grotto-palace, and was ever ready to assist
distressed mariners in the hour of danger.

PROTEUS.

Proteus, more familiarly known as "The Old Man of the Sea," was a son of
Poseidon, and gifted with prophetic power. But he had an invincible
objection to being consulted in his capacity as seer, and those who wished
him to foretell events, watched for the hour of noon, when he was in the
habit of coming up to the island of Pharos,[42] with