ptre, and seems to have been used by him chiefly to rouse up
the waters; for we find sometimes that he lays it aside when he is to
appease them, but he resumes it when there is occasion for violence.
Virgil makes him shake Troy from its foundation with it; and in Ovid it
is with the stroke of this that the waters of the earth are let loose
for the general deluge. The poets have generally delighted in describing
this god as passing over the calm surface of the waters, in his chariot
drawn by sea-horses. The fine original description of this is in Homer,
from whom Virgil and Statius have copied it.

In searching for the mythological sense of the fable, we must again have
recourse to Egypt, that kingdom which, above all others, has furnished
the most ample harvest for the reaper of mysteries. The Egyptians, to
denote navigation, and the return of the Phoenician fleet, which
annually visited their coast, used the figure of an Osiris borne on a
winged horse, and holding a three-forked spear, or harpoon. To this
image they gave the name of Poseidon, or Neptune, which, as the Greeks
and Romans afterwards adopted, sufficiently proves this deity had his
birth here. Thus the maritime Osiris of the Egyptians became a new deity
with those who knew not the meaning of the symbol.

TRITON. It is not agreed who were the parents of Triton; but he was a
sea-deity, the herald and trumpeter of Oceanus and Neptune. He sometimes
delighted in mischief, for he carried off the cattle from the Tanagrian
fields, and destroyed the smaller coasting vessels; so that to appease
his resentment, the Tanagrians offered him libations of new wine.
Pleased with its flavor and taste, he drank so freely that he fell
asleep, and tumbling from an eminence, one of the natives cut of his
head. He left a daughter called Tristia.

The poets ordinarily attribute to Triton, the office of calming the sea,
and stilling of tempests: thus in the Metamorphoses we read, that
Neptune desiring to recall the waters of the deluge, commanded Triton to
sound his trumpet, at the noise of which they retired to their
respective channels, and left the earth again habitable, having swept
off almost the whole human race.

This god is exhibited in the human form from the waist upwards, with
blue eyes, a large mouth, and hair matted like wild parsley; his
shoulders covered with a purple skin, variegated with small scales, his
feet resembling the fore feet of a horse, and his lower p