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55-523: The theory took its name from Neptune , the ancient Roman god of the sea. There was considerable debate between its proponents (neptunists) and those favouring a rival theory known as plutonism which gave a significant role to volcanic origins, and which in modified form replaced neptunism in the early 19th century as the principle of uniformitarianism was shown to fit better with the geological facts as they became better known. Modern geology acknowledges many different forms of rock formation, and explains

110-579: A Proto-Indo-European freshwater deity; since the Indo-Europeans lived inland and had little direct knowledge of the sea, the Romans may have reused the theology of a previous freshwater god in their worship of Neptune. Servius explicitly names Neptune as the god of rivers, springs, and waters; he may parallel the Irish god Nechtan , master of rivers and wells. This is in contrast to Poseidon, who

165-500: A different interpretation of Neptune's theology. Developing his understanding of the theonym as rooted in the Indo-European *nebh , he writes that the god would be an ancient deity of the cloudy, rainy sky in company with (and in opposition to) Zeus / Jupiter , the god of clear skies. Similar to Caelus , he would be the father of all earthly things through the fertilising power of rain. The hieros gamos of Neptune and Earth

220-453: A minor effect, modifying the continents and adding more sediment as well as some volcanic rocks, and successive lesser floods added more layers, so that most rocks resulted from precipitates settling out of water. There is no indication that any of the floods in Werner's cosmogony were Noah's flood . A rival theory known as plutonism (or vulcanism) held that rocks were formed in fire. This

275-552: A rock and creating a spring (Paris: Bibliothèque Nationale, Cabinet des Medailles . Another Etruscan artifact ( Nethunus , from the Luynes collection) depicts the god causing a horse to spring from the earth with a blow of his trident. A late-fourth-century bronze mirror in the Vatican Museums (Museo Gregoriano Etrusco: C.S.E. Vaticano 1.5a) depicts Neptune with Amymone (daughter of Danaus ), whom he saves from assault by

330-496: A satyr and teaches the art of creating springs. On a bronze mirror from Tuscania dated to 350 BC, also in the Vatican Museums (Museo Gregoriano Etrusco E. S. 1. 76), Nethuns is talking to Usil and Thesan. He holds a double-ended trident, suggesting that he might be able wield lightning bolts. Daniel Kehlmann Daniel Kehlmann ( German: [ˈdaːni̯eːl ˈkeːlman, -ni̯ɛl -] ; born 13 January 1975)

385-556: A series of distinct epochs . Abraham Gottlob Werner was the inspector of mines and professor of mining and mineralogy at the Mining Academy in Freiberg ( Saxony ) which became dominant in late eighteenth-century geology. His Short Classification and Description of Rocks of 1787 and his lectures set out a classification of rocks on the basis of their age based on the sequence of layers of differing material, rather than by

440-467: A surface phenomenon). He wrote elsewhere that Venilia would be the "hope that comes", an aspect (or power) of Jupiter understood as anima mundi . Servius, in his commentary on the Aeneid , wrote about Salacia and Venilia in V 724: " ( Venus ) dicitur et Salacia, quae proprie meretricum dea appellata est a veteribus "; "(Venus) is also called Salacia, who was particularly named goddess of prostitutes by

495-524: Is a German-language novelist and playwright of both Austrian and German nationality. His novel Die Vermessung der Welt (translated into English by Carol Brown Janeway as Measuring the World , 2006) is the best selling book in the German language since Patrick Süskind 's Perfume was released in 1985. In an ironic way, it deals with Alexander von Humboldt , one of the world's best-known naturalists of

550-644: Is an added context of agricultural fertility in the festival, since Neptune received the sacrifice of a bull. Neptune had only one temple in Rome . It stood near the Circus Flaminius , the Roman racetrack in the southern part of the Campus Martius , and dates back to at least 206 BC. The temple was restored out by Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus c.  40 BC , an event depicted on a coin struck by

605-568: Is currently being adapted into a TV series for Netflix by the makers of Dark . The novel was shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker Prize . Kehlmann's play Die Reise der Verlorenen was adapted for BBC radio by Tom Stoppard under the title The Voyage of the St. Louis . Kehlmann was born in Munich, the son of the television director Michael Kehlmann and the actress Dagmar Mettler. His family moved to his father's hometown Vienna when Daniel

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660-628: Is moist"). Georges Dumézil said that words deriving from the root *nep- are not attested in Indo-European languages other than Vedic Sanskrit and Avestan . He proposed an etymology which joins Neptunus with the Indian and Iranian theonyms Apam Napat and Apam Napá and the Old Irish theonym Nechtan , all meaning "descendant of the waters". Using a comparative approach, the Indo-Iranian, Avestan and Irish figures have common features with

715-603: Is reflected in Virgil's Aeneid V 14 ( pater Neptunus ). Neptune's power would be reflected by Salacia , one of his paredrae , who also denotes the overcast sky. His other paredra , Venilia , is associated with the wind as well as the sea. The theonym Venilia may be rooted in *venilis , a postulated adjective deriving from the IE root *ven(h) ("to love or desire") in the Sanskrit vánati, vanóti ("he loves"), German Wonne , and

770-441: Is standing in the centre, holding Aplu 's bow in his right hand. Thesan is on the right, with her right hand on Uśil's shoulder; both are listening intently to Nethuns' words. The identification of Uśil with Aplu (and his association with Nethuns) is emphasised by an anguiped demon holding two dolphins on an exergue . The scene highlights the identities and association of Nethuns and Aplu (here identified as Uśil) as main deities of

825-602: The feriae of Neptunus on July 23, between the Lucaria festival of the grove and the Furrinalia festival of July 25. All three festivals were connected to water during the period of summer heat ( canicula ) and drought, when freshwater sources were lowest. It has been speculated that the three festivals fall in a logical order. The Lucaria was devoted to clearing overgrown bushes and uprooting and burning excess vegetation. Neptunalia followed, devoted to conservation and

880-491: The Falisci (who called themselves Neptunia proles ), joining Mars , Janus , Saturn , and Jupiter as the deific father of a Latin tribe. Neptunalia , the Roman festival of Neptune, was held at the height of summer (typically on July 23). The date of the festival and the construction of tree-branch shelters suggest that Neptune was a god of water sources in times of drought and heat. The most ancient Roman calendar set

935-688: The Flamen Quirinalis and the Vestal Virgins made sacrifices on the underground altar of Consus. The proximity of the two Consualia to the Opiconsivia (the latter were four days later, the winter festival on December 19) indicates the relationship between the two deities pertaining to agriculture. According to Dumézil, the horse has a much-different symbolic value in the theologies of Poseidon and Consus. Tertullian ( De Spectaculis V 7) wrote that according to Roman tradition, Consus

990-460: The Rutulians ). According to another source, Venilia would be the partner of Janus , with whom she mothered the nymph Canens (loved by Picus ). These mythical data underline the reproductive function envisaged in the figures of Neptune's paredrae , particularly that of Venilia, in childbirth and motherhood. A legendary king Venulus was remembered at Tibur and Lavinium . Before Poseidon

1045-541: The ager latiniensis . The Etruscans were also fond of horse races. The Etruscan name of Neptune is Nethuns . It had been believed that Neptune derived from Etruscan , but this view has been disputed. Nethuns was apparently important to the Etruscans . His name is found in two places on the Liver of Piacenza : on the outer rim of section seven, and on the gallbladder of section 28. This last location aligns with Pliny

1100-646: The 18th and 19th centuries, and Humboldt's relationship with the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss . According to The New York Times , it was the world's second-best selling novel in 2006. All his subsequent novels reached the number one spot on Germany's Spiegel bestseller list and were translated into English. He collaborated with Jonathan Franzen and Paul Reitter on Franzen's 2013 book The Kraus Project . Kehlmann's play The Mentor , translated by Christopher Hampton , opened at Theatre Royal, Bath , in April 2017 starring F. Murray Abraham and transferred to

1155-541: The Elder's belief that the gallbladder was sacred to Neptune. The name Nethuns occurs eight times in columns VII, IX, and XI of the Liber Linteus . On a mirror from Tuscania (E. S. 1. 76), Nethuns is represented talking to Uśil (the sun) and Thesan (the goddess of dawn). Nethuns is seated on the left, holding a double-ended trident in his right hand and with his left arm raised as if giving instructions. Uśil

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1210-706: The Etruscan Penates were Fortuna , Ceres , Genius Iovialis and Pales . The etymology of the Latin Neptunus is unclear and disputed. The ancient grammarian Varro derived the name from nuptus ("covering", opertio ), alluding to nuptiae ("the marriage of Heaven and Earth"). Among modern scholars, Paul Kretschmer proposed a derivation from the Indo-European *neptu- ("moist substance"). Raymond Bloch similarly theorised that it might be an adjectival form ( -no ) of *nuptu- ("he who

1265-489: The Falisci (and others) to war in the Aeneid . Nepi and Falerii have been known since antiquity for the quality of their meadow springwater. Nepet might be considered a hydronymic toponym of pre-Indo-European origin from a noun meaning "damp wide valley, plain", a cognate of the proto-Greek νάπη ("wooded vale, chasm"). In lectures delivered during the 1990s, German scholar Hubert Petersmann proposed an etymology from

1320-608: The Indo-European root *nebh- ("damp, wet") with the suffix -tu (for an abstract verbal noun) and the adjectival suffix -no (domain of activity). The root *nebh- gives the Sanskrit nābhah , Hittite nepis , Latin nubs , nebula , German Nebel , and the Slavic nebo . The concept would be close to that expressed in the name of the Greek god Όυράνος ( Uranus ), derived from the root *h 2 wórso- ("to water or irrigate") and *h 2 worsó- ("the irrigator"). Petersmann proposes

1375-617: The Latin Venus , venia . Neptune's dual nature is found in Catullus 31. 3: " uterque Neptunus ". According to Petersmann, the ancient Indo-Europeans also venerated a god of wetness as the generator of life; this is indicated by the Hittite theonyms nepišaš (D)IŠKURaš or nepišaš (D)Tarhunnaš ("lord of sky wet"), the sovereign of Earth and humanity. Although this function was transferred to Zeus/Jupiter (the sovereigns of weather),

1430-472: The Latin Faliscans: the father of Messapus and Halesus, their heroic founders. William Warde Fowler considered Salacia the personification of the virile potency which generated a Latin people, parallel with Mars, Saturn, Janus and Jupiter. Etruscan representations of Neptune are rare but significant. The oldest may be a fourth-century BC carved carnelian scarab from Vulci of Nethuns kicking

1485-751: The London West End in July 2017. In October 2017, his play Christmas Eve , also translated by Christopher Hampton, premiered at the Theatre Royal. His novella You Should Have Left (2016) was adapted into a movie starring Kevin Bacon and Amanda Seyfried . Kehlmann's highly praised novel Tyll (2017), which sold more than 600,000 copies in German alone and was published in the US in February 2020,

1540-405: The Roman legends about Neptune. Dumézil proposed to derive the nouns from the Indo-European root népōts- ("descendant, sister's son"). His former student, Indo-Europeanist Jaan Puhvel , theorises that the name might have meant "child ( neve , nephew) of the water" as part of an Indo-European fire-in-water myth . A different etymology, grounded in the legendary history of Latium and Etruria,

1595-495: The ancient". Elsewhere, he wrote that Salacia and Venilia are the same entity. Among modern scholars, Dumézil and his followers Bloch and Schilling centre their interpretation of Neptune on the direct, concrete, limited value and functions of water. Salacia would represent the forceful, violent aspect of gushing and overflowing water and Venilia the tranquil, gentle aspect of still (or slowly-flowing) water. According to Dumézil, Neptune's two paredrae (Salacia and Venilia) represent

1650-566: The consul. Within the temple was a sculpture of a marine group by Scopas Minor. The Basilica Neptuni was later built on the Campus Martius, and was dedicated by Agrippa in honor of the naval victory of Actium . This basilica supplanted the older temple, which had replaced an ancient altar. Neptune is one of only four Roman gods to whom it was considered appropriate to sacrifice a bull. The other three were Apollo , Mars , and Jupiter , although Vulcan has also been depicted with

1705-401: The desire for reproduction. Ludwig Preller cited a significant aspect of Venilia; she was recorded in the indigitamenta as a deity of longing or desire. According to Preller, this would explain a theonym similar to that of Venus. Other data seem to agree; Salacia would parallel Thetis as the mother of Achilles, and Venilia would be the mother of Turnus and Iuturna by Daunus (king of

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1760-516: The draining of superficial waters. These culminated in the Furrinalia , sacred to Furrina (the goddess of springs and wells). Neptunalia was spent under branch huts in a woods between the Tiber and the Via Salaria , with participants drinking spring water and wine to escape the heat. It was a time of merrymaking, when men and women could mix without the usual Roman societal constraints. There

1815-543: The early years of the 19th century, but the works of Charles Lyell in the 1830s gradually won over support for the uniformitarian ideas of Hutton and the plutonists. However, sedimentary rocks such as limestone are considered to have resulted from processes like those described by the neptunists, and so modern theory can be seen as a synthesis of the two approaches. The theory, and its intellectual context, are treated in Daniel Kehlmann 's fictionalised account of

1870-481: The fact that Poseidon is nowhere worshipped at underground shrines or altars. Martianus Capella places Neptune and Consus together in region X of Heaven, possibly following an old interpretatio graeca of Consus or reflecting an Etruscan idea of a chthonic Neptune apparent in the recommendation of the De Haruspicum Responso for propitiating Neptune for the cracking sounds heard underground in

1925-531: The formation of sedimentary rock through processes very similar to those described by neptunism. In the mid-eighteenth century as the investigation of geology found evidence such as fossils , naturalists developed new ideas which diverged from the Genesis creation narrative . Georges de Buffon proposed that the Earth was over 75,000 years old, possibly much older, and showed signs of historical development in

1980-420: The most respected authors of the day, took sides with the neptunists. The fourth act of his famous work Faust contains a dialogue between a neptunist and a plutonist, the latter being Mephistopheles , the antagonist of the play who is a devil. Doing so he implicitly expressed his favour for the neptunist theory, though he also did so explicitly and sometimes even harshly elsewhere. The controversy lasted into

2035-468: The motion of the sea. Venilia brought waves to the shore, and Salacia caused their retreat out to sea. They were examined by the Christian philosopher St. Augustine , who devoted a chapter of De Civitate Dei to ridiculing inconsistencies in the theological definition of the entities; since Salacia personified the deep sea, Augustine wondered how she could also be the retreating waves (since waves are

2090-777: The offering of a red bull and a red-bull calf. If an incorrect offering was presented, either inadvertently or due to necessity, additional propitiation was required to avoid divine retribution. This type of offering implied a stricter connection between the deity and the world. Paredrae are entities who accompany a god, representing the fundamental aspects (or powers) of that god. With Hellenic influence, these paredrae came to be considered separate deities and consorts of their associated god. Earlier folk belief might have also identified paredrae as consorts of their god. Salacia and Venilia have been discussed by ancient and modern scholars. Varro connects Salacia to salum (sea), and Venilia to ventus (wind). Festus attributed to Salacia

2145-455: The old function survived in literature: the Aeneid V 13-14 reads, " Heu, quianam tanti cinxerunt aethera nimbi?/ quidve, pater Neptune, paras? " ("What, why have so many clouds enringed the sky? What are you preparing, father Neptune?") The indispensability of water and its connection to reproduction are universally known. Müller and Deeke interpreted Neptune's theology as a divine ancestor of

2200-497: The overpowering and tranquil aspects of water, natural and domesticated: Salacia the gushing, overbearing waters, and Venilia the still (or quietly-flowing) waters. Preller, Fowler, Petersmann and Takács attribute to the theology of Neptune broader significance as a god of universal worldly fertility, particularly relevant to agriculture and human reproduction. They interpret Salacia as personifying lust, and Venilia as related to venia : ingratiating attraction, connected with love and

2255-484: The realms of heaven , the earthly world (including the underworld ), and the seas. Salacia is his wife. Depictions of Neptune in Roman mosaics , especially those in North Africa , were influenced by Hellenistic conventions. He was likely associated with freshwater springs before the sea; his festival, Neptunalia , took place on July 23, during the peak of summer when water was scarcest. Like Poseidon, he

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2310-407: The third. The reason for Neptune's displacement to region X is unclear. It is consistent with the collocation in the third quadrant of the deities related to the human world. Arnobius provides information about the theology of Neptune. Neptune and Apollo were considered Etruscan Penates , and the deities were credited with giving Ilium its walls. In another tradition based on the same source,

2365-580: The travels of Alexander von Humboldt , Die Vermessung der Welt ( Measuring the World ) of 2006. Neptune (mythology) Neptune ( Latin : Neptūnus [nɛpˈtuːnʊs] ) is the god of freshwater and the sea in the Roman religion . He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon . In the Greek-inspired tradition , he is a brother of Jupiter and Pluto , with whom he presides over

2420-478: The types of minerals as had been previous practice. He based his historical sequence of rock formation on the theory that the Earth had originally consisted of water. According to this account, the water contained material which settled out of suspension in a process of sedimentation to form the core of the planet and the continents as a series of layers, the oldest and hardest being granite while newer layers showed an increasing number of fossils . Volcanoes had

2475-406: The unearthing of the altar, indicate the deity's antiquity and chthonic nature. From Augustine ( De Civitate Dei IV 8, about the role of Tutilina in assuring the safety of stored grain), Dumézil interprets its name as deriving from condere (to hide or store) as a verbal noun similar to Sancus and Janus : the god of stored grains. A direct identification of Consus with Poseidon is hindered by

2530-429: The worldly realm and the life cycle. Thesan and Uśil-Aplu, who has been identified with Śuri (Soranus Pater, the underworld sun god) clarify the transience of earthly life. Neptune is a god of fertility, including human fertility. According to Stephen Weinstock, Jupiter is present in each of the first three regions with different aspects related to each region; Neptune should have been in the second region, and Pluto in

2585-447: Was a sedimentary deposit which included fossils and so could not be of volcanic origin. Hutton correctly asserted that basalt never contained fossils and was always insoluble, hard, and crystalline. He found geological formations in which basalt cut through layers of other rocks, supporting his theory that it originated from molten rock under the Earth's crust. The debate was not just between scientists. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe , one of

2640-603: Was also worshipped by the Romans as a god of horses, Neptunus equestris, who was also a patron of horse-racing. The theology of Neptune is limited by his close identification with the Greek god Poseidon , one of many members of the Greek pantheon whose theology was later tied to a Roman deity . The lectisternium of 399 BC indicated that the Greek figures of Poseidon, Artemis , and Heracles had been introduced and worshipped in Rome as Neptune, Diana, and Hercules. It has been speculated that Neptune has been conflated with

2695-651: Was in the valley of the Circus Maximus at the foot of the Palatine (the site of horse races). On the summer Consualia (August 21) it was customary to bring horses and mules, crowned with flowers, in procession and then hold equine races in the Circus. The festival also traditionally reenacted the abduction of the Sabine (and Latin) women, reflecting the sexual license characteristic of such festivals. On that day,

2750-428: Was known as the god of the sea, he was connected to the horse and may have originally been depicted in equine form. This connection reflects the violent and brutal nature of Poseidon the earth-shaker, the linkage of horses and springs, and the animal's psychopompous character. Neptune, in contrast, has no such direct connection with horses. The Roman deity Consus was associated with the horse, and his underground altar

2805-409: Was originally proposed by Abbé Anton Moro (1687–1750) with reference to his studies of volcanic islands, and was taken up by James Hutton who put forward a uniformitarian theory of a rock cycle extending over infinite time in which rocks were worn away by weathering and erosion, then were re-formed and uplifted by heat and pressure. Neptunists differed from the plutonists in holding that basalt

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2860-399: Was primarily a god of the sea. Neptune has been associated with a number of other Roman deities. By the first century BC, he had supplanted Portunus as the god of naval victories; Sextus Pompeius called himself the "son of Neptune". For a time, Neptune was paired in his dominion of the sea with Salacia , the goddess of saltwater . Neptune was considered the legendary progenitor god of

2915-491: Was proposed by the 19th-century scholars Ludwig Preller , Karl Otfried Müller and Wilhelm Deeke . The name of the Etruscan deity Nethuns or Nethunus ( NÈDVNVZ ) would be an adjectival form of the toponym Nepe(t) or Nepete (present-day Nepi ), near Falerii . The district was traditionally connected to the cult of Neptune, and Messapus and Halesus (the eponymous hero of Falerii) were believed to be his sons. Messapus led

2970-700: Was six years old. His paternal grandparents were born Jewish, and his father was in a concentration camp during WWII. Kehlmann currently lives in Berlin. Since 2015, Kehlmann has held the Eberhard Berent Chair at New York University . He is a member of the Deutsche Akademie für Sprache und Dichtung . 2016–2017 he was a fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center for Writers and Scholars. The novel Tyll

3025-515: Was the god who advised Romulus on the abduction of the Sabines. Perhaps influenced by Poseidon Ίππιος, Consus (whose festival included horse races) was reinterpreted as Neptunus equestris ; for his underground altar, he was identified with Poseidon Ένοσίχθων. The etymology of Poseidon , derived from Posis (lord or husband) and De (grain or earth) may have contributed to the identification of Consus with Neptune. His arcane cult, which required

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