Neptune

Meaning

Neptune receives the sea in the poets’ division of the world among Saturn’s sons. The passage notes that some accounts grant him primogeniture rather than Jupiter, but sets those arguments aside as unnecessary. The local point is the relation of heavenly influence, water and the earth’s accumulated riches, not adjudication of a mythological family tree.

Pluto’s apparent wealth is explained through the earthly reception of what the other brothers supply. Neptune’s portion therefore contributes to the figure of the lower world as treasury. Later the Cosmopolitain’s Neptune and two mines belong to a different interpretive context concerning philosophical names. Neither occurrence establishes a fixed modern material equivalent for the sea-god.