Trident of Neptune- Roman ArtifactArtifact · Weapon

The Cyclopes' Gift

When Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto freed the Cyclopes from beneath the earth, the master smiths repaid them with weapons. Jupiter received his thunderbolts, Pluto a helm that made him invisible. Neptune's gift was the trident, three prongs forged to command the sea. Armed with these, the brothers overthrew Saturn and divided the world by lot. Neptune took the waters, and the trident became the instrument of that sovereignty.

The Flood

Ovid shows the trident's reach in the Metamorphoses. When Jupiter decided to drown the world, Neptune struck the ground with his trident and the earth split open. Water surged up from below to meet the rain falling from above. Rivers burst their banks. The sea climbed over the shore and kept climbing. Fish swam through treetops. One blow, and the world was water.

The Storm and the Walls

In the Aeneid, Virgil gives the trident two contrasting roles. When Juno and Aeolus conspire to shatter the Trojan fleet with a storm, Neptune rises from the deep. He does not strike. He rebukes the winds for acting without his leave, and the seas flatten at his word. The trident is there in his hand, visible, but the threat of it is enough. The waters obey before the weapon falls.

Later, during the fall of Troy, Neptune turns the trident against the city itself. Virgil describes him shaking the walls and foundations loose with his trident, bringing the city down. The weapon that calmed seas and split the earth now unmakes a city, stone by stone.