On some medals he treads on the beak of a ship, to show that he presided over the seas, or more particularly over the Mediterranean sea, which was the great, and almost the only scene for navigation among the old Greeks and Romans. He is standing, as he generally was represented; he most commonly, too, has his trident in his right hand: this was his peculiar sceptre, 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 Phœnician fleet, which annually visited their coast, used the figure of an Osīris 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 Osīris 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 Oceănus 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.