XXXIX

PART 6 – Ch.XXXIX.6.III

The great Pelasgian empire

(Decline of the Pelasgian empire)

Other kings of the divine dynasty

XXXIX. 6. III. Neptune (Poseidon, Poseidan).

Neptune, as Greek traditions tell us, had reigned in the beginning over the regions from Atlas mountain, in the country of the Hyperboreans, or at the north of the lower Istru.

After the dethronement of Saturn, writes Plato (Critias, ed. Didot, II. p. 256), the great empire of the ancient world being divided, Neptune had received the territory called Atlantis (from Atlas mountain, in the country of the Hyperboreans), which, from a geographical point of view, comprised the lands from the southern part of the Carpathians, and especially today Oltenia.

Neptune had in antiquity double honors (Homer, Iliad, XV. 190; XXIII. 307; Hymn. 21.5). He was considered as the master and god of the great waters (regnator Marum). It was also said about him that he had domesticated the noble species of the horses, and that he had been the first to introduce horse riding and their harnessing to wagons.

In regard to his genealogy, as well as his attributes, Neptune has been mistaken for the titan Atlas even from the most ancient times. So, Homer’s Odyssey tells us (I. 52) that Atlas, who supported the high columns which separated the sky from the earth, also knew all the depths of the seas.

We also find this confusion between the prehistoric personality of Neptune and that of Atlas, in the Romanian epic songs, whose traditional essence is without doubt archaic.

In these epic songs, Neptune figures under the name Tanislav and Stanislav (“Tara noua”, An.II.p. 366; Catana, Balade pop. p.22; Teodorescu, Poesii pop. p. 688), as he similarly had with the Greek authors the epithet eyristhenas, “most powerful” (Homer, Odyss. XIII. 140), certainly a simple literary word formed after his epic folk name.

In Romanian poems, exactly as in Homer’s Odyssey – this Stanislav represents the figure of the titan Atlas; but he has at the same time the traditional characteristics of Neptune, as master of the great waters. Stanislav is the great master of the art of swimming and rowing.

He spends his life on the water of the Danube. He rests and sleeps on the Danube, in his kayak, written with silver letters, and moored with a little silver chain. About him the Romanian poems tell us that: “the Danube reared him, and wide in shoulders made him”, that “the Danube knows him, she knows him and he knows her; he swims like a fish, he walks across the Danube, and fights in her as ten”. Caught by his enemies and thrown, with a millstone tied round his neck, into the Danube, where the water was deeper, and where the river appeared like a wide sea, he sleeps for three days at the bottom of the Danube, with the stone tied round his head, and after three days, upon waking up, he rises to the surface and swims for another three days, the stone still round his head.

This legend was also known in antiquity. Cicero, in his treatise about the nature of the divinities, tells us (N. D. II. 26) that the name of Neptune derives from nando, (TN – innotand) swimming. We find the same expression, with the same grammatical form, also in the Romanian epic songs: “Stanislav innotand” (Teodorescu, Poesii pop. p. 569).

Neptune, the most famous “swimmer” of the ancient world, was celebrated at the same time as the great master of the art of rowing.

Sophocles addresses him the following verses: You, with your hands, drove the ships with oars, with so much power, that you made them hop on the surface of the water (Oed. Col. v. 715).

We find the same verses in a Romanian epic poem. Stanislav says towards one of his friends:

Bring your oar to me,

To show you how to row,

What the Danube needs…

And when the oar he dipped….

Three steps the kayak glided,

And faster it took him,

Over the bank it lifted him,

And when the kayak hopped,

Stanislav it overthrew,

Long in the grass he fell

(Teodorescu, Poesii pop. p. 570).

With the Greeks, Neptune also had the epithet petraios, “that one with the stone”, or “the one with the rock” (Preller, Gr. Myth. I, 1854, p. 356, 363). In Romanian epic poems, “petra” is a characteristic attribute of Stanislav, in both his roles, either when he represents the legendary figure of the titan Atlas, or Neptune, as master of the great waters.

The ancient Egyptian traditions said the following about Neptune, as ruler over the renowned country Atlantis: that he had been the first to organize that territory from a political, military and religious point of view; that he had divided this country in ten districts, because he had ten sons; his eldest son Atlas, he had made king over the entire country, and the other sons he had named district captains; that Neptune had given laws to that country, which had been engraved on a column of yellow copper, placed in his temple. Under the rule of the kings from the family of Neptune, the country called Atlantis had reached, in the course of several centuries, a flourishing state of economic prosperity and political power (Plato, Critias, ed. Didot, vol. II, p. 255 seqq).

From a geographical note which we find with Pliny, the territory which Plato calls Atlantis, had had in the beginning the name Aetheria (I.IV.25. 5), a Pelasgian word, altered in Greek literature, but synonymous with “Terra” or Gaia, ateirea gaian (Apollonius Rhodius, Argon. II. 375).

The political reign of Neptune had also extended beyond the frontiers of the territory Atlantis. Eschyl called him pontomedon anaxi, Homer, pontios, master of the Pontos (Euxine).

The family Stanislav had once reigned over the eastern parts of the Romanian country.

In the historical monuments of the Vatican, there is mentioned at 1247ad Szeneslaus Woiauoda Olatorum (Theiner, Monumenta hist. Hung.t.I.p.208-211), ruler of the Romanian country from the left side of the river Olt, neighboring the territory of the Cuman hordes from near the Black Sea.

The name “Stanislav” or “Szeneslaus” is patronymic and belongs to primitive times. Homer, in his Iliad (XVI. 585), mentions one Trojan with the name Stenelaus, whom Patroclus kills by hitting him in the head with a rock. It seems that Homer had borrowed the name, as well as the idea, from a folk poem about Stanislav, the one “with the stone round his head”.

The ancient traditions also told about Neptune that he had been the first to make and place bridles on the head of horses; that he had introduced the art of riding horses and their harnessing to wagons (Sophocle, Oed. Col. v. 711; Homer, Iliad, XXIII. 307; Ibid, Hymn. XXI. 4; Pausanias, lib. VII. 21. 8). In memory of these achievements, to Neptune had been consecrated the horses, and he had the epithet ippios, equester, the rider.

The most renowned horses of Neptune had been, according to Greek poets: Pegasus, “the winged horse”, about which it was said that he bore the thunderbolts of Jove (Hesiodus, Theog. v. 284), Xanthus and Balius, “the immortal horses”, which “flew like the wind”, which Achilles had used during the Trojan war.

Pegasus, writes Hesiodus, had been born near the sources of the river Oceanos (Theog. v. 281) or Istru, which in ancient times were believed to have been upstream from the cataracts. It was also called “Scythius”, meaning from Scythia (Dupuis, Orig. d. tous l. cultes, vI. 481; Servius, Virg. Georg. I. 13). Pegasus also appears figured on the national coins of Dacia; on one, with his mane raised upwards in the shape of a wing, and on another, having above him a long serpentine line symbolizing the lightning of the sky (Archiv. d. Ver. f. siebenb. Lnkde. XIII. Taf. XIV. 4; Froehner, La Colonne Trajane, p. VIII).

The name “Pegasos” does not derive from the Greek substantive pega, “source”, as Hesiodus had tried to explain the etymology of this word, but we have here an ancient Pelasgian term, which corresponds to the Romanian form from Moldova “pag” (motley colored), “peg” in the historical documents of Hungary (Fejer, Cod. Dipl. IX. 6. 133. 1364: equus coloris peg), “peiu” in Transilvania (pale, yellowish colored), a term which is especially applied to horses (Hasdeu, Etym. M. III. 3082; Lexicon, Buda, 1825; Laurian and Massim, Glos).

The magnificent horses of Trojan times, Xanthus and Balius (“Galben” and “Balan” / TN – yellow and blond), one of which could speak, had been born, as Homer writes, on the plains near Oceanos potamos. (Fl. XVI. 149; Apollodorus, Bibl. II. 13. 5. 5). The two horses had been tamed by Neptune, who had later given them to king Peleus. (The Macedo-Romanians call “baliu” a horse with a white star on the forehead – Hasdeu, Etym. m. III. p. 2937).

In Romanian folk songs, Neptune, as the first tamer of the wild horse, figures under the name “Mos Stan from Baragan” (Teodorescu, Poesii pop. 688; Catana, Balade, p. 22; Tocilescu, Mater. Folkl. p. 124. 1250). This “Mos Stan” is identical with Stanislav, who represents in Romanian epic songs the legendary figure of Neptune, as master of the great waters.

For as long as the week, the week and the month lasted, Mos Stan, as the Romanian poems tell us, twined nooses, to catch the marvelous horses which came to drink water at a well on the deserted plain of Baragan; and after he caught and tamed them, he placed bridles on their heads, tied them with the ropes, saddled one of them, mounted, then led them in a gallop, and hopped and flew over the vast and mysterious, deserted Baragan.

We find in the Romanian folk poems also the tradition about the divine horses of Neptune, called Pegasus, Xanthus and Balius (Pag, Galben and Balan). They are: “horses three years old, yellowish in color, with black stripes on their backs, with spurs on three legs, with stars above each nostril, when Mos Stan sees them, he dies”: “When you see their gait, you lose your mind, and you’d give away your soul” (Hasdeu, Etym. magn. III. 2481).

These colts galloped over the plain “like a thought”, and when they kicked their legs “the waters eddied, green orchards were leveled, mountains shook” (Tocilescu, Mater. Folk. p. 124).

Their mother, Sarga (dark yellow color) was “the best of horses, like a ghost”.

Homer calls her Podarge, meaning “fast-footed”, and Quintus calls her dia, divine (Posthom. III. 750). These “three years old, yellowish in color” horses have been snared with the noose on the plain of Baragan, at a well called the well of “Cioropina”, as was similarly told about Pegasus, that he had been caught at a well called “Pirina” (Euripides, El. 475; Pindar, Ol. XIII. 90), the same topical name in essence, but under another form.

According to Greek legends, Neptune and Medusa had been the parents of the winged horse Pegasus (Ovid, Metam. Iv. 797; Apollod. Bibl. II. 4. 2. 12). In Romanian poems though, Matusa is the mother of Stanislav, the great master of the art of swimming and rowing, meaning Neptune of prehistoric times (Rev. Tara noua, An. II, p. 306).

As we see, the Greek traditions about Neptune had been borrowed from the north of the lower Danube; but the Greek authors exaggerated and changed into fables the fine poetical ideas of the ancient folk songs, in order to arouse even more the curiosity and pleasure of their readers.

One of these fables is that Neptune, by hitting the earth with his trident, had made the first restive horse to come out of the ground (Virgil, Georg. I. 13).Here the Greek poets had entirely altered the true meaning of some folk versions. We still find today the original form of this idea in the Romanian epic songs. Not the horse, but the fork of the well, on which the nooses were tied, had come out from the ground (Teodorescu, Poesii pop. p. 689: “when his head he shook, the fork from the earth came out”).

One so-called Staan figures also in the list of the Shepherd kings (Manetho, Fragments, in Fragm. Hist. Gr. II. 567-568), kings who had reigned in ancient times over Egypt, and who were identical with the kings of the divine dynasty which began with Montu or Uranos.

Imperial honors were also attributed to Mos Stan in Romanian epic poems. He was buried in the “imperial garden” in Moldova (Teodorescu, Poesii pop. p, 692), a place of repose and eternal happiness, which corresponds to the “gardens of eternal life” of Pelasgian, Greek and Egyptian traditions, which in the beginning had been the exclusive privilege of a small number of kings, heroes and noble men.

In Greek literature Neptune is called Poseidon or Poseidan (C. I. Gr. nr. 1335, 2254), but the etymology of this name has remained obscure to this day.

In today’s Russian language, the word posaditi means “to make someone mount a horse”, and by the word posadka is meant the posture, the sitting of a rider on the horse (Makaroff, Dict. russe-francais, 1900, p. 679).

Both these words have nothing to do though with the verb posaditi, “to plant”, because they do not derive from the same root.

In its original form, the word Poseidon or Poseidan seems to have been composed of ippos, horse, and edomai, to sit (edos, chair), as Pindar gives Diana the similar epithet ipposoa, equorum agitatrix (Olymp. III. 27; Isthm. IV. 35). Poseidon has therefore the meaning of “equo sedens” or “equo insidens”, the one who sits on the horse, or the rider, as this is also confirmed by the epithets ippios and equester; the same name, but under another form.

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