Neptune

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The figure of Neptune emerges from Dante's verses as a personification of the sea. In Inferno XXVIII 83, in the context of the betrayal plotted by Malatestino da Rimini against the two gentlemen of Fano, the poet records the invocation «non vide mai sì gran fallo Nettuno» ("Neptune never saw so great a trespass"), with which the god of the sea is asked whether he has ever witnessed an equally grave crime between Cyprus and Majorca, across the entire Mediterranean. The note to the verse specifies that "the sea is here personified" in the pagan deity. In Paradiso XXXIII 96, at the climax of the supreme vision, Dante recalls the mythical episode of the ship Argo, the first to plow the ocean, and affirms that the swiftness of the oblivion following the divine vision is greater than that which, after twenty-five centuries, has erased the memory of the voyage of the Argonauts, to the point that it «fé Nettuno ammirar l'ombra d'Argo» ("made Neptune marvel at Argo's shadow").