Prayer to Neptune

Charmides has come ashore after a sea voyage and is thanking Neptune. The speech is long; three passages are given here, the seams marked […], and a few lines in the middle — on Neptune's reputation as a savage god and on his sparing the poor — are not rendered by the card.

The opening is Salsipotenti et mulsipotenti, to the Salt-powerful and the Honey-powerful. Compound epithets in -potens are genuine in cult and epic: Neptune was called tridentipotens (neptunus-005). Plautus takes a ready-made word-formation and puts anything at all into it; the solemnity of the form survives, the content falls out.

Laetus lubens laudes ago et grates gratiasque habeo — gladly, willingly, praises, thanks and gratitude. Five words where one would do: what is parodied is the very ritual redundancy that sounds in earnest in the matrons' prayer at the Secular Games (juno-003).

The genealogy is inflated too: "brother of Jupiter and of Nereus". Neptune is nobody's brother to Nereus in any known mythology; the extra name is added for weight.

And it ends magnificently: "off you go, well done: you know how to deal with people properly; that is worthy of gods". The god is dismissed with a commendation for good service — a satisfied client summing up the job.