Prayer to Neptune

Scipio prays to Neptune before sailing for Spain. The prayer is short, and everything in it rests on one conditional clause.

Si iusta paro — if what I am preparing is just. Not "if I have made sacrifice" and not "if I have honoured your temples": the claim to help is derived from the rightness of the cause. It is worth setting beside the vow from Cato's Origines (jupiter-001), where the argument is wholly proprietary — who is to receive the first-fruits. Between those two arguments lies the entire history of the Roman idea of why a god ought to help.

Per pontum pia bella veho — across the sea I carry a righteous war. Bellum pium is a precise term: a war declared by the fetial rite and therefore lawful before the gods (janus-004). In four words Scipio invokes the whole of Roman international law.

Tridentipotens — trident-powerful. The compound in -potens is a genuine cult formation; in Plautus' comedy the same pattern serves as the basis of a parody (neptunus-004).