Aeolus obeyed the goddess and sent
forth his sons, Boreas, Typhon, and the other winds, to toss the
ocean. A terrible storm ensued and the Trojan ships were driven
out of their course towards the coast of Africa. They were in
imminent danger of being wrecked, and were separated, so that
Aeneas thought that all were lost except his own.
At this crisis, Neptune, hearing the storm raging, and knowing
that he had given no orders for one, raised his head above the
waves, and saw the fleet of Aeneas driving before the gale.
Knowing the hostility of Juno, he was at no loss to account for
it, but his anger was not the less at this interference in his
province. He called the winds and dismissed them with a severe
reprimand. He then soothed the waves, and brushed away the clouds
from before the face of the sun. Some of the ships which had got
on the rocks he pried off with his own trident, while Triton and a
sea-nymph, putting their shoulders under others, set them afloat
again. The Trojans, when the sea became calm, sought the nearest
shore, which was the coast of Carthage, where Aeneas was so happy
as to find that one by one the ships all arrived safe, though
badly shaken.
Waller, in his "Panegyric to the Lord Protector" (Cromwell),
alludes to this stilling of the storm by Neptune:
"Above the waves, as Neptune showed his face,
To chide the winds and save the Trojan race,
So has your Highness, raised above the rest,
Storms of ambition tossing us repressed.
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