The coasts were peopled with cyclops like Polyphemus, with frightful monsters born of the union of Olympian goddesses and simple mortals; but an obliging dolphin came and went, carrying messages between Poseidon and the Nereid, until, overwhelmed by the eloquence of this restless rover of the wave, Amphitrite agreed to become the wife of the god, and the Mediterranean appeared to take on still greater beauty.
She was the aurora that shows her rosy finger-tips through the immense cleft between sky and sea, the warm hour of midday that makes the waters drowsy under its robe of restless gold, the bifurcated tongue of foam that laps the two faces of the hissing prow, the aroma-laden breeze that like a virgin's breath swells the sail, the compassionate kiss that lulls the drowned to rest, without wrath and without resistance, before sinking forever into the fathomless abyss.
Her husband--Poseidon on the Greek coast and Neptune on the Latin--on mounting his chariot, used to awaken the tempest.

The brazen-hoofed horses with their stamping would paw up the huge waves and swallow up the ships.

The tritons of his cortege would send forth from their white shells the bellowing blasts that snap off the masts like reeds.
_O, mater Amphitrite_!...

and Ferragut would describe her as though she were just passing before his eyes.

Sometimes when swimming around the promontories, feeling himself enveloped like primitive man in the blind forces of Nature, he used to believe that he saw the white goddess issuing forth from the rocks with all her smiling train after a rest in some marine cave.
A shell of pearl was her chariot and six dolphins harnessed with purpling coral used to draw it along.