Note 256 — THE SHIELD OF HERCULES.

Bull-visaged Neptune.] The patriarch was esteemed the great deity of the sea: and at the same time was represented under the semblance of a bull, or with the head of that animal: and as all rivers were looked upon as the children of the ocean, they likewise were represented in the same manner. Bryant.

This seems to have been a double emblem: referring to the bull Apis, the representative of the father of husbandry, Osiris, and to the roaring of waters.