The Statue
The statue was erected in 2016 and erected to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the port. It shows him with a trident in his left and and his right arm arm raised.
At his feet is an octopus. The pedestal he stands on has the inscription "Port de Menton-Garavan 1966 - 2016".
The port and marina is one of the largest on the Cote d'Azur and 770 places including 170 public ones.
Neptune the Roman God
"Neptune (Latin: Neptunus) was the god of freshwater and the sea in Roman religion. He is the counterpart of the Greek god Poseidon. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Neptune was the brother of Jupiter and Pluto; the brothers presided over the realms of Heaven, the earthly world, and the Underworld. Salacia was his wife.
Depictions of Neptune in Roman mosaics, especially those of North Africa, are influenced by Hellenistic conventions. Neptune was likely associated with fresh water springs before the sea. Like Poseidon, Neptune was worshipped by the Romans also as a god of horses, under the name Neptunus Equester, a patron of horse-racing.
Neptune is the creator of horses and is the god of the sea as well as the owner of a powerful weapon, the Trident. Poseidon is the greek Neptune and is one of the big three gods Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon. He accidentally created horses when he had an affair with Medusa, and also created a boy who roams the seas as a pirate past the pillar of Hercules."
The Planet
“Neptune was the first planet found by mathematical prediction rather than by empirical observation. Unexpected changes in the orbit of Uranus led Alexis Bouvard to deduce that its orbit was subject to gravitational perturbation by an unknown planet. Neptune was subsequently observed on September 23, 1846[1] by Johann Galle within a degree of the position predicted by Urbain Le Verrier, and its largest moon, Triton, was discovered shortly thereafter, though none of the planet's remaining 12 moons were located telescopically until the 20th century. Neptune has been visited by only one spacecraft, Voyager 2, which flew by the planet on August 25, 1989.”
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Le Verrier originally proposed the name Neptune for the planet and Neptune became the internationally accepted name in line with all the other planets apart from Earth being named after Roman and Greek gods.
Neptune was the chosen God to name the planet due to the deep blue colour of the planet because of the high concentrations of methane in the atmosphere.
Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. It is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third largest by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times the mass of Earth but not as dense. On average, Neptune orbits the Sun at a distance of 30.1AU, approximately 30 times the Earth–Sun distance.
The orbital period of Neptune is 165 Earth years and so on July 2011 it completed its first complete orbit since its original discovery.