Nature has taught us, at a high price, that no one can dominate it, but some thought they could control the elements, in this case the sea.
During the Second Medical War (480-479 BC), between Persians and Greeks, the king of the pears, Xerxes I , he intended to cross the Dardanelles Strait with his troops by building a bridge. The company was complicated, let us remember that the strait is 1,600 m wide at its narrowest part and has an average depth of about 50 m, but the monarch's megalomania had no limits.
The idea was to build a bridge with boats tied up to cover the entire strait. When the construction was almost finished, a storm destroyed the bridge.
Xerxes Irritated, he ordered the sea to be whipped with three hundred lashes, some shackles to be thrown at the bottom of the sea, and branded with hot iron.
Canute II , better known as Cnut the Great, was a Viking king of Denmark, Norway, and England. On one occasion, and to demonstrate his greatness, he had his camp set up with his entire court on the seashore. How the waves disturbed the daily chores
he commanded to retreat to the waves of the sea
The response of the sea was immediate and devastated the entire camp.
Before I am accused of being a sensationalist, or telling urban legends of the time, I will make it clear that the intention of these events, if they occurred, was not to control the sea .
Xerxes he used the pantomime of scourging the sea to demonstrate to his subjects that he was a Superior Being , he could even punish the sea.
Canute II he used this clumsiness of withdrawing the waters (Moses style) to demonstrate the opposite, that he was not a Superior Being , only God was an omnipotent being.
Source:Pedro Voltes – Great Lies of History