List of Roman deities

Ancient Roman religion

Marcus Aurelius (head covered)
sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Practices and beliefs

Imperial cult  · festivals  · ludi
mystery religions · funerals
temples · auspice · sacrifice
votum · libation · lectisternium
Priesthoods

College of Pontiffs · Augur
Vestal Virgins · Flamen · Fetial
Epulones · Arval Brethren
Quindecimviri sacris faciundis

Jupiter · Juno · Neptune · Minerva
Mars · Venus · Apollo · Diana
Vulcan · Vesta · Mercury · Ceres
Other deities

Janus · Quirinus · Saturn ·
Hercules · Faunus · Priapus
Liber · Bona Dea · Ops
Chthonic deities: Proserpina ·
Dis Pater · Orcus · Di Manes
Domestic and local deities:
Lares · Di Penates · Genius
Hellenistic deities: Sol Invictus · Magna Mater · Isis · Mithras
Deified emperors:
Divus Julius  · Divus Augustus
See also List of Roman deities
Related topics

Roman mythology
Glossary of ancient Roman religion
Religion in ancient Greece
Etruscan religion
Gallo-Roman religion
Decline of Hellenistic polytheism

This is a list of deities of ancient Rome, including those who are known to have received cult within the city of Rome, the ager Romanus, or the provinces of the Empire under a Latin or Latinized name. A comprehensive alphabetical list follows a survey of theological groups as constructed by the Romans themselves.[1] For cult pertaining to deified Roman emperors, see Imperial cult.

Roman lists

Triads

Groupings of twelve

Lectisternium

In describing the lectisternium of the Twelve Great Gods in 217 BC, the Augustan historian Livy places the deities in gender-balanced pairs:[4]

Divine male-female complements such as these, as well as the anthropomorphic influence of Greek mythology, contributed to a tendency in Latin literature to represent the gods as "married" couples or (as in the case of Venus and Mars) lovers.

Dii Consentes

Varro uses the name Dii Consentes for the 12 deities, six male-female pairs, whose gilded images stood in the forum.[5] Although individual names are not listed, they are assumed to be the deities of the lectisternium. A fragment from Ennius, within whose lifetime the lectisternium occurred, lists the same 12 deities by name, though in a different order from that of Livy: Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars, Mercurius, Jove, Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo.[6]

The Dii Consentes are sometimes seen as the Roman equivalent of the Greek Olympians. The meaning of Consentes is subject to interpretation, but is usually taken to mean that they form a council or consensus of deities.

Agricultural deities

Varro, De re rustica

At the beginning of his treatise on farming, Varro[7] gives a list of twelve deities who are vital to agriculture. These make up a conceptual or theological grouping, and are not known to have received cult collectively. They are:

Vergil, Georgics

In his Georgics, a collection of poetry on agrarian themes, Vergil gives a list influenced by literary Hellenization and Augustan ideology:[8]

The poet proposes that the divus Julius Caesar be added as a thirteenth.

Di selecti

Varro[12] gives a list of twenty principal gods of Roman religion:

Sabine gods

Varro, who was himself of Sabine origin, gives a list of Sabine gods who were adopted by the Romans:

Elsewhere, Varro claims Sol Indiges, who had a sacred grove at Lavinium, as Sabine but at the same time equates him with Apollo.[15] Of those listed, he writes, "several names have their roots in both languages, as trees that grow on a property line creep into both fields. Saturn, for instance, can be said to have another origin here, and so too Diana."[16] Varro makes various claims for Sabine origins throughout his works, some more plausible than others, and his list should not be taken at face value.[17] But the importance of the Sabines in the early cultural formation of Rome is evidenced, for instance, by the bride abduction of the Sabine women by Romulus's men, and in the Sabine ethnicity of Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome, to whom are attributed many of Rome's religious and legal institutions.[18] Varro, however, says that the altars to most of these gods were established at Rome by King Tatius as the result of a vow (votum).[19]

Shared titles and honorifics

Certain honorifics and titles could be shared by different gods, divine personifications, demi-gods and divi (deified mortals).

Augusta

"The elevated or august one" (feminine form), an honorific and title associated with the development and dissemination of Rome's Imperial cult and applied to Roman Empresses, whether living, deceased or deified as divi. The first Augusta was Livia, wife of Octavian, and the title is then shared by various state goddess including Bona Dea, Ceres, Juno Minerva and Ops; and by many minor, local goddesses and the personifications of Imperial virtues such as Pax and Victoria, both held to be essentially female.

Augustus

"The elevated or august one" (masculine form), a honorific and title awarded to Octavian in recognition of his unique status, the extraordinary range of his powers, and the apparent divine approval of his principate. After his death and deification, the title was awarded to each of his successors. It also became a near ubiquitous title or honour for various minor local deities, including the Lares Augusti of local communities, and obscure provincial deities such as the North African Marazgu Augustus. This extension of an Imperial honorific to major and minor deities of Rome and her provinces is considered a ground-level feature of Imperial cult.

Caelestis

"Heavenly" or "Celestial", either masculine or feminine. From the middle Imperial era, Ceres, Isis, Juno, Venus and other goddesses share the title, as different aspects of a single, supreme heavenly Goddess (Dea Caelestis), identified with the constellation of the Virgin who holds the divine balance of justice.[20]

Mater

"Mother", an honorific that respects a goddesses maternal authority and functions. Early examples include Terra Mater (Mother Earth) and the Mater Larum (Mother of the Lares). From the middle Imperial era, the reigning Empress becomes symbolic Mother of Rome's military camps, its Senate and State (Mater castrorum et senatus et patriae). See also Magna Mater (Great Mother) below.

Magna Mater

"The Great Mother", the title given Cybele in her Roman cult, though not exclusive to her. Some Roman literary sources accord the same title to Maia, inferring that both goddesses are aspects of a supreme "Great Mother".

Pater

"Father", a title given various deities, to signify their preeminence and paternal care, and the filial respect due to them. An epithet of Dis Pater, Jupiter and Liber Pater, among others.

Alphabetical list

Contents: Top · 0–9 · A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

See also

References

  1. ^ Robert Schilling, "Roman Gods," Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), pp. 75 online and 77 (note 49). Unless otherwise noted, citations of primary sources are Schilling's.
  2. ^ Livy, 1.38.7, 1.55.1–6.
  3. ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus 6.17.2
  4. ^ Livy, 22.10.9.
  5. ^ Varro, De re rustica 1.1.4: "eos urbanos, quorum imagines ad forum auratae stant, sex mares et feminae totidem.
  6. ^ Ennius, Annales frg. 62, in J. Vahlen, Ennianae Poesis Reliquiae (Leipzig, 1903, 2nd ed.). Ennius's list appears in poetic form, and the word order may be dictated by the metrical constraints of dactylic hexameter.
  7. ^ Varro, De re rustica 1.1.4–6.
  8. ^ Vergil, Georgics 1.5–20.
  9. ^ Clarissima mundi lumina
  10. ^ Cultor nemorum.
  11. ^ Unci puer monstrator aratri.
  12. ^ As recorded by Augustine of Hippo, De civitate Dei 7.2.
  13. ^ Or Novensiles: the spelling -d- for -l- is characteristic of the Sabine language
  14. ^ For Fides, see also Semo Sancus or Dius Fidius; Roger D. Woodard, Indo-European Sacred Space: Vedic and Roman Cult p. 184.
  15. ^ Varro, De lingua latina 5.10; Paul Rehak, Imperium and Cosmos: Augustus and the Northern Campus Martius (University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), p. 94.
  16. ^ e quis nonnulla nomina in utraque lingua habent radices, ut arbores quae in confinio natae in utroque agro serpunt: potest enim Saturnus hic de alia causa esse dictus atque in Sabinis, et sic Diana.
  17. ^ Anna Clark, Divine Qualities: Cult and Community in Republican Rome (Oxford University Press, 2007) pp. 37–38; Emma Dench, Romulus' Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian (Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 317–318.
  18. ^ William Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1922), p. 108.
  19. ^ Tatius is said by Varro to have dedicated altars to "Ops, Flora, Vediovis and Saturn, to Sol, Luna, Vulcan and Summanus, and likewise to Larunda, Terminus, Quirinus, Vortumnus, the Lares, Diana and Lucina."
  20. ^ Benko, Stephen, The virgin goddess: studies in the pagan and Christian roots of mariology, BRILL, 2004, pp. 112–114: see also pp. 31, 51, citing Apuleius, Metamorphoses, 11.2, in which Isis reveals that she, Ceres and Proserpina, Artemis and Venus are all aspects of the one "Heavenly Queen"; cf Juno Caelestis, "Queen of Heaven", the Romanised form of Tanit.
  21. ^ Ovid, Fasti 2.67 and 6.105 (1988 Teubner edition).
  22. ^ Ovid, Fasti 6.106.
  23. ^ This depends on a proposed emendation of Aternus to Alernus in an entry from Festus, p. 83 in the edition of Lindsay. At Fasti 2.67, a reading of Avernus, though possible, makes no geographical sense. See discussion of this deity by Matthew Robinson, A Commentary on Ovid's Fasti, Book 2 (Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 100–101.
  24. ^ As noted by Robinson, Commentary, p. 101; Georges Dumézil, Fêtes romaines d'été et d'automne (1975), pp. 225ff., taking the name as Helernus in association with Latin holus, holera, "vegetables." The risks and "excessive fluidity" inherent in Dumézil's reconstructions of lost mythologies were noted by Robert Schilling, "The Religion of the Roman Republic: A Review of Recent Studies," in Roman and European Mythologies, pp. 87–88, and specifically in regard to the myth of Carna as a context for the supposed Helernus.
  25. ^ Marko Marinčič, "Roman Archaeology in Vergil's Arcadia (Vergil Eclogue 4; Aeneid 8; Livy 1.7), in Clio and the Poets: Augustan Poetry and the Traditions of Ancient Historiography (Brill, 2002), p. 158.
  26. ^ St Augustine (trans. R. W. Dyson) The City of God against the pagans, Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought, 1998, pp. 258, 1198.
  27. ^ Augustine, De civitate Dei 4.11.
  28. ^ Michael Lipka, Roman Gods: A Conceptual Approach (Brill, 2009), pp. 126–127.
  29. ^ Augustine, De civitate Dei 4.23.
  30. ^ Augustine, De civitate Dei 4.8.

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