Jupiter
King of the Gods God of the sky and diurnal thunder
Member of the Archaic Triad, Capitoline Triad and the Dii Consentes
A marble statue of Jupiter
Other names	Jove
Venerated in	Imperial cult of ancient Rome Polytheistic religion
Abode	The heavens
Planet	Jupiter[1]
Symbol	Lightning bolt, eagle, oak tree
Day	Thursday (dies Jovis)
Personal information
Parents	Saturn and Ops[2][3]
Siblings	Vesta, Ceres, Juno, Pluto, Neptune
Consort	Juno
Children	Mars, Vulcan, Bellona, Angelos, Lucina, Juventas, Minerva, Hercules
Equivalents
Greek equivalent	Zeus[4]
Norse equivalent	Thor
Hindu equivalent	Indra, Brihaspati[5] Dyaus Pita[6]
Canaanite equivalent	Baal[7]
Mesopotamian equivalent	Anu[8][9](disputed), Enlil,[10] Hadad,[11] Šulpae[12]
Egyptian equivalent	Amun
Proto-Indo-European equivalent	*Dyḗus-ph₂tḗr
Albanian equivalent	Zojz[13]
Messapic equivalent	Zis

Religion in ancient Rome
Marcus Aurelius (head covered) sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter
Practices and beliefs
libation votum temples festivals ludi funerary practices imperial cult mystery religions
Priesthoods
Pontifices Augures Vestales Flamines Fetiales Epulones Fratres Arvales
Deities
Twelve major gods Capitoline Triad Aventine Triad Underworld indigitamenta Agriculture Birth Deified leaders: Julius Caesar Augustus Other deified persons: Antinous
Related topics
Glossary of ancient Roman religion Roman mythology Ancient Greek religion Etruscan religion Gallo-Roman religion Interpretatio Graeca Decline
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Jupiter (Latin: Iūpiter or Iuppiter,^[14] from Proto-Italic *djous "day, sky" + *patēr "father", thus "sky father" Greek: Δίας or Ζεύς),^[15] also known as Jove (gen. Iovis [ˈjɔwɪs]), is the god of the sky and thunder, and king of the gods in ancient Roman religion and mythology. Jupiter was the chief deity of Roman state religion throughout the Republican and Imperial eras, until Christianity became the dominant religion of the Empire. In Roman mythology, he negotiates with Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, to establish principles of Roman religion such as offering, or sacrifice.

Jupiter is usually thought to have originated as a sky god. His identifying implement is the thunderbolt and his primary sacred animal is the eagle,^[16][17] which held precedence over other birds in the taking of auspices^[18] and became one of the most common symbols of the Roman army (see Aquila). The two emblems were often combined to represent the god in the form of an eagle holding in its claws a thunderbolt, frequently seen on Greek and Roman coins.^[19] As the sky-god, he was a divine witness to oaths, the sacred trust on which justice and good government depend. Many of his functions were focused on the Capitoline Hill, where the citadel was located. In the Capitoline Triad, he was the central guardian of the state with Juno and Minerva. His sacred tree was the oak.

The Romans regarded Jupiter as the equivalent of the Greek Zeus,^[20] and in Latin literature and Roman art, the myths and iconography of Zeus are adapted under the name Jupiter. In the Greek-influenced tradition, Jupiter was the brother of Neptune and Pluto, the Roman equivalents of Poseidon and Hades respectively. Each presided over one of the three realms of the universe: sky, the waters, and the underworld. The Italic Diespiter was also a sky god who manifested himself in the daylight, usually identified with Jupiter.^[21] Tinia is usually regarded as his Etruscan counterpart.^[22]

Role in the state

The Romans believed that Jupiter granted them supremacy because they had honoured him more than any other people had. Jupiter was "the fount of the auspices upon which the relationship of the city with the gods rested."^[23] He personified the divine authority of Rome's highest offices, internal organization, and external relations. His image in the Republican and Imperial Capitol bore regalia associated with Rome's ancient kings and the highest consular and Imperial honours.^[24]

The consuls swore their oath of office in Jupiter's name, and honoured him on the annual feriae of the Capitol in September. To thank him for his help, and to secure his continued support, they sacrificed a white ox (bos mas) with gilded horns.^[25] A similar sacrificial offering was made by triumphal generals, who surrendered the tokens of their victory at the feet of Jupiter's statue in the Capitol. Some scholars have viewed the triumphator as embodying (or impersonating) Jupiter in the triumphal procession.^[26]

Jupiter's association with kingship and sovereignty was reinterpreted as Rome's form of government changed. Originally, Rome was ruled by kings; after the monarchy was abolished and the Republic established, religious prerogatives were transferred to the patres, the patrician ruling class. Nostalgia for the kingship (affectatio regni) was considered treasonous. Those suspected of harbouring monarchical ambitions were punished, regardless of their service to the state. In the 5th century BC, the triumphator Camillus was sent into exile after he drove a chariot with a team of four white horses (quadriga)—an honour reserved for Jupiter himself. When Marcus Manlius, whose defense of the Capitol against the invading Gauls had earned him the name Capitolinus, was accused of regal pretensions, he was executed as a traitor by being cast from the Tarpeian Rock. His house on the Capitoline Hill was razed, and it was decreed that no patrician should ever be allowed to live there.^[27] Capitoline Jupiter represented a continuity of royal power from the Regal period, and conferred power to the magistrates who paid their respects to him.^[28]

During the Conflict of the Orders, Rome's plebeians demanded the right to hold political and religious office. During their first secessio (similar to a general strike), they withdrew from the city and threatened to found their own. When they agreed to come back to Rome they vowed the hill where they had retreated to Jupiter as symbol and guarantor of the unity of the Roman res publica.^[29] Plebeians eventually became eligible for all the magistracies and most priesthoods, but the high priest of Jupiter (Flamen Dialis) remained the preserve of patricians.^[30]

Flamen and Flaminica Dialis

Jupiter was served by the patrician Flamen Dialis, the highest-ranking member of the flamines, a college of fifteen priests in the official public cult of Rome, each of whom was devoted to a particular deity. His wife, the Flaminica Dialis, had her own duties, and presided over the sacrifice of a ram to Jupiter on each of the nundinae, the "market" days of a calendar cycle, comparable to a week.^[31] The couple were required to marry by the exclusive patrician ritual confarreatio, which included a sacrifice of spelt bread to Jupiter Farreus (from far, "wheat, grain").^[32]

The office of Flamen Dialis was circumscribed by several unique ritual prohibitions, some of which shed light on the sovereign nature of the god himself.^[33] For instance, the flamen may remove his clothes or apex (his pointed hat) only when under a roof, in order to avoid showing himself naked to the sky—that is, "as if under the eyes of Jupiter" as god of the heavens. Every time the Flaminica saw a lightning bolt or heard a clap of thunder (Jupiter's distinctive instrument), she was prohibited from carrying on with her normal routine until she placated the god.^[34]

Some privileges of the flamen of Jupiter may reflect the regal nature of Jupiter: he had the use of the curule chair,^[35] and was the only priest (sacerdos) who was preceded by a lictor^[36] and had a seat in the senate.^[37] Other regulations concern his ritual purity and his separation from the military function; he was forbidden to ride a horse or see the army outside the sacred boundary of Rome (pomerium). Although he served the god who embodied the sanctity of the oath, it was not religiously permissible (fas) for the Dialis to swear an oath.^[38] He could not have contacts with anything dead or connected with death: corpses, funerals, funeral fires, raw meat. This set of restrictions reflects the fulness of life and absolute freedom that are features of Jupiter.^[39]

Augurs

The augures publici, augurs were a college of sacerdotes who were in charge of all inaugurations and of the performing of ceremonies known as auguria. Their creation was traditionally ascribed to Romulus. They were considered the only official interpreters of Jupiter's will, thence they were essential to the very existence of the Roman State as Romans saw in Jupiter the only source of state authority.

Fetials

The fetials were a college of 20 men devoted to the religious administration of international affairs of state.^[40][41][42] Their task was to preserve and apply the fetial law (ius fetiale), a complex set of procedures aimed at ensuring the protection of the gods in Rome's relations with foreign states. Iuppiter Lapis is the god under whose protection they act, and whom the chief fetial (pater patratus) invokes in the rite concluding a treaty.^[43] If a declaration of war ensues, the fetial calls upon Jupiter and Quirinus, the heavenly, earthly and chthonic gods as witnesses of any potential violation of the ius. He can then declare war within 33 days.^[44]

The action of the fetials falls under Jupiter's jurisdiction as the divine defender of good faith. Several emblems of the fetial office pertain to Jupiter. The silex was the stone used for the fetial sacrifice, housed in the Temple of Iuppiter Feretrius, as was their sceptre. Sacred herbs (sagmina), sometimes identified as vervain, had to be taken from the nearby citadel (arx) for their ritual use.^[45][46]

Jupiter and religion in the secessions of the plebs

The role of Jupiter in the conflict of the orders is a reflection of the religiosity of the Romans. On one side, the patricians were able to naturally claim the support of the supreme god as they held the auspices of the State. On the other side, the plebs (plebeians) argued that, as Jupiter was the source of justice, they had his favor because their cause was just.

The first secession was caused by the excessive debt burden on the plebs. The legal institute of the nexum permitted a debtor to become a slave of his creditor. The plebs argued the debts had become unsustainable because of the expenses of the wars wanted by the patricians. As the senate did not accede to the proposal of a total debt remission advanced by dictator and augur Manius Valerius Maximus the plebs retired on the Mount Sacer, a hill located three Roman miles to the North-northeast of Rome, past the Nomentan bridge on river Anio.^[47] The place is windy and was usually the site of rites of divination performed by haruspices. The senate in the end sent a delegation composed of ten members with full powers of making a deal with the plebs, of which were part Menenius Agrippa and Manius Valerius. It was Valerius, according to the inscription found at Arezzo in 1688 and written on the order of Augustus as well as other literary sources, that brought the plebs down from the Mount, after the secessionists had consecrated it to Jupiter Territor and built an altar (ara) on its summit. The fear of the wrath of Jupiter was an important element in the solution of the crisis. The consecration of the Mount probably referred to its summit only. The ritual requested the participation of both an augur (presumably Manius Valerius himself) and a pontifex.^[48]

The second secession was caused by the autocratic and arrogant behaviour of the decemviri, who had been charged by the Roman people with writing down the laws in use till then kept secret by the patrician magistrates and the sacerdotes. All magistracies and the tribunes of the plebs had resigned in advance. The task resulted in the XII Tables, which though concerned only private law. The plebs once again retreated to the Sacer Mons: this act besides recalling the first secession was meant to seek the protection of the supreme god. The secession ended with the resignation of the decemviri and an amnesty for the rebellious soldiers who had deserted from their camp near Mount Algidus while warring against the Volscians, abandoning the commanders. The amnesty was granted by the senate and guaranteed by the pontifex maximus Quintus Furius (in Livy's version) (or Marcus Papirius) who also supervised the nomination of the new tribunes of the plebs, then gathered on the Aventine Hill. The role played by the pontifex maximus in a situation of vacation of powers is a significant element underlining the religious basis and character of the tribunicia potestas.^[49]

Myths and legends

A dominant line of scholarship has held that Rome lacked a body of myths in its earliest period, or that this original mythology has been irrecoverably obscured by the influence of the Greek narrative tradition.^[50] After the influence of Greek culture on Roman culture, Latin literature and iconography reinterpreted the myths of Zeus in depictions and narratives of Jupiter. In the legendary history of Rome, Jupiter is often connected to kings and kingship.

Birth

Jupiter is depicted as the twin of Juno in a statue at Praeneste that showed them nursed by Fortuna Primigenia.^[51] An inscription that is also from Praeneste, however, says that Fortuna Primigenia was Jupiter's first-born child.^[52] Jacqueline Champeaux sees this contradiction as the result of successive different cultural and religious phases, in which a wave of influence coming from the Hellenic world made Fortuna the daughter of Jupiter.^[53] The childhood of Zeus is an important theme in Greek religion, art and literature, but there are only rare (or dubious) depictions of Jupiter as a child.^[54]

Numa Pompilius

Faced by a period of bad weather endangering the harvest during one early spring, King Numa resorted to the scheme of asking the advice of the god by evoking his presence.^[55] He succeeded through the help of Picus and Faunus, whom he had imprisoned by making them drunk. The two gods (with a charm) evoked Jupiter, who was forced to come down to earth at the Aventine (hence named Iuppiter Elicius, according to Ovid). After Numa skilfully avoided the requests of the god for human sacrifices, Jupiter agreed to his request to know how lightning bolts are averted, asking only for the substitutions Numa had mentioned: an onion bulb, hairs and a fish. Moreover, Jupiter promised that at the sunrise of the following day he would give to Numa and the Roman people pawns of the imperium. The following day, after throwing three lightning bolts across a clear sky, Jupiter sent down from heaven a shield. Since this shield had no angles, Numa named it ancile; because in it resided the fate of the imperium, he had many copies made of it to disguise the real one. He asked the smith Mamurius Veturius to make the copies, and gave them to the Salii. As his only reward, Mamurius expressed the wish that his name be sung in the last of their carmina.^[56] Plutarch gives a slightly different version of the story, writing that the cause of the miraculous drop of the shield was a plague and not linking it with the Roman imperium.^[57]

Tullus Hostilius

Throughout his reign, King Tullus had a scornful attitude towards religion. His temperament was warlike, and he disregarded religious rites and piety. After conquering the Albans with the duel between the Horatii and Curiatii, Tullus destroyed Alba Longa and deported its inhabitants to Rome. As Livy tells the story, omens (prodigia) in the form of a rain of stones occurred on the Alban Mount because the deported Albans had disregarded their ancestral rites linked to the sanctuary of Jupiter. In addition to the omens, a voice was heard requesting that the Albans perform the rites. A plague followed and at last the king himself fell ill. As a consequence, the warlike character of Tullus broke down; he resorted to religion and petty, superstitious practices. At last, he found a book by Numa recording a secret rite on how to evoke Iuppiter Elicius. The king attempted to perform it, but since he executed the rite improperly the god threw a lightning bolt which burned down the king's house and killed Tullus.^[58]

Tarquin the Elder

When approaching Rome (where Tarquin was heading to try his luck in politics after unsuccessful attempts in his native Tarquinii), an eagle swooped down, removed his hat, flew screaming in circles, replaced the hat on his head and flew away. Tarquin's wife Tanaquil interpreted this as a sign that he would become king based on the bird, the quadrant of the sky from which it came, the god who had sent it and the fact it touched his hat (an item of clothing placed on a man's most noble part, the head).^[59]

The Elder Tarquin is credited with introducing the Capitoline Triad to Rome, by building the so-called Capitolium Vetus. Macrobius writes this issued from his Samothracian mystery beliefs.^[60]

Cult

Sacrifices

Sacrificial victims (hostiae) offered to Jupiter were the ox (castrated bull), the lamb (on the Ides, the ovis idulis) and the wether (a castrated goat or castrated ram) (on the Ides of January).^[61] The animals were required to be white. The question of the lamb's gender is unresolved; while a sacrificial lamb for a male deity was usually male, for the vintage-opening festival the flamen Dialis sacrificed a ewe lamb to Jupiter.^[62] This rule seems to have had many exceptions, as the sacrifice of a ram on the Nundinae by the flaminica Dialis demonstrates. During one of the crises of the Punic Wars, Jupiter was offered every animal born that year.^[63]

Temples

Temple of Capitoline Jupiter

The Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus stood on the Capitoline Hill in Rome.^[64] Jupiter was worshiped there as an individual deity, and with Juno and Minerva as part of the Capitoline Triad. The building was supposedly begun by king Tarquinius Priscus, completed by the last king (Tarquinius Superbus) and inaugurated in the early days of the Roman Republic (13 September 509 BC). It was topped with the statues of four horses drawing a quadriga, with Jupiter as charioteer. A large statue of Jupiter stood within; on festival days, its face was painted red. ^[65] In (or near) this temple was the Iuppiter Lapis: the Jupiter Stone, on which oaths could be sworn.

Jupiter's Capitoline Temple probably served as the architectural model for his provincial temples. When Hadrian built Aelia Capitolina on the site of Jerusalem, a temple to Jupiter Capitolinus was erected in the place of the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem.

Other temples in Rome

There were two temples in Rome dedicated to Iuppiter Stator; the first one was built and dedicated in 294 BC by Marcus Atilius Regulus after the third Samnite War. It was located on the Via Nova, below the Porta Mugonia, ancient entrance to the Palatine.^[66] Legend attributed its founding to Romulus.^[67] There may have been an earlier shrine (fanum), since the Jupiter cult is attested epigraphically.^[68] Ovid places the temple's dedication on 27 June, but it is unclear whether this was the original date,^[69] or the rededication after the restoration by Augustus.^[a]

A second temple of Iuppiter Stator was built and dedicated by Quintus Caecilus Metellus Macedonicus after his triumph in 146 BC near the Circus Flaminius. It was connected to the restored temple of Iuno Regina with a portico (porticus Metelli).^[70] Augustus constructed the Temple of Jupiter Tonans near that of Jupiter Capitolinus between 26 and 22 BC.^[71]

Iuppiter Victor had a temple dedicated by Quintus Fabius Maximus Gurges during the third Samnite War in 295 BC. It was probably on the Quirinal, on which an inscription reading Diovei Victore^[72] has been found, but was eclipsed by the imperial period by the Temple of Jupiter Invictus on the Palatine, which was often referred to by the same name.^[73] Inscriptions from the imperial age have revealed the existence of an otherwise-unknown temple of Iuppiter Propugnator on the Palatine.^[74]

Iuppiter Latiaris and Feriae Latinae

The cult of Iuppiter Latiaris was the most ancient known cult of the god: it was practised since very remote times near the top of the Mons Albanus on which the god was venerated as the high protector of the Latin League under the hegemony of Alba Longa.

After the destruction of Alba by king Tullus Hostilius the cult was forsaken. The god manifested his discontent through the prodigy of a rain of stones: the commission sent by the Roman senate to inquire was also greeted by a rain of stones and heard a loud voice from the grove on the summit of the mount requesting the Albans perform the religious service to the god according to the rites of their country. In consequence of this event the Romans instituted a festival of nine days (nundinae). Nonetheless a plague ensued: in the end Tullus Hostilius himself was affected and lastly killed by the god with a lightning bolt.^[75] The festival was reestablished on its primitive site by the last Roman king Tarquin the Proud under the leadership of Rome.

The feriae Latinae, or Latiar as they were known originally,^[76] were the common festival (panegyris) of the so-called Priscan Latins^[77] and of the Albans.^[78] Their restoration aimed at grounding Roman hegemony in this ancestral religious tradition of the Latins. The original cult was reinstated unchanged as is testified by some archaic features of the ritual: the exclusion of wine from the sacrifice^[79] the offers of milk and cheese and the ritual use of rocking among the games. Rocking is one of the most ancient rites mimicking ascent to Heaven and is very widespread. At the Latiar the rocking took place on a tree and the winner was of course the one who had swung the highest. This rite was said to have been instituted by the Albans to commemorate the disappearance of king Latinus, in the battle against Mezentius king of Caere: the rite symbolised a search for him both on earth and in heaven. The rocking as well as the customary drinking of milk was also considered to commemorate and ritually reinstate infancy.^[80] The Romans in the last form of the rite brought the sacrificial ox from Rome and every participant was bestowed a portion of the meat, rite known as carnem petere.^[81] Other games were held in every participant borough. In Rome a race of chariots (quadrigae) was held starting from the Capitol: the winner drank a liquor made with absynth.^[82] This competition has been compared to the Vedic rite of the vajapeya: in it seventeen chariots run a phoney race which must be won by the king in order to allow him to drink a cup of madhu, i. e. soma.^[83] The feasting lasted for at least four days, possibly six according to Niebuhr, one day for each of the six Latin and Alban decuriae.^[84] According to different records 47 or 53 boroughs took part in the festival (the listed names too differ in Pliny Naturalis historia III 69 and Dionysius of Halicarnassus AR V 61). The Latiar became an important feature of Roman political life as they were feriae conceptivae, i. e. their date varied each year: the consuls and the highest magistrates were required to attend shortly after the beginning of the administration, originally on the Ides of March: the Feriae usually took place in early April. They could not start campaigning before its end and if any part of the games had been neglected or performed unritually the Latiar had to be wholly repeated. The inscriptions from the imperial age record the festival back to the time of the decemvirs.^[85] Wissowa remarks the inner linkage of the temple of the Mons Albanus with that of the Capitol apparent in the common association with the rite of the triumph:^[86] since 231 BC some triumphing commanders had triumphed there first with the same legal features as in Rome.^[87]

Religious calendar

Ides

The Ides (the midpoint of the month, with a full moon) was sacred to Jupiter, because on that day heavenly light shone day and night.^[88] Some (or all) Ides were Feriae Iovis, sacred to Jupiter.^[b] On the Ides, a white lamb (ovis idulis) was led along Rome's Sacred Way to the Capitoline Citadel and sacrificed to him.^[89] Jupiter's two epula Iovis festivals fell on the Ides, as did his temple foundation rites as Optimus Maximus, Victor, Invictus and (possibly) Stator.^[90]

Nundinae

The nundinae recurred every ninth day, dividing the calendar into a market cycle analogous to a week. Market days gave rural people (pagi) the opportunity to sell in town and to be informed of religious and political edicts, which were posted publicly for three days. According to tradition, these festival days were instituted by the king Servius Tullius.^[91] The high priestess of Jupiter (Flaminica Dialis) sanctified the days by sacrificing a ram to Jupiter.^[92]

Festivals

During the Republican era, more fixed holidays on the Roman calendar were devoted to Jupiter than to any other deity.^[93]

Viniculture and wine

Festivals of viniculture and wine were devoted to Jupiter, since grapes were particularly susceptible to adverse weather.^[94] Dumézil describes wine as a "kingly" drink with the power to inebriate and exhilarate, analogous to the Vedic Soma.^[95]

Three Roman festivals were connected with viniculture and wine.

The rustic Vinalia altera on 19 August asked for good weather for ripening the grapes before harvest.^[96] When the grapes were ripe,^[97] a sheep was sacrificed to Jupiter and the flamen Dialis cut the first of the grape harvest.^[98][99]

The Meditrinalia on 11 October marked the end of the grape harvest; the new wine was pressed, tasted and mixed with old wine^[100] to control fermentation. In the Fasti Amiternini, this festival is assigned to Jupiter. Later Roman sources invented a goddess Meditrina, probably to explain the name of the festival.^[101]

At the Vinalia urbana on 23 April, new wine was offered to Jupiter.^[c] Large quantities of it were poured into a ditch near the temple of Venus Erycina, which was located on the Capitol.^[103]

Regifugium and Poplifugium

The Regifugium ("King's Flight")^[104] on 24 February has often been discussed in connection with the Poplifugia on 5 July, a day holy to Jupiter.^[105][d] The Regifugium followed the festival of Iuppiter Terminus (Jupiter of Boundaries) on 23 February. Later Roman antiquarians misinterpreted the Regifugium as marking the expulsion of the monarchy, but the "king" of this festival may have been the priest known as the rex sacrorum who ritually enacted the waning and renewal of power associated with the New Year (1 March in the old Roman calendar).^[107] A temporary vacancy of power (construed as a yearly "interregnum") occurred between the Regifugium on 24 February and the New Year on 1 March (when the lunar cycle was thought to coincide again with the solar cycle), and the uncertainty and change during the two winter months were over.^[108] Some scholars emphasize the traditional political significance of the day.^[109]

The Poplifugia ("Routing of Armies"^[110]), a day sacred to Jupiter, may similarly mark the second half of the year; before the Julian calendar reform, the months were named numerically, Quintilis (the fifth month) to December (the tenth month).^[e] The Poplifugia was a "primitive military ritual" for which the adult male population assembled for purification rites, after which they ritually dispelled foreign invaders from Rome.^[112]

Epula Iovisedit

There were two festivals called epulum Iovis ("Feast of Jove"). One was held on 13 September, the anniversary of the foundation of Jupiter's Capitoline temple. The other (and probably older) festival was part of the Plebeian Games (Ludi Plebei), and was held on 13 November.^[113] In the 3rd century BC, the epulum Iovis became similar to a lectisternium.^[114]

Ludiedit

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