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Rh Juno and Minerva, in a fashion which clearly indicates a Graeco-Etruscan origin; for the combination of three deities in one temple was foreign to the ancient Roman religion, while it is found both in Greece and Etruria. This temple was built on a scale of magnificence quite unknown to primitive Rome, and was beyond doubt the work of Etruscan architects employed, we may presume, by the Tarquinii. Its three cellae contained the statues of the three deities, with Jupiter in the middle holding his thunderbolt. Henceforward it was the centre of the religious life of the state, and symbolized its unity and strength. Its dedication festival fell on the 13th of September, on which day the consuls originally succeeded to office; accompanied by the senate and other magistrates and priests, and in fulfilment of a vow made by their predecessors, they offered to the great god a white heifer, his favourite sacrifice, and after rendering thanks for the preservation of the state during the past year, made the same vow as that by which they themselves had been bound. Then followed the epulum Jovis or feast of Jupiter, in which the three deities seem to have been visibly present in the form of their statues, Jupiter having a couch and each goddess a sella, and shared the meal with senate and magistrates. In later times this day became the central point of the great Roman games (ludi Romani), originally games vowed in honour of the god if he brought a war to a successful issue. When a victorious army returned home, it was to this temple that the triumphal procession passed, and the triumph of which we hear so often in Roman history may be taken as a religious ceremonial in honour of Jupiter. The general was dressed and painted to resemble the statue of Jupiter himself, and was drawn on a gilded chariot by four white horses through the Porta Triumphalis to the Capitol, where he offered a solemn sacrifice to the god, and laid on his knees the victor’s laurels (see ).

Throughout the period of the Republic the great god of the Capitol in his temple looking down on the Forum continued to overshadow all other worships as the one in which the whole state was concerned, in all its length and breadth, rather than any one gens or family. Under Augustus and the new monarchy it is sometimes said that the Capitoline worship suffered to some extent an eclipse (J. B. Carter, The Religion of Numa, p. 160 seq.); and it is true that as it was the policy of Augustus to identify the state with the interests of his own family, he did what was feasible to direct the attention of the people to the worships in which he and his family were specially concerned; thus his temple of Apollo on the Palatine, and that of Mars Ultor in the Forum Augusti, took over a few of the prerogatives of the cult on the Capitol. But Augustus was far too shrewd to attempt to oust Jupiter Optimus Maximus from his paramount position; and he became the protecting deity of the reigning emperor as representing the state, as he had been the protecting deity of the free republic. His worship spread over the whole empire; it is probable that every city had its temple to the three deities of the Roman Capitol, and the fact that the Romans chose the name of Jupiter in almost every case, by which to indicate the chief deity of the subject peoples, proves that they continued to regard him, so long as his worship existed at all, as the god whom they themselves looked upon as greatest.

See,. Excellent accounts of Jupiter may be found in Roscher’s Mythological Lexicon, and in Wissowa’s Religion und Kultus der Römer (p. 100 seq.).

 JUPITER, in astronomy, the largest planet of the solar system; his size is so great that it exceeds the collective mass of all the others in the proportion of 5 to 2. He travels in his orbit at a mean distance from the sun exceeding that of the earth 5.2 times, or 483,000,000 miles. The eccentricity of this orbit is considerable, amounting to 0.048, so that his maximum and minimum distances are 504,000,000 and 462,000,000 miles respectively. When in opposition and at his mean distance, he is situated 390,000,000 miles from the earth. His orbit is inclined about 1° 18′ 40″ to the ecliptic. His sidereal revolution is completed in 4332.585 days or 11 years 314.9 days, and his synodical period, or the mean interval separating his returns to opposition, amounts to 398.87 days. His real polar and equatorial diameters measure 84,570 and 90,190 miles respectively, so that the mean is 87,380 miles. His apparent diameter (equatorial) as seen from the earth varies from about 32″, when in conjunction with the sun, to 50″ in opposition to that luminary. The oblateness, or compression, of his globe amounts to about ; his volume exceeds that of the earth 1390 times, while his mass is about 300 times greater. These values are believed to be as accurate as the best modern determinations allow, but there are some differences amongst various observers and absolute exactness cannot be obtained.

The discovery of telescopic construction early in the 17th century and the practical use of the telescope by Galileo and others greatly enriched our knowledge of Jupiter and his system. Four of the satellites were detected in 1610, but the dark bands or belts on the globe of the planet do not appear to have been noticed until twenty years later. Though Galileo first sighted the satellites and perseveringly studied the Jovian orb, he failed to distinguish the belts, and we have to conclude either that these features were unusually faint at the period of his observations, or that his telescopes were insufficiently powerful to render them visible. The belts were first recognized by Nicolas Zucchi and Daniel Bartoli on the 17th of May 1630. They were seen also by Francesco Fontana in the same and immediately succeeding years, and by other observers of about the same period, including Zuppi, Giovanni Battista Riccioli and Francesco Maria Grimaldi. Improvements in telescopes were quickly introduced, and between 1655 and 1666 C. Huygens, R. Hooke and J. D. Cassini made more effective observations. Hooke discovered a large dark spot in the planet’s southern hemisphere on the 19th of May 1664, and from this object Cassini determined the rotation period, in 1665 and later years, as 9 hours 56 minutes.

The belts, spots and irregular markings on Jupiter have now been assiduously studied during nearly three centuries. These markings are extremely variable in their tones, tints and relative velocities, and there is little reason to doubt that they are atmospheric formations floating above the surface of the planet in a series of different currents. Certain of the markings appear to be fairly durable, though their rates of motion exhibit considerable anomalies and prove that they must be quite detached from the actual sphere of Jupiter. At various times determinations of the rotation period were made as follows:—

A great number of Jovian features have been traced in more recent years and their rotation periods ascertained. According to the researches of Stanley Williams the rates of motion for different latitudes of the planet are approximately as under:—

W. F. Denning gives the following relative periods for the years 1898 to 1905:—