Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 16, 1905.djvu/321

 The European Sky -God. 273

"heavens, the bright sky sank beneath the horizon at nightfall ; and as Jupiter was the god of the sky by day, so Summanus or Jupiter Summanus ^ was the god of the sky by night.- Hence the Italians, like the Greeks, came to conceive of a subterranean Jupiter. They named him

Vediovis, Veditis, or Veiovis, and regarded him as in some sort an anti-Jove. Thus on the summit of the Alban Mount there was a cult of Jupiter Latiaris,^ in Bovillae at its base a cult of Vediovis : ^ on the Capitol at Rome Jupiter Feretrius was worshipped," in the hollow of the same hill Vediovis.^ The chthonian character of the latter deity is well attested. The ancient formula of devotion used by dictators and generals was addressed to Dis pater,

Veiovis, Manes ^ i.e. to a group of chthonian powers. A law, attributed to Romulus, ordained that a patron or client who neglected his duties " might be put to death by any man, as a victim devoted to the chthonian Jupiter,"^ i.e. to Vediovis.^ And Martianus Capella expressly identifies Vediovis with Pluto and Dis.^*^ There was, then, an early cult of a chthonian Jupiter, which justified the poets in calling the underground god Jupiter Stygitis,^^ Tartareiisy^ infernus^'^ niger}^ etc.^^

'Dessau 3057, 3058. ^wi^gQ^a Rel. u. KuU. d. Rom. p. 124.

" Roscher Lex. ii. 686 ff. ^ Dessau 2988. ^ Roscher Lex. ii. 670 ff.


 * • Preller-Jordan i. 264 ff., Wissowa Rel. u. Kult. d. Rom. p. 191.

^Macr. Sat. 3. 9. lo.

®Dionys. ant. Rom. 2.10. ® Wissowa Rel. 11. Kult. a. Rom. p. 190.

'"Mart. Cap. 2. 166 Pluton quem etiatn Ditem Veiovemque dixere. "Wissowa cp. Mythogr. Vat. iii. 6. i.

''Verg. Aen. 4. 638, Os. fast. 5. 448, Sil. i. 386, Aus. id. 12 granimatico- mastix 16, carm. Verg. yjf) in Biihrens Poetae Latini minores iv. 234, Biicheler Carmina Lattna epigraphica i. 258 no. 540. 5, Arnob. 2. 70, 3. 31, Corp. inscrr. Lat. ix. 5350.

i^Val. Flacc. i. 730, Sil. 2. 674.

'■'Sen. Here. fur. 47, cp. Prudent c. Symmach. i. 388 lovis Infernalis,

"Sil. 8. 116, Stat. Theb. 2. 49.

'■'J. B. CaLXitr Epitheta dcorum ^. 33 cites Aus. epitaph. 33. 8 lovis Elysii, Sen. Here. fur. 612 diro. . . lovi, [Damasus] £/;^r. 78. 4 funereo. . . lovi.

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