![]() In the time of the Republic the worship of Sol Indiges was joined with that of Luna, the moon. Christian scholars have frequently seen Sol Invictus and Mithras as prefigurations of Christ.Īnciently, Sol seems to have been the god of the agricultural year. Sol Invictus was a powerful symbol for the Romans of the late Empire: each evening he is forced apparently to submit to the powers of darkness, but he reappears each morning as the eternal victor. The type of Sol Invictus, though not the name, appears on imperial coinage from the time of Septimius Severus onwards. Modern research has shown that the cult is, however, autochthonous at Rome. Many older works erroneously suppose the cult of Sol Invictus was the oriental cult of Elagabalus imported to Rome. He built a temple and founded a second pontifical college, the pontifices Solis, pontiffs of the Sun, to administer the rites. The worship of Sol Invictus was elevated to a state cult by the emperor Aurelian in 274. Apollo and Diana carry the prayers of the people to the throne of the gods. In Horace’s Carmen Saeclare, the poet addresses Apollo and Diana. īy the time of the early Empire, Sol had been partially syncretized with the Greek Apollo. ![]() Janus and Jana were worshipped as sun and moon, and were regarded as the highest of the gods, receiving their sacrifices before all the others. Īt an early date Sol came to be identified with Janus. Probably the Romans made an evocatio of Sol at some point during the early third-century conquest of the Sabines, and the Aurelii, as the Sabine family that superintended the cult, acquiesced in Sol’s removal to Rome. Under the Republic, the cult of Sol Indiges was a sacrum gentilicum of gens Aurelia (originally the Sabine gens Auselii), who claimed descent from the god. Latinus, the eponymous ancestor legendary hero of the Latins, was said to have been a son of Odysseus and Circe, who was herself the daughter of Helios (Sol). ![]() As Aeneas was the supposed ancestor of the Romans, so Odysseus was the ancestor of the Etruscans and Latins. įor the early Romans, Sol was an important symbol of the amalgamation of Latins and Romans. The Sabines settled on the Quirinal, and the altar of Sol there was one of the altars established by Titus Tatius. According to tradition, the Sabine king Titus Tatius introduced the worship of Sol to Rome after the conclusion of peace between Romulus and the Sabines Varro mentions Sol Indiges as one of the 12 principal agricultural deities. The Latin name Sol is cognate to the Etruscan Usil, Sabine Ausil, Sanskrit Surya, Germanic Sol, and Greek Helios.
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