Agriculture, Chthonic, Complement, Italy, Jupiter, Mercury, Money, Neptune, Religion, Saturn, Sticks and Stones, Underworld
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Dis Pater aka Rex Infernus, Roman god of the underworld, contracted from Dives Pater (“Father of Riches”)
Dīs Pater (Dītis Patris), otherwise known as Rex Infernus or Pluto, is a Roman god of the underworld. Dis was originally associated with fertile agricultural land and mineral wealth, and since those minerals came from underground, he was later equated with the chthonic deities Pluto (Hades) and Orcus.
- Orcus was a god of the underworld, punisher of broken oaths in Etruscan and Roman mythology. As with Hades, the name of the god was also used for the underworld itself. Eventually, he was conflated with Dis Pater and Pluto.
Dīs Pater’s name was commonly shortened to Dīs, and this name has since become an alternative name for the underworld or a part of the underworld, such as the City of Dis of Dante’s The Divine Comedy, which comprises Lower Hell.
- In Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy, the City of Dis encompasses the sixth through the ninth circles of Hell.
Etymology
The name Dīs is a contraction of the Latin adjective dīves (‘wealthy, rich’), probably derived from dīvus, dīus (‘godlike, divine’) via the form *deiu-(o)t- or *deiu-(e)t- (‘who is like the gods, protected by/from the gods’). The occurrence of the deity Dīs together with Pater (‘father’) may be due to association with Di(e)spiter (Jupiter).
- de Vaan 2008, pp. 173–174.
- Kurt Latte, Römische Religionsgeschichte, part 5, vol. 4 of Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, C.H.Beck, 1976, ISBN 978-3-406-01374-4, p. 247.
Cicero gave a similar etymology in De Natura Deorum, suggesting the meaning ‘father of riches’, and comparing the deity to the Greek name Pluto (Plouton, Πλούτων), meaning “the rich one”, a title bestowed upon the Greek god Hades.
Mythology
Dīs Pater eventually became associated with death and the underworld because mineral wealth such as gems and precious metals came from underground, wherein lies the realm of the dead, i.e. Hades‘ (Pluto’s) domain.
In being conflated with Pluto, Dīs Pater took on some of the latter’s mythological attributes, being one of the three sons of Saturn (Greek Cronus) and Ops (Greek Rhea), along with Jupiter (Greek Zeus) and Neptune (Greek Poseidon). He ruled the underworld and the dead beside his wife, Proserpina (Greek Persephone). In literature, Dīs Pater’s name was commonly used as a symbolic and poetic way of referring to death itself.
- Grimal (1987). The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 141, 177. ISBN 0-631-13209-0.
Dīs Pater was sometimes identified with the Sabine god Soranus. Julius Caesar, in his Commentaries on the Gallic Wars (VI:18), states that the Gauls all claimed descent from Dīs Pater. This is an example of interpretatio romana: what Caesar meant was that the Gauls all claimed descent from a Gaulish god that he equated with the Roman Dīs Pater.
- Servius‘ commentary to Aeneid, XI. 785 “Mount Soracte is located in the territory of the Hirpini next to Via Flaminia. It was on this mountain that a sacrifice to Dis Pater was once performed – because it is devoted to chthonic deities – as wolves suddenly appeared and plundered the entrails from the ire. The shepherds chased the wolves for a long time, until they arrived at a cave emanating pestilential gases that killed people standing nearby. The reason for the emergence of this plague was that they had chased the wolves. They received a message that they could calm it down by imitating wolves; that means, living by plundering. They did so, and since then these people have been called Hirpi Sorani.”
- Green. Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 81–82. ISBN 0-500-01516-3.
- Śuri, latinised as Soranus, was an Etruscan, Faliscan, Capenate and Sabine god adopted into ancient Roman religion. He was worshipped on Mt. Soracte in Lazio. The area was sacred to underworld gods, such as Dis Pater.
A scholium on the Pharsalia equates Dis Pater with Taranis, the Gaulish god of thunder.[need quotation to verify] In southern Germany and the Balkans, Aericura was considered a consort of Dīs Pater.[citation needed][year needed]
- Vendryes, Joseph (1958). Études celtiques (in French). Les Belles Lettres.
- In Celtic mythology, Taranis is the god of thunder, who was worshipped primarily in Gaul, Hispania, Britain, and Ireland, but also in the Rhineland and Danube regions, amongst others.
- Erecura or Aerecura was a goddess worshipped in ancient times, often thought to be Celtic in origin, mostly represented with the attributes of Proserpina and associated with the Roman underworld god Dis Pater, as on an altar from Sulzbach. She appears with Dis Pater in a statue found at Oberseebach, Switzerland, and in several magical texts from Austria, once in the company of Cerberus and once probably with Ogmios, the Celtic deity of eloquence. Miranda Green calls Aericura a “Gaulish Hecuba“, while Noémie Beck characterizes her as a “land-goddess” sharing both underworld and fertility aspects with Dis Pater. Geographically, the areas in which Erecura and Dis Pater were worshipped appear to be in complementary distribution with those where the cult of Sucellus and Nantosuelta is attested, and Beck suggests that these cults were functionally similar although iconographically distinct. A male deity called Arecurius or Aericurus is named on an altar-stone in Northumberland, England, although Beck cautions that “this inscription is quite uncertain, and it might be a misreading of Mercurio“.
Worship
In 249 BC and 207 BC, the Roman Senate under senator Lucius Catellius ordained special festivals to appease Dīs Pater and Proserpina. Every hundred years, a festival was celebrated in his name. According to legend, a round marble altar, Altar of Dīs Pater and Proserpina (Latin: Ara Ditis Patris et Proserpinae), was miraculously discovered by the servants of a Sabine called Valesius, the ancestor of the first consul. The servants were digging in the Tarentum on the edge of the Campus Martius to lay foundations following instructions given to Valesius’s children in dreams, when they found the altar 20 feet (6 m) underground. Valesius reburied the altar after three days of games. Sacrifices were offered to this altar during the Ludi Saeculares or Ludi Tarentini. It may have been uncovered for each occasion of the games, to be reburied afterwards, a clearly chthonic tradition of worship. It was rediscovered in 1886–1887 beneath the Corso Vittorio Emanuele in Rome.
- Nash, Ernest (1961–1962). Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Vol. 1. London, UK: A. Zwemmer Ltd. p. 57. ISBN 0-8018-4300-6. OCLC 14110024. ISBN 978-087817265-8
- Richardson, L., Jr. (1 October 1992). A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (illustrated ed.). London, UK / Baltimore, MD: Thames and Hudson / Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 110–111. ISBN 0-8018-4300-6. ISBN 978-080184300-6
- Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, commonly known as Corso Vittorio, is a wide east–west thoroughfare that courses through Rome. It connects a bridge over the Tiber, Ponte Vittorio Emanuele II, to both the Via Torre Argentina and Via del Plebiscito. The latter Via continues east from Piazza del Gesù and along Palazzo Venezia to reach Piazza Venezia which sits below the massive white Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II. In its traverse from the Tiber through central Rome, Corso Vittorio runs along the Piazza della Chiesa Nuova standing before the facade of the church of Santa Maria in Vallicella (the Chiesa Nuova), past the Palazzo della Cancelleria on the right, past the Palazzo Braschi and the Rome Commune (City Hall), and then past the curving Palazzo Massimo alle Colonne and Sant’ Andrea della Valle, until it splits into two streets at Largo di Torre Argentina, where the easterly direction continues up to the Piazza of the Gesù. It was created by a resolution of 1886 and was named after Vittorio Emanuele II, the first King of Italy.
See also
References
- de Vaan 2008, pp. 173–174.
- Kurt Latte, Römische Religionsgeschichte, part 5, vol. 4 of Handbuch der Altertumswissenschaft, C.H.Beck, 1976, ISBN 978-3-406-01374-4, p. 247.
- Grimal (1987). The Dictionary of Classical Mythology. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 141, 177. ISBN 0-631-13209-0.
- Servius‘ commentary to Aeneid, XI. 785 “Mount Soracte is located in the territory of the Hirpini next to Via Flaminia. It was on this mountain that a sacrifice to Dis Pater was once performed – because it is devoted to chthonic deities – as wolves suddenly appeared and plundered the entrails from the ire. The shepherds chased the wolves for a long time, until they arrived at a cave emanating pestilential gases that killed people standing nearby. The reason for the emergence of this plague was that they had chased the wolves. They received a message that they could calm it down by imitating wolves; that means, living by plundering. They did so, and since then these people have been called Hirpi Sorani.”
- Green. Dictionary of Celtic Myth and Legend. London: Thames and Hudson. pp. 81–82. ISBN 0-500-01516-3.
- Vendryes, Joseph (1958). Études celtiques (in French). Les Belles Lettres.
- Nash, Ernest (1961–1962). Pictorial Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Vol. 1. London, UK: A. Zwemmer Ltd. p. 57. ISBN 0-8018-4300-6. OCLC 14110024. ISBN 978-087817265-8
- Richardson, L., Jr. (1 October 1992). A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (illustrated ed.). London, UK / Baltimore, MD: Thames and Hudson / Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 110–111. ISBN 0-8018-4300-6. ISBN 978-080184300-6
Bibliography
- de Vaan, Michiel (2008). Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the other Italic Languages. Brill. ISBN 9789004167971.
External links
- Media related to Dīs Pater at Wikimedia Commons
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