CONSO. — An ancient Roman god: his two festivals, called Consualia, on 21 August and 15 December, are recorded in the most ancient Roman calendar.
His cult centred on a subterranean altar near the Circus Maximus, where, during his festival, games were held featuring races of mules and horses. Even the circus spectacle staged by Romulus, during which, according to legend, the rape of the Sabine women occurred, was said to have been dedicated to this god, who in texts recalling the episode is identified with Neptunus equester. At the December festival the rex sacrorum also took part on horseback. The same interval that separates the festival of Consus in December from that of Ops, a goddess mythologically conceived as the Earth, separates the day of the Opiconsivia from his August festival. Hence, while ancient scholars interpreted the god, by etymology, on the basis of the word consilium, modern scholars tend to see in him an agrarian deity linked, in his name, with the verb condere (in the sense of storing grain in underground granaries): this meaning also corresponds to the position of the August festival. But since condere has other meanings—such as closing a period—others explain the December festival in connection with the end of the year; others, finally, on the basis of the subterranean altar in the circus, regard him as an infernal deity.