Consus

CONSUS. - Ancient Roman god: his two festivals, called Consualia, on August 21 and December 15, are marked in the oldest Roman calendar.

His cult was centered around a subterranean altar near the Circus Maximus, where, during his festival, games with races of mules and horses took place. Even the circus spectacle organized by Romulus, during which, according to legend, the rape of the Sabine women is said to have occurred, would have been dedicated to the god who, in the texts that recall the episode, is identified with Neptunus equester. The festival of December was also attended by the rex sacrorum on horseback. The same distance that separates the festival of Ops, mythologically conceived as the Earth, from that of C. in December, separates the day of the Opiconsivia from his festival in August. Therefore, while ancient scholars interpreted the god by etymologizing on the basis of the word consilium, modern scholars tend to see in him an agrarian divinity connected, in his name, with the verb condere (in the sense of storing grain in subterranean granaries): the position of the August festival would correspond to this meaning. But, since condere also has other meanings - for example, to close 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, consider him an underworld divinity.

Angelo Brelich