DIS PATER. — A figure of Roman religion of very slight interest. Son of Saturn and Ops, he received the subterranean realm as his share when it was decided, together with his brothers Jupiter, Neptune, and Conso, to divide the rule of the world; his wife is Proserpina (Domina Ditis), whom he carried off near Enna in Sicily. The appellation of pater may suggest an ancient indigenous origin of D. (cf. Ianus pater, Iup-piter, Mars-piter, etc.), as may also the sacellum Ditis (near the ara Saturni at the foot of the Capitoline), whose foundation, according to an ancient myth, was attributed to the Pelasgians, who originally are said to have offered human sacrifices there, later replaced by Hercules with oscilla (Varro in Macrobius, I, 7, 28 ff.).
Nevertheless, it is more commonly accepted that Dis (another form Ditis, from the same root as div-es, div-itia) is the translation of the Greek Πλῶτος (also signifying wealth) and that he was imported from Tarentum, where he was worshipped, alongside Persephone (= Proserpina), as an underworld deity, by order of the Sibylline Books, on the occasion of a “prodigy” (249 B.C.). The cult of D. (together with that of Proserpina) took place at the Tarentum (or Tarentum, in the Campus Martius, perhaps near the present church of S. Giovanni de' Fiorentini), where there were two underground altars (Conso, D.’s brother, also had an underground altar in the Circus Maximus), and in his honour the ludi Tarentini (later saeculares) were celebrated for three consecutive nights, comprising a lectisternium, horse races, and sacrifices of black victims.