Dis Pater

DIS PATER. - A figure of Roman religion of very slight interest. Son of Saturn and Ops, he received as his lot the underground kingdom, when it was decided with his brothers Jupiter, Neptune and Consus to divide the rule of the world; his spouse is Proserpina (Domina Ditis), whom he abducted near Enna in Sicily. The appellation 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 would have offered human sacrifices to it, later replaced by Hercules with oscilla (Varro in Macrobius, I, 7, 28 ff.).

Nevertheless it is more commonly held 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 it would have been imported from Taranto, where it was worshipped, alongside Persephone (= Proserpina), as an infernal 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 (Consus too, brother of D., had an underground altar in the Circus Maximus) and in his honor the ludi Tarentini (later saeculares) were celebrated for three consecutive nights, comprising a lectisternium, horse races and sacrifices of black victims.

Cesare D'Onofrio