DIS PATER. — A figure of very little interest in Roman religion. Son of Saturn and Ops, he received the underground kingdom when it was decided, along with his brothers Jupiter, Neptune, and Corvus, to divide the world’s kingdom; his spouse is Proserpina (Domina Ditis), whom he abducted near Enna in Sicily. The epithet *pater* may suggest an ancient indigenous origin of Dis (cf. Ianus pater, Iuppiter, Mars-piter, etc.), as well as the *saeculum 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 accepted that Dis (another form *Ditis*, from the same root as *div-ess*, *div-itia*) is the translation of the Greek Πλούτων (also signifying "wealth") and that it was imported from Tarentum, 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 Dis (together with that of Proserpina) took place at the Tarentum (or Tarentum, in the Campus Martius, perhaps near the present-day church of S. Giovanni de' Fiorentini), where two underground altars were located (Corvus, Dis’s brother, also had an underground altar in the Circus Maximus), and in his honor the *ludi Tarentini* (later called *saeculares*) were celebrated for three consecutive nights, including a *lectisternium*, horse races, and sacrifices of black victims.