JUPITER (Juppiter). - Supreme god of the Roman religion. His name, linguistically identical to the Vedic Dyäus Pită (v.), is of Indo-European origin and conceals within itself the root di- which indicates brightness and particularly that of the daytime sky (cf. Lat. dies = day) and an original vocative "father!": the same concepts, therefore, that survive in the Greek Zeus, who in his name contains the same root and who is considered father of gods and men; likewise the Germanic Ziu and Tyr are linguistically analogous divine names.
The origins of the deity therefore go back to a period earlier than the migrations of the Indo-European-speaking peoples. The god of the sky, father and sovereign, is a primordial concept that is preserved in various forms in the various religions of those peoples.
Although the documents of the Italic religions do not go back, save for a few exceptions, beyond the period in which Rome dominated the whole peninsula, it is evident that the cult of J. had no need to be spread by Rome: his cults in the various Italic cities demonstrate, in fact, characteristics that could hardly derive from the Roman cult. In Latium, on the summit of the Mons Albanus (Monte Cavo) was the cult seat of Iuppiter Latiaris: annually the more than thirty peoples of the Prisci Latini sacrificed bulls there, whose flesh was distributed and consumed by the representatives of all the individual towns; in myth, this Iuppiter Latiaris was identified with the legendary progenitor of the Latins, Latinus. At Lavinium, the name of Iuppiter, like that of Aeneas and that of the Sun, was applied to the god Indiges of the river Numicus. At Palestrina J. participates in the cult of the goddess Fortuna and assumes, among other things, the figure of a child, Iuppiter Puer. Similar seems to be the Iuppiter Anxur of the Volscian city of Terracina. Even in other regions, outside Latium, an autochthonous cult of J. can be recognized. The Iguvine Tables document it for Umbria. In Campania, under the Greek name of Iuppiter Milichius (Zeus Meilichios) an autochthonous J. of infernal character may be hidden. These and similar traits are absent from the Roman figure of J., at least from that fixed by the classical tradition. However, even at Rome J. has an extraordinary abundance of original characteristics that pass into second place only before the preponderant importance of his Capitoline cult and the Hellenizing character of the literary and artistic tradition. It seems that before the unification of the city each community had its own cult of J. and precisely on the summit of its own hill: this is suggested both by the individual transmitted names of Iuppiter Viminus, Fagutalis, Coelius, etc., and by the particular correspondence of such places of worship to the character of a supreme god of the bright sky. Such, in fact, J. is from the very origins of the Roman religion and remains so afterward as well: the epithet Lucetius, which is already found in the very ancient hymn of the Salii, alludes to this character of his, while the current expressions of the Latin language that say "sub Iove" for "in the open air," etc., also presuppose it.
(lat. Anderson)
In the most ancient Roman calendar the festivals of J. are only apparently scarce: many circumstances, in fact, confirm the relatively late testimony according to which the idus, that is, originally the day of the full moon of each month, was sacred to J. from the beginning. On such days no other festivals appear in the calendar, not even those whose date and very ancient age cannot be doubted (on the idus of March: Anna Perenna; on those of Oct.: equus october); and, even in historical times, the most important cults of J. were celebrated on the Ides of the various months. On these days the special priest of J., the flamen Dialis — the first of the flamines maiores — sacrificed a sheep (ovis idulis) to J. monthly on the acropolis of the city. J., therefore, is not only present in the calendar, but occupies a central position in it; this position, as well as the connection with the full moon (the day of the most lasting luminosity) and the severe norms of ritual purity that regulate, in their smallest details, the life of his priest, correspond clearly to the character of the supreme god of the sky. However, the calendar also reveals other characteristics of J. It is known, for example, that the festivals connected with the production of wine — the Vinalia priora of April 23, the Vinalia rustica of Aug. 19, and the Meditrinalia of Oct. 11 — were sacred to J. Feriae Iovis are also the festival of the Poplifugium and Dec. 23 (Larentalia): festivals whose original connection with the cult of J. now escapes us.
Undoubtedly very ancient — that is, presumably prior to the establishment of the Capitoline cult — are also other Roman cults of J. that bring out certain functions and certain aspects of the god. On the northern summit of the Capitoline Hill was worshiped Iuppiter
Feretrius or Iuppiter Lapis: his priestly college, that of the fetiales, regulated the sacred international law of ancient Rome, that is, practically the declarations of war in ritual form: one swore on the stone (lapis silos) that represented the god. The supposed meteoric origins of this stone lead to another form of appearance of J.: the lightning bolt. Even in classical times the primitive connection of lightning and thunder with J. survives, and he assumes the epithets Tonans, Fulgurator, etc., as well as other appellations, for example, Pluvius, which indicate his nature as a god of the sky: but more ancient than all these seems to be the name of Iuppiter Fulgur, that is, "J. Lightning." Like the sky deities of primitive religions, the Roman J. also sanctioned his decisions with lightning, similar in this respect also to the Etruscan Tinia who, moreover, even in archaic times is assimilated to the Greek Zeus. The ancient age of Iuppiter Elicius also appears from the uncertain interpretation that the ancient Romans themselves gave of it: the meaning of "to produce, to evoke" hidden in his appellation perhaps concerned a power relating to water (cf. the Aquaticium, a rite celebrated on the Aventine) and not, or at least not only, as the ancient scholars believed, the prodigia of the sky. Another ancient cult is that of Iuppiter Liber which, outside Rome, is found in the sub-Apennine region: at Rome it centers around the sanctuary of the Aventine whose festival is Sept. 1. Iuppiter Liber is perhaps to be connected with the aforementioned connection with wine: in this case the god Liber would be a conception later than an original Iuppiter who contained within himself also the Dionysiac characteristics of the former. Other epithets, such as Stator, Victor, Invictus, emphasize in J. a warrior character or that of supreme master of the fortunes of wars. The administration of his cult by the ancient flamen Dialis demonstrates the antiquity of Iuppiter Farreus who presides over the form of sacred marriage called confarreatio. But flour, or more precisely crushed wheat (far), as the basic element of every human life and of every sacrifice, also appears in another connection with J.: in the figure of Iuppiter Pistor, whose name only for modern scholars would be related to a supposed meaning of the verb pinsere relating to hurling lightning bolts, whereas for the Romans it instead meant "to crush grain" (later pistor = baker).
Among all these cults there emerges, for its central importance in Roman public life, the cult of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus on the southern summit of the Capitoline Hill. The temple, oriented toward the south and built with three cellae, of which the side ones housed, as paredrae, Juno Regina and Minerva, dates back to the age "of the Tarquins" and was inaugurated in that year 509 B.C. which Roman tradition considers the first year of the Republic. The temple, built by Etruscan artists, contained a statue of J., certainly according to the archaic Greek anthropomorphic type: nevertheless J. assumes in this cult of his an essentially Roman character, inasmuch as he is placed at the center of the life of the state. It is in this temple, from then on, that all the international treaties of Rome are kept; it is here that the Senate assembles to decide on entering a war; it is here that the departing head of the army makes his vows for his campaign, in order to return here in triumph (triumphus) to present his sacrifice, once victory has been obtained. On this occasion the triumphator dresses in a costume similar to that of J. Optimus Maximus, which was that of the Etruscan kings. The festival of the temple, Sept. 13, marks the beginning of the official year, with the taking of office by the magistrates. On the wall of the cella of Minerva was fixed the clavus annalis, the annual nail that served for a sacred reckoning of time: in fact, the date of the founding of the Capitoline temple constituted for several centuries a stable chronological point of reference. Between the Capitoline cult and the cult of Iuppiter Latiaris there are various significant relations: the commander not admitted to the triumph in the city celebrated a triumph on the Alban Mount; during the feriae Latinae chariot races were also organized on the Capitoline; to Capitoline J. a bull was likewise offered as a victim. While, however, the Alban cult represents the idea of common Latin descent, the Capitoline one, independent of ties of kinship, embodies in itself the universal political idea of Rome. In the Roman coloniae capitolia were built, on the model of the Capitoline temple of the City. The Capitoline cult remains at the center of Roman public religious life throughout the republican period. Augustus is the first who transfers some prerogatives of this cult to the cults founded by him of Mars Ultor and of Apollo, in the service of the dynastic idea he championed. Under other emperors, both because of the intense development of the imperial cult and because of other and specific religious interests (for example, the cult of the Sun under Aurelian), not only the Capitoline cult, but the cult of J. in general seems, at times, to recede into the background. But while sudden fervors and attempts at religious policy mostly pass away with the Emperor who created them, the Roman State always finds anew its religious center in the cult of J. Optimus Maximus.
The non-Italic religious masses included within the orbit of the Empire easily find in this supreme Roman divinity an expression of their own supreme god, just as the Romans themselves believe they find their own J. in foreign divinities (interpretatio Romana). Thus not only the European peoples, among whom, for example, the Celtic god Succellus or the Germanic god Donar are interpreted as J., but also the Eastern peoples identify their most eminent divinities, and for the most part also celestial ones, with the Roman god, while the Romans increasingly undergo the influence of the various Eastern religious ideologies. Thus it happens that from the more or less local cults of Commagene, of Baalbek and of Cyrene there develop, among the mixed population of the Roman provinces, the cults, respectively, of Iuppiter Dolichenus, Iuppiter Heliopolitanus and Iuppiter Harmon.