GIOVE (Iuppiter). — Supreme god of the Roman religion. His name, linguistically identical with the Vedic Dyäus Pită (v.), is of Indo-European origin and contains within it the root di-, which indicates luminosity, particularly that of the daytime sky (cf. Lat. dies = day), and an original vocative “father!”: thus, the same concepts that survive in the Greek Zeus, whose name contains the same root and who is regarded as the father of gods and men; the Germanic Ziu and Tyr are likewise linguistically analogous divine names.
The origins of the divinity therefore go back to a period preceding the migrations of the Indo-European-speaking peoples. The god of the sky, father and sovereign, is a primordial concept preserved in various forms in the various religions of those peoples.
(Lat. Anderson)
GIOVE – Head, known as the “Otricoli Head,” copy of a Greek original of the 4th century – Rome, Vatican Museum.
It seems that before the unification of the city every community had its own cult of Jupiter, specifically on the summit of its own hill: this is suggested both by the individual names handed down to us— Iuppiter Viminus, Fagutalis, Coelius, etc.—and by the particular correspondence between such places of worship and the character of a supreme god of the luminous sky. Such, in fact, Jupiter has been from the origins of Roman religion, and remained thereafter: the epithet Lucetius, already found in the most ancient hymn of the Salii, alludes to this character, while it is also presupposed by the common expressions of the Latin language, which uses “sub Iove,” etc., to say “in the open air.”
In the oldest Roman calendar the festivals of Jupiter appear scarce only apparently: many circumstances, in fact, confirm the relatively late testimony according to which the idus, that is, originally, the day of the full moon in each month, was sacred to Jupiter from the beginning. No other festivals appear in the calendar on these days, not even those whose date and extreme antiquity cannot be doubted (on the idus of March: Anna Perenna; on those of October: equus october); and, even in historical times, the most important cults of Jupiter would be celebrated on the Ides of the various months. On these days Jupiter’s special priest, the flamen Dialis—the first of the flamines maiores—sacrificed a sheep (ovis idulis) to Jupiter each month on the city’s acropolis. Jupiter, therefore, is not merely 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 enduring luminosity) and the strict rules of ritual purity that regulate the life of his priest in its minutest details, clearly correspond to the character of the supreme god of the sky. The calendar, however, also reveals other features of Jupiter. It is known, for example, that the festivals connected with wine production—the Vinalia priora of 23 April, the Vinalia rustica of 19 August, and the Meditrinalia of 11 October—were sacred to Jupiter. Feriae Iovis also include the festival of the Poplifugium and 23 December (Larentalia), festivals whose original connection with the cult of Jupiter is now obscure.
Undoubtedly very ancient—probably predating the establishment of the Capitoline cult—are also other Roman cults of Jupiter that emphasize particular functions and aspects of the god. On the northern summit of the Capitoline Hill, Iuppiter Feretrius or Iuppiter Lapis was worshipped: his priestly college, that of the fetiales, regulated the sacred international law of ancient Rome, that is, in practice, declarations of war in ritual form; oaths were sworn upon the stone (lapis silos) that represented the god. The supposed meteoric origins of this stone lead to another form in which Jupiter appeared: the lightning bolt. Even in classical times, the primitive connection between lightning and thunder and Jupiter survived; he bore the epithets Tonans, Fulgurator, etc., as well as other appellations, such as Pluvius, which indicated his nature as a god of the sky. Yet older than all these seems to be the name Iuppiter Fulgur, that is, “Jupiter Lightning.” Like the deities of the sky in primitive religions, the Roman Jupiter sanctioned his decisions with the lightning bolt, resembling in this also the Etruscan Timus, who, moreover, was assimilated to the Greek Zeus even in archaic times. The ancient age of Iuppiter Elixius is also apparent from the uncertain interpretation that the ancient Romans themselves gave it: the meaning of “to produce, evoke,” concealed in its epithet, perhaps referred to a power connected with water (cf. the Aquaticium, a rite celebrated on the Aventine) and not, or at least not only, as the ancient scholars believed, to the prodigia of the sky. Another ancient cult is that of Iuppiter Liber, which outside Rome is found in the subellic region; at Rome it centered on the sanctuary of the Aventine, whose festival was held on 1 September. Iuppiter Liber may perhaps be connected with the aforementioned association with wine: in that case, the god Liber would be a later conception of an original Iuppiter who also contained within himself the Dionysian characteristics of the former. Other epithets, such as Stator, Victor, and Invictus, emphasize in Jupiter a warlike character or that of supreme master of the fortunes of war. The administration of his cult by the ancient flamen Dialis demonstrates the antiquity of Iuppiter Farreus, who presided over the sacred form of marriage known as confarreatio. But meal, or more precisely crushed grain (far), as the basic element of all human life and of every sacrifice, also appears in another connection with Jupiter: in the figure of Iuppiter Pistor, whose name would be related by modern scholars alone to a supposed meaning connected with the hurling of lightning in the verb pinsere, which for the Romans instead meant “to crush grain” (later, pistor = baker).
Among all these cults, the cult of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus on the southern summit of the Capitoline Hill stands out for its central importance in Roman public life. The temple, oriented toward the south and built with three cellae, the lateral ones housing Juno Regina and Minerva as attendant deities, dates from the period “of the Tarquins” and was inaugurated in the year 509 B.C., which Roman tradition regards as the first year of the Republic. Built by Etruscan artists, the temple contained a statue of Jupiter, certainly of the archaic Greek anthropomorphic type; nevertheless, in this cult Jupiter assumed an essentially Roman character, in that he was placed at the center of state life. From then on, it was in this temple that all Rome’s international treaties were preserved; here the Senate assembled to decide on entering a war; here the departing army commander made vows for his campaign, returning here in triumph (triumphus) to present his sacrifice after achieving victory. On this occasion the triumphator dressed in a costume resembling that of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus, which was that of the Etruscan kings. The festival of the temple, on 13 September, marked the beginning of the official year, with the magistrates’ assumption of office. On the wall of Minerva’s cella the claeus annalis, the annual nail used for a sacred reckoning of time, was fixed: indeed, the date of the foundation of the Capitoline temple constituted a stable chronological point of reference for several centuries. Various significant relations existed between the Capitoline cult and the cult of Iuppiter Latiaris: a commander not admitted to a triumph in the city celebrated a triumph on Mons Albanus; during the feriae Latinae, chariot races were also organized on the Capitoline; a bull was likewise offered in sacrifice to Capitoline Jupiter. Whereas the Alban cult represented the idea of common Latin descent, the Capitoline cult, independent of ties of kinship, embodied the universal political idea of Rome. In the Roman coloniae, capitolia were built on the model of the Capitoline temple of the Urbs. The Capitoline cult remained at the center of Roman public religious life throughout the Republican period. Augustus was the first to transfer certain prerogatives of this cult to the cults he founded of Mars Ultor and Apollo, in the service of the dynastic idea he promoted. Under other emperors, both because of the intense development of the imperial cult and because of other specific religious interests (for example, the cult of the Sun under Aurelian), not only the Capitoline cult but the cult of Jupiter in general sometimes seems to have receded into the background. Yet while sudden enthusiasms and attempts at religious policy generally passed away with the emperor who created them, the Roman state always found its religious center anew in the cult of Iuppiter Optimus Maximus.
The non-Italian religious masses encompassed within the orbit of the Empire readily found in this supreme Roman divinity an expression of their own supreme god, just as the Romans themselves believed they recognized their own G. in foreign divinities (interpretatio Romana). Thus, not only the European peoples, among whom, for example, the Celtic god Succellus or the Germanic god Donar were interpreted as G., but also the Eastern peoples identified their most eminent divinities, which were for the most part celestial as well, with the Roman god, while the Romans increasingly came under the influence of the various religious ideologies of the East. Thus it came about that from the more or less local cults of Commagene, Baalbek, and Cyrene there developed, among the mixed population of the Roman provinces, the cults, respectively, of Iuppiter Dolichenus, Iuppiter Heliopolitanus, and Iuppiter Harmon.
BIBLI: Thulin, Iuppiter, in Pauly-Wissowa, X, 1, col. 1126 ff.; G. Wissowa, Religion und Kultus der Römer, 2nd ed., Monaco 1912, p. 113 ff.; C. Koch, Der römische Jupiter, Francoforte 1937; A. B. Cook, Zeus, 3 vols., Cambridge 1914–40.