SATURNO and SATURNALIA. — In the Roman literary tradition there is no doubt concerning the identity of the Roman god Saturnus and the Greek god Kronos: all the myths of the latter are automatically projected onto the former. It must be said, in any case, that S., unlike the ancient Roman gods, was sacrificed to bareheaded (Graeco ritu), and that an ancient relationship between the two gods cannot be excluded. What is certain is that the origins of the Roman cult of S. go back to times considerably more ancient than Roman Hellenistic culture. His festival, the Saturnalia, already appears in the archaic calendar, and the temple of Saturn, at the foot of the Capitoline, built on the site of an earlier ara Saturni, was dedicated as early as 497 B.C. In this temple, outside which no other place of worship of the god is known, the State treasury was kept.
Like Janus, Picus, and Faunus, Saturn too figured in Roman legendary tradition as a most ancient—in fact, as the first—king of Latium. On the human level of the legend, his reign possessed the same features of a “golden age” that Greek mythology attributes, on the divine level, to the age of Kronos. On the other hand, the introduction of agriculture was attributed to S., which accords with the chthonic and specifically agricultural character ascribed to the god in later literature and representations. This character is also often upheld, in the case of S., by modern scholars who, despite the difference in the value of the first vowel, wish to derive his name from the verb serere (part. satus), “to sow.”
For the character of the god, a more reliable source is what is known about his festival. The Saturnalia are fixed on 17 December, but in practice, in historical times, they lasted for three, four, and even five days. The specific feature of the festival is the temporary freedom granted to slaves, who during those days lived on a footing of equality with their masters or were even served by them: mythologically, this custom is explained by the memory of the golden age under the reign of S., when there were no class differences. A “king of the Saturnalia” was chosen by lot. During those days no one could be summoned before the law. From the cult image of S., for the duration of the festival, the chains (compedes) that it constantly wore, like the slaves, were removed. The Saturnalia, given their calendar position immediately preceding the winter solstice, also had the character of a New Year festival: greetings and candles were exchanged, whose light evidently alluded to the sunlight that was about to be reborn. In this way the Saturnalia, like analogous joyful and auspicious winter festivals in the Germanic region, consti-
While the literary tradition attributes Ops (identified with Rhea) to S. as his wife—she is instead, in the original cult, associated with Consus—alongside Saturn must be placed Lua Saturni, a goddess to whom the weapons captured from the destroyed enemy were offered: destruction is also implicit in the goddess’s very name.
The epigraphic material offers no direct information about the cult of S., which evidently played little part in private worship: in most inscriptions (especially African ones), the name of S. is merely an interpretatio Romana, and in reality the deities in question are non-Roman gods identified with S.