URANUS (Οὐρανός). - Deity representing the sky.
His name is already found in Homer (Il., XV, 36; Od., V, 184) but as a protagonist he appears in Hesiod's Theogony, where he is the husband of Gaea (the Earth) and the father, among other deities, of the Titans (v.) and the Cyclopes (Th., 126 ff.). However, jealous of his children, U. hid them in the bowels of the earth until they, incited by the Earth, rebelled, and then Saturn treacherously cut off U.'s sexual organs, which, falling into the sea, generated Aphrodite. Some texts different from the Theogony call him 'Ἀκμων as sky, and the allusion is taken up poetically by Antimachus ('Ἀκμονίδης, fr. 35 Kinkel) and by Alcman ('Ἀκμονίδην, fr. 111 Bergk). Other sources, on the other hand, regard this appellation as ἀκάματος, untiring (v. L. Preller-C. Robert, Griechische Mythologie, I, 4th ed., Berlin 1894, p. 39, note 3). The cult of U., neglected in Olympian religion, returns to honor in the Hellenistic age, perhaps feeling the earlier Orphic influence. The bas-relief frieze of the altar of Pergamon also includes U. fighting against a giant.
In Roman religion U. is worshiped under the appellation of Caelus (« Qui si est deus [Saturnus], patrem quoque eius Caelum esse deum confitendum est »; Cicero, Nat. deor., III, 17, 44). Art depicts him on a chariot, holding up a mantle arranged in an arc above his head (αἰθήρος κύκλος). In this manner he is portrayed on the breastplate of the statue of Augustus found at Prima Porta, and this figuration continues also in the iconography of the early Church (v. O. Jahn, Arch. Beitr., 85, p. 28; id., in Ber. d. Sächs. Gesellsch. d. Wissenschaft. 1849, p. 63).
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Lanfranco Fiore