This last example may suggest a hypothesis which is at least not likely to do any serious harm. Let it be remembered that each curia was a constituent part of the whole Roman community. We might naturally expect to find a common religious meal of the same kind in which the whole state took part through its magistrates and senate. This is just what we do find in the epulum Jovis, though the character of its ceremonial is different; and it is certainly possible that this epulum had its origin in a feast like that which Dionysius saw, but one which afterwards underwent vital changes at the hands of the Etruscan dynasty of Roman kings. I am strongly inclined to believe that it was under the influence of these kings that the meal came to take place on the Capitol, and in the temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, which they intended to be the new centre of the Roman dominion[[951]]; and to them also I would ascribe the presence at the feast of the three deities in iconic form. It may be that before that critical era in Roman history the epulum took place not on the Capitol but in the Regia, which with the temple of Vesta hard by formed the oldest centre of the united Rome; and that the presence of Jupiter[[952]] or any other god was there a matter of belief, like that of Vacuna with the Sabines, and not of the actual evidence of eyesight.
But this conjecture is a somewhat bold one; and it seems worth while to take this opportunity of examining more closely into the cult of Jupiter, with the object of determining whether the great god was apt, in any part of Italy but Etruria, to lend himself easily to anthropomorphic ideas and practices[[953]].
The cult of Jupiter is found throughout Italy under several forms of the same name, with or without the suffix -piter = pater, which, so far as we can guess, points to a conception of the god as protector, if not originator, of a stock. This paternal title, which was applied to other deities also, does not necessarily imply an early advance beyond the ‘daemonistic’ conception of divine beings; it rather suggests that some one such being had been brought into peculiarly close relations with a particular stock, and does no more than indicate a possibility of further individual development in the future[[954]]. The ‘father’ in this case has no wife, though we find the word ‘mater’ applied to goddesses[[955]]; Juno is undoubtedly the female principle, but she is not, as has so often been imagined, the wife of Jupiter. The attempt to prove this by arguing from the Flamen Dialis and his wife the Flaminica cannot succeed: the former was the priest of Jupiter, but his wife was not the priestess of Juno[[956]]. There is indeed a certain mysterious dualism of male and female among the old Italian divinities, as we know from the locus classicus in Gellius (N. A. 13. 23. 2); but we are not entitled to say that the relation was a conjugal one[[957]].
Before we proceed to examine traces of the oldest Jupiter in Rome and Latium let us see what survivals are to be found in other parts of Italy.
In Umbria we find Jovis holding the first place among the gods of the great inscription of Iguvium, which beyond doubt retains the primitive features of the cult, though it dates probably from the last century B.C., and records rites which indicate a fully developed city-life[[958]]. His cult-titles here are Grabovius, of which the meaning is still uncertain, and Sancius, which brings him into connexion with the Semo Sancus and Dius Fidius of the Romans. The sacrifices and prayers are elaborately recorded, but there is no trace in the ritual of anything approaching to an anthropomorphic conception of the god, unless it be the apparent mention of a temple[[959]]. No image is mentioned, and there is no sign of a common meal. The titles of the deities too have the common old-Italian fluidity, i. e. the same title belongs to more than one deity[[960]]. Everything points to a stage of religious thought in which the personality of gods had no distinct place. The centre-point of the cult seems to be a hill, the ocris fisius, within the town of Iguvium, which reminds us of the habits of the Greek Zeus and the physical or elemental character—unanthropomorphized—which seems to belong to that earlier stage in his worship[[961]].
It is on a hill also that we find the cult among the Sabellians. An inscription from Rapino in the land of the Marrucini tells us of a festal procession in honour of ‘Iovia Ioves patres ocris Tarincris,’ i. e. Jovia (Juno?) belonging to the Jupiter of the hill Tarincris[[962]].
Among the Oscan peoples the cult-title Lucetius is the most striking fact. Servius[[963]] says: ‘Sane lingua Osca Lucetius est Iuppiter dictus a luce quam praestare hominibus dicitur.’ The same title is found in the hymn of the Roman Salii[[964]], and is evidently connected with lux; Jupiter being beyond doubt the giver of light, whether that of sun or moon. So Macrobius[[965]]: ‘Nam cum Iovem accipiamus lucis auctorem, unde et Lucetium Salii in carminibus canunt et Cretenses Δία τὴν ἡμέραν vocant, ipsi quoque Romani Diespitrem appellant ut diei patrem. Iure hic dies Iovis fiducia vocatur, cuius lux non finitur cum solis occasu, sed splendorem diei et noctem continuat inlustrante luna,’ &c. The Ides of all months, i. e. the days of full moon, were sacred to Jupiter. But in all ceremonies known to us in which the god appears in this capacity of his, there is, as we might expect, no trace whatever of a personal or anthropomorphic conception.
The Etruscan Tina, or Tinia, is now generally identified, even etymologically, with Jupiter[[966]]. The attributes of the two are essentially the same, though one particular side of the Etruscan god’s activity, that of the lightning-wielder, is specially developed. But Tina is also the protector of cities, along with Juno and Minerva (Cupra and Menvra); and it is in connexion with this function of his that we first meet with a decided tendency towards an anthropomorphic conception. Even here, however, the stimulus can hardly be said to have come from Italy. ‘The one fact,’ says Aust[[967]], ‘which is at present quite clear is that the oldest Etruscan representations of gods can be traced back to Greek models. Tinia was completely identified in costume and attributes with the Greek Zeus by Etruscan artists.’ The insignia of Etruscan magistrates were again copied from these, and have survived for us in the costume of the Roman triumphator[[968]], and in part in the insignia of the curule magistrate, i. e. in sceptrum, sella, toga palmata, &c., and in the smearing of the face of the triumphator with minium.
Coming nearer to Rome we find at Falerii, a town subject to Roman and Sabellian as well as Graeco-Etruscan influence, the curious rite of the ἱερὸς γάμος described by Ovid (Amores, 3. 13), and found also in many parts of Greece[[969]]. In this elaborate procession Juno is apparently the bride, but the bridegroom is not mentioned. At Argos, Zeus was the bridegroom, and the inference is an obvious one that Jupiter was the bridegroom at Falerii. But this cannot be proved, and is in fact supported by no real evidence as to the old-Italian relation of the god and goddess. The rite is extremely interesting as pointing to what seems to be an early penetration of Greek religious ideas and practices into the towns of Western Italy; but it has no other bearing on the Jupiter-question, nor are we enlightened by the little else we know of the Falerian Jupiter[[970]].
But at Praeneste, that remarkable town perched high upon the hills which enclose the Latin Campagna to the north, we find a very remarkable form of the Jupiter-cult, and one which must be mentioned here, puzzling and even inexplicable as it certainly is. The great goddess of Praeneste was Fortuna Primigenia—a cult-title which cannot well mean anything but first-born[[971]]; and that she was, or came to be thought of as, the first-born daughter of Jupiter is placed beyond a doubt by an inscription of great antiquity first published in 1882[[972]]. But this is not the only anomaly in the Jupiter-worship of Praeneste. There was another cult of Fortuna, distinct, apparently, from that of Fortuna Primigenia, in which she took the form not of a daughter but of a mother, and, strange as it may seem, of the mother both of Jupiter and Juno. On this point we have the explicit evidence of Cicero (de Divinatione, 2. 85), who says, when speaking of the place where the famous ‘sortes’ of Praeneste were first found by a certain Numerius Suffustius: ‘Is est hodie locus saeptus religiose propter Iovis pueri (sacellum?) qui lactens cum Iunone Fortunae in gremio sedens, castissime colitur a matribus.’ Thus we have Fortuna worshipped in the same place as the daughter and as the mother of Jupiter; and nowhere else in Italy can we find a trace of a similar conception of the relations either of these or any other deities. We cannot well reject the evidence of Cicero, utterly unsupported though it be: we must face the difficulty that we have here to account for the occurrence of a Jupiter who is the child of Fortuna and also apparently the brother of Juno, as well as of a Jupiter who is the father of Fortuna.