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Helernus
Helernus, also known as Alernus, was an Archaic Roman deity. He was a minor god of the underworld, and god of the beans used during the Lemuria festival during May. His sacred grove ''(lucus)'' was near the mouth of the Tiber river. Sacrifices were made to him annually on the 1st of February by the Roman Pontiffs, in which a black ox was killed. He had one daughter, named Carna, who was goddess of protecting the intestines of children from vampires. Poultney and others compare Helernus with the similarly (apparently) chthonic deity Hule/''Horse''/Huřie who shows up a couple times in the Umbrian Iguvine Tablets The Iguvine Tablets, also known as the Eugubian Tablets or Eugubine Tables, are a series of seven bronze tablets from ancient Iguvium (modern Gubbio), Italy, written in the ancient Italic language Umbrian. The earliest tablets, written in the na .... Poultney, J.W. "Bronze Tables of Iguvium" 1959 p. 214 https://archive.org/details/bronzetablesofig00poul/page/n19/mode ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Gods
The Roman deities most widely known today are those the Romans identified with Greek counterparts (see ''interpretatio graeca''), integrating Greek myths, iconography, and sometimes religious practices into Roman culture, including Latin literature, Roman art, and religious life as it was experienced throughout the Empire. Many of the Romans' own gods remain obscure, known only by name and sometimes function, through inscriptions and texts that are often fragmentary. This is particularly true of those gods belonging to the archaic religion of the Romans dating back to the era of kings, the so-called "religion of Numa", which was perpetuated or revived over the centuries. Some archaic deities have Italic or Etruscan counterparts, as identified both by ancient sources and by modern scholars. Throughout the Empire, the deities of peoples in the provinces were given new theological interpretations in light of functions or attributes they shared with Roman deities. An extensive al ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cardea
Cardea or Carda was the ancient Roman goddess of the hinge (Latin ''cardo, cardinis''), Roman doors being hung on pivot hinges. The Augustan poet Ovid conflates her with another archaic goddess named Carna, whose festival was celebrated on the Kalends of June and for whom he gives the alternative name Cranê or Cranea, a nymph. Ovid's conflation of the goddesses is likely to have been his poetic invention, but it has also been conjectured that ''Carna'' was a contracted form of ''Cardina'', and at minimum Ovid was observing that their traditions were congruent. Cardea and doorways In the Christian polemic of the Church Fathers, Cardea is associated with two otherwise unknown deities who preside over doorways: Forculus, from ''fores'', "door", plural in form because double doors were common on public buildings and elite homes ('' domūs''); and Limentinus, from ''limen, liminis'', "threshold" (compare English " liminal"). St. Augustine mocks the apparent triviality of these "li ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Iguvine Tablets
The Iguvine Tablets, also known as the Eugubian Tablets or Eugubine Tables, are a series of seven bronze tablets from ancient Iguvium (modern Gubbio), Italy, written in the ancient Italic language Umbrian. The earliest tablets, written in the native Umbrian alphabet, were probably produced in the 3rd century BC, and the latest, written in the Latin alphabet, from the 1st century BC. The tablets contain religious inscriptions that memorialize the acts and rites of the Atiedian Brethren, a group of 12 priests of Jupiter with important municipal functions at Iguvium. The religious structure present in the tablets resembles that of the early stage of Roman religion, reflecting the Roman archaic triad and the group of gods more strictly related to Jupiter. Discovered in a farmer's field near Scheggia in the year 1444, they are currently housed in the Civic Museum of the Palazzo dei Consoli in Gubbio. The tablets are by far the longest and most important document of any of the Osco-U ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lemuria (festival)
The Lemuralia or Lemuria was an annual event in the religion of ancient Rome, during which the Romans performed rites to exorcise any malevolent and fearful ghosts of the restless dead from their homes. These unwholesome spectres, the ''lemures'' or ''larvae'' were propitiated with chants and offerings of black beans. Observance In the Julian calendar the three days of the festival were 9, 11, and 13 May. Lemuria's name and origin myth, according to Ovid, derives from a supposed ''Remuria'' instituted by Romulus to appease the angry spirit of his murdered twin, Remus. The philosopher Porphyry points out that Remus' death was violent, premature, and a matter of regret for Romulus. Toynbee defines ''lemures'' as ordinary ''di Manes'', made harmful and spiteful to the living because "kinless and neglected" in death and after it, having no rites or memorial, free to leave their dead body but unable to enter the underworld or afterlife. A less common but more "mischievous and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Lucus
In ancient Roman religion, a ''lūcus'' (, plural ''lūcī'') is a sacred grove. ''Lucus'' was one of four Latin words meaning in general "forest, woodland, grove" (along with ''nemus'', ''silva'', and ''saltus''), but unlike the others it was primarily used as a religious designation. Servius defines the ''lucus'' as "a large number of trees with a religious significance," as distinguished from the ''silva'', a natural forest, and a ''nemus'', an arboretum that is not consecrated. A ''saltus'' usually implied a wilderness area with varied topographical features. A ''lucus'' was a cultivated place, more like a wooded park than a forest, and might contain an ''aedes'', a building that housed the image of a god, or other landscaped features that facilitated or gave rise to ritual. It has been conjectured, for instance, that the Lupercal, referred to as a "cave," was a small ''lucus'' with an artificial grotto, since archaeology has uncovered no natural cave in the area. Apul ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tiber River
The Tiber ( ; it, Tevere ; la, Tiberis) is the third-longest river in Italy and the longest in Central Italy, rising in the Apennine Mountains in Emilia-Romagna and flowing through Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio, where it is joined by the River Aniene, to the Tyrrhenian Sea, between Ostia and Fiumicino. It drains a basin estimated at . The river has achieved lasting fame as the main watercourse of the city of Rome, which was founded on its eastern banks. The river rises at Mount Fumaiolo in central Italy and flows in a generally southerly direction past Perugia and Rome to meet the sea at Ostia. Known in ancient times (in Latin) as ''flavus'' ("the blond"), in reference to the yellowish colour of its water, the Tiber has advanced significantly at its mouth, by about , since Roman times, leaving the ancient port of Ostia Antica inland."Tiber River". ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. 2006 However, it does not form a proportional delta, owing to a strong north-flowing sea current ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
College Of Pontiffs
The College of Pontiffs ( la, Collegium Pontificum; see ''collegium'') was a body of the ancient Roman state whose members were the highest-ranking priests of the state religion. The college consisted of the '' pontifex maximus'' and the other ''pontifices'', the '' rex sacrorum'', the fifteen ''flamens'', and the Vestals. The College of Pontiffs was one of the four major priestly colleges; originally their responsibility was limited to supervising both public and private sacrifices, but as time passed their responsibilities increased. The other colleges were the ''augures'' (who read omens), the ''quindecimviri sacris faciundis '' ("fifteen men who carry out the rites"), and the ''epulones'' (who set up feasts at festivals). The title ''pontifex'' comes from the Latin for "bridge builder", a possible allusion to a very early role in placating the gods and spirits associated with the Tiber River, for instance. Also, Varro cites this position as meaning "able to do". The ''pontife ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chthonic
The word chthonic (), or chthonian, is derived from the Ancient Greek word ''χθών, "khthon"'', meaning earth or soil. It translates more directly from χθόνιος or "in, under, or beneath the earth" which can be differentiated from Γῆ, or "ge", which speaks to the living surface of land on the earth. In Greek, chthonic is a descriptive word for things relating to the underworld and can be used in the context of chthonic gods, chthonic rituals, chthonic cults, and more. This is as compared to the more commonly referenced Olympic gods and their associated rites and cults. Olympic gods are understood to reference that which exists above the earth, particularly in the sky. Gods that are related to agriculture are also considered to have chthonic associations as planting and growing takes place in part under the earth. Chthonic deities Chthonic and ouranic, or olympic, are not completely opposite descriptors. They do not cleanly differentiate types of gods and worship int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Umbrian
Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian languages, a term generally replaced by Sabellic in modern scholarship. Since that classification was first formulated, a number of other languages in ancient Italy were discovered to be more closely related to Umbrian. Therefore, a group, the Umbrian languages, was devised to contain them. Corpus Umbrian is known from about 30 inscriptions dated from the 7th through 1st centuries BC. The largest cache by far is the Iguvine Tablets, sevenThe tradition born in the 17th century that the tablets were originally nine, and that two, sent to Venice, never came back, must be considered spurious. Paolucci (1966), p. 44 inscribed bronze tablets found in 1444 near the village of Scheggia or, according to another tradition, in an underground chamber a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Deities Of Classical Antiquity
A deity or god is a supernatural being who is considered divine or sacred. The ''Oxford Dictionary of English'' defines deity as a god or goddess, or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life". Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as "God"), whereas polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as aspects of the same divine principle. Nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity, but may accept a pantheon of deities which live, die and may be reborn like any other being. Although most monotheistic religions traditionally e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chthonic Beings
The word chthonic (), or chthonian, is derived from the Ancient Greek word ''χθών, "khthon"'', meaning earth or soil. It translates more directly from χθόνιος or "in, under, or beneath the earth" which can be differentiated from Γῆ, or "ge", which speaks to the living surface of land on the earth. In Greek, chthonic is a descriptive word for things relating to the underworld and can be used in the context of chthonic gods, chthonic rituals, chthonic cults, and more. This is as compared to the more commonly referenced Olympic gods and their associated rites and cults. Olympic gods are understood to reference that which exists above the earth, particularly in the sky. Gods that are related to agriculture are also considered to have chthonic associations as planting and growing takes place in part under the earth. Chthonic deities Chthonic and ouranic, or olympic, are not completely opposite descriptors. They do not cleanly differentiate types of gods and worship int ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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