Topic summary
Sol Indiges
Extracted from the Wikipedia article Sol (Roman mythology).
In the Roman Republic
In Rome Sol had an "old" temple in the Circus Maximus according to Tacitus (56–117 CE), and this temple remained important in the first three centuries CE. There was also an old shrine for Sol on the Quirinal, where an annual sacrifice was offered to Sol Indiges on 9 August to commemorate Caesar's victory at Pharsala (48 BCE). The Roman ritual calendars or fasti also mention a feast for Sol Indiges on 11 December, and a sacrifice for Sol and Luna on 28 August. Traditionally, scholars have considered Sol Indiges to represent an earlier, more agrarian form in which the Roman god Sol was worshipped, and considered him to be very different from the late Roman Sol Invictus, who they believed was a predominantly Syrian deity. Neither the epithet "indiges" (which fell out of use sometime after Caesar) nor the epithet "invictus" are used with any consistency however, making it impossible to differentiate between the two.