Di Penates
O: Two jugate heads of Di Penates Publici
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R: Soldiers with spears pointing at lying sow
C· SV(LP)ICI ·C·F
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Reverse depicts scene from Aeneid. According to the prophecy, in the place where a white sow casts 30 piglets under an oak tree, a new city shall be built (Lavinium); also, a new city called after the white sow shall be built by Ascanius 30 years later (Alba Longa).
Sulpicius C. f. Galba in Rome 106 BC.
ref.: Sulpicia 1., Sydenham 572., Crawford 312/1
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In ancient Roman religion, the Di Penates (Latin: [ˈdiː pɛˈnaːteːs]) or Penates (English: /pɪˈneɪtiːz/ pin-AY-teez) were among the dii familiares, or household deities, invoked most often in domestic rituals. When the family had a meal, they threw a bit into the fire on the hearth for the Penates.[1] They were thus associated with Vesta, the Lares, and the Genius of the pater familias in the "little universe" of the domus.[2]
Like other domestic deities, the Penates had a public counterpart.[3]
Function
An
Public Penates
The Penates of Rome (Penates Publici Populi Romani) had a temple on the Velia near the Palatine. Dionysius of Halicarnassus says it housed statues of two youths in the archaic style.[9]
The public cult of the ancestral gods of the Roman people originated in Lavinium,[10] where they were also closely linked with Vesta. One tradition identified the public Penates as the sacred objects rescued by Aeneas from Troy and carried by him to Italy.[11] They, or perhaps rival duplicates, were eventually housed in the Temple of Vesta in the Forum. Thus, the Penates, unlike the localized Lares, are portable deities.[12]
Archaeological evidence from Lavinium shows marked influence from Greece in the archaic period, and Aeneas was venerated there as Jupiter Indiges.[13] At the New Year on March 1, Roman magistrates first sacrificed to Capitoline Jupiter at Rome, and then traveled to Lavinium for sacrifices to Jupiter Indiges and Vesta, and a ceremonial visit to the "Trojan" Penates.[14]
See also
References
- Servius, note to Aeneid1.730, as cited by Robert Schilling, "The Penates," in Roman and European Mythologies (University of Chicago Press, 1981, 1992), p. 138.
- ^ Cicero, De natura deorum 2.60–69, as cited by Jane Chance, Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177 (University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 73.
- ^ Celia E. Schutz, Women's Religious Activity in the Roman Republic (University of North Carolina Press, 2006), p. 123.
- ^ Schutz, Women's Religious Activity, p. 123; Sarah Iles Johnston, Religions of the Ancient World (Harvard University Press, 2004), p. 435; Schilling, "The Penates," p. 138.
- ISBN 9780195397703.
- ^ Cicero, De natura deorum 2.68, as cited by Schilling, "The Penates," p. 138.
- ^ Festus 296L, as cited by Schilling, "The Penates," p. 138.
- ^ Qui diligentius eruunt veritatem Penates esse dixerunt per quos penitus spiramus, per quos habemus corpus, per quos rationem animi possidemus: Macrobius, Saturnalia 3.4.8–9, quoting Varro; Sabine MacCormack, The Shadows of Poetry: Vergil in the Mind of Augustine (University of California Press, 1998), p. 77; H. Cancik and H. Cancik-Lindemaier, "The Truth of Images: Cicero and Varro on Image Worship," in Representation in Religion: Studies in Honor of Moshe Barasch (Brill, 2001), pp. 48–49.
- ^ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 1.68.
- Varro, De lingua latina 5.144, says of Lavinium that "this is where our Penates are"; Tim Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c. 1000–264 BC) (Routledge, 1995), p. 66.
- Fasti 3.615; Propertius4.1.
- ^ Johnston, Religions of the Ancient World, p. 435.
- ^ Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome, pp. 66, 68 and 109; Schutz, Women's Religious Activity, p. 123.
- ^ Emma Dench, Romulus' Asylum: Roman Identities from the Age of Alexander to the Age of Hadrian (Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 202; Arnaldo Momigliano, "How to Reconcile Greeks and Trojans," in On Pagans, Jews, and Christians (Wesleyan University Press, 1987), p. 272.