Identifier: ancientlegendsof00pais (find matches)
Title: Ancient legends of Roman history
Year: 1905 (1900s)
Authors: Pais, Ettore, 1856-1939 Cosenza, Mario Emilio, 1880-1966, tr
Subjects:
Publisher: New York, Dodd, Mead & Company
Contributing Library: The Library of Congress
Digitizing Sponsor: The Library of Congress

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f Jupiter Capitolinus as the religious centre of the nationdid not arise in the first year of the Republic is that, in theabsolutely historic period (in the last century of the Re-public) there still existed on the Quirinal the CapitoliumVetus. This was dedicated to the same divinities as thoseof the Capitoline triad, and, as late as the time of Sulla,was honored with the same worship as the Capitol. From this there results the truly recent origin of the prin-cipal cult of Jupiter Capitolinus. Only after the completesubjugation of the Peninsula in 338 B.C. did it acquire itsparamount importance and character. In other words, itgained the ascendency only when, as I have demonstratedelsewhere, the Forum became the political centre of thecity and of the Latin nation. The corroboration of what has been said is found in thetexts relating to the most ancient cults of the Capitoline.From a mass of religious references I would deduce thatthe most ancient god worshipped on that hill was called
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g o H <u wh O w a, SwH w h O wH HORATII AND VALERII 155 Tarpeius, just as Tarpeia was the principal female divinityof the citadel. Later he was considered the custodian ofthe citadel in the time of Romulus, and still later he be-came identified with King Tarquin. Tarpeia, likewise, wastransformed into the maid who betrayed the citadel to theSabines; or else, into the good vestal virgin Tarquinia, whodonated to the Romans the Campus Martius. This, inturn, was said, by others, to belong to her contemporary,King Tarquin. If we desire to sift to the bottom the information regard-ing the oldest cults of this time, we shall find, by the sideof Jupiter Lapis and of Jupiter Feretrius, the lost divinitiesof Vulcan and Summanus—the first representing the diur-nal activity of the Sun, the second the nocturnal. The cultof these deities gradually yielded, it is true, to that ofJupiter Tutor, who later became known as Jupiter Capito-linus. Nevertheless, Vulcan continued to adorn the fagadeof t

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