Sol (mythology)
Encyclopedia
- This article is about the sun god. For the sun goddess of the same name, see Sól.
Sol was the solar deity
Solar deity
A solar deity is a sky deity who represents the Sun, or an aspect of it, usually by its perceived power and strength. Solar deities and sun worship can be found throughout most of recorded history in various forms...
in Ancient Roman religion. It was long thought that Rome actually had two different, consecutive sun gods. The first, Sol Indiges, was thought to have been unimportant, disappearing altogether at an early period. Only in the late Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, scholars argued, did solar cult re-appear with the arrival in Rome of the Syrian Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...
. Recent scholarship has rejected this (see Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...
).
Etymology
The Latin sol for "SunSun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is almost perfectly spherical and consists of hot plasma interwoven with magnetic fields...
" is the continuation of the PIE
Pie
A pie is a baked dish which is usually made of a pastry dough casing that covers or completely contains a filling of various sweet or savoury ingredients....
heteroclitic *Seh2ul- / *Sh2-en-, cognate to Germanic Sol, Sanskrit Surya
Surya
Surya Suraya or Phra Athit is the chief solar deity in Hinduism, one of the Adityas, son of Kasyapa and one of his wives, Aditi; of Indra; or of Dyaus Pitar . The term Surya also refers to the Sun, in general. Surya has hair and arms of gold...
, Greek Helios
Helios
Helios was the personification of the Sun in Greek mythology. Homer often calls him simply Titan or Hyperion, while Hesiod and the Homeric Hymn separate him as a son of the Titans Hyperion and Theia or Euryphaessa and brother of the goddesses Selene, the moon, and Eos, the dawn...
, Lithuanian Saulė. also compare Latin "solis" to Etruscan "usil". Today, "sol" is still the main word for sun in romance languages. "Sol" is used in contemporary English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
by astronomer
Astronomer
An astronomer is a scientist who studies celestial bodies such as planets, stars and galaxies.Historically, astronomy was more concerned with the classification and description of phenomena in the sky, while astrophysics attempted to explain these phenomena and the differences between them using...
s and science fiction
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
authors as the proper name of the Sun to distinguish the Sun from other star
Star
A star is a massive, luminous sphere of plasma held together by gravity. At the end of its lifetime, a star can also contain a proportion of degenerate matter. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun, which is the source of most of the energy on Earth...
s, which are the suns of their own planetary system
Planetary system
A planetary system consists of the various non-stellar objects orbiting a star such as planets, dwarf planets , asteroids, meteoroids, comets, and cosmic dust...
s.
Sol in the Roman Republic
According to Roman sources, the worship of Sol was introduced by Titus TatiusTitus Tatius
The traditions of ancient Rome held that Titus Tatius was the Sabine king of Cures, who, after the rape of the Sabine women, attacked Rome and captured the Capitol with the treachery of Tarpeia. The Sabine women, however, convinced Tatius and the Roman king, Romulus, to reconcile and subsequently...
. In Virgil
Virgil
Publius Vergilius Maro, usually called Virgil or Vergil in English , was an ancient Roman poet of the Augustan period. He is known for three major works of Latin literature, the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the epic Aeneid...
he is the grandfather of Latinus
Latinus
Latinus was a figure in both Greek and Roman mythology.-Greek mythology:In Hesiod's Theogony, Latinus was the son of Odysseus and Circe who ruled the Tyrsenoi, presumably the Etruscans, with his brothers Ardeas and Telegonus...
, the son of Sol's daughter Circe
Circe
In Greek mythology, Circe is a minor goddess of magic , described in Homer's Odyssey as "The loveliest of all immortals", living on the island of Aeaea, famous for her part in the adventures of Odysseus.By most accounts, Circe was the daughter of Helios, the god of the sun, and Perse, an Oceanid...
who lived not far from Rome at Monte Circeo. A shrine to Sol stood on the banks of the Numicius, near many important shrines of early Latin religion. In Rome Sol had an "old" temple in the Circus Maximus according to Tacitus
Tacitus
Publius Cornelius Tacitus was a senator and a historian of the Roman Empire. The surviving portions of his two major works—the Annals and the Histories—examine the reigns of the Roman Emperors Tiberius, Claudius, Nero and those who reigned in the Year of the Four Emperors...
(AD 56 – 117), and this temple remained important in the first three centuries AD. There was also an old shrine for Sol on the Quirinal, where an annual sacrifice was offered to Sol Indiges on August 9th. The Roman ritual calendars or fasti
Fasti
In ancient Rome, the fasti were chronological or calendar-based lists, or other diachronic records or plans of official and religiously sanctioned events...
also mention a feast for Sol Indiges on December 11th, and a sacrifice for Sol and Luna on August 28th.
Sol Indiges ("the native sun" or "the invoked sun" — the etymology and meaning of the word "indiges" is disputed) represents the earlier, more agrarian form in which the Roman god Sol was worshipped. As the cult evolved the epithet "indiges" fell into disuse (see Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...
, see also Di indigetes
Di indigetes
In Georg Wissowa's terminology the di indigetes or indigites were Roman deities and spirits not adopted from other mythologies, as distinguished from the di novensides...
).
Identification with Janus
Various Roman philosophers speculated on the nature of the sun, without arriving at any consensus. A typical example is Nigidius, a scholar of the first century BC. His works have not survived, but writing five centuries later, Macrobius reports that Nigidius argued that Sol was to be identified with JanusJanus (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Janus is the god of beginnings and transitions, thence also of gates, doors, doorways, endings and time. He is usually a two-faced god since he looks to the future and the past...
and that he had a counterpart, Jana, who was Moon. As such, they were to be regarded as the highest of the gods, receiving their sacrifices before all the others. Such views appear to have been restricted to an erudite elite — no ancient source aside from Macrobius mentions the equation of Sol with Janus — and had no impact on the well-attested cult of Sol as independent deity.
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was long thought to have been a Roman state-supported sun god introduced from Syria by the emperor AurelianAurelian
Aurelian , was Roman Emperor from 270 to 275. During his reign, he defeated the Alamanni after a devastating war. He also defeated the Goths, Vandals, Juthungi, Sarmatians, and Carpi. Aurelian restored the Empire's eastern provinces after his conquest of the Palmyrene Empire in 273. The following...
in 274 and overshadowing other Eastern cults in importance, until the abolition of paganism
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
under Theodosius I
Theodosius I
Theodosius I , also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland...
. However the evidence for this is meager at best, and the notion that Aurelian introduced a new cult of the sun ignores the abundant evidence on coins, in images, in inscriptions, and in other sources for a strong presence of the sun god in Rome throughout the imperial period. Tertullian
Tertullian
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian , was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and...
(ca. AD 160 – AD 220) writes that the Circus Maximus was dedicated primarily to Sol. There is no hiatus in the cult of Sol in Rome, nor any shift in the depictions of the god suggesting some sort of significant change under Aurelian. It is clear, however, that the cult of the sun did become much more important during his reign, not least with the institution of a new college of pontiffs for Sol.
There is some debate over the significance of December 25th for the cult of Sol. According to a single, late source, the Romans held a festival on December 25 of Dies Natalis Invicti, "the birthday of the unconquered one." Most scholars assume Sol Invictus was meant, although our source for this festival does not state so explicitly. December 25 was commonly indicated as the date of the winter solstice
Winter solstice
Winter solstice may refer to:* Winter solstice, astronomical event* Winter Solstice , former band* Winter Solstice: North , seasonal songs* Winter Solstice , 2005 American film...
, with the first detectable lengthening of daylight hours.
There were also festivals on other days in December, including the 11th (mentioned above), as well as August. Gordon points out that none of these other festivals are linked to astronomical events. When the festval on December 25th was instituted is not clear, which makes it hard to assess what impact (if any) it had on the establishment of Christmas
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
.
The official status of the cult of Sol after Aurelian was significant, but there is no evidence that it was the supreme cult of the state. Hoey exaggerates the importance of an inscription from Salsovia that supposedy indicates an official empire-wide cult-prescription for Sol on December 19th. It actually simply states that at the command of the emperor Licinius the commanding officer of the detachment at Salsovia was to burn incense annually for a newly erected statue of Sol on November 18 (Hoey misread the date). This simply means that Licinius accpted the erection of the statue in his honour.
Throughout the fourth century the cult of Sol continued to be maintained by high-ranking pontiffs, including the renowned Vettius Agorius Praetextatus
Vettius Agorius Praetextatus
Vettius Agorius Praetextatus was a wealthy pagan aristocrat in 4th-century Roman Empire and a high priest in the cults of numerous gods...
.
See also
- AmshumanAmshumanAmshuman is a figure of Hindu mythology, and the word means the sun denoting someone who gives light and dispels darkness. Amshuman was the son of Asamanjaya, and they were descendants of Ikshvaku, a king of Raghuvamsa. Anshuman Gaikwad is the most famous person named after this mythological king...
- Black Sun (alchemy)
- Black Sun (mythology)Black Sun (mythology)The Black Sun in Mesoamerican mythology has many mystical meanings, among them it is connected to the god Quetzalcoatl and his penetration in the Underworld through the west door after his diurnal passage on the sky. Amidst the Mexicas there were two suns, the young day sun and the ancient sun,...
- GuaraciGuaraciGuaraci is a municipality in the northwestern area of the state of São Paulo in Brazil. The population in 2004 is 9,376 and the area is 640.72 km². The elevation is 481 meters. This place name comes from the Tupi language....
- PiltzintecuhtliPiltzintecuhtliIn Aztec mythology, Piltzintecuhtli was a god of the rising sun, healing, and visions, associated with Tonatiuh. The name means "the Young Prince". It may have been another name for Tonatiuh, but he is also mentioned as a possibly unique individual, the husband of Xochiquetzal. He was the lord of...