Zeus : a study in ancient religion - Warburg Institute

lanus an older lupiter 335
(0) lanus an older lupiter.
But the relations subsisting between lanus and lupiter call for
clearer statement and closer definition.
lanus was commonly recognised as the oldest god of Italy.
Juvenal addresses lanus Pater as 'most ancient of the gods^'
Herodian speaks of him as the ' most ancient indigenous god of
Italy^.' Prokopios says :
' This lanus was the first of the ancient
gods, whom the Romans in their language termed Penates'^! With
regard to his essential character there was less agreement. According
to Varro, some authorities identified him with the sky, others with
the universe*. Varro himself appears to have shared the latter
opinion^. But M. Valerius Messalla, consul in 53 B.C. and an augur
of fifty-five years' standing, began a treatise on lanus with the fol-
lowing words"
He who fashions all things and rules them too has linked together, on the
one hand water and earth, heavy elements slipping downwards into the abyss, on
the other hand fire and air, light elements escaping upwards into space, by
means of the sky put round about them :
bound together two unlike forces.
thus the great potency of the sky has
This extract, for the preservation of which we are indebted to the
erudition of Macrobius, enables us to see how a philosophic mind
might pass from a belief in lanus as the sky to a belief in lanus as
the universe''. Others equated him with the air^ or with chaos" the
Pater ?
1 luv. 6. 393 f. die mihi nunc, qiiaeso, die, antiquissime divum, |
respondes
his, lane
- Herodian. i. i6. i a^^ovat 5e ttji/ iopTrjv 'Foifxaioi es debv apxo^i-bTa.Tov ttjs 'IraXias
iirixiipiov dva