The name of Caelus indicates that he was theRoman counterpart of theGreek godUranus (Οὐρανός,Ouranos), who was of major importance in thetheogonies of the Greeks, and the Jewish godYahweh.[1]Varro couples him withTerra (Earth) aspater et mater (father and mother), and says that they are "great deities" (dei magni) in the theology of themysteries atSamothrace.[2] Although Caelus is not known to have had a cult at Rome,[3] not all scholars consider him a Greek import given a Latin name; he has been associated withSummanus, the god of nocturnal thunder, as "purely Roman."[4]
Caelus begins to appear regularly inAugustan art and in connection with the cult ofMithras during theImperial era.Vitruvius includes him among celestial gods whose temple-buildings(aedes) should be built open to the sky.[5] As a sky god, he became identified with Jupiter, as indicated by aninscription that readsOptimus Maximus Caelus Aeternus Iup<pi>ter.[6]
According toCicero andHyginus, Caelus was the son ofAether andDies ("Day" or "Daylight").[7] Caelus and Dies were in this tradition the parents ofMercury.[8] WithTrivia, Caelus was the father of the distinctively Roman godJanus, as well as ofSaturn andOps.[9] Caelus was also the father of one of the threeJupiters, the fathers of the other two being Aether and Saturn instead.[10] In one tradition, Caelus was the father withTellus of theMuses, though this was probably a mere translation ofOuranos from a Greek source.[11]
Caelus substituted for Uranus in Latin versions of the myth of Saturn (Cronus) castrating his heavenly father, from whose severed genitals, cast upon the sea, the goddessVenus (Aphrodite) was born.[12] In his workOn the Nature of the Gods, Cicero presents aStoicallegory of the myth in which the castration signifies "that the highest heavenly aether, that seed-fire which generates all things, did not require the equivalent of human genitals to proceed in its generative work."[13] ForMacrobius, the severing marks offChaos from fixed and measuredTime (Saturn) as determined by the revolving Heavens (Caelum). Thesemina rerum ("seeds" of things that exist physically) come from Caelum and are the elements which create the world.[14]
The divine spatial abstractionCaelum is asynonym forOlympus as ametaphorical heavenly abode of the divine, both identified with and distinguished from themountain in ancient Greece named as the home of the gods. Varro says that the Greeks call Caelum (or Caelus) "Olympus."[15] As a representation of space, Caelum is one of the components of themundus, the "world" orcosmos, along withterra (earth),mare (sea), andaer (air).[16] In his work on thecosmological systems of antiquity, theDutch RenaissancehumanistGerardus Vossius deals extensively with Caelus and his duality as both a god and a place that the other gods inhabit.[17]
It is generally, though not universally, agreed that Caelus is depicted on thecuirass of theAugustus of Prima Porta,[19] at the very top above the four horses of the Sun god'squadriga. He is a mature, bearded man who holds a cloak over his head so that it billows in the form of an arch, a conventional sign of deity(velificatio) that "recalls the vault of thefirmament."[20] He is balanced and paired with the personification of Earth at the bottom of the cuirass.[21] (These two figures have also been identified as Saturn and theMagna Mater, to represent the new Saturnian "Golden Age" of Augustan ideology.)[22] On an altar of theLares now held by theVatican, Caelus in his chariot appears along withApollo-Sol above the figure ofAugustus.[23]
AsCaelus Nocturnus, he was the god of the night-time, starry sky. In a passage fromPlautus, Nocturnus is regarded as the opposite ofSol, the Sun god.[24] Nocturnus appears in severalinscriptions found inDalmatia andItaly, in the company of other deities who are found also in thecosmological schema ofMartianus Capella, based on the Etruscan tradition.[25] In theEtruscan discipline of divination, Caelus Nocturnus was placed in the sunless north opposite to Sol to represent the polar extremities of the axis (seecardo). This alignment was fundamental to the drawing of atemplum (sacred space) for the practice ofaugury.[26]
The nameCaelus occurs in dedicatory inscriptions in connection to the cult ofMithras.[27] The Mithraic Caelus is sometimes depictedallegorically as an eagle bending over the sphere of heaven marked with symbols of the planets or thezodiac.[28] In a Mithraic context he is associated withCautes[29] and can appear asCaelus Aeternus ("Eternal Sky").[30] A form ofAhura-Mazda is invoked in Latin asCaelus Aeternus Iupiter.[31] The walls of somemithrea feature allegorical depictions of the cosmos withOceanus and Caelus. The mithraeum ofDieburg represents the tripartite world with Caelus, Oceanus, and Tellus belowPhaeton-Heliodromus.[32]
^Floro,Epitome 1.40 (3.5.30): "TheJews tried to defendJerusalem; but he[Pompeius Magnus] entered this city also and saw that grand Holy of Holies of an impious people exposed, Caelum under a golden vine"(Hierosolymam defendere temptavere Iudaei; verum haec quoque et intravit et vidit illud grande inpiae gentis arcanum patens, sub aurea vite Caelum). Finbarr Barry Flood,The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture (Brill, 2001), pp. 81 and 83 (note 118). ElOxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, 1985 reprinting), p. 252, entry oncaelum, cita a Juvenal, Petronio, and Floro como ejemplos deCaelus oCaelum "with reference toJehovah; also, to some symbolization of Jehovah."
^Pierre Grimal,The Dictionary of Classical Mythology (Blackwell, 1986, 1996, originally published 1951 in French), pp. 83–84.
^Marion Lawrence, "The Velletri Sarcophagus",American Journal of Archaeology 69.3 (1965), p. 220.
^Other gods for whom thisaedes design was appropriate areJupiter,Sol andLuna.Vitruvius,De architectura 1.2.5; John E. Stambaugh, "The Functions of Roman Temples",Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II.16.1 (1978), p. 561.
^Cicero,De natura deorum 3.44, as cited by E.J. Kenney,Apuleius: Cupid and Psyche (Cambridge University Press, 1990, 2001), note to 6.6.4, p. 198;Hyginus, preface. This is not thetheogony thatHesiod presents.
^Cicero,De natura Deorum 3.56; alsoArnobius,Adversus Nationes 4.14.
^Ennius,Annales 27 (edition of Vahlen); Varro, as cited byNonius Marcellus, p. 197M;Cicero,TimaeusXI; Arnobius,Adversus Nationes 2.71, 3.29.
^Arnobius,Adversus Nationes 3.37, citingMnaseas as his source.
^Cicero,De nature Deorum; Arnobius,Adversus Nationes 4.24.
^Cicero,De natura Deorum 2.64.Isidore of Seville says similarly that Saturn "cut off the genitalia of his father Caelus, because nothing is born in the heavens from seeds" (Etymologies 9.11.32). Jane Chance,Medieval Mythography: From Roman North Africa to the School of Chartres, A.D. 433–1177 (University Press of Florida, 1994), pp. 27 and 142.
^Macrobius,Saturnalia 1.8.6–9; Chance,Medieval Mythography, p. 72.
^Varro,De lingua latina 7.20; likewiseIsidore of Seville,Etymologies 14.8.9. The nounCaelum appears in theaccusative case, which obscures any distinction between masculine and neuter.Servius, note toAeneid 6.268, says that "Olympus" is the name for both the Macedonian mountain and forcaelum. Citations and discussion by Michel Huhm, "Le mundus et le Comitium: Représentations symboliques de l'espace de la cité",Histoire urbaine 10 (2004), p. 54.
^Servius, note toAeneid 3.134; Huhm, "Le mundus et le Comitium", p. 53, notes 36 and 37.
^Gerardus Vossius,Idolatriae 3.59onlineet passim, inGerardi Joan. Vossii Operum, vol. 5,De idololatria gentili. See also Giovanni Santinello andFrancesco Bottin,Models of the History of Philosophy: From Its Origins in the Renaissance to the "Historia Philosophica" (Kluwer, 1993), vol. 1, pp. 222–235.
^Elizabeth De Palma Digeser, "Religion, Law and the Roman Polity: The Era of the Great Persecution", inReligion and Law in Classical and Christian Rome (Franz Steiner, 2006), pp. 78–79.
^Jane Clark Reeder, "The Statue of Augustus from Prima Porta, the Underground Complex, and the Omen of the Gallina Alba",American Journal of Philology 118.1 (1997), p. 109; Charles Brian Rose, "The Parthians in Augustan Rome",American Journal of Archaeology 109.1 (2005), p. 27.
^Karl Galinsky,Augustan Culture: An Interpretive Introduction (Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 158 and 321.
^IncludingCIL 3.1956 =ILS 4887, 9753, 142432,CIL 5.4287 =ILS 4888, as cited and discussed by Mario Torelli,Studies in the Romanization of Italy (University of Alberta Press, 1995), pp. 108–109.
^Torelli,Studies, p. 110. See also Huhm, "Le mundus et le Comitium", pp. 52–53, on the relation oftemplum,mundus, andcaelum.
^Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911)."Uranus (god)" .Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 27 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 789; see lines five to seven.The Roman Caelus (or Caelum) is ...not the name of a distinct national divinity...no evidence of the existence of a cult of Caelus...the worship of the sky being closely connected with that of Mithras.
^M. J. Vermaseren,Mithraica I: The Mithraeum at S. Maria Capua Vetere (Brill, 1971), p. 14; Jaime Alvar,Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation, and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras, translated by Richard Gordon (Brill, 2008), p. 86.
^R. Beck in response to I.P. Culianu, "L'«Ascension de l'Âme» dans les mystères et hors des mystères", inLa Soteriologia dei culti orientali nell' impero romano (Brill, 1982), p. 302.
^Levi, "Aion", p. 302. This was the view also ofSalomon Reinach,Orpheus: A General History of Religions, translated by Florence Simmonds (London: Heinemann, 1909), p. 68.
^The word does not appear in thenominative case in any of the passages, and so its intended gender cannot be distinguished; see above.
^Juvenal,Satires 14.97; Peter Schäfer,Judeophobia: Attitudes toward the Jews in the Ancient World (Harvard University Press, 1997), pp. 41, 79–80.
^Petronius, frg. 37.2; Schäfer,Judeophobia, pp. 77–78.
^Florus,Epitome 1.40 (3.5.30): "The Jews tried to defendJerusalem; but he[Pompeius Magnus] entered this city also and saw that grand Holy of Holies of an impious people exposed, Caelum under a golden vine"(Hierosolymam defendere temptavere Iudaei; verum haec quoque et intravit et vidit illud grande inpiae gentis arcanum patens, sub aurea vite Caelum). Finbarr Barry Flood,The Great Mosque of Damascus: Studies on the Makings of an Umayyad Visual Culture (Brill, 2001), pp. 81 and 83 (note 118). TheOxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982, 1985 reprinting), p. 252, entry oncaelum, cites Juvenal, Petronius, and Florus as examples ofCaelus orCaelum "with reference toJehovah; also, to some symbolization of Jehovah."
