In 1939, an excavation underneath Piazza del Campidoglio discovered an almost completely obscured ancient Roman building. This ancient Roman building is identified as the temple of Vejovis, one of the oldest of the Roman gods. In the same area, an asylum was also found. Ovid (circa 43 BC – 18 AD) implies that the temple had already existed since the time of Romulus, and it was in this asylum that Romulus extended hospitality to refugees from other parts of the Latium region in order to populate Rome which, at the time, was a new city. In Fasti, Ovid writes: "When Rolumus surrounded the grove with a high stone wall, “Take refuge here,” said he, “whoe’er thou art; thou shalt be safe.” O from how small a beginning the Roman took his rise! How little to be envied was that multitude of old!” The chief feature of this temple, not shared by many other Roman buildings, probably due to the very limited space available, is the transversally-elongated cella, its width almost double its depth at 15 by 8.90 meters (49.21 by 29.19 feet). Another interesting feature of this temple is the marble cult statue of a beardless young man, carrying a bundle of arrows in his right hand and accompanied by a goat.
Interior of the excavated Temple of Vejovis, underneath Piazza del Campidoglio. (Public Domain)
Not much is known about this mysterious youthful god. His name, Vejovis, has long been eclipsed by many other youthful Roman gods such as Apollo or Bacchus, and he does not appear in nearly as many stories as Jupiter, Venus or Neptune. However, Vejovis was apparently an important enough god to be worshipped at Bovillae in Latium, as well as having temples erected for him in Rome, on the Capitoline hill and on the Tiber island. Dates of celebrations for Vejovis are also known as January 1st, March 7th, and May 21st. Unfortunately, nothing definite can be found in relation to the nature of these festivals as well as the rest of the god’s cult.
Invocations of Vejovis in Times of War
As studies on Vejovis show constant updating of his condition and his functions, somewhere along the way Vejovis was also associated with the Underworld - a volcanic god responsible for marshland and earthquakes. Vejovis also earned his place in coins, implying that some powerful Romans considered him as a patron. On a denarius (ancient Roman coin) showing a depiction of the historian and orator Gaius Licinius Macer (82 - 47 BC), the obverse image portrays a youthful Vejovis with a cloak hanging over his left shoulder while he hurls a thunderbolt with his right hand. Some coins also bear the obverse image of Vejovis which depicts him carrying a bundle of arrows, accompanied by goats. However, as a patron to the more powerful men of Rome, Vejovis proved to be less fortunate as Macer who was later impeached by Cicero under the lex de repetundis (the law of extortion). Macer later committed suicide to avoid the verdict.
112-111 BC. AR Denarius Rome mint. Heroic bust of Apollo-Vejovis left, preparing to hurl thunderbolt; ROMA monogram behind / Two Lares seated right, each holding a staff; dog between them, head of Vulcan and tongs above. (CC BY-SA 2.5)
Perhaps due to the asylum found near his temple, Vejovis was also considered the patron of criminals, slaves and fighters. The temple of Vejovis was considered as a safe-haven for wrongly persecuted people and dedicated to the protection of immigrants to Rome. His role as a protector may have led to Vejovis’ frequent invocations in times of war. Livy (59 BC - 17 AD) noted that Roman general Lucius Furius Purpureo successfully called upon Vejovis to route the Gauls at the Battle of Cremona in 200 BC. Macrobius’ fifth century AD Saturnalia preserved one of Vejovis’ invocations which clearly draws upon Vejovis’ destructive aspects: “Father Dis, Veiovis, Manes, or by whatever other name it is right to call you: may you all fill that city of Carthage, and that army of which it is my intention to speak, and those who will bear arms and missiles against our legions and armies, with the urge to flee, with dread, with panic; and may you lead away that army, that enemy, those people who dwell in these places and regions, fields and cities, deprive them of heaven’s light…”
Hermes leads a goat to the sacrifice. Side A of a Campanian red-figure bell-krater 360 – 350 BC Louvre Museum (Public Domain)
The God and the Goat
Vejovis’ reputation seems to be a sinister one as collector of folk tales Andrew Lang (1844 - 1912) referred to him as ‘hurtful god Vejovis’ and that people worshipped him: “…more for fear of harm than for hope of any good” before expressing his disapproval of the practice of sacrifice linked to the worship of Vejovis. Latin author Aulus Gellius (circa 125 – 180 AD), in the Noctes Atticae, written almost a millennium later, informs that Vejovis received the sacrifice of a female goat, sacrificed ritu humano (after the manner of a human sacrifice) to avert plagues. Aulus Gellius also speculated that Vejovis was the inverse or ill-omened counterpart of Jupiter. In this case, the goat next to the statue of Vejovis is most likely female as it could either refer to the female goats sacrificed for Vejovis or, more likely, to the infancy of Jupiter who was suckled by the goat Amaltheia on Mount Ida. Amalthea’s role in Jupiter’s life is an important one as it went beyond suckling him as a baby. When Jupiter reached maturity, he created his thunder-shield from her hide and the horn of plenty from her crown.
Ceiling "Council of the Gods" in Galleria Borghese, Rome. (Giovanni Lanfranco / CC BY-SA 4.0)
Still regarding his relationship to Jupiter, Vejovis is comparable to Summanus, the god of night thunder in ancient Roman religion who is also nocturnal counterpart of Jupiter, the god of diurnal (daylight) thunder. However, perhaps the closest identification to Vejovis, at least in appearance, is the ancient Etruscan deity Veive, a god of revenge who, similar to Apollo, often wears a laurel wreath and carries arrows. The trouble with this identification is that, although many of the Etruscan gods became part of the Roman pantheon, very little Etruscan writing has survived and, although the ancient Romans wrote extensively about the Etruscans, what they wrote is now lost. However, this identification is supported by references to Vejovis in an Etruscan divination formula preserved by Martianus Capella (360 - 428 AD) which places him among gods of thunder and lightning.
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Veive was friends with Maris, an Etruscan savior god as well as the god of farming and fertility. Possibly due to his Etruscan counterpart’s friendship with Maris, over time Vejovis also became acknowledged for his power of healing and became associated with the Greek Aesclepius - this is a rather strange association as snakes, which represent healing and rejuvenation in ancient cultures, do not make up a part of Vejovis’ image.
Etruscan Religion and Divination
Vejovis’ Etruscan origin is not surprising as the Etruscan religion became somewhat of a blue-print for the Roman religion. Therefore, it is helpful to understand what the religion entails. Underlying the Etruscan religion was the idea that the destiny of man was completely determined by the will of the many Etruscan deities. Every natural phenomenon from lightning, flight patterns of birds to something as subtle as the structure of the internal organs of sacrificial animals was therefore an expression of the divine will and contained messages which could be interpreted by augurs.
Tomb of the Augurs at Tarquinia (Public Domain)
An account of the revelation of the Etruscan religion is given by Cicero’s De Divinatione. One day, a divine being with the appearance of a child but with the wisdom of an old man rose up from the newly ploughed furrow. The startled cry of the ploughman brought the lucomones, the priest-kings of Etruria, hurried to the spot. The wise child chanted the sacred doctrine to them as the ploughman and the priest-kings reverently listened and wrote down the teaching so that this most precious possession could be passed on to their successors. Immediately after the revelation, the miraculous being fell dead and disappeared into the ploughed field. The divine child’s name was Tages, son of Genius and grandson of the highest god Tinia. This doctrine was known to the Romans as the disciplina etrusca.
From the writings of the Etruscan haruspex Tarquitius (circa 90 BC), one is also afforded a glimpse of the prophesy of the nymph Vegoia. Vergoia tells Arruns Velturnnus: "You should know that the sea is separated from the earth. When Jupiter claimed the land of Etruria for himself, he decided and commanded the fields to be surveyed and the lands marked out. Knowing the covetousness of man and his worldly greed, he wanted the boundaries of everything to be marked by boundary stones. Those which at any time anyone has placed because of the greed of this eighth - almost the latest - saeculum, arrogating to themselves license, men with wrongful deceit will violate, touch and move. But if anyone touches or moves a boundary stone, extending his own possessions or diminishing those of someone else, for this crime he will be condemned by the gods…There will be civil strife amongst the people. Know that these things happen, when such crimes are committed. Therefore, do not be either a deceitful or treacherous. Place restraint in your heart. ..."
A picture of the remnants of an Etruscan temple in Orvieto, Italy. (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Etruscan Heritage and Ancient Wisdoms
As the Etruscan doctrine was so complex and all-embracing, this led to the deities occupying different and sometimes contradictory functions. Therefore, understanding them naturally required long and laborious study even for the Etruscans themselves. The Etruscans had special training institutes which were much more than priests' seminaries in the modern sense. Their curricula not only included religious laws and theology, but also the encyclopedic knowledge required by the priests, which ranged from astronomy, meteorology, zoology, ornithology, botany, geology to hydraulics. The aquivices who advised the city-states on all their hydraulic engineering projects were, in fact, expert diviners who knew how to find subterranean water and how to bore wells, dig water channels, supply drinking water and install drainage systems in the fields. They could also create artificial reservoirs and collaborated with other priests who specialized in constructing subterranean corridors and tunneling mountains. The idea was that whatever man set himself to do on earth must be in consonance with the cosmos and, as all the efforts of the priests were directed upon the heavens, it was necessary to discover the will of the gods in accordance with the sacred doctrine. As such specialized knowledge were needed by the Etruscans to understand the gods and their functions, it was not surprising that the gods’ functions became rather more confusing by the time they were imported to Rome.
The ancient Romans imported not only the basic belief of the Etruscan religion, they also imported many of the Etruscan deities. The Roman Senate adopted key elements of the Etruscan religion, perpetuated by haruspices and noble Roman families who claimed Etruscan descent, long after the general population had forgotten the language. Although the Roman emperor Claudius (10 BC - 54 AD), who himself claimed a remote Etruscan descent, maintained a knowledge of the language and religion, he was one of the exceptions and this practice soon ceased after his death. A number of canonical works in the Etruscan language survived until the middle of the first millennium AD, but were destroyed by the ravages of time, decree of the Roman Senate, and by fire. What was left of the Etruscan literature after that, was completely destroyed in the advent of Christianity, perhaps due to the very fact that Etruscan religious beliefs and practices were so deep-rooted among the Romans. Arnobius, one of the first Christian apologists, living around 300 AD, wrote that the Etruscan religion is the originator and mother of all superstition. Thus, among many others, Vejovis was reduced from a powerful ancient god of the Etruscans to a little-known Roman deity.
Martini Fisher is a Mythographer and author of many books, including "Time Maps: Matriarchy and the Goddess Culture” / Check out MartiniFisher.com
Top Image: Gladiators after the fight, José Moreno Carbonero (1882) Museo del Prado. (Public Domain)
References
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