The ''Dii Consentes'', also known as ''Di'' or ''Dei Consentes'' (once ''Dii Complices''), or ''The Harmonious Gods'', is an ancient list of twelve major deities, six gods and six goddesses, in the pantheon of Ancient Rome. Their gilt statues stood in the

Roman Forum A forum (Latin: ''forum'', "public place outdoors", : ''fora''; English : either ''fora'' or ''forums'') was a public square in a municipium, or any civitas, of Ancient Rome reserved primarily for the vending of goods; i.e., a marketplace, alon ...

, and later apparently in the Porticus Deorum Consentium. The gods were listed by the poet

Ennius Quintus Ennius (; ) was a writer and poet who lived during the Roman Republic. He is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was born in the small town of Rudiae, located near modern Lecce (ancient ''Calabria'', today Salento), a town ...

in the late 3rd century BCE in a paraphrase of an unknown Greek poet:

Livy Titus Livius (; 59 BC – AD 17), known in English as Livy ( ), was a Roman historian. He wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people, titled , covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome before the traditional founding i ...

arranges them in six male-female pairs: Jupiter-Juno, Neptune-Minerva, Mars-Venus, Apollo-Diana, Vulcan-Vesta and Mercury-Ceres. Three of the ''Dii Consentes'' formed the

Capitoline Triad The Capitoline Triad was a group of three deities who were worshipped in ancient Roman religion in an elaborate temple on Rome's Capitoline Hill (Latin ''Capitolium''). It comprised Jupiter, Juno and Minerva. The triad held a central place in th ...

: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.

Precursor lists

The grouping of twelve deities has origins older than the

Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...

or Roman sources.

Hittite

The Greek grouping may have Hittite origins via

Lycia Lycia (; Lycian: 𐊗𐊕𐊐𐊎𐊆𐊖 ''Trm̃mis''; , ; ) was a historical region in Anatolia from 15–14th centuries BC (as Lukka) to 546 BC. It bordered the Mediterranean Sea in what is today the provinces of Antalya and Muğ ...

, in

Anatolia Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...

. A group of twelve Hittite gods is known both from

cuneiform Cuneiform is a Logogram, logo-Syllabary, syllabic writing system that was used to write several languages of the Ancient Near East. The script was in active use from the early Bronze Age until the beginning of the Common Era. Cuneiform script ...

texts and from artistic representation. All the Hittite Twelve are male, with no individualizing features. The

Roman Empire The Roman Empire ruled the Mediterranean and much of Europe, Western Asia and North Africa. The Roman people, Romans conquered most of this during the Roman Republic, Republic, and it was ruled by emperors following Octavian's assumption of ...

period group is a possible reflex of the Lycians' twelve gods: By 400 BCE, a precinct dedicated to twelve gods existed at the marketplace in

Xanthos Xanthos or Xanthus, also referred to by scholars as ''Arna'', its Lycian name, (, Lycian: 𐊀𐊕𐊑𐊏𐊀 ''Arñna'', , Latin: ''Xanthus'') was an ancient city near the present-day village of Kınık, in Antalya Province, Turkey. The ru ...

, Lycia.

Egyptian

Herodotus Herodotus (; BC) was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus (now Bodrum, Turkey), under Persian control in the 5th century BC, and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria, Italy. He wrote the '' Histori ...

mentions a group of twelve gods in Egypt, but this cannot be confirmed in any Egyptian sources.

Greek

The Greek cult of the

Twelve Olympians file:Greek - Procession of Twelve Gods and Goddesses - Walters 2340.jpg, upright=1.8, Fragment of a Hellenistic relief sculpture, relief (1st century BC1st century AD) depicting the twelve Olympians carrying their attributes in procession; from ...

can be traced to 6th century BCE

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

and has no apparent precedent in the

Mycenaean period Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC.. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainla ...

. The altar to the Twelve Olympians at Athens is usually dated to the archonship of the younger Pesistratos, in 522–521 BCE. By the 5th century BCE, there are well-attested cults of the Twelve Olympians in Olympia and at the Hieron on the

Bosphorus The Bosporus or Bosphorus Strait ( ; , colloquially ) is a natural strait and an internationally significant waterway located in Istanbul, Turkey. The Bosporus connects the Black Sea to the Sea of Marmara and forms one of the continental bo ...

Etruscan

The references to twelve

Etruscan deities Etruscan religion comprises a set of stories, beliefs, and religious practices of the Etruscan civilization, heavily influenced by the mythology of ancient Greece, and sharing similarities with concurrent Roman mythology and Religion in ancie ...

come from later Roman authors, writing long after the influence of the Greek pantheon had become dominant, and must be regarded with skepticism. Arnobius states that the

Etruscans The Etruscan civilization ( ) was an ancient civilization created by the Etruscans, a people who inhabited Etruria in List of ancient peoples of Italy, ancient Italy, with a common language and culture, and formed a federation of city-states. Af ...

had a set of six male and six female deities which they called ''consentes'' and ''complices'' because they rose and set together, implying an

astronomical Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest include ...

significance, and that these twelve acted as councillors of Jupiter. Scholarly evaluation of this account depends on the hypothesis that the Etruscans originally immigrated to

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

from

. In this case, the Etruscan Twelve might have been cognate to the Hittite Twelve. However, Etruscan artifacts show extensive use of Etruscan translations of Greek mythology; it is just as likely that both the Etruscan Twelve and the Roman Twelve were simply adaptations of the Greek Twelve.

In modern culture

In the Japanese manga ''

Future Diary is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Sakae Esuno. It was serialized in Kadokawa Shoten's '' Shōnen Ace'' between January 2006 and December 2010, and has been collected into 12 ''tankōbon'' volumes. The plot depicts the ...

'' by Sakae Esuno, each Future Diary Holder is named after one of the Dii Consentes.

References

{{Authority control Roman deities Cultural lists 12 (number)