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Libera (goddess)
Proserpina ( ; ) or Proserpine ( ) is an ancient Roman goddess whose iconography, functions and myths are virtually identical to those of Greek Persephone. Proserpina replaced or was combined with the ancient Roman fertility goddess Libera, whose principal cult was housed in the Aventine temple of the grain-goddess Ceres, along with the wine god Liber. Each of these three deities occupied their own ''cella'' at the temple. Their cults were served or supervised by a male public priesthood. Ceres was by far the senior of the three, one of the ''Dii Consentes'', Rome's approximate equivalent to the Greek Twelve Olympians. She was identified with Greek Demeter and Liber was identified with Bacchus and Dionysus. Libera is sometimes described as a female version of Liber Pater, concerned with female fertility. Otherwise she is given no clear identity or mythology by Roman sources, and no Greek equivalent. Nothing is known of her native iconography: her name translates as a feminine f ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Orcus
Orcus was a god of the underworld, punisher of broken oaths in Etruscan and Roman mythology. As with Hades, the name of the god was also used for the underworld itself. Eventually, he was conflated with Dis Pater and Pluto. A temple to Orcus may once have existed on the Palatine Hill in Rome. It is likely that he was transliterated from the Greek daemon Horkos, the personification of oaths and a son of Eris. Origins The origins of Orcus may have lain in Etruscan religion. The so-called " Tomb of Orcus", an Etruscan site at Tarquinia, is a misnomer, resulting from its first discoverers mistaking a hairy, bearded giant for Orcus; it actually depicts a Cyclops. The Romans sometimes conflated Orcus with other underworld gods such as Pluto, Hades, and Dis Pater. The name "Orcus" seems to have referred specifically to the malicious and punishing side of the ruler of the underworld, as the god who tormented evildoers in their afterlife. Like the name Hades, "Orcus" could refer bot ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Second Punic War
The Second Punic War (218 to 201 BC) was the second of Punic Wars, three wars fought between Ancient Carthage, Carthage and Roman Republic, Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean Basin, Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Roman Italy, Italy and Iberia, but also on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia and, towards the end of the war, in North Africa. After immense materiel and human losses on both sides, the Carthaginians were once again defeated. Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedonia, Kingdom of Syracuse, Syracuse and several Numidians, Numidian kingdoms were drawn into the fighting, and Celtiberians, Iberian and Gauls, Gallic forces fought on both sides. There were three main Theater (military), military theatres during the war: Italy, where Hannibal defeated the Roman legions repeatedly, with occasional subsidiary campaigns in Sicily, Sardinia and Greece; Iberia, where Hasdrubal (Barcid), Hasdru ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Spaeth, Barbette Stanley
Barbette Stanley Spaeth is an American academic who is an associate professor at College of William and Mary, and is an expert in Roman mythology. She is past secretary of the Williamsburg Society, Archaeological Institute of America, and president of the Society for Ancient Mediterranean Religions. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a PhD. Spaeth wrote her doctoral dissertation on Ceres, ''The Roman Goddess Ceres''. She was a professor at Tulane University, from 1987 to 2001. She has won awards for her work in academia.See, ''e.g.''2011 Faculty Governance Awards at William and Mary College Selected publications *Spaeth, Barbette Stanley, "The Goddess Ceres and the Death of Tiberius Gracchus", ''Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte,'' Vol. 39, No. 2, 1990. * See also * Aventine Triad * Cerealia * Crisis of the Roman Republic * Enna * Liber and Libera (mythology) * Mother goddess * Sexuality in ancient Rome * Women in ancient Rome Freeborn (Ancient Ro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fauna (goddess)
Fauna is a Roman mythology, Roman rustic goddess said in differing ancient sources to be the wife, sister, or daughter of Faunus (the Roman counterpart of Pan (mythology), Pan). Varro regarded her as the female counterpart of Faunus, and said that the ''fauni'' all had prophetic powers. She is also called Fatua or Fenta Fauna. Name Etymology The name ''Fauna'' is a feminine form of Latin ''Faunus'', the deity of the countryside. ''Faunus'' itself is generally thought to stem from Proto-Italic ''*fawe'' or ''*fawono'', ultimately from Proto-Indo-European language, Proto-Indo-European ''*bʰh₂u-n'' ('favourable'). Consequently, Georges Dumézil translated her name as "the Favourable." In his conceptual approach to Roman deity, Michael Lipka sees Faunus and Fauna as an example of a characteristically Roman tendency to form gender-complementary pairs within a sphere of functionality. The male-female figures never have equal prominence, and one partner (not always the female) see ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faunus
In Religion in ancient Rome, ancient Roman religion and Roman mythology, myth, Faunus was the rustic god of the forest, plains and fields; when he made cattle fertile, he was called Inuus. He came to be equated in literature with the Greek god Pan (god), Pan, after which Romans depicted him as a horned deity, horned god. Faunus was one of the oldest Roman deities, known as the ''di indigetes''. According to the epic poet Virgil, he was a legendary king of the Latins. His shade was consulted as a goddess of prophecy under the name of Fatuus, with oracles in the sacred grove of Tibur, around the well Albunea, and on the Aventine Hill in ancient Rome itself.Peck, Harry (1897). “Faunalia Faustina.” ''Harper's Dictionary of Classical Literature and Antiquities.'' Harper & Brothers Publishers. 662-663. Marcus Terentius Varro asserted that the oracular responses were given in Saturnian (poetry), Saturnian verse. Faunus revealed the future in dreams and voices that were Incubation ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italic Peoples
The concept of Italic peoples is widely used in linguistics and historiography of ancient Italy. In a strict sense, commonly used in linguistics, it refers to the Osco-Umbrian languages, Osco-Umbrians and Latino-Faliscan languages, Latino-Faliscans, speakers of the Italic languages, a subgroup of the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. In a broader sense, commonly used in historiography, all the ancient peoples of Italy are referred to as Italic peoples, including the non-Indo-European ones, as Rhaetian people, Rhaetians, Ligures and Etruscan civilization, Etruscans. As the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins achieved a dominant position among these tribes, by virtue of the expansion of the Ancient Rome, Roman civilization, the other Italic tribes adopted Latin language and culture as part of the process of Romanization (cultural), Romanization. Classification The Italics were an ethnolinguistic group who are identified by their use of the Italic languages, which ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plebeian
In ancient Rome, the plebeians or plebs were the general body of free Roman citizens who were not patricians, as determined by the census, or in other words "commoners". Both classes were hereditary. Etymology The precise origins of the group and the term are unclear, but may be related to the Greek, ''plēthos'', meaning masses. In Latin, the word is a singular collective noun, and its genitive is . Plebeians were not a monolithic social class. In ancient Rome In the annalistic tradition of Livy and Dionysius, the distinction between patricians and plebeians was as old as Rome itself, instituted by Romulus' appointment of the first hundred senators, whose descendants became the patriciate. Modern hypotheses date the distinction "anywhere from the regal period to the late fifth century" BC. The 19th-century historian Barthold Georg Niebuhr believed plebeians were possibly foreigners immigrating from other parts of Italy. This hypothesis, that plebeians were racial ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Liber Pater
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber ( , ; "the free one"), also known as Liber Pater ("the free Father"), was a god of viticulture and wine, male fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia (March 17) became associated with free speech and the rights attached to coming of age. His cult and functions were increasingly associated with Romanised forms of the Greek Dionysus/Bacchus, whose mythology he came to share. Etymology The name ''Līber'' ('free') stems from Proto-Italic ''*leuþero'', and ultimately from Proto-Indo-European ''*h₁leudʰero'' ('belonging to the people', hence 'free'). Origins and establishment Before his official adoption as a Roman deity, Liber was companion to two different goddesses in two separate, archaic Italian fertility cults; Ceres, an agricultural and fertility goddess of Rome's Hellenized neighbours, and Libera, who was Liber's female equivalen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renaissance
The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and surpass the ideas and achievements of classical antiquity. Associated with great social change in most fields and disciplines, including Renaissance art, art, Renaissance architecture, architecture, politics, Renaissance literature, literature, Renaissance exploration, exploration and Science in the Renaissance, science, the Renaissance was first centered in the Republic of Florence, then spread to the Italian Renaissance, rest of Italy and later throughout Europe. The term ''rinascita'' ("rebirth") first appeared in ''Lives of the Artists'' () by Giorgio Vasari, while the corresponding French word was adopted into English as the term for this period during the 1830s. The Renaissance's intellectual basis was founded in its version of Renaiss ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Roman Art
The art of Ancient Rome, and the territories of its Republic and later Empire, includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work. Luxury objects in metal-work, gem engraving, ivory carvings, and glass are sometimes considered to be minor forms of Roman art, although they were not considered as such at the time. Sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting was also highly regarded. A very large body of sculpture has survived from about the 1st century BC onward, though very little from before, but very little painting remains, and probably nothing that a contemporary would have considered to be of the highest quality. Ancient Roman pottery was not a luxury product, but a vast production of "fine wares" in '' terra sigillata'' were decorated with reliefs that reflected the latest taste, and provided a large group in society with stylish objects at what was evidently an affordable price. Roman coins were an important means ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Pluto (mythology)
In Religion in ancient Greece, ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, Pluto () was the ruler of the Greek underworld, underworld. The earlier name for the god was Hades, which became more common as the name of the underworld itself. Pluto represents a more positive concept of the god who presides over the afterlife. ''Ploutōn'' was frequently conflation, conflated with Plutus, Ploûtos, the Greek god of wealth, because mineral wealth was found underground, and because as a chthonic god Pluto ruled the deep earth that contained the seeds necessary for a bountiful harvest. The name ''Ploutōn'' came into widespread usage with the Eleusinian Mysteries, in which Pluto was venerated as both a stern ruler and a loving husband to Persephone. The couple received souls in the afterlife and are invoked together in religious inscriptions, being referred to as ''Plouton'' and as ''Kore'' respectively. Hades, by contrast, had few temples and religious practices associated wit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flamen
A (plural ''flamines'') was a priest of the ancient Roman religion who was assigned to one of fifteen deities with official cults during the Roman Republic. The most important of these were the three (or "major priests"), who served the important Roman gods Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus. The remaining twelve were the ("lesser priests"). Two of the served deities whose names are now unknown; among the others are deities about whom little is known other than the name. During the Imperial era, the cult of a deified emperor () also had a flamen. The fifteen Republican flamens were members of the Pontifical College, who administered state-sponsored religion. When the office of flamen was vacant, a could serve as a temporary replacement, although only the is known to have substituted for the , one of the . Etymology The etymology of remains obscure, and perhaps undecidable. Andrew Sihler ''New Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin,'' Oxford University Press 1995 p.198:’ Tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
