stylistic:style_transfer
Veiove

Scholars have been often puzzled by Ve(d)iove (or Veiovis, or Vedius) and unwilling to discuss his identity, claiming our knowledge of this god is insufficient. Most, however, agree that Veiove is a sort of special Jupiter or anti-Iove, or even an underworld Jupiter. In other words, Veiove is indeed the Capitoline god himself, who takes up a different, diminished appearance (iuvenis and parvus, young and gracile), in order to be able to discharge sovereign functions over places, times and spheres that by their own nature are excluded from the direct control of Jupiter as Optimus Maximus. This conclusion is based on information provided by Gellius, who states his name is formed by adding prefix ve (here denoting "deprivation" or "negation") to Iove (whose name Gellius posits as rooted in the verb iuvo "I benefit"). D. Sabbatucci has stressed the feature of bearer of instability and antithesis to cosmic order of the god, who threatens the kingly power of Jupiter as Stator and Centumpeda and whose presence occurs side by side to Janus' on 1 January, but also his function of helper to the growth of the young Jupiter. In 1858 Ludwig Preller suggested that Veiovis may be the sinister double of Jupiter.

The god (under the name Vetis) is placed in the last case (number 16) of the outer rim of the Piacenza Liver—before Cilens (Nocturnus), who ends (or begins in the Etruscan vision) the disposition of the gods. In Martianus Capella 's division of heaven, he is found in region XV with the dii publici; as such, he numbers among the infernal (or antipodal) gods. The location of his two temples in Rome—near those of Jupiter (one on the Capitoline Hill, in the low between the arx and the Capitolium, between the two groves where the asylum founded by Romulus stood, the other on the Tiber Island near that of Iuppiter Iurarius, later also known as temple of Aesculapius) —may be significant in this respect, along with the fact that he is considered the father of Apollo, perhaps because he was depicted carrying arrows. He is also considered to be the unbearded Jupiter. The dates of his festivals support the same conclusion: they fall on 1 January, 7 March and 21 May, the first date being the recurrence of the Agonalia, dedicated to Janus and celebrated by the king with the sacrifice of a ram. The nature of the sacrifice is debated; Gellius states capra, a female goat, although some scholars posit a ram. This sacrifice occurred rito humano, which may mean "with the rite appropriate for human sacrifice". Gellius concludes by stating that this god is one of those who receive sacrifices so as to persuade them to refrain from causing harm.

The arrow is an ambivalent symbol; it was used in the ritual of the devotio (the general who vowed had to stand on an arrow). It is perhaps because of the arrow and of the juvenile looks that Gellius identifies Veiove with Apollo and as a god who must receive worship in order to obtain his abstention from harming men, along with Robigus and Averruncus. The ambivalence in the identity of Veiove is apparent in the fact that while he is present in places and times which may have a negative connotation (such as the asylum of Romulus in between the two groves on the Capitol, the Tiberine island along with Faunus and Aesculapius, the kalends of January, the nones of March, and 21 May, a statue of his nonetheless stands in the arx. Moreover, the initial particle ve- which the ancient supposed were part of his name is itself ambivalent as it may have both an accrescitive and diminutive value.

Maurice Besnier has remarked that a temple to Iuppiter was dedicated by praetor Lucius Furius Purpureo before the battle of Cremona against the Celtic Cenomani of Cisalpine Gaul. An inscription found at Brescia in 1888 shows that Iuppiter Iurarius was worshipped there and one found on the south tip of Tiber Island in 1854 that there was a cult to the god on the spot too. Besnier speculates that Lucius Furius had evoked the chief god of the enemy and built a temple to him in Rome outside the pomerium. On 1 January, the Fasti Praenestini record the festivals of Aesculapius and Vediove on the Island, while in the Fasti Ovid speaks of Jupiter and his grandson. Livy records that in 192 BC, duumvir Q. Marcus Ralla dedicated to Jupiter on the Capitol the two temples promised by L. Furius Purpureo, one of which was that promised during the war against the Gauls. Besnier would accept a correction to Livy's passage (proposed by Jordan) to read aedes Veiovi instead of aedes duae Iovi. Such a correction concerns the temples dedicated on the Capitol: it does not address the question of the dedication of the temple on the Island, which is puzzling, since the place is attested epigraphically as dedicated to the cult of Iuppiter Iurarius, in the Fasti Praenestini of Vediove and to Jupiter according to Ovid. The two gods may have been seen as equivalent: Iuppiter Iurarius is an awesome and vengeful god, parallel to the Greek Zeus Orkios, the avenger of perjury.

A. Pasqualini has argued that Veiovis seems related to Iuppiter Latiaris, as the original figure of this Jupiter would have been superseded on the Alban Mount, whereas it preserved its gruesome character in the ceremony held on the sanctuary of the Latiar Hill, the southernmost hilltop of the Quirinal in Rome, which involved a human sacrifice. The gens Iulia had gentilician cults at Bovillae where a dedicatory inscription to Vediove has been found in 1826 on an ara. According to Pasqualini it was a deity similar to Vediove, wielder of lightningbolts and chthonic, who was connected to the cult of the founders who first inhabited the Alban Mount and built the sanctuary. Such a cult once superseded on the Mount would have been taken up and preserved by the Iulii, private citizens bound to the sacra Albana by their Alban origin.