Myth Monday - Vediovis

Vediovis (aka Vedius, Vejove, or Veiovis) is a puzzling Roman god, thought to have come to the Romans in their pre-Republican period, from the Latins and Sabines.

In the early 20th century, American archaeologist A. L. Frothingham and British classical scholar Arthur Bernard Cook, among others, studied Vediovis, who, even in the ancient world, was a curiosity. Frothingham says that by the Augustan era, "Ovid presupposed on the part of his readers absolute ignorance as to Vediovis and that even the name will be strange to them (novitas nominis)." This despite the fact that Caesar's extended family, the Julian gens, honored the god Vediovis. Frothingham considers Vediovis a volcanic god. Cook says Vediovis is an anti-Jove, worshiped in proximity to the king of the Roman gods, both verbally and physically.

Even if Vedovis is mysterious, with not quite credible or consistent reports circulating about him from antiquity, we can still guess who Vediovis was and report on the curiosities that Latin writers, like Ovid, Pliny, Aulus Gellius, and Martianus Capella report.

Vediovis came to be associated with the healing god Asculapius, with an aedes (temple) on Tiber Island [Lacus Curtius Platner: Aedes Veiovis].

Often Vediovis, who does not seem to have started as a chthonic god, seems to have been associated with Underworld Pluto and Dis, and in some sort of opposition with Jupiter.

The name Vediovis (Vedius, Vejove, or Veiovis), in its various forms, seems to hold the name by which Jupiter was known: Jupiter was known as Dius, Diovis, lovis, Jove, etc.

Like Jupiter, Vediovis is connected with fulguration. This concept neatly combines apparently celestial phenomena with ones that appear to emerge from within the earth. Thunder/lightning, bolts (the arrows) and bursts from volcanic activity are all covered by the term fulguration. (Frothingham provides further Etruscan divination/astronomical details, based on Martianus Capella, that tie into the fulguration theme.)

Vedovis was also assimilated or confused with Apollo because he is depicted holding missiles, and because he is generally shown as very youthful in appearance.

Some Romans thought Vedovis was a young Jupiter. A shared association with goats can be traced to the rearing of the god. When Jupiter's mother spirited her last son away so he could escape consumption by his filicidal father, Amalthea tended the baby. Sometimes Amalthea is a goat. Her horn is the origin of the cornucopia [N.B. obligatory Thanksgiving holiday connection].

Cook says Ovid and others interpreted the particle Ve- at the start of the Jupiter-like name as a diminutive, making the name "Little Jupiter." Cook dismisses this possibility, politely saying, "This conjecture has been very properly relegated to the waste-paper basket."

Aulus Gellius [Attic Nights] interpreted "Ve-" as a privative -- depriving Jupiter of all his excellence.

• "Vediovis, the Volcanic God: A Reconstruction," by A. L. Frothingham; The American Journal of Philology, (1917), pp. 370-391.
• "The European Sky-God. III: The Italians," by Arthur Bernard Cook; Folklore, (1905), pp. 260-332.

Join Me on Facebook | Get My Twitter Updates