Jupiter

Jupiter (in Latin Iuppiter, genitive Iovis) is the king of the Roman gods and supreme sovereign of the pantheon. Son of Saturn and Ops, brother of Neptune and Pluto, with whom he divided the cosmos: to Jupiter fell the sky, to Neptune the waters, and to Pluto the underworld. The Romans identified him with the Greek Zeus, of whom he is a cultural variant, and assimilated to his figure the Hellenic tales of birth and childhood. As god of the daytime sky, his name goes back to the Indo-European root of the bright sky, the same that gives rise to Zeus. From an early age he presided over the religious life of Rome as guarantor of order and of the sovereignty of the State.

Jupiter is the god of the sky, lightning, and thunder, which he wields as his supreme weapon; he also presides over law, oaths, and the order of the Roman State. He is the divine witness of pacts, and in his name the consuls swore, for upon him depended justice and good government. His attributes are the thunderbolt, the eagle, the scepter, and the oak, the tree consecrated to him. His wife and sister is Juno, queen of the gods; among his children Roman tradition counts Minerva, Mars, Mercury, Diana, Apollo, Vulcan, and Bacchus, and Hercules, born of the mortal Alcmena. This wide kinship articulates the hierarchy of the pantheon, over which Jupiter exercises his imperial authority.

In the official cult, Jupiter presided over the Capitoline Triad together with Juno and Minerva, venerated in the great temple of the Capitol, the most important sanctuary of Rome. He bore the title of Best and Greatest (Iuppiter Optimus Maximus), and under other epithets he was invoked as Tonans (the thundering one), Feretrius (to whom the spoils of the vanquished enemy were offered), and Stator (he who halts flight and sustains the army). His will was read through the auspices: the augurs were the only official interpreters of his signs, and upon them depended the legitimacy of public decisions. His chief priest was the flamen Dialis. Thus Jupiter embodied the very sovereignty of Rome.

In Virgil's Aeneid, Jupiter guarantees the destiny of Aeneas and directs the foundation of Rome, promising the Romans an empire without end. In the Gigantomachy, together with the other gods, he defeats the Giants who assault the heavens and affirms his eternal dominion. Ovid narrates how he struck down the impiety of Lycaon and unleashed the flood to punish corrupted humanity. As Jupiter Optimus Maximus he embodied Roman imperial power, and his figure, merged with that of Zeus, endured in the Western tradition of art and literature.