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Altar stone of the 12 Dei Consentes ( Louvre )

The Dei consentes or Dii consentes were a group of 12 gods who were particularly worshiped by the Romans. The poet Ennius called in the 3rd century BC The following 6 male and 6 female gods:

• Jupiter - Zeus
• Juno - Hera
• Minerva - Athena
• Vesta - Hestia
• Ceres - Demeter
• Diana - Artemis
• Venus - Aphrodite
• Mars - Ares
• Mercurius - Hermes
• Neptune - Poseidon
• Vulcanus - Hephaestus
• Apollo - Apollon .

Their gilded statues stood in the Roman Forum , later apparently in the Porticus Deorum Consentium , whose restoration by Vettius Agorius Praetextatus in 367 is evidenced by a corresponding inscription. The gods were worshiped at the Lectisternium , a banquet of the gods. The statues of the gods were placed on pillows and a meal was offered to them.

The number 12 was adopted by the Etruscans , who also worshiped a pantheon of 12 gods. This is where the term Consentes comes from , as the Roman writers used the Etruscan term with Consentes (from “to agree”) or Complices (from “to merge”), ie the name of a type of council. This Etruscan council of gods advised the supreme god Tinia , the Etruscan equivalent of Jupiter, especially when it came to throwing a certain type of lightning. Nothing more is known about the composition of this council.

The Roman Dei consentes were identified with the Greek Olympian gods . The first three gods Jupiter, Juno and Minerva formed the Capitoline Triassic and led the others.

literature

• Emil Aust : Consent. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume IV, 1, Stuttgart 1900, Col. 910 f.
• Fritz Graf : Consentes Dei. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 3, Metzler, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-476-01473-8 , column 129 f.
• Charlotte R. Long: The Twelve Gods of Greece and Rome. Brill, Leiden 1987, ISBN 90-04-07716-2 , pp. 235-243.
• Ernest Will :  Dodekatheoi . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume III, Zurich / Munich 1986, pp. 658-660.
• Georg Wissowa : Consent . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 1,1, Leipzig 1886, Col. 922 f. ( Digitized version ).

Web links

Commons : Dei Consentes  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Marcus Terentius Varro , Res rusticae 1,1,4.
2. ↑ CIL 6, 102 = ILS 4003.
3. ↑ Varro in Arnobius , Adversus nationes 3,40; Aulus Caecina near Seneca , Naturales quaestiones 2.41.