Sol Invictus ("Unconquered Sun") was the official sun god of the later Roman Empire and a patron of soldiers. In 274 the Roman emperor Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new. The god was favored by emperors after Aurelian and appeared on their coins until Constantine. The last inscription referring to Sol Invictus dates to 387 AD and there were enough devotees in the 5th century that Augustine found it necessary to preach against them.
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| Elagabalus AV Aureus. Struck 218-219 AD. Antioch mint. IMP C M AVR ANTONINVS P F AVG, laureate, draped & cuirassed bust left, seen from behind / SANCT DEO SOLI, ELAGABAL in exergue, quadriga right bearing stone of Emesa upon which is an eagle; four parasols around. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
It is commonly claimed that the date of 25 December for Christmas was selected in order to correspond with the Roman festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, or "Birthday of the Unconquered Sun".
Invictus ("Unconquered, Invincible") was an epithet for several deities of classical Roman religion, including the supreme deity Jupiter, the war god Mars, Hercules, Apollo and Silvanus.
Invictus was in use from the 3rd century BC, and was well-established as a cult title when applied to Mithras from the 2nd century onwards.
It has a clear association with solar deities and solar monism; as such, it became the preferred epithet of Rome's traditional Sol and the novel, short-lived Roman state cult to Elagabalus, an Emesan solar deity who headed Rome's official pantheon under his namesake emperor.
Roman Imperial repoussésilver disc of Sol Invictus (3rd century), found at Pessinus (British Museum)
Here "augustus" is most likely a further epithet of Sol as "august" (an elevated being, divine or close to divinity), though the association of Sol with the Imperial house would have been unmistakable and was already established in iconography and stoic monism.
These are the earliest attested examples of Sol as invictus, but in AD 102 a certain Anicetus restored a shrine of Sol; Hijmans (2009, 486, n. 22) is tempted "to link Anicetus' predilection for Sol with his name, the Latinized form of the Greek word ἀνίκητος, which means invictus".
Elagabalus
The first sun god consistently termed invictus was the provincial Syrian god Elagabalus. According to the Historia Augusta, the teenaged Severan heir adopted the name of his deity and brought his cult image from Emesa to Rome. Once installed as emperor, he neglected Rome's traditional State deities and promoted his own as Rome's most powerful deity. This ended with his murder in 222.
The Historia Augusta refers to the deity Elagabalus as "also called Jupiter and Sol" (fuit autem Heliogabali vel Iovis vel Solis).
This has been seen as an abortive attempt to impose the Syrian sun god on Rome;but because it is now clear that the Roman cult of Sol remained firmly established in Rome throughout the Roman period,this Syrian Sol Elagabalus has become no more relevant to our understanding of the Roman Sol than, for example, the Syrian Jupiter Dolichenus is for our understanding of the Roman Jupiter.
Images @ Melonpopzdropz Flickr
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