Religion of Ancient Rome...
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.
 |
| 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.
The earliest dated use of
Sol invictus is in a dedication from Rome, AD 158.
Another, stylistically dated to the 2nd century AD, is inscribed on a Roman
phalera:
"inventori lucis soli invicto augusto" (to the contriver of light, sol invictus augustus ).
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
