Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Deities

Jupiter

JOO-pih-ter
Roman Deities

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As the face of the planet Jupiter, the Roman Jupiter embodies expansion, sovereignty, and meaning. Jupiter, also called Jove, is the supreme god of the Roman state, the god of the sky, thunder, and law, and the king of the gods. Worshipped on the Capitoline Hill as Jupiter Optimus Maximus alongside Juno and Minerva in the great Capitoline Triad, he was the guarantor of oaths, treaties, and the power of Rome throughout the Republic and the Empire. In legend he treats with Numa Pompilius, the second king, to establish the rites of Roman religion. He wields the thunderbolt, his bird is the eagle and his tree the oak, and he is the counterpart of the Greek Zeus. He gives his name to the planet and to the day Jove's-day, and he embodies authority, expansion, justice, and good fortune.

Facts
Identity
Gender
Male 1
Origins
Origin of the Name
The name Jupiter descends from the Proto Italic Iovis pater, sky father, the same root that gives the Greek Zeus pater, making the two names etymological cousins rather than unrelated words. 2
Cult
Principal Cult Centre
The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitoline Hill at Rome 1
Attributes and Iconography
The thunderbolt, the eagle, the sceptre and the oak; enthroned and bearded. 1
Worship and Practice
The Ludi Romani, held each September, honored Jupiter Optimus Maximus at his temple on the Capitoline Hill with games and a formal procession, and every incoming Roman consul opened their year of office with a public vow made at that same temple, tying the highest civic office directly to Jupiter's own cult. 2
Function
Domain / Function
Sky 1
Domain / Function
Storm and thunder 1
Domain / Function
Kingship and sovereignty 1
Domain / Function
Justice, law and oaths 1
Status
Status Within the Tradition
Not formally addressed by this tradition 2
Attestation
Era of Attestation
600 BCE to 391 CE 1
Veneration Today
Historically attested; no continuous cult 1
Historicity
Not a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2
Belief
Theology
Polytheistic: many gods 2
Attributions
Mythic Association
Roman myth, following the Greek pattern it absorbed, held that Jupiter overthrew his own father Saturn to become king of the gods, a succession later softened in Roman memory into the idea that Saturn withdrew peacefully to rule a lost golden age in Italy rather than being violently deposed. 2
History
Historical Note
The temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Rome's Capitoline Hill, traditionally dedicated in 509 BCE at the start of the Republic, stood as the central shrine of Roman state religion for nearly a thousand years, the site where consuls took office and triumphant generals ended their processions. 2
Practice
Lineage
Roman genealogy makes Jupiter a son of Saturn and Ops, brother to Neptune, Pluto, Ceres, Juno and Vesta, a family structure adapted directly from the Greek genealogy of Zeus and his Titan parents Cronus and Rhea. 2
Learn More
Optimus Maximus: The God of the Roman State

The Capitoline temple that gave Jupiter Optimus Maximus his central Roman home had a building history as turbulent as the Republic itself. Tradition credited its vow to king Tarquinius Priscus and its completion to Tarquinius Superbus, and later Romans dated its dedication to 509 BCE, the very first year of the Republic, as though the fall of the monarchy and the god's great house belonged to the same founding moment. Fire destroyed the temple during the civil war of 83 BCE, and Sulla rebuilt it; it burned again in 69 CE, during the fighting that made and unmade three emperors in a single year, and was rebuilt once more under Vespasian, only to burn a third time in 80 CE under Titus.

The final rebuilding, completed under Domitian at the end of the first century CE, was the most lavish of all, faced in white Pentelic marble with gilded roof tiles, and it stood as the temple that later visitors and ancient sources took as the definitive image of the sanctuary, even though nothing physical of any phase now survives above ground. That repeated cycle of destruction and ever more magnificent rebuilding across five centuries is itself a kind of monument to how central Jupiter's cult remained to Roman civic identity through the Republic and into the high Empire.

Sky-Father, from Diespiter to Jove

Jupiter's public rites preserved a strange trace of very old belief: Pliny the Elder records that on the day of his triumph, a victorious general had his face painted red with minium so that he resembled, for that one day, the red terracotta cult statue of Jupiter housed in the Capitoline temple, paraded through the city in a chariot as though he were briefly the god's own image come to life. The practice had faded into a merely decorative memory by the late Republic, but ancient writers still connected it back to this identification between triumphator and god.

Jupiter's astrological and calendrical legacy long outlasted his temples. Ancient astrology gave him rulership of the largest planet and made him the great benefic, a reading of expansion and good fortune that Western astrology still uses; dies Iovis, Jove's day, survives as jeudi in French and giovedi in Italian, while English Thursday continues the same weekday but through the Germanic identification of Jupiter with Thor rather than with Jove directly, an equivalence based on their shared command of thunder rather than any borrowed name. Renaissance and Baroque painters, Correggio and Rubens among them, returned repeatedly to Jupiter's mythic love affairs, keeping the god visually present in European art long after his cult had ended.

Correspondences & Relations

Archetypes

Pantheons

Planetary Faces

Jupiter Optimus Maximus, head of the Capitoline triad, supplied the surviving name by way of the Greek identification with Zeus and the Babylonian one with Marduk. Rank, not any observed trait, drives the whole chain.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 13 to 20 degrees of Aquarius and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 0 to 6 degrees of Aries and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Baalbek, Sacred Sites

The great temple is to Jupiter Heliopolitanus, a Roman name laid over a local storm god.

Source UNESCO World Heritage ListUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

This source names Jupiter directly: "of a planet between Mars and Jupiter."

Source Bode's Law and the Discovery of JunoClifford J. Cunningham

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 19 to 26 degrees of Cancer and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Jupiter stood alongside Juno and Minerva in the Capitoline Triad as guarantor of oaths, treaties and the power of Rome.

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 7 to 14 degrees of Capricorn and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "found in the belt between Mars and Jupiter, and it was counted a planet for some decades before being reclassified as an asteroid and, in 2006, as a dwarf planet."

This source names Jupiter directly: "at the winter solstice, sub-ruled by Jupiter, which widens Capricorn's ambition toward vision and growth."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "opening of the sign, sub-ruled by Jupiter, which widens Gemini's curiosity toward broader meaning."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Decan 2 of Leo, Decans

This source names Jupiter directly: "20 degrees), fixed fire sub-ruled by Jupiter, which enlarges Leo's warmth into generosity and vision."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "degrees), mutable water sub-ruled by Jupiter, its traditional ruler, expanding Pisces' compassion and faith."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "30 degrees), cardinal air sub-ruled by Jupiter, which expands Libra's sense of fairness toward justice and generosity."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "maiores (major flamens), serving Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus and traditionally drawn from patrician families, and twelve flamines minores (minor flamens) serving lesser deities, generally open to..."

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price

This source names Jupiter directly: "tradition, including essays on Saturn-Jupiter conjunctions across medieval Islamic, Jewish and Latin astrology."

Source From Masha'allah to Kepler: Theory and Practice in Medieval and Renaissance AstrologyCharles Burnett and Dorian Gieseler Greenbaum (editors)

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 6 to 12 degrees of Gemini and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "Roman queen of the gods and wife of Jupiter, whose Greek counterpart is Hera."

Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion

This source names Jupiter directly: "The glyph of Jupiter is not a picture but a letter."

This source names Jupiter directly: "proposal that a triple conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn in Pisces in 7 BCE underlies the Star of Bethlehem, and setting Kepler's calculation against an actual Babylonian astronomical almanac tablet..."

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 0 to 6 degrees of Leo and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 14 to 21 degrees of Libra and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "eight centuries: that conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn, recurring roughly every twenty years and cycling through the four astrological triplicities over a longer period, mark the timing of major..."

Source Mashallah ibn Athari (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Jupiter directly: "the theory that conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn mark the timing of major terrestrial and historical change."

Source Mashallah ibn Athari (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Jupiter directly: "dodecahedron, Mars, tetrahedron, Jupiter, cube, Saturn."

Source Mysterium CosmographicumJohannes Kepler

This source names Jupiter directly: "search for a planet between Mars and Jupiter; like the other early asteroid signs it is an attribute emblem of the deity whose name the body carries, and its origin is documented."

Source A History of Western AstrologyNicholas Campion

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 12 to 16 degrees of Pisces and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 0 to 12 degrees of Sagittarius and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "The glyph of Saturn, like that of Jupiter, is an abbreviated Greek name rather than a picture."

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 19 to 24 degrees of Scorpio and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Taranis, Deities

This source names Jupiter directly: "Taranis as the Gaulish match for Jupiter."

Source The DruidsRonald Hutton

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 14 to 22 degrees of Taurus and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "Jewish astrologers who applied Saturn-Jupiter conjunction theory to Jewish history: Abraham bar Hiyya's Megillat HaMegalleh, which held that a conjunction occurring in Pisces signaled calamity for..."

Tin, Periodic Elements

This source names Jupiter directly: "antiquity, and in alchemy the metal of Jupiter, marked with a symbol resembling the numeral four."

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "from most benefic to most malefic, run Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

This source names Jupiter directly: "This term spans 17 to 21 degrees of Virgo and is ruled by Jupiter."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Zibelthiurdos, Deities

This source names Jupiter directly: "names him under the Latinized gloss Jupiter Urius rather than his own Thracian name, evidence the identification with the Greco-Roman sky father was already standard well before the Roman conquest..."

Source The Thracians (Hoddinott)R. F. Hoddinott

Children

Apollo, Deities

Apollo's own description: "He is the son of Jupiter (Zeus) and Leto." Distinct Jupiter entity; Leto side already exists.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price
Mercury, Deities

Mercury's own description names him son of Jupiter and the Titan-daughter Maia; no honest edge target exists for Maia.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th editionSimon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.)
Vulcan, Deities

Vulcan's own description article: "he was reckoned a son of Jupiter and Juno."

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th editionSimon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.)

Depicted In

Identified with (Interpretatio)

Ame-no-Minakanushi is the Japanese face of Jupiter, set alongside the Roman Jupiter in the shared astrological figure of the ordering center and expansive, governing meaning.

Source KojikiDonald L. Philippi (translator)
Brihaspati, Deities

Brihaspati is the Hindu face of the planet Jupiter, set alongside the Roman Jupiter and Greek Zeus in the shared astrological figure of expansion and wisdom.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)
Tai Sui, Deities

Tai Sui is the deified spirit of the planet Jupiter and of the year, set alongside the Roman Jupiter in the shared astrological figure of expansive governance.

Source The Encyclopedia of TaoismFabrizio Pregadio (ed.)
Thor, Deities

Interpretatio germanica: Thunor/Thor equated with Jupiter the thunderer; dies Iovis calqued as Thunresdaeg (Thursday).

Source GermaniaPublius Cornelius Tacitus
Zeus, Deities

Interpretatio romana: Greek sky-father Zeus identified with Roman Jupiter.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price

Sacred to This Deity

Rome, Cities

Jupiter, head of the Capitoline Triad, was worshipped at Rome's central state temple.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price

Sibling Of

Juno, Deities

Juno's own description article: "the consort and sister of Jupiter."

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th editionSimon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.)
Neptune, Deities

Neptune is brother to Jupiter and Pluto, the three presiding over the heavens, the earthly world and the underworld.

Source The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th editionSimon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.)

Worshipped In

Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Best and Greatest, headed the Capitoline triad and received the triumphs of Rome.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price

Worshipped here at the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Roman religion's largest and most important temple.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
Sources
1. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition
Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2012s.v. JupiterView the Source
2. Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A History
Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Cambridge University Press, 1998View the Source
Greek Religion
Walter Burkert, Harvard University Press, 1985the Indo-European sky-fatherView the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. JupiterView the Source

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