Dii Consentes- Roman GroupCollective"The Twelve Gods"
Also known as: Di Consentes
Description
Rome's supreme divine council: twelve gilded statues at the foot of the Capitoline, Jupiter and Juno among them. First honored together during the crisis of the Second Punic War, their portico was among the last pagan monuments restored in the dying days of Roman religion.
Mythology & Lore
Ennius and the Twelve
The poet Ennius, writing around 200 BCE, fixed the list in a hexameter verse that became the standard reference:
Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars, Mercurius, Jovi', Neptunus, Volcanus, Apollo.
Apuleius and Varro both cite it. The name Dii Consentes means "gods who agree together," from consentire. They were organized into six male-female pairs, a structure borrowed from Greek precedent but filled with Roman deities.
The Lectisternium of 217 BCE
After the catastrophe at Lake Trasimene, where Hannibal destroyed a Roman army during the Second Punic War, the Sibylline Books ordered a lectisternium for all twelve simultaneously. It was the first time the complete council was honored together.
For three days, gilded images of the gods lay on six couches in the Forum while the city offered them food. Jupiter shared a couch with Juno, Mars with Venus. A supplicatio carried prayers to every temple in Rome, and the senate vowed a ver sacrum: all livestock born the following spring would be sacrificed to the gods.
The Portico
The Porticus Deorum Consentium stood at the foot of the Capitoline, overlooking the Forum: twelve gilded statues under a colonnade. An inscription records its restoration by the urban prefect Vettius Agorius Praetextatus in 367 CE. Praetextatus was a prominent pagan in an increasingly Christian Rome, and the restoration was one of the last acts of official devotion to the old gods. The portico's columns still stand.
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