Saturn’s Family Tree

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Family

• Ops(spouse),Ceres(child),Juno(child),Jupiter(child),Neptune(child),Pluto(child),Vesta(child)— Marriage

  Saturn devoured each of his children at birth, but Ops hid the infant Jupiter on Crete, feeding Saturn a swaddled stone instead. Jupiter, Juno, Neptune, Pluto, Ceres, and Vesta were all born to this divine pair.

• Caelus(parent),Terra(parent),Ops(sibling)— Marriage

  Caelus and Terra, Sky and Earth joined in the first marriage, bore the elder gods — Saturn, Ops, Coeus, Phoebe, Hyperion, Theia, and their kin — until Saturn castrated his father and seized dominion over the cosmos.

• Picus(child)

  Saturn fathered Picus during his reign in Latium, establishing a lineage that connected the Golden Age god to Rome's legendary kings through Picus's descendants Faunus and Latinus.

Allied with

• Janus

  Janus welcomed Saturn to Latium after Jupiter expelled him from heaven, sharing his throne with the exiled god. Together they presided over Italy's Golden Age of peace and agricultural abundance.

Enemy of

• Caelus

  Saturn overthrew his father Caelus and castrated him, seizing control of the cosmos from the primordial sky god. This act of violence echoed through divine generations when Jupiter later overthrew Saturn.

• Jupiter

  Jupiter overthrew his father Saturn, who had devoured his siblings whole, and cast him from heaven. Saturn fell to earth and settled in Latium, where he founded a golden age among mortals.

Rules over

• Latium

  Saturn reigned over Latium as king after his exile from heaven, gathering the scattered hill peoples under his laws and teaching them to farm, establishing the fabled Golden Age that Romans remembered each year at the Saturnalia.

Equivalent to

• Kronos(Greek)

  Saturn is the Roman continuation of Greek Kronos — the same dethroned father-king who devoured his children and was overthrown by the youngest son, transplanted into Roman religion with his own temple at the foot of the Capitoline and the great midwinter festival of Saturnalia.

Associated with

• Capitoline Hill

  Saturn settled upon the Capitoline Hill when he first arrived in Italy as an exile from heaven, and later Romans built his temple at its foot where the hill met the Forum, housing the state treasury in its vaults.