Sol- Roman GodDeity"Sol Indiges"

The Quirinal

Sol Indiges, the native sun, had a shrine on the Quirinal Hill that Varro counted among Rome's oldest sacred sites. On August 9 each year, at the festival called the Agonalia, the rex sacrorum sacrificed a ram to Sol. The title rex sacrorum was itself archaic, a priestly office older than the Republic. Sol also had a shrine in the Circus Maximus, where chariot teams raced the oval course and the central spina bore solar imagery. Four horses pulled Sol's chariot across the sky. Four horses pulled a Roman chariot around the track.

Phaethon

In the Metamorphoses, Ovid tells how Sol's son Phaethon came to his father's palace at the eastern edge of the world and asked to drive the sun chariot for a single day. Sol begged him not to. The horses were too strong, the path too steep, and the sky full of dangers: the Scorpion's claws and the Lion's open jaws. Phaethon insisted. Sol had sworn on the Styx to grant him any wish, and the oath could not be broken.

The boy took the reins. The horses felt a lighter hand and bolted. The chariot veered too high, and the stars froze. It plunged too low, and the earth caught fire. Rivers boiled. Mountains smoked. The Sahara turned to desert. Jupiter had no choice. He threw a thunderbolt and knocked Phaethon from the chariot. The boy fell burning into the river Eridanus. His sisters, the Heliades, wept over his body until the gods turned them into amber-dripping poplar trees.

Venus and Mars

Sol saw everything from his chariot. In the Metamorphoses, he spotted Venus and Mars together in Vulcan's bed and told Vulcan what he had seen. Vulcan forged a net of bronze links so fine they were invisible, draped it over the bed, and waited. When Venus and Mars lay down together, the net fell and pinned them. Vulcan threw open the doors and called the gods to look. Venus never forgave Sol for telling. She cursed him with a chain of hopeless passions, and from then on the all-seeing god who watched over every love affair could never manage his own.