Volturnus- Roman GodDeity"The East Wind"
Also known as: Vulturnus
Titles & Epithets
Domains
Description
The hot southeast wind that blew dust into Roman soldiers' faces at Cannae, helping Hannibal to his greatest victory. Volturnus was the only Roman wind god with his own festival — the Volturnalia, held in late August when his scorching breath most threatened the harvest.
Mythology & Lore
The Wind
Volturnus was the hot southeast wind, the breath that blew across the sea from Africa and arrived in Italy carrying dust and furnace heat. Farmers knew him by what he did to their fields: grain withered and the late-summer harvest shriveled before it could be gathered. Varro connects his name to the Volturno River in Campania, listing it among native Italian terms for the winds.
Cannae
In 216 BCE, at the Battle of Cannae, Volturnus blew directly into the faces of the Roman legions. Livy records that the wind drove dust and grit into their eyes while Hannibal's Carthaginian forces fought with it at their backs. The Romans lost perhaps fifty thousand men that day. It was the worst defeat in the Republic's history, and a wind god had helped deliver it.
The Volturnalia
Of all the Roman wind gods, only Volturnus had his own festival. The Volturnalia fell on August 27, deep in the hottest stretch of the Italian year, when his scorching wind posed the greatest threat to crops still in the field. The festival appears in the oldest Roman calendars. What the priests did that day, what offerings they made to turn the wind or endure it, has not survived.
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