Sol Invictus - Use of The Phrase

Use of The Phrase

Invictus (unconquered) was an epithet used for various Roman divinities in the Roman Empire. In the Roman Calendar of the early empire these include Jupiter Invictus and Mars Invictus. It was in use from the late Republic and throughout the Imperial period for a range of deities, such as Hercules, Apollo and Silvanus, and was therefore a well-established form when applied to Mithras by Roman devotees from the 2nd century onwards. It has a clear association with solar deities and solar monism; as such, it became the preferred epithet of Rome's traditional Sol and the novel, short-lived Roman state cult to Elagabalus, an Emesan solar deity who headed Rome's official pantheon under his namesake emperor.

The earliest dated use of Sol invictus is in a dedication from Rome, AD 158. Another, stylistically dated to the 2nd century AD, is inscribed on a Roman phalera: "inventori lucis soli invicto augusto" (to the contriver of light, sol invictus augustus ). Here "augustus" is most likely a further epithet of Sol as "august" (an elevated being, divine or close to divinity), though the association of Sol with the Imperial house would have been unmistakable and was already established in iconography and stoic monism. These are the earliest attested examples of Sol as invictus, but in AD 102 a certain Anicetus restored a shrine of Sol; Hijmans (2009, 486, n. 22) is tempted "to link Anicetus' predilection for Sol with his name, the Latinized form of the Greek word ἀνίκητος, which means invictus".