Vejovis - Antecedents

Antecedents

The studies about Vejovis are very poor and unclear. They show a constant updating of his condition and his use by people: escaping from netherworld, Volcanic God responsible for marshland and earthquakes, and later guardian angel in charge of slaves and fighters refusing to lose. God of deceivers, he is called to protect right causes and to give pain and deception to enemies. His temple has been described as a safe haven from police for wrongly persecuted people, and dedicated to the protection of newcomers to Rome, but this view is probably wrong.

Vejovis may be based on the Etruscan god of vendetta, known to them by the name Vetis written on the Piacenza Liver, a bronze model used in haruspical divination.

His name may be connected with that of Jupiter (Jovis), but there is little agreement as to its meaning: he may be a “little Jupiter” or a “Sinister Devils Scorpion” for his enemies. He is also at times identified with Apollo.

Aulus Gellius, in the Noctes Atticae, speculated that Vejovis is the inverse or ill-omened counterpart of Jupiter; compare Summanus. Aulus Gellius observes that the particle ve- that prefixes the name of the god also appears in Latin words such as vesanus, "insane," and thus interprets the name Vejovis as the anti-Jove.

He has been identified with Apollo, with the infant Jupiter, and speculatively as the Anti-Jupiter (i.e. the Jupiter of the Lower World) as suggested by his name. In art, he is depicted as a youth holding a Laurel wreath and some arrows, next to a goat. He had a temple between the two peaks of the Capitoline Hill in Rome, where his statue had a beardless head and carried a bundle of arrows in his right hand. It stood next to a statue of a goat. There is no firm evidence that he is a god of expiation and the protector of runaway criminals.