The Cult
Iūpiter's cult was the state religion concentrated into one hill. His Capitoline temple, vowed by Tarquinius Superbus and dedicated in 509 BCE, held the terracotta statue Vulca of Veii made for it, red-faced like terracotta itself, and every September the Lūdī Rōmānī filled the Circus below with games in his honor. War and worship ran together: generals vowed temples to him mid-battle, crowned their triumph at his altar with white oxen, and hung captured armor in his cella until the porch read as a museum of victories. His priest was the flāmen Diālis, highest of the flamines, hedged by a rulebook of taboos — no raw flesh, no iron on his person, no night spent outside the city, no army arrayed in his sight, no corpse in his arms. Once a year the Latin peoples kept his common feast, the Fēriae Lātīnae, on the Alban Mount. And when Rome staged the lectisternium of 399 BCE — twelve gods on twelve draped couches — Iūpiter's couch stood first.