Veiŏvis
(also
Vediŏvis). An old Italian deity whose peculiar
attributes were early forgotten. At Rome he had a famous shrine in the depression between the
two peaks of the Capitoline Hill, the Capitol and the Arx (Ovid,
Fast. iii. 430;
Gell. v. 12). There lay his
asylum and afterwards his temple between two sacred groves. His statue, by the side of which
stood a goat as a symbol, had a youthful, beardless head, and carried a bundle of arrows in
its right hand; it was therefore supposed that he was the same as the Greek Apollo. Others saw
in him a youthful Inpiter; while at a later date he was identified with Dis, the god of the
world below. He was probably a god of expiation, and hence at the same time the protector of
runaway criminals. The goat, which was sacrificed to him annually on the 7th of March, appears
elsewhere in the Roman cult as an expiatory sacrifice. Etymologists differ as to the
composition of the name Veiovis. Some regard the prefix
veas diminutive,
hence “little Iupiter” (Ovid,
Fast. iii. 445), i.e. youthful.
Others make it intensive, as in
vepallidus, and hence interpret
“mighty” or “destructive” Iupiter. It is probably
separative and negative in its nature, as in
vecors, vesanus; and hence
the name is really the “Anti-Iupiter,” i. e. the antithesis of Iupiter,
referring to Iupiter Inferus as the god of the lower world—Dis or Pluto, as noted
above.