Divinity Atlas

Sacred Correspondences
Sign In
Text size
100%
Theme

Switch Atlas

Deity

Saturn

SAT-urn
Roman Deities

As the face of the planet Saturn, the Roman Saturn embodies time, limitation, and mastery. Saturn is the Roman god of seed-sowing, agriculture, wealth, dissolution, periodic renewal, and, in later thought, of time itself. His mythic reign was remembered as a lost Golden Age of plenty, peace, and equality. His temple in the Forum housed the state treasury, and his great December festival, the Saturnalia, was a time of feasting, gift-giving, free speech, and the reversal of ranks between masters and slaves. He is the counterpart of the Greek Cronus, and he gives his name both to the planet and to Saturday. Sacred to him are the sickle and the scythe, and he embodies time, limitation, endurance, and the mastery that ripens through age.

Facts
Belief
Theology
Polytheistic: many gods 1
History
Historical Note
The Roman state treasury, the aerarium Saturni, was housed within Saturn's own temple in the Forum, a location tradition explained by his mythic identity as god of a lost golden age of shared plenty before private wealth existed. 2
Cult
Principal Cult Centre
The temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum 1
Attributes and Iconography
Saturn is conventionally shown as an old, bearded man carrying the harpe, the curved sickle or pruning hook that marks his character as a god of sowing and the harvest, and, in the Roman custom reserved for a small number of cults, with his head veiled, capite velato, in the manner of a priest at sacrifice. 2
Worship and Practice
Saturn's festival, the Saturnalia, held in mid December, was marked by a temporary suspension of ordinary social order in which masters were said to wait on their own slaves at table, along with gift giving and public feasting that ancient writers linked to a nostalgic memory of Saturn's own mythical golden age of equality. 3
Function
Domain / Function
Agriculture and harvest 1
Domain / Function
Fate and time 1
Attributions
Mythic Association
His festival, the Saturnalia in December, was among the most popular in Rome, marked by role reversal, gift giving and a temporary suspension of ordinary social rank. 2
Mythic Association
Ovid's Fasti records Roman tradition that Saturn once ruled Italy during a lost golden age of abundance and equality before being displaced, a memory kept alive each December in the licensed reversal of social roles during Saturnalia. 3
Origins
Origin of the Name
Saturn's name is connected to the Latin sero, to sow, reflecting his character as a god of agriculture and the harvest. 2
Position Profile
Key Text
Saturn's festival, the Saturnalia, held in mid December, was marked by a temporary reversal of social roles in which masters served their slaves at table, an inversion later scholars have linked to Saturn's own mythic reign as a lost golden age of equality before Jupiter's rule. 2
Identity
Gender
Male 1
Attestation
Era of Attestation
500 BCE to 391 CE 1
Veneration Today
Historically attested; no continuous cult 1
Historicity
Not a historical person: a divine or other-than-human being 2
Practice
Lineage
Roman tradition, echoing the Greek pattern, counts Saturn father of Jupiter, Neptune, Pluto, Juno, Ceres and Vesta by his consort Ops, though unlike his Greek counterpart Cronus, Saturn's own overthrow by his son receives comparatively little emphasis in Roman sources, which favor his golden age reign instead. 2
Sources
Textual Note
Ovid's Fasti, describing the Saturnalia festival held each December, notes that during the celebration masters and slaves temporarily reversed their usual roles and dined together, a social inversion later Roman writers cited as evidence of the festival's link to the legendary Golden Age Saturn was believed once to have ruled over. 3
Learn More
The Sower, and the Lost Golden Age

Saturn is one of the oldest gods of Rome, a deity of seed-sowing and agriculture whose very name the Romans linked to satus, sowing. But the memory attached to him reached back further than farming: he was said to have reigned in Italy in a lost age of peace and plenty, when the earth gave its fruits without labour and there was no war, slavery or private property. This was the Latin Golden Age, the Saturnia regna, and the land of Latium was even called Saturnia in his honour. Through his identification with the Greek Kronos, whom Zeus overthrew, Saturn was imagined as an exiled king who had come to Italy and taught its people the arts of settled life before vanishing.

The cult statue of Saturn in his Roman temple was shown veiled, capite velato in the old Roman fashion, holding a curved sickle or harpe, and its feet were bound year-round with woollen fetters that were ceremonially loosened only during the Saturnalia itself, a vivid image of the god's own liberation echoing the festival's temporary release of ordinary social bonds; the writer Macrobius, in the fifth century CE, preserves this detail along with much of what is known about the festival's customs. Saturn's temple at the western end of the Roman Forum, traditionally dated to the earliest years of the Republic, was rebuilt more than once, and the eight surviving Ionic columns of its final restoration remain among the most recognisable ruins of the Forum today.

The Saturnalia, and the Treasury Under His Temple

Saturn's great festival, the Saturnalia, opened on the seventeenth of December and ran for several days, and it was the most beloved holiday of the Roman year. For its duration the ordinary order was turned upside down: masters served their slaves at table, gambling was allowed in public, a mock king of misrule was chosen, gifts were exchanged, and the formal toga was set aside, a licensed reversal that recalled the equality of his Golden Age. Many of its customs of feasting and gift-giving passed into the later midwinter festivals of Europe. His temple in the Roman Forum, one of the oldest in the city, held the aerarium, the state treasury, so that the god of the abundant past also guarded the wealth of the present. Later thought made Saturn a figure of time and its devouring passage, an association that ran through astrology into the melancholy planet-god of the Renaissance.

Because the temple also held the state treasury, the aerarium Saturni, the phrase sub Saturno, under Saturn, could stand as shorthand for the public finances themselves, tying the god of a mythical age without private property to the very institution that managed Rome's money. The mock king of misrule chosen during the Saturnalia, sometimes called the Saturnalicius princeps, who issued playful commands his household had to obey, is widely cited by folklorists as an ancestor of the medieval and early modern Lord of Misrule and King of the Bean traditions of European midwinter festivity, one of the clearer unbroken threads running from Roman religion into later folk custom.

Correspondences & Relations

Archetypes

The Orphan, Archetypes

Pantheons

Roman, Pantheons

Planetary Faces

Saturn, Planets

Saturn was an Italic god of sowing whom the Romans equated with Greek Cronus, and the planet came with the equation. His festival, the Saturnalia, sits at the year's turning, reinforcing the planet's link with time and limit.

Connections

Associated With

Pisces Fourth Term: Mars, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Pisces Second Term: Jupiter, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Pisces Third Term: Mercury, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Sagittarius Fifth Term: Mars, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Sagittarius First Term: Jupiter, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Sagittarius Fourth Term: Saturn, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "This term spans 21 to 26 degrees of Sagittarius and is ruled by Saturn."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Sagittarius Second Term: Venus, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Sagittarius Third Term: Mercury, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Saturn, Religious Symbols

This source names Saturn directly: "The glyph of Saturn, like that of Jupiter, is an abbreviated Greek name rather than a picture."

Source The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian CultureFrancesca Rochberg
Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art, Sources

This source names Saturn directly: "Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and Art, Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl's 1964 scholarly work from Thomas Nelson and Sons, later..."

Source Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion and ArtRaymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky and Fritz Saxl
Saturnalia, 17 December, Observance Rules

This source names Saturn directly: "This rule originally fixed Saturnalia on the seventeenth of December alone, honoring the Roman god Saturn, but by the late Republic and into the Empire the festival had expanded into the full seven..."

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price
Scorpio Fifth Term: Saturn, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "This term spans 24 to 30 degrees of Scorpio and is ruled by Saturn."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Scorpio First Term: Mars, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Scorpio Fourth Term: Jupiter, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Scorpio Second Term: Venus, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Scorpio Third Term: Mercury, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Taurus Fifth Term: Mars, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Taurus First Term: Venus, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Taurus Fourth Term: Saturn, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "This term spans 22 to 27 degrees of Taurus and is ruled by Saturn."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Taurus Second Term: Mercury, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Taurus Third Term: Jupiter, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
The Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Medieval Jewish Thought, Sources

This source names Saturn directly: "Jewish astrologers who applied Saturn-Jupiter conjunction theory to Jewish history: Abraham bar Hiyya's Megillat HaMegalleh, which held that a conjunction occurring in Pisces signaled calamity for..."

Source The Conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Medieval Jewish ThoughtJeremy Brown
The Legend of Sword and Fairy, Games

This source names Saturn directly: "for Windows 95 in 1997 and the Sega Saturn in 1999."

Source Wikipedia, "The Legend of Sword and Fairy"
Virgil, Eclogue IV (the Fourth Eclogue), Sources

This source names Saturn directly: "return of a golden age, the reign of Saturn come again, framed by the poem's own opening lines as the fulfillment of a cycle of ages the Cumaean Sibyl's prophetic song had set out."

Source Virgil, Eclogue IV (the Fourth Eclogue)Publius Vergilius Maro (Virgil)
Virgo Fifth Term: Saturn, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "This term spans 28 to 30 degrees of Virgo and is ruled by Saturn."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Virgo First Term: Mercury, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Virgo Fourth Term: Mars, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Virgo Second Term: Venus, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy
Virgo Third Term: Jupiter, Egyptian Terms

This source names Saturn directly: "Jupiter or Venus first through Mars or Saturn last."

Source TetrabiblosClaudius Ptolemy

Showing 51 to 79 of 79 in Associated With, page 2 of 2.

Depicted In

Saturn Devouring His Son, Sacred Art & Iconography
Source Saturn Devouring His Son, Wikipedia

Identified with (Interpretatio)

Cronus, Deities

Interpretatio romana: Greek Titan Cronus identified with Roman Saturn.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price
Huangdi, Deities

As the Chinese face of Saturn, Huangdi the Yellow Emperor presides over the center and the element Earth, set alongside the Roman Saturn in the shared figure of the ordering center and the measured turning of time.

Source Chinese Mythology: An IntroductionAnne Birrell
Kuninotokotachi, Deities

Kuninotokotachi is the Japanese face of Saturn, set alongside the Roman Saturn in the shared astrological figure of the primal ground, time and foundation.

Source Shinto: A HistoryHelen Hardacre
Shani, Deities

Shani is the Hindu face of the planet Saturn, set alongside the Roman Saturn in the shared astrological figure of time, limitation and the discipline that mastery requires.

Source Encyclopedia of HinduismDenise Cush, Catherine Robinson and Michael York (eds.)

Sacred to This Deity

Saturnalia, Holidays & Festivals

Saturnalia's own description: "held in honour of the god Saturn," opening with public sacrifice at the Temple of Saturn.

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price

Worshipped In

Roman Religion, Religions
Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)
The Roman Forum, Sacred Sites

The Roman Forum's own description names "the temples of Saturn" among the temples it held; Saturn is a live family deity with no honest edge target problem, and no edge previously connected the two. Castor, Pollux, Concord and the deified emperors have no honest target (Castor/Pollux exist here only as astronomical "star" entities, the rest have no live entity).

Source Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A HistoryMary Beard, John North and Simon Price
Sources
1. The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edition
Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth and Esther Eidinow (eds.), Oxford University Press, 2012s.v. SaturnView the Source
2. Religions of Rome, Volume 1: A History
Mary Beard, John North and Simon Price, Cambridge University Press, 1998View the Source
3. Fasti
Ovid, Loeb Classical Library, 1931View the Source
Encyclopedia of Religion
Mircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.), Macmillan Reference, 2005s.v. Saturn; the Saturnalia, the temple treasury, and the identification with KronosView the Source
Metamorphoses
Ovid, (various editions)Metamorphoses, Book 1, lines 1-4 (Invocatio), tr. Brookes More
Quote, Metamorphoses, Book 1, lines 1-4 (Invocatio), tr. Brookes More
My soul is wrought to sing of forms transformed to bodies new and strange! Immortal Gods inspire my heart, for ye have changed yourselves and all things you have changed!
View the Source

Take a Related Quiz

Comments (0)
No comments yet. Be the first to share a thought.
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.