Saturn and mythology
Saturn (alchemy and astrology) .- The planet Saturn has under its patronage lead, among Greek alchemists and those of the Middle Ages. The same sign designates the star and metal. The dark color of one was compared to that of amber, and the slow apparent motion of the planet likened to gravity (density) of lead.
Saturnus (Roman Religion). - One of the most ancient gods of Latium and central Italy. A tradition collected by Pompey Trogus and Justin represented as a king of the Aborigines, ie d. primitive populations. The ancient, eg Varro and Augustine after him, had attached the word Saturnus at the root sat contained in satum (verb sero, sow) sator. This is an etymology that seems always admissible. Saturn was therefore, at least originally, the god who presided over seeding, which protected the seeds entrusted to the earth; but he did not remain confined to these special powers. As far as we can judge by the Greek additions later modified the physiognomy of the god, Saturn, husband of Ops was for the inhabitants of Latium agricultural deity par excellence. His main attribute was a sickle, or rather a curved knife, which he used to cut the harvest, pruning trees, to prune vines
Finally, under the epithet Stercutus or Sterculius, he was the god of fertilizers that increase soil fertility. His character was clearly chthonic; in him the ancient Romans worshiped the subterranean forces that germinate seeds buried in the ground; it seems to have been a close relationship between Rome and Saturn Dis Pater. Macrobius says that the altar of Saturn adjoined a chapel Dispater (Saturnalia, I, 10, § 48).
The month of December was dedicated to Saturn, because the sowing were then completed, and because it was the time of year beginning in the womb of the earth, the work of germination, distant prelude to the future harvest. Saturn was very formerly worshiped on the same Rome location. There was, in historical times, on the southern slope of the Capitol, while a quarter of the city which preserved the memory of this cult: there was the temple of Saturn and Ops, which were deposited the Treasury, public and the state archives; not far opened in the enclosure called Servius Tullius, a door Saturn, Porta Saturnia; Varro adds that the Capitoline hill was originally called mons of Saturn, and that before the founding of Rome there was this height a town that bore the name Saturnia.
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