20 Ancient Roman Gods With Surprisingly Specific Jobs

Sterquilinus’s name is derived from the Latin word stercus, meaning “manure.” I’m not sure I’d want my name associated with animal feces, but hey, I guess there really was a god for everything. Sterquilinus’s duty was to oversee composting and soil fertilization, which was actually very important work in an economy that relied on manuring to keep fields fertile. Fourth-century Christian authors such as the theologian Augustine of Hippo made fun of him, as they often did with the pagan pantheon. And there was no Roman “flatulence god” named Crepitus; he was an invention by French writer Voltaire in 1764, though it is quite amusing to imagine!

Each Roman male was thought to possess a genius, a supernatural being associated with the generative power of a man and his ancestry (gens). Members of the household, even slaves, paid homage to the genius of the paterfamilias (head of the household), particularly on his birthday, offering him wine, cakes, and garlands. In shrines, he was depicted pouring a libation (a ritual offering of liquid) or shown as a sacred snake feeding from an altar.

After a birth, three men performed a ritual at the doorway to drive away Silvanus, the god of the wilds, from mother and child. One beat the doorpost with an iron axe, invoking Intercidona; another struck it with a pestle used for pounding grain, invoking Pilumnus; the third swept the entranceway with a broom, invoking Deverra, and thus kept back the wilderness. It was an unusually elaborate amount of security for one doorway.

Vesta’s fame primarily comes from her temple and the Vestal Virgins, priestesses who tended its eternal flames, but she was also present in every private household. It was an ill omen if a household’s fire went out accidentally, and at every meal families tossed cakes made of sacred salted flour (mola salsa) and bits of food into the flames in honor of Vesta.

The Romans called Janus the god with two faces. He was the deity of new beginnings and of passages. He watched over the front door, the janua of a house. Every morning, Romans asked his permission for safe passage out into the tumult of the outside world before they got down to work. I guess being two-faced isn’t all that bad when you’re a god.

Each Roman woman had a Juno, but her Juno was not the Juno, queen of the gods. Her own Juno was the personal spirit who watched over women’s fertility, marital faithfulness, and life cycles. A materfamilias’s Juno was offered wine, incense, and perfume during festivals and on her birthday, and the family took oaths in her name.

While Terminus did have a famous shrine atop Rome’s Capitoline Hill, his day-to-day job was tending boundary markers on farms across Italy. Every February 23, at a festival called Terminalia, farmers from adjacent fields would gather at the stones that divided their land. There, they’d hang garlands of flowers and sacrifice cakes, wine, and honeycombs to keep good relations between their properties. A divine property-line dispute was probably best avoided!

There were also Abeona and Adeona, the pair of deities concerned with travel, both leaving and coming home again. Their names, respectively, mean “the one who sets out” and “the one who comes home.” Abeona was invoked for a child’s first steps outside the door of the family house, while Adeona ensured that they made it back across the threshold to the warmth of the hearth. The Romans had effectively assigned one deity to “go” and another to “come back.”

The Lar Familiaris, whose likeness on the home shrine was of a young man holding a drinking horn and a libation bowl, guarded the family, the house, and the land. The Lar was given food, wine, incense, and garlands each morning, and additional sacrifices were offered at weddings and other special events. Some ancient writers identified the Lares with deceased ancestors. However, most modern scholars consider such identification to be a matter of literary embellishment rather than fact. Either way, it would be nice to know that there was a god looking after my family and me.

The name Cunina comes from cunae, the Latin for “cradle.” In the ancient world, with high infant mortality rates, Cunina was called upon by mothers and wet nurses to safeguard their babes from evil spells, sickness, or the fascinum, the Roman term for the evil eye. The offering of a small libation of liquid was deemed sufficient to ensure that a baby remained safe throughout the night.

Cardea was the guardian of one mechanical component of the house: the hinge (cardo). Yes, specifically the hinge. The rest of the door had other divine help. The Roman poet Ovid writes that she protects sleeping infants against striges, vampiric night-birds, by touching their doorposts with hawthorn twigs, sprinkling them with water, and placing charms at their windows. He connects her with Carna, the bean-goddess, but they seem to be two distinct figures.

Limentinus was the god of the threshold (limen in Latin), the stone strip that Romans stepped over every time they entered or left. To trip on a threshold was to incur a bad omen for whatever endeavor was being undertaken, even marriage. Nearly all that we know about Limentinus is mentioned in book 4 of Augustine’s City of God, chapter 8, in which he cites him among the other gods of doors to ridicule polytheistic belief.

While Cardea protected the hinge, and the god Limentinus the threshold, Forculus protected the actual door leaves themselves. These heavy pieces of wood were called fores, and so Forculus, together with Cardea and Limentinus, made a trio of gods watching over the door. The Romans really did divide up the assignment—one god for the whole door would apparently have been asking too much! Roman houses typically had large double doors, making them a major point of security, and Forculus was summoned to ensure the doors stayed closed against both thieves and malevolent spirits.

A baby’s first steps are always a huge deal and definitely call for some celebration. But did you know that there was also a god specifically for this stage of life? Yep, Statilinus (or Statanus), named for stare (“standing”), was invoked the moment a toddler tried to stand on their own feet. The parents asked that the child’s legs be strengthened, that the child not stumble, and that the child develop a correct posture.

The transition of a child from suckling to eating solid food and taking real drinks was covered by two deities: Edusa and Potina. Edusa, named for the act of eating, was invoked so that babies could consume solid food and not suffer ill effects; Potina, on the other hand, was called on to ensure that weaning liquids were tolerated. Even feeding a toddler required a two-god team. Caregivers would give small amounts of food and liquid as sacrifices.

Consus’s name came from conserere, “to store away,” and he protected grain stored in underground chambers against moisture, insects, and rodents. When a farmer decided to bury or unearth a supply of grain, he prayed to Consus. The Consualia were celebrated twice a year, on August 21 and December 15.

Fornax was both the name for the physical oven that made bread and the goddess invoked to protect bread from scorching. As someone who has burned food while standing a few feet away from it, I understand the appeal. Some people like burnt toast, but I’m just not one of them. The Fornacalia was celebrated annually in February in her honor; it was a floating holiday, announced each year by the Curio Maximus, the priest who oversaw Rome’s traditional neighborhood divisions. Toasted grain was offered both in the home and within the curiae, the neighborhood divisions themselves.

The Di Penates were named for the innermost pantry of the home, called the penus, which they guarded. Romans dined in silence while tossing crumbs into the fire as an offering. They took a statuette of the Penates with them every time they moved house. Even the household gods apparently came along with the furniture. It was even possible to elevate a major deity, like Ceres or Mercury, to the role of personal Penates, although the household Penates themselves usually had no individual names.

Another major baby milestone? When your baby said their first word! Whether you hoped for “mama” or “dada,” the Romans had a deity for this moment: Fabulinus, named for fabulari (“talk”), who was hailed every time a child spoke their first recognizable word. When the milestone was reached, a small amount of wine was poured out as an offering of thanks. Fabulinus was noted by the Roman scholar Marcus Terentius Varro in a text surviving through the writings of later authors, Nonius Marcellus and Augustine.

The Romans gave a divine identity to crop rust, the fungal disease that could devastate a grain field, and called it Robigo or Robigus. The poet Ovid used the name Robigo, while Roman writers Varro and Columella called the deity Robigus. This was one divine visitor nobody wanted dropping by. Rather than asking this deity to bring them a good harvest, Romans made offerings in hopes of keeping the disease away. On April 25, during the festival of Robigalia, they offered sacrifices and prayed that crop rust would leave their fields alone.

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