Sol Invictus

Sol Invictus (, "Invincible Sun" or "Unconquered Sun") was the official sun god of the late Roman Empire and a later version of the god Sol. The emperor Aurelian revived his cult in AD 274 and promoted Sol Invictus as the chief god of the empire. The main festival dedicated to him was the Dies Natalis Solis Invicti ('birthday of the Invincible Sun') on 25 December, the date of the winter solstice in the Roman calendar. From Aurelian onward, Sol was of supreme importance, and often appeared on imperial coinage. He was often shown wearing a sun crown and driving a horse-drawn chariot through the sky. His prominence lasted until the emperor Constantine I legalized Christianity and restricted paganism. The last known inscription referring to Sol Invictus dates to AD 387, although there were enough devotees in the fifth century that the Christian theologian Augustine found it necessary to preach against them.

In recent years, the scholarly community has become divided on Sol between traditionalists and a growing group of revisionists. In the traditional view, Sol Invictus was the second of two different sun gods in Rome. The first of these, Sol Indiges, or Sol, was believed to be an early Roman god of minor importance whose cult had petered out by the first century AD. Sol Invictus, on the other hand, was believed to be a Syrian sun god whose cult was first promoted in Rome under Elagabalus, without success. Some fifty years later, in AD 274, Aurelian established the cult of Sol Invictus as an official religion. There has never been consensus on which Syrian sun god he might have been: some scholars opted for the sky god of Emesa, Elagabal, while others preferred Malakbel of Palmyra. In the revisionist view, there was only one cult of Sol in Rome, continuous from the monarchy to the end of antiquity. There were at least three temples of Sol in Rome, all active during the Empire and all dating from the earlier Republic.

Invictus as epithet


Invictus ("unconquered, invincible") was an epithet utilized for several Roman deities, including Jupiter, Mars, Hercules, Apollo, and Silvanus. It had been in use from the 3rd century BC. The Roman cult to Sol is continuous from the "earliest history" of the city until the institution of Christianity as the exclusive state religion. Scholars have sometimes regarded the traditional Sol Indiges and Sol Invictus as two separate deities, but the rejection of this view by S. E. Hijmans has found supporters.

An inscription of AD 102 records a restoration of a portico of Sol in what is now the Trastevere area of Rome by a certain Gaius Iulius Anicetus. While he may have had in mind an allusion to his own cognomen, which is the Latinized form of the Greek equivalent of invictus, ἀνίκητος (anikētos), the earliest extant dated inscription that uses invictus as an epithet of Sol is from AD 158. Another, stylistically dated to the 2nd century, is inscribed on a Roman phalera (ornamental disk): ("I glorify the unconquerable sun, the creator of light.")  Augustus is a regular epithet linking deities to the Imperial cult. Sol Invictus played a prominent role in the Mithraic mysteries, and was equated with Mithras. The relation of the Mithraic Sol Invictus to the public cult of the deity with the same name is unclear and perhaps non-existent.

Elagabalus
According to the Historia Augusta, Elagabalus, the teenaged Severan heir, adopted the name of his deity and brought his cult image from Emesa to Rome. Once installed as emperor, he neglected Rome's traditional State deities and promoted his own as Rome's most powerful deity. This ended with his murder in 222. The Historia Augusta equates the deity Elagabalus with Jupiter and Sol: fuit autem Heliogabali vel Iovis vel Solis sacerdos, "He was also a priest of Heliogabalus, or Jove, or Sol". While this has been seen as an attempt to import the Syrian sun god to Rome, the Roman cult of Sol had existed in Rome at least since the early Republic.

Aurelian


The Roman gens Aurelia was associated with the cult of Sol. After his victories in the East, the Emperor Aurelian thoroughly reformed the Roman cult of Sol, elevating the sun-god to one of the premier divinities of the Empire. Where previously priests of Sol had been simply sacerdotes and tended to belong to lower ranks of Roman society, they were now pontifices and members of the new college of pontifices instituted by Aurelian. Every pontifex of Sol was a member of the senatorial elite, indicating that the priesthood of Sol was now highly prestigious. Almost all these senators held other priesthoods as well, however, and some of these other priesthoods take precedence in the inscriptions in which they are listed, suggesting that they were considered more prestigious than the priesthood of Sol. Aurelian also built a new temple for Sol, which was dedicated on 25 December 274, and brought the total number of temples for the god in Rome to (at least) four. He also instituted games in honor of the sun god, held every four years from 274 onwards.

The identity of Aurelian's Sol Invictus has long been a subject of scholarly debate. Based on the Augustan History, some scholars have argued that it was based on Sol Elagablus (or Elagabla) of Emesa. Others, basing their argument on Zosimus, suggest that it was based on the Šams, the solar god of Palmyra on the grounds that Aurelian placed and consecrated a cult statue of the sun god looted from Palmyra in the temple of Sol Invictus. Forsythe (2012) discusses these arguments and adds a third more recent one, based on the work of Steven Hijmans. Hijmans argues that Aurelian's solar deity was simply the traditional Greco-Roman.

Constantine
Emperors portrayed on their official coinage, with a wide range of legends, only a few of which incorporated the epithet, such as the legend , claiming the "Unconquered Sun" as a companion to the Emperor, used with particular frequency by Constantine. Statuettes of Sol Invictus, carried by the standard-bearers, appear in three places in reliefs on the Arch of Constantine. Constantine's official coinage continues to bear images of Sol until 325/326. A solidus of Constantine as well as a gold medallion from his reign depict the Emperor's bust in profile twinned (jugate) with Sol Invictus, with the legend

Constantine decreed (March 7, 321) – the day of the Sun, "Sunday" – as the Roman day of rest

"On the venerable day of the Sun let the magistrates and people residing in cities rest, and let all workshops be closed. In the country however persons engaged in agriculture may freely and lawfully continue their pursuits because it often happens that another day is not suitable for grain-sowing or vine planting; lest by neglecting the proper moment for such operations the bounty of heaven should be lost."

Constantine's triumphal arch was carefully positioned to align with the colossal statue of Sol by the Colosseum, so that Sol formed the dominant backdrop when seen from the direction of the main approach towards the arch.

Sol and later Roman Emperors
Berrens (2004) deals with coin-evidence of Imperial connection to the Solar cult. Sol is depicted sporadically on imperial coins in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, then more frequently from Septimius Severus onwards until AD 325–326. appears on coin legends from AD 261, well before the reign of Aurelian.

Connections between the imperial radiate crown and the cult of Sol are postulated. Augustus was posthumously depicted with radiate crown, as were living emperors from Nero (after AD 65) to Constantine. Some modern scholarship interprets the imperial radiate crown as a divine, solar association rather than an overt symbol of Sol; Bergmann calls it a pseudo-object designed to disguise the divine and solar connotations that would otherwise be politically controversial   but there is broad agreement that coin-images showing the imperial radiate crown are stylistically distinct from those of the solar crown of rays; the imperial radiate crown is depicted as a real object rather than as symbolic light.

Hijmans argues that the Imperial radiate crown represents the honorary wreath awarded to Augustus, perhaps posthumously, to commemorate his victory at the Battle of Actium; he points out that henceforth, living emperors were depicted with radiate crowns, but state divi were not. Hijmans believes this implies that the radiate crown of living emperors is a symbolic link to Augustus. His successors automatically inherited (or sometimes acquired) the same offices and honours due to Octavian as "saviour of the Republic" through his victory at Actium, piously attributed to Apollo-Helios.

Furthermore, radiate crowns were not solely worn by emperors: The wreaths awarded to victors at the Actian Games were radiate.

Festival of Dies Natalis Solis Invicti


In AD 274, the emperor Aurelian instituted the festival Dies Natalis Solis Invicti ('birthday of the Invincible Sun') on 25 December, the date of the winter solstice in the Roman calendar. In Rome, this yearly festival was celebrated with thirty chariot races. Gary Forsythe, Professor of Ancient History, says "This celebration would have formed a welcome addition to the seven-day period of the Saturnalia (December 17–23), Rome's most joyous holiday season since Republican times, characterized by parties, banquets, and exchanges of gifts". In AD 362, the emperor Julian wrote in his Hymn to King Helios that the Agon Solis was a festival of the sun held at the end of the Saturnalia in late December.

The festival is recorded in the Chronograph of 354 (or Filocalian calendar). Historians generally agree that this part of the text was written in Rome in AD 336.

Wallraff (2001) says there is limited evidence for the festival before the mid-4th century.

Christianity
A widely-held theory is that the Church chose December 25 as Jesus Christ's birthday (Dies Natalis Christi) to appropriate the festival of Sol Invictus's birthday Dies Natalis Solis Invicti, held on the same date.

The early Church linked Jesus Christ to the Sun and referred to him as the 'Sun of Righteousness' (Sol Justitiae) prophesied by Malachi. A Christian treatise attributed to John Chrysostom and dating to the early fourth century AD associates Christ's birth with the birthday of Sol Invictus:"Our Lord, too, is born in the month of December ... the eighth before the calends of January [25 December] ... But they [the pagans] call it the 'Birthday of the Unconquered'. Who indeed is so unconquered as Our Lord? Or, if they say that it is the birthday of the Sun, [we may say] He is the Sun of Justice."

The theory is mentioned in an annotation of uncertain date added to a manuscript by 12th-century Syrian bishop Jacob Bar-Salibi. The scribe wrote: "It was a custom of the Pagans to celebrate on the same 25 December the birthday of the Sun, at which they kindled lights in token of festivity. In these solemnities and revelries, the Christians also took part. Accordingly, when the doctors of the Church perceived that the Christians had a leaning to this festival, they took counsel and resolved that the true Nativity should be solemnised on that day."

Another theory is that Christmas was calculated as nine months after a date chosen as Christ's conception (the Annunciation): March 25, the Roman date of the spring equinox. This theory was first proposed by French writer Louis Duchesne in 1889.

The charioteer in the mosaic of Mausoleum M has been interpreted by some as Christ. Clement of Alexandria had spoken of Christ driving his chariot across the sky. This interpretation is doubted by others: "Only the cross-shaped nimbus makes the Christian significance apparent", and the figure is seen by some simply as a representation of the Sun with no explicit religious reference whatever, pagan or Christian.

Judaism
The traditional image of the Sun has also been used in early Jewish prophecy, poetry, and art. Psalm 19, begins "The heavens proclaim the glory of God, the firmament proclaims his handiwork", and likens the Sun to a bridegroom, to a warrior, and to the Torah.

An Aggadic legend found in tractate Avodah Zarah 8a contains the talmudic hypothesis that Adam the first established the tradition of fasting before the winter solstice, and rejoicing afterward, which festival later devolved into the Roman Saturnalia and Calenda.

A mosaic floor in Hamat Tiberias presents David as Helios surrounded by a ring with the signs of the zodiac. As well as in Hamat Tiberias, figures of Helios or Sol Invictus also appear in several of the very few surviving schemes of decoration surviving from Late Antique synagogues, including Beth Alpha, Husefa, all now in Israel, and Naaran in the West Bank. He is shown in floor mosaics, with the usual radiate halo, and sometimes in a quadriga, in the central roundel of a circular representation of the zodiac or the seasons. These combinations "may have represented to an agricultural Jewish community the perpetuation of the annual cycle of the universe or ... the central part of a calendar".