Caelus
[1] Varro couples him with Terra (Earth) as pater et mater (father and mother), and says that they are "great deities" (dei magni) in the theology of the mysteries at Samothrace.
[2] Although Caelus is not known to have had a cult at Rome,[3] not all scholars consider him a Greek import given a Latin name; he has been associated with Summanus, the god of nocturnal thunder, as "purely Roman.
[5] As a sky god, he became identified with Jupiter, as indicated by an inscription that reads Optimus Maximus Caelus Aeternus Iup
[11] Caelus substituted for Uranus in Latin versions of the myth of Saturn (Cronus) castrating his heavenly father, from whose severed genitals, cast upon the sea, the goddess Venus (Aphrodite) was born.
[18] It is generally, though not universally, agreed that Caelus is depicted on the cuirass of the Augustus of Prima Porta,[19] at the very top above the four horses of the Sun god's quadriga.
He is a mature, bearded man who holds a cloak over his head so that it billows in the form of an arch, a conventional sign of deity (velificatio) that "recalls the vault of the firmament.
[25] In the Etruscan discipline of divination, Caelus Nocturnus was placed in the sunless north opposite to Sol to represent the polar extremities of the axis (see cardo).
A golden vine, perhaps the one mentioned, was sent by the Hasmonean king Aristobulus to Pompeius Magnus after his defeat of Jerusalem, and was later displayed in the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus.
