[4]: 7.678 Evidence pertaining to di indigites is rarely found outside Rome and Lavinium, but a fragmentary inscription from Aletrium (modern Alatri, north of Frosinone) records offerings to di Indicites including Fucinus, a local lake-god; Summanus, a god of nocturnal lightning; Fiscellus, otherwise unknown, but perhaps a local mountain god; and the Tempestates, weather deities.
Rose, Hendrik Wagenvoort, E. Vetter, K. Latte, G. Radke, R. Schilling, and more recently, R. Anttila have made contributions to the enquiry into the meaning of the word Indiges and on the original nature of the di indigetes.
[a] Koch remarks too that the festival of December 11 is in correspondence with the Matralia of June 11, dedicated to Mater Matuta, considered the goddess of dawn and, in the ritual, the aunt of the sun, who is the son of the night.
[b] Albert Grenier contributed a paper[13] in which he expands on the results obtained by Koch and pays more attention to the original nature of the di Indigetes.
[14] As Koch did, Grenier[13] cites the formula of the oath of loyalty to M. Livius Drusus in 91 BCE by a Latin chief, preserved by Diodorus Siculus,[15] in which are mentioned, after Iuppiter Capitolinus, Vesta, and Mars Pater, Helios genarchees, and euergetin zooin te kai phytoon Geen (‘the mother Earth which benefits animals and plants’).
Grenier thinks that Sol Indiges and the Good Mother Earth (whom he interprets to be the Mater Matuta of the Matralia)[c] would be the di Indigetes of the devotio of Decius Mus.
[17] The first is the inscription on the monument on the Numicus, which was thought to be dedicated to Aeneas Iuppiter Indiges, which reads: "Of the Father God chthonios who rules the flow of the Numicius."
section) mentions a Sol Indiges, and Dionysius describes a monument called the Sanctuary of the Sun in his time, made up by two altars on an East–West line by a marsh: It was believed to have been erected by Aeneas as a token of thanksgiving for the miracle of the spring.
[e] The Roman Penates publici were represented as two young men or boys, similar to the Dioscures, and identified as gods brought by Aeneas from Troy,[17]: I 64–65 as the true identity of the Indigetes was secret to avoid exauguration.
[21][f] Grenier considers the identification with Aeneas and Romulus a later development, and thinks the original indigetes were naturalistic gods: forces like the sun, the earth, and the waters, which make the wheat and the children grow.
[g] Kurt Latte[23] has supported Carl Koch's thesis that the most ancient Roman religious concepts were based on the natural forces of the sun, moon and waters.
Latte concludes that, by putting all the above elements together, it could be argued that indiges might be traced to a representation in which man requests the god to ensure the safety of his sowing.
However, more recent discussions have called this interpretation into question, as such formations are usually found only for monosyllabic verbal themes showing a vocalic shift with a preverbal, such as comes, superstes, trames, which aio excludes; moreover they have an active meaning in Latin.
Another relevant remark by Latte concerns the belief in the efficacy of the divine appellates, which are sometimes the same for different gods like Heries Iunonis and Heres Martea.
Latte finally refuses the interpretation indigetes divi for Greek daimones found in the translation by Macrobius[37] of Hesiod Opera 121, considering it influenced by late time speculations.
Most recently, glottologist Raimo Anttila has made renewed attempts into the inquiry of the original meaning of the word indiges in his book on protoindoeuropean root *ag.
[i] Radke[39] has also proposed the possibility of *en-dhigh-et- grade 0 as in figulus (from IE stem DHEIG) as a nomen agentis meaning 'forming, shaping, generating from within', close to impelling.
Latte too gives as a background for indiges the general appeal to natural forces in Roman religion, e.g. the summoning of the Moon goddess and other instances.
In 1971, a temple built over a princely cenotaph in the Oriental style of the 7th century BCE[clarification needed] was also discovered, probably on the site of a heroon described by Dionysius Halicarnassus.