Hail to the indigenous sun!
Hail to Pales, the divine twins!
Hail to Mars!
Hail to Quirinus!
Hail too Palatua!
Now is the time in which we come to move beyond time and to solar re-birth.
This is the time for hearth and home.
May we know our pagan place,
And may we honour our communal unities.
Salve Sol Indiges!
Salve Pales!
Salve Marte!
Salve Quirine!
Salve Palatua!

 

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The Agonalia of December begins the Latin yuletide, among the most sacred and special within the Roman calendrical year. As the feriae of December are seven, more than the festivals of any other month of the year, they encompass a stretch of thirteen days. This is the Latin yule. And, appropriately, it begins with a solar festival, albeit to the sun when the orb belongs the most to the earthly domain of the present locality.

As an Agonium, this festival to Sol Indiges connects with the other Agonia of the year, namely, the Agonium Martiale of March, the Agonium of May and the Agonium of January – respectively feast days of (Mars-)Quirinus, Vediovis and Janus. The suggestion is that the Agonia deities are different indigitations of an hypothetical Agonus who is known variously as the Mars-Quirinus counterpart of Jupiter, the ‘Not-Jupiter’, Janus who is both Mars and Quirinus and Mars and Jupiter (as the Liberalia coinciding with the March Agonium further suggest), and the solar deity himself – especially in his more chthonian capacity.

The day is also known as the dies Septimontium and presumably commemorates the union of the original seven montani or hills of Rome. Since the name of the feriae itself connects with the Quirinal hill as the Collis Agonus or Collis Agonalis, the date most likely also extends to the subsequent inclusion of the Quirinal with the seven hills of the original city.

The priest who is active on the December Agonium is the flamen Palatualis. The Palatium is first of the montes, and the sacrifice occurs on the Palatine hill where it is known as the palatuar. We can guess that it is dedicated to the goddess Palatua or to the Pales as the divine twins or presumably to both. There is almost inevitably a female figure involved with the male twins – constituting what we otherwise can term the Dioscuri triad. The pales Martis and the pales Quirini together here suggest the more underworld/otherworld orientation of deity that we elsewhere witness (Quirinus, Vediovis, Janus in one-half of his duality, Consus, Neptunus, Portunus, and Volturnus) who is especially honoured during the Latin yuletide (Sol Indiges, Consus and also Saturnus). We must with Roman religion always keep in mind the fluidity of deity and the quasi-independent emergence of various indigitations that overlay the divine duality and the Dioscuri/triadic female as the terrestrial/underworld earth or celestial dawn or both.

From the vantage points of the Palatine, Capitol and the Forum, the area to which the winter sun primarily ‘belongs’ (indiges) is the Quirinal hill. The deity of the Quirinal is Quirinus who may, like Mars, carry luminous and thermal connotations suggestive of auroral and solar associations. Near to Quirinus’ temple was the solis pulvinar as part of a cult to Sol, and this placement may relate to the contended solar aspects of Quirinus himself – especially as an embodiment of the netherworld orientation of the sun. For the commencement of the Latin yule commemorating the rebirth of the solstitial sun, Quirinus appears to be the hypostasis operating predominately within or beneath the earth, the Sol Indiges.