curious ways. I have already suggested that the scene of
the early paramount importance of Jupiter and his flamen, in that age
perhaps a king of some kind, was Alba Longa, which by universal
tradition was the leading city of Latium before Rome rose to importance,
and where the sky-god was worshipped on his holy mountain as the
religious centre of Latium from the earliest times. I have also
suggested that when the new warlike city on the Tiber took the place of
Alba, the worship was transferred thither, but lost its strength in the
process, and that the flamen was little more than a survival even in the
most primitive period of what we may call for the moment Roman history.
This can be accounted for by the fact that the traditions of primitive
Rome were connected much more closely with Mars than with Jupiter. Not
till Etruscan kings founded the great temple on the Capitol, which was
to endure throughout all later ages of Roman dominion, did the sky-god
become the supreme guardian deity of his people, under the titles of
Optimus Maximus, the best and greatest of all her deities.

But Jupiter was there; and we know certain facts of his cult which give
us a pretty clear idea of what the Romans of the pre-Etruscan period
thought about him. In the calendar all Ides belonged to him, were
_feriae Iovis_;[256] he seems to be the source of light, whether of sun
or moon, for neither of which the Romans had any special divinity; in
the hymn of the Salii he is addressed as Lucetius, the giver or source
of light. The festivals of the vintage belonged to him, since the
production of wine specially needed the aid of sun and light, and his
flamen was employed in the cult on these occasions.[257] When rain was
sorely needed, the aid of the sky-god was sought under the cult-title
Elicius, and as Fulgur or Summanus[258] he was the Power who sent the
lightning by day and by night. The ideas thus reflected in the Roman
cult were common to all Italian peoples of the same stock; everywhere we
find him worshipped on the summits of hills, and in woods of oak, ilex,
or beech,[259] where nothing but the trees he loved intervened between
the heaven and the earth.

His oldest cult at Rome was on the Capitoline hill, but at all times
quite distinct from that which became so famous afterwards; he was known
here as Feretrius, a cult-title of which the meaning is uncertain,[260]
and here, so far as we can guess, there must have been an ancient oak
reg