JUPITER, the supreme god of the ancient Pagans. The theologists, according to Cicero, reckoned three Jupiters, the first and second of whom were born in Arcadia; and of these two, the one sprang from Aether, and the other from Coelus. The third Jupiter was the son of Saturn, and born in Crete, where they pretended to show his sepulchre. Cicero in other places speaks of several Jupiters, who reigned in different countries. The Jupiter by whom the poets and mythologists understand the supreme god, was the son of Saturn, king of Crete. He would have been devoured by his father as soon as born, had not his mother Rhea substituted a stone instead of the child, which Saturn immediately swallowed. Saturn took this method to destroy all his male children, because it had been foretold by Coelus and Terra that one of his sons would deprive him of his kingdom. Jupiter, being thus saved from his father’s jaws, was brought up by the Curetes in a den on Mount Ida. Virgil tells us that he was fed by the bees; and, out of gratitude for this service, he changed them from an iron ιo a golden colour. Some say that his nurses were Amalthaea and Melissa, who gave him goat’s milk and honey; and others, that Amalthaea was the name of the goat which nourished him, and which, as a reward for her great services, was changed into a constellation. According to others, he was fed by wild pigeons, which brought him ambrosia from Oceanus; and by an eagle, which carried nectar in his beak from a steep rock; services for which he rewarded the former, by making them the foretellers of winter and summer; and the latter, by giving him immortality, and making him his thunderbearer. When grown up, he drove his father out of heaven, and divided the empire of the world with his brothers. For himself, he reserved heaven and earth; Neptune had allotted to him the sea and waters; and Pluto the infernal regions. The Titans undertook to destroy Jupiter, as he had done his father. These Titans were giants, the sons of Titan and the Earth. They declared war against Jupiter, and heaped mountains upon mountains in order to escalade heaven; but their efforts were unsuccessful, Jupiter overthrew them with his thunder, and shut them up under the waters and mountains, from which they were not able to escape. Jupiter had several wives. The first of these, named Metis, he is said to have destroyed in a most extraordinary manner. His second was Themis; the name of his third is not known; but his fourth was the celebrated Juno, whom he deceived under the form of a cuckoo, which, to shun the violence of a storm, fled for shelter to her lap. He was the father of the Muses and Graces, and had a prodigious number of children by his mistresses. He metamorphosed himself into a satyr to enjoy Antiope; into a bull, to carry off Europa; into a swan, to abuse Leda; into a shower of gold, to corrupt Danae; and into several other forms to gratify his passions. He had Bacchus by Semele, Diana and Apollo by Latona, and was the father of Mercury and the other gods. The heathens in general believed that there was but one supreme God; but when they considered this one great being as influencing the affairs of the world, they gave him as many different names; and hence proceeded their variety of nominal gods. When he thundered or lightened, they called him [7:12:633]Jupiter; when he calmed the sea, Neptune; when he guided their councils, Minerva; and when he gave them strength in battle, Mars. In process of time they used different representations of this Jupiter, and considered them, vulgarly at least, as so many different persons. They afterwards regarded each of them in different views; thus, the Jupiter who showered down blessings was called the Kind ; and the Jupiter who punished, the Terrible. There was also one Jupiter for Europe, and another for Africa. In Europe, there was one great Jupiter who was the particular friend of the Athenians, and another who was the special protector of the Romans; nay, there was scarcely a town or hamlet perhaps in Italy that had not a Jupiter of its own; but the Jupiter of Terracina, or Jupiter Anxur, represented in medals as young and beardless, with rays round his head, resembled Apollo more than the great Jupiter of the Capitol. In this way Jupiter at length had different temples and different characters almost everywhere. At Carthage, he was called Ammon; in Egypt, Serapis; at Athens, the Olympian Jupiter; and at Rome, the Capitoline Jupiter, who was the guardian and benefactor of the Romans, and whom they called the best and greatest, Jupiter optimus maximus. The figure of this Jupiter was represented, in his chief temple on the Capitoline Hill, as sitting on a curule chair, with the fulmen or lightning in one hand, and a sceptre in the other. This fulmen, in the figures of the old artists, was always adapted to the character under which they required to represent Jupiter. If his appearance was to be mild and calm, they gave him the comic fulmen, or bundle of flames wreathed close together, held down in his hand; when punishing, he held up the same figure, with two transverse darts of lightning, sometimes with wings added to each side of it to denote its swiftness (this was called by the poets the three-forked bolt of Jove); and when he was going to do some exemplary execution, they put in his hand a handful of flames, all let loose in their utmost fury, and sometimes filling both his hands with flames. The superiority of Jupiter was principally manifested in that air of majesty which the ancient artists endeavoured to express in his countenance; particular attention being paid to the head of hair, the eyebrows, and the beard. There are, on ancient seals, several heads of the mild Jupiter; where his face has a mixture of dignity and ease in it, admirably described by Virgil (Aen. i. ver. 256). The statues of the Terrible Jupiter were generally of black marble, as those of the former were of white; the one sitting with an air of tranquillity, the other standing, more or less disturbed. The face of the one is pacific and serene, of the other angry or clouded. On the head of the one the hair is regular and composed; in the other it is so dishevelled that it falls half way down the forehead. The face of the Jupiter Tonans resembles that of the Terrible Jupiter; he is represented on gems and medals as holding up the triple bolt in his right hand, and standing in a chariot which seems to be whirled on impetuously by four horses. Thus he is also described by the poets (Ovid, Deian. Here. v. 28; Horace, lib. i. od. 4, V. 8). Jupiter, as the intelligence presiding over a single planet, is represented only in a chariot and pair; upon all other occasions, if represented in a chariot, he is always drawn by four horses. Jupiter is well known as the chief ruler of the air, whose particular province it was to direct the rains, the thunders, and the lightnings. As the dispenser of rain, he was called Jupiter Pluvius, under which character he is exhibited seated in the clouds, holding up his right hand, or extending his arms almost in a straight line each way, and pouring a stream of hail and rain from his right hand upon the earth, whilst the fulmen is held down in his left. The wings that are given to him relate to his character of presiding over the air; his hair and beard in the Antonine pillar are all spread down by the rain, which descends in a sheet from him, and falls for the refreshment of the Romans; whilst their enemies are represented as struck with the lightnings, and lying dead at their feet.

Some are of opinion that the fable of Jupiter includes a great part of the history of Noah and his three sons, and that Saturn is Noah, who saw all mankind perish in the waters of the deluge, and who, in some sort, swallowed them up, by not receiving them into the ark. Jupiter is Ham; Neptune, Japheth; and Shem, Pluto. The Titans, it is thought, represent the old giants, who built the tower of Babel, and whose pride and presumption God had confounded, by changing their language, and pouring out the spirit of discord and division amongst them. The name of Jupiter, or Zeus, or Jovis Pater, is thought to be derived from Jehovah; and in medals we meet with Jovis in the nominative as well as oblique cases, thus, Jovis custos, Jovis propugnator, Jovis stator. To the name Jovis was added pater -, and afterwards, instead of Zeus or Jovis Pater, they used Jupiter by abbreviation.

The name of Jupiter was not known to the Hebrews till the reign of Alexander the Great, and the kings his successors. Antiochus Epiphanes commanded the idol of Jupiter Olympius to be placed in the temple at Jerusalem; and that of Jupiter the defender of strangers in the temple on Mount Gerizim (2 Macc. vi. 2). Whilst St Paul and St Barnabas were at Lystra, they were taken for gods, because they cured one who had been lame from his birth, and that by an expression only; St Paul was taken for Mercury, by reason of his eloquence, and St Barnabas for Jupiter (Acts, xiv. 11, 12), on account of his goodly mien.

Jupiter, 1Ļ, in Astronomy, one of the superior planets, remarkable for its brightness, and which by its proper motion revolves round the earth in about twelve years. See Astronomy.