Soranus

A Sabine divinity of the lower world. Mount Soracte, which probably derived its name from him, was, according to Servius,1 sacred to the infernal gods, especially to Dis Pater; and it is related that during a sacrifice offered to Soranus, wolves snatched away the entrails of the victims from the altar, and that the shepherds pursuing the wolves came to a cave, the poisonous vapors of which caused a pestilence among them. An oracle then ordered them to live, like wolves, on prey, and hence those people are called Hirpini, from the Sabine word hirpus, a wolf, which was joined to that of Soranus, so that their full name was Hirpini Sorani.

It was a custom observed down to a comparatively late period that the Hirpi or Hirpini (probably some ancient Sabine families) at the festival on Mount Soracte, walked with bare feet upon the glowing coals of fir-wood, carrying about the entrails of the victims.2 Strabo connects this ceremony with the worship of Feronia, and this circumstance, as well as the proximity of the sanctuary of the two divinities, shows, that Soranus and Feronia probably belonged to the same religion. Roman poets sometimes identified Soranus with the Greek Apollo.

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References

Notes

  1. Servius on Virgil's Aeneid xi, 785.
  2. Servius on Virgil's Aeneid xi, 784 ff. Pliny the Elder. Naturalis Historia vii, 2; Silius Italicus, v, 174; Strabo. Geography v, p. 226.

Sources

  • Hartung, J.A. Die Religion der Römer. Vol. 2, p. p. 191 ff.
  • Smith, William. (1870). Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. London: Taylor, Walton, and Maberly.
  • Virgil. Aeneid 11.786; comp. Müller, K.O. (1828). Die Etrusker. Vol. 2, p. 67 ff.

This article incorporates text from Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) by William Smith, which is in the public domain.