Dii Consentes

The Dii Consentes, also as Di or Dei Consentes (once Dii Complices), was a list of twelve major deities, six gods and six goddesses, in the pantheon of Ancient Rome. Their gilt statues stood in the Forum, later apparently in the Porticus Deorum Consentium.

The gods were listed by the poet Ennius in the late 3rd century BC in a paraphrase of an unknown Greek poet:

Livy arranges them in six male-female pairs: Jupiter-Juno, Neptune-Minerva, Mars-Venus, Apollo-Diana, Vulcan-Vesta and Mercury-Ceres. Three of the Dii Consentes formed the Capitoline Triad: Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva.

Background

The grouping of twelve deities has origins older than the Greek or Roman sources. The Greek grouping may have Anatolian, more precisely Lycian origins. A group of twelve Hittite gods is known both from cuneiform texts and from artistic representation. The Hittite Twelve are all male, with no individualizing features. They have a possible reflex in a Lycian group of twelve gods in the Roman Empire period. By 400 BC, a precinct dedicated to twelve gods existed at the marketplace in Xanthos in Lycia.