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This trophy was styled an offering to Jupiter Feretrius, from ferire, which in Latin is to smite; for Romulus prayed he might smite and overthrow his enemy; and the spoils were called opima, or royal spoils, says Varro, from their richness, which the word opes signifies; though one would more probably conjecture from opus, an act; for it is only to the general of an army who with his own hand kills his enemies' general that this honor is granted of offering the opima spolia.
Their king Deldo was slam by Crassus himself. The armor stripped from the prince he would have dedicated as spolia opima to Jupiter Feretrius, had he been a general acting on his own authority. Such was the course of that engagement: of the remainder some took refuge in a grove, which was set on fire all around, and others leaped into a fort, where they were annihilated.
"Jupiter Feretrius," said he, "I, King Romulus, victorious over my foes, offer to thee these royal arms, and dedicate to thee a temple within those quarters, which I have just now marked out in my mind, to be a resting-place for the spolia opima, which posterity, following my example, shall bring hither on slaying the kings or generals of the enemy."
For it was customary to the Romans, when they offered worship to the gods, to turn round; and in this moment of meeting the enemy, he is said to have vowed the best of the arms to Jupiter Feretrius.
But as the little community grew, and especially perhaps after the union of the two settlements, the worship of Iuppiter Feretrius, associated with the sacred oak upon the Capitol the hill between Palatine and Quirinal comes more and more into prominence as a bond of union and the central point of the state's religious life: it tends indeed to take the place of priority, which had previously been occupied by Ianus.
Yet it is said that Numa Pompilius speaks of first, second, and third degrees of spolia opima, ordering the first to be offered to Jupiter Feretrius, the second to Mars, and the third to Quirinus; and that for the first the prize is three hundred ases, two hundred for the second, and one hundred for the third.
This deity could be none other than the sky-father Juppiter, who had stood by them in the old days of their exclusively farming life, sending them sunshine and rain in due season. Up on the Capitoline he was worshipped as Feretrius, "the striker," in his most fearful attribute as the god of the lightning.
A nail was annually driven into the wall of the temple to mark the course of time; besides this chronological record, it contained the Sibylline books, and other oracles supposed to be pregnant with the fate of the city. There were several other temples on this hill, of which the most remarkable was that of Jupiter Feretrius, erected by Romulus, where the spolia opima were deposited.
And not only was the city increased under this king, but also its territory and boundaries. After the Mesian forest had been taken from the Veientines, the Roman dominion was extended as far as the sea, and the city of Ostia built at the mouth of the Tiber; salt-pits were dug around it, and, in consequence of the distinguished successes in war, the Temple of Jupiter Feretrius was enlarged.
Another fig-tree with a similar history is the caprificus of the Campus Martius, subsequently the site of the worship of Iuno Caprotina. A more significant case is the sacred oak of Iuppiter Feretrius on the Capitol, on which the spolia opima were hung after the triumph probably in early times a dedication of the booty to the spirit inhabiting the tree.
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