Sources identify Fontus/Fons as the son of Juturna and Janus. He is attested in Roman topography (an altar, ara Fontis, on the Janiculum where Numa Pompilius was said to have been buried) and in Roman family lore (the gens Fonteia claimed descent from him). These genealogical and topographical notes situate Fontus within Roman mytho-religious frameworks and civic memory.
No anthropomorphic or iconographic description of Fontus is supplied in the cited sources. Attestations of Fontus appear primarily in inscriptions, calendrical observance, festival practice, and literary/cosmographical listings rather than in surviving pictorial representations.
Attested functions/roles: Fontus is presented in sources as the divine figure associated with springs, wells, and fountains (the Latin fons/fontis = spring or source). He is honored on the festival Fontinalia, receives votive and dedicatory attention in civic and religious contexts, and is included among deities receiving expiatory sacrifice (an Arval Brothers record from 224 AD records Fons receiving two wethers). In Mithraic contexts the epithet Fons Perennis appears in inscriptions and narrative imagery where a perennial spring is represented as a source of life-giving water and immortal refreshment; these dedications treat the spring as a cultic, responsive entity analogous to nymphs and healing powers.
Abundantia
Abundantia is the Roman divine personification of abundance and material plenty, used primarily in imperial propaganda and public iconography to signify secure grain supplies, wealth, and the promise of a 'Golden Age' under the emperor. She also appears in later medieval European folklore as Domina Abundia / Dame Habonde, a household benefactor in accounts condemned by ecclesiastical writers.
Aeternitas
Aeternitas is the Roman divine personification of eternity, cultivated as an abstract virtue in the official Imperial cult and invoked especially to express the perpetual duration of imperial rule (Aeternitas Imperii). She appears on coinage and in temple cult from the 1st through the 3rd centuries AD and is treated in later intellectual tradition as the Latin term for divine duration.
Agenoria
Agenoria is a minor Roman personification attested in modern summaries and late-antique citation as the faculty or divinity associated with activity, the capacity to respond and to act. She appears in at least one allegorical tableau (the wedding of Labor and Agenoria) and is reported in secondary sources to have had a sanctuary on Rome's Aventine Hill.
Angerona
Angerona (also Angeronia; local form Ancharia at Faesulae) is a polyvalent goddess in ancient Roman religion associated with relief from pain and sorrow, protection of Rome (including custody of the city's "sacred name"), and a calendrical role at the year's turning (Angeronalia/Divalia near the winter solstice). She is attested in state cult practice (pontiff-offered sacrifice) and in local altars, and is discussed by modern scholars as a tutelary, healing, and liminal deity.
Averruncus
Averruncus (also Auruncus) is an ancient Roman divine name/agent associated with averting harm. Attested in Roman antiquarian discussion as a power invoked to ward off disaster to people and harvests, Averruncus appears both as a specialized protective function and as an indigitamentum (a ritual name or aspect) applied to greater gods to secure their local, protective action.
Bona Dea
Bona Dea (Latin: "Good Goddess") is an honorific Roman goddess and protective cult figure primarily associated with married women, fertility, healing, and the welfare of the Roman people. Her cult employed a respectful pseudonym, female-exclusive rites, and a polyvalent identity that was variously conflated with other earth/fertility and prophetic goddesses in Roman literary tradition.
Bonus Eventus
Bonus Eventus is the Roman divine personification of a 'Good Outcome', originally attested within agricultural ritual contexts and later represented more broadly in public religion, imperial imagery, and private amulets as an embodied principle invoked for success and favorable results.
Caca
Caca is an ancient Roman female deity associated with the sacred hearth, attested in late sources as possessing a sacellum (shrine) in Rome where sacrifices were made through the agency of the Vestal priesthood. Later tradition and modern summaries report that her cult was succeeded or replaced by Vesta, and some secondary accounts link her mythically to Cacus.
Ceres
Ceres is the ancient Roman goddess of agriculture, grain, fertility, and maternal relationships. She presides over the technologies and rites of grain production, the protection and multiplication of plant and animal seed, and the social-ritual rules that sustain settled life; she was central to plebeian public cult and is listed among the Dii Consentes.
Cloacina
Cloacina is a minor Roman divinity associated with the Cloaca Maxima (and the original Velabrum/Spinon stream), worshipped at a small public sacellum in the Roman Forum. She is linked to purification by moving water, civic sanitation, and rites of reconciliation, and is sometimes syncretized with Venus under the epithet Venus Cloacina.
Dea Dia
Dea Dia is an ancient Roman agricultural goddess associated with fertility, growth, and daylight; her cult was maintained by the priestly college the Fratres Arvales, who performed a three-day festival in May in a sacred grove (lucus) and chanted the archaic Carmen Arvale to secure crop success. Her name is interpreted as 'Goddess of Daylight' or 'Bright Goddess' and she is sometimes identified with Ceres/Demeter.
Dispater (Dis Pater)
Dispater (classical Dis Pater) is a chthonic Roman deity originally associated with fertile soil and subterranean mineral wealth who in modern fantasy and gaming traditions is reinterpreted as Dispater, an arch‑devil and lord of the Iron City of Dis, a high‑ranking ruler within layered infernal cosmologies.
Community Record
- [1]Fontus. Wikipedia: Fontus entry (accessed source material provided)wiki
- [2]Wikidata: Fontus (Q37563872). Wikidata entry for Fontusother
- [3]Ritual record: Arval Brothers inscription (224 AD) mentioning Fons. Summarized in the Fontus (Wikipedia) entry: Arval Brothers expiatory sacrifices recording Fons received two wethers (224 AD)wiki
- [4]Fontinalia festival and Mithraic dedications (summary). Summarized in the Fontus (Wikipedia) entry: description of Fontinalia (Oct 13) and references to Fons Perennis in mithraeawiki