Consus, A Compendium of the Ancient Gods

Consus was an ancient deity of the Roman countryside, the god of the gathered grain and of stores hidden away beneath the earth — for the prudent farmer in the old Italian way buried his harvest in a covered pit to save it from rot and from raiders. Consus's altar, which lay in the Circus Maximus at the foot of the Aventine, was likewise kept underground: it was uncovered only twice a year, on the Consualia of August (after the harvest) and on a corresponding rite of December (after the autumn sowing). On these days alone the altar was opened, sacrifices made, and games celebrated upon the Circus.

The most famous of these games was the Consualia of August, for at the very first Consualia in Rome — celebrated by Romulus to draw a crowd from neighboring tribes — the Romans seized the daughters of their Sabine guests and bore them off as wives. So says Livy. The Sabines made war upon Rome to recover their daughters, and the war was settled only by the daughters themselves, who threw themselves between the lines and reconciled their fathers with their husbands. Thereafter the Sabines were absorbed into the Roman state, and Consus's festival was kept as a memorial of the founding event.

Horses and mules — the beasts of the harvest — were given the day off on the Consualia, garlanded with flowers, and led through the streets in honor of the god; the chariot-races run upon the Circus were the only races in the Roman year that included mules as well as horses. The pontifices and the flamen Quirinalis officiated at the rite, but no flamen of Consus himself is recorded — for Consus was older than the priestly system that Rome had developed, and his cult retained an archaic simplicity.

Curator’s note

What the sources say, and what later tradition added. The sources for this bay

Consus's altar in the Circus Maximus is described by Tertullian (De Spectaculis 5.7), who reports its underground placement, and by Servius (commentary on Aeneid 8.636). Livy (1.9) recounts the rape of the Sabines at the first Consualia; Plutarch's Romulus 14 gives the same story. The Consualia of August 21 and December 15 are listed in the various surviving Roman calendars (the Fasti Praenestini, Fasti Antiates Maiores). Ovid's Fasti has unfortunately not survived for the relevant months. Mommsen and Wissowa traced Consus's name to condere, 'to store,' against an older derivation from consilium, 'counsel' — the latter being the etymology adopted by the ancient mythographers, who made Consus the god of secret counsel and equated him with Poseidon Hippios. The agricultural etymology is now accepted in standard scholarship (Dumézil, Religion Romaine Archaïque).

When the sources speak

Dated witnesses for The Indigenous Italic Gods. A date marks when the evidence was written down, not when the belief began. The whole timeline

c. 1000–750 BCE: Iron Age communities of Latium and neighboring peoples develop the cult landscapes later absorbed into Roman tradition.
traditional 753 BCE: Roman foundation chronology places Romulus and the first civic institutions at the beginning of the city’s sacred history.
traditional 7th–6th centuries BCE: The regal period is credited with priesthoods, calendars, temples, and the organization of public rites.
509–264 BCE: Republican expansion incorporates Latin, Sabine, Etruscan, and Italian cults through treaty, migration, and evocatio.
264–146 BCE: Mediterranean conquest accelerates Greek interpretation and the importation or redefinition of foreign gods.
204 BCE: The Magna Mater is formally brought from Pessinus during the Second Punic War.
1st century BCE: Varro, Cicero, and other antiquarians document rites and divine names amid civil war and institutional change.
27 BCE–14 CE: Augustan restoration monumentalizes selected ancestral cults and rewrites Roman sacred history.