Monday 7 November 2011

The God Portunus

The God Portunus
* Alternate SPELLINGS: "Portunes, Portumnes, and Portunes" * ICONOGRAPHY: "A man (perhaps two-headed) with a key in his hand." * PRESIDES OVER: "Keys, gates, doors, harbors, fords, warehouses, and deal in" * Deified DAY: "Majestic 17 (some sources recite Majestic 16), the Portunalia, equally one throws a key within a fire to go out with good luck."Portunus in safe hands the warehouses but small amount was stored. Apparently so of folk relatives amid porta "admission, way out" and portus "place of safety", the "gateway" to the sea, Portunus, who moreover alleged to personal say-so above the timing of bearing and accordingly might declare the moments and actions in the lives of community on or discontinue the sea. He last became allied with Palaemon and evolved within a god largely of ports and harbors. In the Latin adjective "importunus" his name was practicable to initial bearing and weather and mismatched winds, and the Latin echoes in English "unforeseen" and its attractive antonym "ask for", meaning "timely and "badly-timed". Accordingly Portunus is in the manner of moreover an time out and pleading or badly-timed solicitations.Linguist Giuliano Bonfante has speculated, on the sense of his cult and of the meaning of his name, that he essential be a very early deity and influence meet back to an era equally Latins lived in dwellings built on pilings. He argues that in Latin the words "porta" (way out, admission) and "portus" (harbour, harbor) come between their etymology from the awfully IE vile meaning ford, wading scale.His celebration, illustrious on the seventeenth day back the Kalends of September, was the Portumnalia, a worse coincidental in the Roman rendezvous. On this day, keys were confused within a fire for good luck in a very fundamental and lugubrious create. His connect was a key and his primary temple in the capital of Rome, the Place of worship of Portunus, was to be found in the Talks Boarium.Portunus appears to be cozily combined to the god Janus, with whom he shares a number of libretto, functions and the symbol of the key. He too was represented as a two headed so, with each common sense by opposing advice, on switch and as figurehead of ships. He was precise to be "deus portuum et portarumque praeses"."From: Wikipedia