In ancient Roman religion, Ops, also spelled Opes or Opis, was a fertility and earth goddess of abundance, prosperity, and agriculture, and the consort of Saturn. As Ops Consiva, she presided over the reserved portion of the harvest alongside Consus, the god of stored grain. She was celebrated during two yearly festivals: Opiconsivia in August and Opalia in December.
Ops was frequently compared to goddesses like Demeter, Cybele, Ceres, and Terra, who were similarly associated with the earth and agriculture. She was conflated with the Greek Rhea, mother of the first generation Olympians and consort of Cronus, the Greek equivalent of Saturn.
Ops' name and function was discussed in Varro's De Lingua Latina, which identified her as the wife of Saturn, another agricultural god. He additionally conflated her with Isis and Terra, and compared her functions to those of Ceres. Varro claimed that, as Saturn embodied the sky, Ops embodied the earth, and was therefore referred to as "mother." Similar understandings of Ops' function were attested to by Festus and Verris Flaccus, who identified her as both an agricultural goddess and counterpart of Saturn. Varro additionally connected the name Ops directly with opus: "work," specifically the working of the earth. Macrobius, writing in the 5th century, similarly identified her with the work required to grow crops (again using opus), and claimed that men prayed to the goddess before beginning to work the earth in order honor her as "mother of mortals."
She was additionally a goddess of abundance as the creator of economies linked to farming and agriculture at large, particularly cereals. As the guarantor of abundant harvest and food security, Ops may have been worshipped as a protector of Rome— a claim put forth by Macrobius. She may have additionally been abstractly connected to the production or procurement of wealth. The word ops is etymologically related to the words opulenti ("opulence") and opima ("rich, fertile"), and she was bestowed with the epithet Ops Consiva ("she who sows"). Ops Consiva was a goddess associated with the reserved portion (condere) of the harvest, and was associated closely with Consus, god of stored grain and consilium.
After the Roman Republic's conquest of Greece and the influence of Hellenic mythology and culture on Roman culture, Ops became increasingly conflated with the Greek Rhea: wife of Cronus and mother of the first generation Olympians. Greek myths were sometimes taken in their entirety and reworked with the gods' Roman counterparts. For example, when they translated the story of Rhea hiding her children from Cronus, Livius Andronicus and Ennius rendered the story faithfully and simply replaced "Rhea" with "Ops." Similarly, Ovid described Ops as both the wife and sister of Saturn; Rhea and Cronus were full-blooded siblings as the children of Uranus and Gaia. In Plautus' comedic play Persa, Ops is referred to as the mother of Jupiter, and in his Cistellaria, Juno is referred to as the daughter of Jupiter and the granddaughter of Ops. In these accounts, Ops' functions outside being the wife of Saturn and the mother of multiple gods are not mentioned.
All published appearances of Ops from before January 1, )-(95)}} are public domain in the US.
Some notable appearances are listed below:
* De Lingua Latina by Varro
* De Mulieribus Claris
* Persa by Plautus
* Cistellaria
* There are figures in Greek mythology that share the name of the Roman goddess Ops, which you can read about here.
* Wikipedia
* [https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Peter_Paul_Rubens_-_Abundance_(Abundantia)_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg#mw-jump-to-license Wikimedia Commons]
* Myths in Media Wiki
* Myth & Folklore Wiki
* Religion Wiki
* [https://www.britannica.com/topic/Ops Britannica]
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Roman Myth
In ancient Roman religion, Ops, also spelled Opes or Opis, was a fertility and earth goddess of abundance, prosperity, and agriculture, and the consort of Saturn. As Ops Consiva, she presided over the reserved portion of the harvest alongside Consus, the god of stored grain. She was celebrated during two yearly festivals: Opiconsivia in August and Opalia in December.
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