Ops

Ops has almost no story of her own. Roman writers give her a name, a marriage and a place in the calendar, and little else. Varro calls Saturn and Ops the chief gods in Latium, the local pair for Heaven and Earth (De Lingua Latina 5.57). He explains her name from opus, work. Earth is Ops because all work is in her and life needs work upon her, and she is called Mother because Earth is a mother (De Lingua Latina 5.64).

Macrobius, writing around 400 CE, states the marriage plainly. The Romans believed this goddess Ops to be the wife of Saturn, which is why Saturnalia and Opalia are kept in the same month. Both were thought to have found crops and fruit (Saturnalia 1.10.19). He adds that some took the pair for sky and earth, with Saturn named from satus, sowing, and Ops from ope, aid, or from opere, work (Saturnalia 1.10.20). Worshippers sit to pray to her and touch the ground on purpose, to show that mother earth is what mortals must seek (Saturnalia 1.10.21). The Opalia day now sits inside the Saturnalia, having first been assigned to Saturn and Ops together (Saturnalia 1.10.18). Varro also dates it: the Opalia of Ops follows on the third day after the Saturnalia begins (De Lingua Latina 6.22).

Her children come from poets and later writers, not from cult. Ovid explains why Vesta has virgin priestesses. Juno and Ceres were born of Ops from Saturn's seed, he says, and Vesta was the third (Fasti 6.285-286). The poet Ennius made the family a human dynasty. In his Euhemerus, as quoted by Lactantius, Saturn took Ops as his wife. Their mother Vesta, with Ceres and Ops as sisters, urged Saturn not to yield the kingdom to his brother Titan (Lactantius, Divine Institutes 1.14). Twins followed, Jupiter and Juno. Jupiter was hidden and given to Vesta to raise. Ops bore Neptune, and later Pluto, in secret from Saturn (Divine Institutes 1.14). Titan later seized Saturn and Ops and walled them in (Divine Institutes 1.14).

Rome's own cult of Ops was small and old. Varro lists a day named Opeconsiva, after the goddess Ops Consivia, whose shrine stood in the Regia. It was kept shut, and only the Vestal Virgins and the public priest could enter (De Lingua Latina 6.21). Varro does not explain the epithet Consivia. He also does not say where a separate temple stood.

She had a treasury as well. Cicero speaks of money kept at the temple of Ops. He wishes the money were still at Ops. It is bloodstained, he says, but needed now that it is not returned to its owners (Philippics 1.17). He later asks where the seven hundred million sesterces entered in the accounts at Ops are (Philippics 2.93). He also says Antony cleared a huge debt at the temple of Ops (Philippics 2.35). Here Ops is literally wealth, in a vault.

Macrobius preserves another identity. Cornelius Labeo held that the Bona Dea and the earth were one. The pontifical books, he says, invoked the same goddess as Bona, Fauna, Ops and Fatua. Ops was the name for the aid by which life is sustained (Saturnalia 1.12.21-22). Macrobius also cites Philochorus for an altar to Saturn and Ops that Cecrops set up in Attica, where fathers feasted with their slaves once the harvest was in (Saturnalia 1.10.22).

The Greek match came late and by translation. Lactantius, a Christian writing around 300 CE, retells Saturn's story from Ennius. He says Saturn's sister Rhea, whom Latin calls Ops, was forbidden by an oracle to rear sons. When Ops bore Jupiter, she sent the infant secretly to Crete (Divine Institutes 1.13). This is the story Greek writers tell of Rhea and Kronos. Strabo elsewhere lists Cybele among the names under which Rhea is worshipped (Strabo, Geography 10.3.12), so Ops and Cybele meet only through Rhea. The Romans kept Ops and Cybele as separate cults.

Ovid names Ops as the mother of Vesta (Fasti 6.285-286), a goddess the Greeks knew as Hestia; see Hestia vs Vesta.