Tellus

deity earth Roman single tradition · 4

Tellus is a nocturnal divinity addressed in the Carmen Saeculare. She is mentioned alongside Lucina or Ilithyia and the Parcae in five stanzas dedicated to the nocturnal divinities. Tellus appears as one of the divine recipients invoked in this Roman ritual hymn.

↻ synthesized from 4 sources

When

First attested
500 BCE
Attested period
-500 – 2020
Historical notes
Attested in pre-Imperial Roman religious tradition.

Relationships

syncretized with
Vesta, Tec, Gilva

Expand to full subgraph →

Sources

Source passages

“the next 5 for the nocturnal divinities (Lucina or Ilithyia, the Parcae and Tellus)”

#19784 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“The Roman evidence for the idea of Earth as a mother is doubtful, as it is usually associated with the name Terra rather than Tellus (the pre-Imperial earth-goddess)”

#26795 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“Varro links Vesta to Tellus. He says: 'They think Tellus... is Vesta, because she is "vested" in flowers'.”

#34693 · extracted by anthropic/claude-sonnet-4.5

“In January, Ceres (alongside the earth-goddess Tellus) was offered spelt wheat and a pregnant sow, at the movable Feriae Sementivae.”

#46284 · extracted by openai/gpt-oss-120b:free