SUMMANUS  , according to some, an old

Sabine or Etruscan deity; the name, however, is Latin, formed by assimilation from sub-minus (cf. mane, Matuta), signifying the god of the time " before the morning." His sphere of influence was the nocturnal heavens, thunderstorms at night being attributed to him, those by day to Jupiter . Summanus had a temple at Rome near the Circus Maximus, dedicated at the time of the invasion of Italy by Pyrrhus, king of Epirus (278), when a terra-cotta image of the god (or of Jupiter himself) on the pediment of the Capitoline temple was struck by lightning and hurled into the river Tiber . Here sacrifice was offered every year to Summanus on the 20th of June, together with cakes called summanalia baked in the form of a wheel, supposed to be symbolical of the car of the god of the thunderbolt . In Plautus (Bacchides iv . 8, 54) Summanus and the verb summanare are used for the god of thieves and the act of stealing, with obvious reference to Summanus as a god of night, a time favourable to thieves and their business . The later explanation that Summanus is a contraction from Summus Manium (the greatest of the Manes), and that he is to be identified with Dis Pater, is now generally rejected . Scc Augustine, De civitate dei, iv . 23; Ovid . Fasti, vi . 729; Festus, s.v . Provorsum fulgor; G . Wissowa, Religion and Kultus der Romer (1902) ; W .

W .

Fowler, The Roman Festivals (1899) .