The epulum Jovis, thus occurring in the middle of the ludi, is believed by some writers to have originally belonged to the Ides of November and to the ludi plebeii, as it does not happen to be alluded to by Livy in connexion with the ludi Romani, and our first notice of it in September is in the Augustan calendars[940]. But it is surely earlier than B.C. 230, the received date of the ludi plebeii, and of the circus Flaminius in which they took place. We may agree with the latest investigator of the Jupiter-cult that the origin of the epulum is to be looked for in a form of thanksgiving to Jupiter for the preservation of the state from the perils of the war season, and that no better day could be found for it than the foundation-day of the Capitoline temple[941]. This epulum was one of the most singular and striking scenes in Roman public life. It began with a sacrifice; the victim is not mentioned, but was no doubt a heifer, and probably a white one[942]. Then took place the epulum proper[943], which the three deities of the Capitol seem to have shared in visible form with the magistrates and senate. The images of the gods were decked out as for a feast, and the face of Jupiter painted red with _minium_, like that of the triumphator. Jupiter had a couch, and Juno and Minerva each a sella, and the meal went on in their presence[944].
Now an investigator of the Roman religious system is here confronted with a difficult problem. Was this simply a Greek practice like that of the lectisternium, and one which began with the Etruscan dynasty and the foundation of the Capitoline temple with its triad of deities? Or is it possible that in the cult of the Roman Jupiter there was of old a common feast of some kind, shared by gods and worshippers, on which this gorgeous ritual was eventually grafted?
Marquardt has gone so far as to separate the epulum Jovis altogether from the lectisternia, and apparently also from the inundation of Greek influence[945]. It answers rather, he says, to such domestic rites as the offering to Jupiter Dapalis described thus by Cato in the _De Re Rustica_[946]: ‘Dapem hoc modo fieri oportet. Iovi dapali culignam vini quantum vis polluceto. Eo die feriae bubus et bubulcis, et qui dapem facient. Cum pollucere oportebit, sic facies. Iupiter dapalis, quod tibi fieri oportet, in domo familia mea culignam vini dapi, eius rei ergo macte hac illace dape pollucenda esto. Manus interluito. Postea vinum sumito. Iupiter dapalis, macte istace dape pollucenda esto. Macte vino inferio esto. Vestae, si voles, dato[947]. Daps Iovi assaria pecuina, urna vini lovis caste.’