Zis Menzanas (Lord of Horses)
Messapian · deity · iron age to roman messapia · Recorded classification
Zis Menzanas, known in Latin sources as Iuppiter Menzanas, is the horse-lord aspect of the Messapic sky-god Zis. The epithet menzanas preserves an inherited Palaeo-Balkan word for the horse (compare Albanian mëz 'foal'), and the deity is best known from a notice of the Roman grammarian Festus reporting that the Sallentini of southern Apulia annually sacrificed a horse to him by throwing the living animal into a fire. The cult-title binds the supreme sky-god to the horse, an animal central to Iapygian aristocratic and ritual life, and is the clearest surviving evidence for a distinctively Messapian sacrificial practice.
Domains
- horses and horsemanship
- sky and lightning
Powers
- to master horses and receive the burnt offering of the horse
Epithets
- MenzanasWilkes, John. The Illyrians. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 244-245. (secondary)
Relations
- subordinate to: ZisMenzanas is a cult-title of the sky-god Zis, the equine aspect under which the Sallentini-Messapians worshipped him as Iuppiter Menzanas.Wilkes, John. The Illyrians. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 244-245. (secondary)
Sources
- Zis Menzanas, latinised as Iuppiter Menzanas, is the 'lord of horses' cult-title of the Messapic sky-god, to whom the Sallentini annually sacrificed a horse by fire.: Festus, Sextus Pompeius. De verborum significatu, ed. W. M. Lindsay. Leipzig: Teubner, 1913, s.v. 'October equus'. (secondary); Wilkes, John. The Illyrians. Oxford and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992, pp. 244-245. (secondary)