From saviours to salvation : Salus in republican Italy

The goddess Salus is one of the deities who take their names from concepts; modern scholars have defined these gods and goddesses as Virtues, Qualities, or conceptual deities, although in antiquity these categories did not exist. The strong association with a concept makes these deities very helpful to reflect on polytheistic divinities. It has been argued that polytheisms work to a great extent as semantic systems, in which divinities have different roles and meanings. In this chapter I shall argue that concepts can be a helpful hermeneutic category for polytheism. In the definition of Koselleck, concepts must have multiple meanings at the same time, and can continuously assume new ones. The multiple meanings with which concepts are endowed can account for the variety and multiplicity of different, potentially conflicting interpretations that ancient gods were given in antiquity, which a structuralist approach cannot, as it is based on the assumption that there must be a stable connection between deities and functions.