By Jupiter!, he said Jovially...

Robotics season is not over, but the team and the machine are in waiting mode now. Robots wait patiently.  Humans less so.

Perhaps it is a good week to look ahead.

In early May I'll be off to excavate at the Roman site of Vindolanda up in the wilds of Northumbria near Hadrian's Wall.  

Let's have a week of posts looking ahead to that, shall we?

Something new at Vindolanda this year is the erection of repro altars on site.  These are casts of originals found in the same location a few years back.  The real ones are in the associated museum but it is cool to have the feeling of an ancient shrine back again after so many centuries.

The shrine is to Jupiter Dolicheus, one of the assorted personifications of the Roman king of the gods, Jupiter.  With some eastern weather god stuff overlaid.

Since Latin does not have the letter J, Jupiter is rendered as IOVI, sometimes Anglicized as Jove.  The I O M on the altar above is short hand for IOVI OPTIMO MAXIMO, or Jupiter, best and greatest.

Recently I actually thought about a word we use fairly often, "jovial" and wondered how it fit in with Jove.  There had to be a connection, yes?

Indeed.  We think in its modern usage of jovial meaning good natured, amiable, cheerful.  The roman Jove certainly had that aspect to his persona - witness the many demigod offspring he sired by a bevy of mortal women - but he was also known for tossing the occasional thunderbolt at those who deserved smiting.  This by the way is how Dolicheus, a local weather god, was a natural fit with Jupiter.  Thunder and lightning were the stock and trade of both of them.

The etymology of jovial alas is mundane.  From late Latin jovialus - "of Jupiter" - we get the 16th century French word jovial, which meant born under the sign of Jupiter.  So just a bit of astrology.  

I tried to figure out where it fits into the twelve classic signs of the Zodiac but quickly got bogged down in enough internet gibberish that I just gave up.