entities: ENT_ITA_FLORA

The core table — every entity in the database, spanning gods, angels, demons, aeons, prophets, saints, heroes, spirits, monsters, personified abstractions, cosmological realms, and ritual categories. Use category to filter by functional type (146 values: Underworld Deity, Hero, Adversarial Being, Revealer Figure, etc.). Use tradition to filter by tradition. The short_note column contains a scholarly description with source citations.

This data as json

entity_id canonical_name greek_name tradition entity_type category primary_domains tags cult_scope primary_period evidence_confidence review_status inclusion_basis earth_association_score chthonic_flag serpent_flag short_note entity_class
ENT_ITA_FLORA Flora   Italic/Sabine deity / goddess of flowering plants and spring deity flowers; spring; vegetation; bloom; Floralia; Sabine origin; Chloris parallel; gardens; fertility       A           Flora is an ancient Italian goddess of flowering plants, spring vegetation, and the season of bloom (ver), whose cult in Rome is attested from the earliest period of the Republic: she had a flamen (the flamen Floralis, one of the fifteen flamines of archaic Rome) assigned to her cult, which is strong evidence of very high antiquity. The Floralia (28 April – 3 May) was her chief festival, an unusually joyful, loosely ordered celebration involving theatrical performances and the scattering of beans, lupins, and vetches. Flora's Sabine origin is implied by Varro (LL 5.74) who notes that the Sabine word for "Flower" was the basis of her name. Ovid (Fasti 5.195-372) presents the fullest account of her mythology: in a dialogue with the goddess, Ovid learns that Flora was originally the Greek nymph Chloris (Χλωρίς, "Green/Verdant"), beloved of Zephyrus (the west wind), who transformed her and gave her dominion over flowers as a wedding gift. She claims to have caused the pregnancy of Juno that produced Mars (by giving Juno a flower), and to have transformed the blood of Hyacinthus and the body of Narcissus into flowers. This makes Flora/Chloris a figure at the productive intersection of Greek and Italic tradition — her Sabine/Italic name and ancient Roman cult are mapped onto the Greek figure of Chloris. The explicit Chloris identification in Ovid (Fasti 5.195: "Chloris eram") makes Flora the clearest example in Roman religion of an Italic nature deity explained through a Greek mythological counterpart. Wissowa (1912) pp. 196-198. deity

Links from other tables