IUPITER DOLICHENUS. The god known in the Latin-speaking part of the Roman Empire as Iupiter Doli-chenus was a local god of Syrian origin. His cult as a major cosmic god became widespread in the Empire in the second century CE, and he was given the majestic epithets of the Roman Jupiter (Optimus and Maximus). Although honored with Roman religious formulae, certain specific dedications have nonetheless retained evidence of his exotic origin.

Doliche (modern Dülük, in Turkey, near Gaziantep) was a town of Commagene beside the Euphrates—and thus at the crossroads of Anatolian, Syrian, and Iranian influences—and had come under Roman sway at the time of Pompey (106–48 BCE). Its local god (whose sanctuary has not yet been excavated) was derived from the Hittite-Hurrian Teshub, a weather god who had absorbed some of the characteristics of the Aramaic Hadad, a Syrian storm god. In...