WSol Invictus was long considered to be the official sun god of the later Roman Empire. In recent years, however, the established views on Sol Invictus have come under sustained attack, and at present the scholarly community is divided on Sol between traditionalists and a growing group of revisionists. In the traditional view, Sol Invictus was the second of two entirely different sun gods in Rome. The first of these, Sol Indiges, or Sol, was an early Roman deity of minor importance whose cult had petered out by the first century AD. Sol Invictus, on the other hand, was a Syrian sun god, whose cult was first promoted in Rome under Elagabalus, without success. Some fifty years later, on 25 December AD 274, the Roman emperor Aurelian did succeed to establish the cult of Sol Invictus as an official religion, alongside the traditional Roman cults.
WThe Battle of the Milvian Bridge took place between the Roman Emperors Constantine I and Maxentius on 28 October 312. It takes its name from the Milvian Bridge, an important route over the Tiber. Constantine won the battle and started on the path that led him to end the Tetrarchy and become the sole ruler of the Roman Empire. Maxentius drowned in the Tiber during the battle; his body was later taken from the river and decapitated, and his head was paraded through the streets of Rome on the day following the battle before being taken to Africa.
WThe Colossus of Nero was a 30-metre (98 ft) bronze statue that the Emperor Nero created in the vestibule of his Domus Aurea, the imperial villa complex which spanned a large area from the north side of the Palatine Hill, across the Velian ridge to the Esquiline Hill. It was modified by Nero's successors into a statue of the sun god Sol. The statue was eventually moved to a spot outside the Flavian Amphitheatre, which became known, by its proximity to the Colossus, as the Colosseum.
WHelios, Latinized as Helius, is the god and personification of the Sun in ancient Greek religion and myth, often depicted in art with a radiant crown and driving a horse-drawn chariot through the sky. He was a guardian of oaths and also the god of sight.
WThe labarum was a vexillum that displayed the "Chi-Rho" symbol ☧, a christogram formed from the first two Greek letters of the word "Christ" — Chi (χ) and Rho (ρ). It was first used by the Roman emperor Constantine the Great.
WMalakbel was a sun god worshiped in the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra, frequently associated and worshiped with the moon god Aglibol as a party of a trinity involving the sky god Baalshamin.
WThe post-reform radiate, was a Roman coin first issued by Diocletian during his currency reforms of AD 293–310. The radiate looked very similar to the Antoninianus, with a radiate crown, similar to the one worn by the Roman deity, Sol Invictus. It is different from the Antoninianus because of the absence of the "XXI" that existed on pre-reform radiates, a symbol believed to have indicated a consistence of 20 parts bronze to 1 part silver. The post-reform radiate had little or no silver content. The weight can vary between 2.23 and 3.44 grams.
WA radiant or radiate crown, also known as a solar crown, sun crown, Eastern crown, or tyrant's crown, is a crown, wreath, diadem, or other headgear symbolizing the sun or more generally powers associated with the sun. Apart from the Ancient Egyptian form of a disc between two horns, it is shaped with a number of narrowing bands going outwards from the wearer's head, to represent the rays of the sun. These may be represented either as flat, on the same plane as the circlet of the crown, or rising at right angles to it.
WSol is the personification of the Sun and a god in ancient Roman religion. It was long thought that Rome actually had two different, consecutive sun gods: The first, Sol Indiges, was thought to have been unimportant, disappearing altogether at an early period. Only in the late Roman Empire, scholars argued, did the solar cult re-appear with the arrival in Rome of the Syrian Sol Invictus, perhaps under the influence of the Mithraic mysteries. Recent publications have challenged the notion of two different sun gods in Rome, pointing to the abundant evidence for the continuity of the cult of Sol, and the lack of any clear differentiation – either in name or depiction – between the "early" and "late" Roman sun god.
WA representation of the sun is used as a heraldic charge. The most usual form, often called sun in splendour or in his glory, consists of a round disc with the features of a human face surrounded by twelve or sixteen rays alternating wavy and straight. The alternating straight and wavy rays are often said to represent the light and heat of the sun respectively.