Pluvius
i. e. the sender of rain, a surname of Jupiter among the Romans, to whom sacrifices were offered during long protracted droughts. These sacrifices were called aquilicium, "the calling forth of water," because certain magic ceremonies were performed by Etruscans to call down rain from heaven. (Tib. 1.8. 26; Tertull. Apolog. 40; Fest. p. 2, ed. Mütller.)
From William Smith (ed.), Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology. Text provided under a CC BY-SA license by Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu, with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Tufts University. Data accessed from https://github.com/PerseusDL/canonical-pdlrefwk/ on 17 October 2026.