Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

An inscription discovered in 1973 in the city wall of Lugo (Léon), capital of a conventus of northwest Galicia, reveals much about the religious situation in the empire in the Severan era: “To the divine powers of the Augusti, Juno Regina, Venus Victrix, Africa Caelestis, Frugifer, Augusta Emerita and the Lares of the Callaeciae, Saturninus, freedman of Augustus” ( Inscripciones romanas de Galicia 2, Provincia de Lugo, 23; AE 1985, 494; 1990, 939). As Le Roux demonstrated, the status of Saturninus as well as the divinities invoked are enough to explain that the patronage of the gods mentioned is linked to the administrative career of an imperial freedman connected to Africa and called on to serve in Lusitania and Galicia, the hierarchy being a religious one ( AE 1980, 595 bis) rather than reflecting the career itself. At the beginning of the text, the imperial numina appear as the normal and inevitable religious representations of the reigning power: here, the successive Augusti, protectors of the freedman, and Juno Regina, the divine evocation of Julia Domna as well as Venus Victrix, bring to mind the emperor, guarantor of the imperial system. For their part, Africa Caelestis, Frugifer, and the Lares of the Callaeciae demonstrate the continuing existence, several centuries after the conquest of Africa, of divinities of provincial origin, some of which, among them Caelestis, ... log in or subscribe to read full text