Polymnia. Studi di Archeologia n.10

The period when Egyptian cults first appear in Rome is generally considered as being relatively late. However, a re-examination of the available data (literary, epigraphic and archaeological) in the light of the earliest relationships between Rome and Ptolemaic Egypt, allows us to reconsider this position. Various documents attest the presence, both at Rome and Ostia, of such cults from at least the 2nd century B.C., naturally in a private setting. This is the case of the temple of Isis Capitolina, built on the Capitolium at latest at the end of this century. As regards the creation of an official cult, there is no reason to dispute the precise indications of Dio Cassius, who records the foundation at Rome of a temple of Isis and Serapis, probably that of the Campus Martius, by the triumvirs in 43 B.C.

La diffusione capillare dei mitrei di Ostia in tutti i quartieri della città è stata interpretata come una testimonianza della popolarità e della superiorità del culto mitriaco sulle religioni tradizionali. Questo modello cristiano-centrato della diffusione del ‘mitraismo’ si basa su una visione ormai superata della religione romana e dei cosidetti culti orientali e anche su una valutazione sommaria della topografia mitriaca di Ostia. È quindi necessario esaminare attentamente il loro contesto di insediamento. Una volta meglio conosciuti, i luoghi in cui erano insediati i mitrei suggeriscono nuove ipotesi sulla natura delle comunità che li frequentavano. Fino a che punto esse erano in realtà costituite da abitanti del quartiere vicinissimo? Considerando i luoghi nei quali erano inseriti i mitrei, ci si deve chiedere da chi potevano essere davvero frequentati. Per evitare una prospettiva esclusivista, che sarebbe questa volta ‘mitraico-centrata’, le nostre riflessioni verranno arricchite da confronti con luoghi di culto dedicati ad altre divinità, che si trovavano in contesti simili a quelli dei mitrei.

Dès son arrivée à Rome, la Mère des dieux a fait l’objet d’un double culte: l’un officiel célébré par les autorités romaines selon leurs propres rites, l’autre toléré et célébré par un couple de prêtres phrygiens venu spécialement à Rome pour continuer à rendre un culte à la déesse selon leurs propres coutumes. Si nous ignorons tout de ce culte phrygien, nous sommes, en revanche, beaucoup mieux renseignés sur le culte officiel romain et sur son organisation. Cette étude s’interroge sur le rôle exercé par le collège des quindécemvirs dans l’organisation du culte métroaque notamment à travers l’élection des prêtres et prêtresses de la déesse et des autres acteurs cultuels, ainsi que dans la participation de ce collège à certains rites.

Religious plurality was a feature of the Roman Empire, and as a rule, the Roman authorities did not repress religious difference, but threats to public order, as it might be caused by pogroms. It was only in the middle of the 2nd century. that there were general persecutions of Christians as a possible consequence of the Antonine Constitution.

The paper presents a summary of the sacra peregrina located in the Colonia Iulia Emona. Albeit the archaeological records quite scarce, the epigraphic evidence allows us, instead, to offer some thoughts about the role of Mithra, Isis, Sarapis and Mater Magna in the pantheon of the city.

This paper tries to analyse synthetically the local origins and the romanised development of the cult of the Matronae. We explain its organisation in the civitas Ubiorum, then in the colonia Agrippinensis (CCAA) in Köln, and also propose to understand which function the Matronae exercise, and in the other hand, the Matres at different levels of civic protection.

The territory of Iulia Concordia has given occasional testimonies of the presence of sacred places, mostly suggested by a few votive inscriptions. These are decontestualized materials, result of surface searches, not assignable to precise contexts. Among them, some refer to Iuppiter Dolichenus: the bronze of Diana from Lison, kept at the Concordiese National Museum in Portogruaro, a dispersed bronze tablet from Fossalta di Portogruaro and, doubtfully, a bronze ensign found near San Vito al Tagliamento, kept at the local Civic Museum. The aim of this paper is to examine the three objects, trying to understand how they converse with known data for the cult of Iuppiter Dolichenus, and at the same time how they fit into the topographical context of reference.

The contribution examines the role played by the collegium of XVviri s.f. in overcoming moments of crisis through the introduction of foreign deities, such as Asclepius, Mater Magna and Ceres, among the sacra populi Romani. Their task, after admitting the new divinity in the Roman pantheon, was to control its worshipers: they had to protect the respect of the mos maiorum.

The aim of this research in fieri is to approach the pluralism of religions in Ancient Mediterranean, as complex realities which cannot be analysed through Greek or Roman interpretatio, nor by studying single divinities within Greek, Roman or Egyptian polytheisms historically in contact. This religious pluralism must be valued as a whole of intersections, conflicts, synthesis of ritual and cultual elements: not only divinities, therefore, but also, in particular, objects, ritual practices, ‘theological’ traditions, as well as ritual fragments or rare modalities of seemingly contrasting practices belonging to different religions.

Iuno Regina was the main goddess of etruscan town of Veii. She was called in Rome by the specific ritual of evocatio. As other foreign divinities, the cult of Iuno Regina was included in the category of sacra peregrina. On one hand, ancient Authors show the importance of this goddes in the context of Roman state religion, specially during the Second Punic war; on the other hand, archaeology of cult places shows the spread of this cult in colonial territories between IIIrd and IInd century B.C., such as the Medio-Adriatic coast. The paper focuses on the role of this cult in the context of colonization and romanization of central Italy through the analysis of a study case: the roman sanctuary known as lucus Pisaurensis near Pesaro, the ancient roman colony of Pisaurum (Italy, Marche region).

This paper aims to present a research on the possible areas of cult spaces dedicated to ‘oriental cults’ on the territory of Salona and the influence that the knowledge on the ‘topography’ of these cults has on their interpretation.

A short survey of jewish community in Rome (Ist century B.C. - Vth century A.D.) on the basis of literary, epigraphical and archaeological sources, in particular catacombs and inscriptions

This paper’s aim is to provide an overview of a crucial problem in the study of late antiquity, that is the dialectic between monotheistic traditions and the various polytheisms of the ancient world. This problem is tackled with the aid of some methodological tools made available thanks to recent anthropological research which helps frame the specificity of the christian monotheism and its ways of dealing with and absorbing some ritual traditions of late antiquity. The cursory analysis of ancient sources, namely concerning what modern scholarship classifies as ‘magic’, shows the fruitfulness of such approach.

Until recently, there has been a tendency to view learned Latin poetry of the late Republican period as a chapter of Hellenistic poetry, a perspective which has overshadowed the role played by such poetry in bringing about the more specifically Roman developments of this tradition. As a case study, this paper proposes a focus on Catullus’ poem 64, a small-scale epic poem (epyllion) in which the conciliation of differences – existential, religious, cultural, linguistic, stylistic – is thematised, and is thus refracted throughout the many layers of the text itself. From a standpoint located at the heart of a present age ‘of iron’, devoid of justice and of the gods, stems the yearning for the opposite condition, which the poem’s narrator identifies in Greek myth and, more precisely, at the heart of the heroic age. The narrator’s utterance is a sort of poetic ritual which, availing itself of a number of Greek models and of procedures acquired from other genres (the cult and rhapsodic hymn in particular), seeks to evoke the gods, summoning them to become manifest for men to behold again as once in the theoxenic age, which had been inaugurated by the marriage of a mortal man (Peleus) with a goddess (Thetis). This attempt is, to all intents and purposes, a failure: the bride does not appear and the Olympians, just like the images of a lectisternium, cannot transcend their mere ‘presence’ at the wedding itself. The structure of the text, moreover, suggests that the Greek model adopted by the narrator in order to explain the story is unfit to fulfil its purpose precisely on account of its being traditional and schematic. Such a failure, however, itself represents the deep and authentically innovative significance of this poem, whose influence on later poetic production is incalculable. What it reveals are the true, difficult conditions which were to enable Greek myth to once again become the object of narratives in the ‘modern’ Roman context. Indeed, had these problems not become the focus of awareness and of accompanying reflections on poetic form, the poets of the next generation would never have been able to give rise to a wholly Roman production of the long-form epic poetry stemming from Homer.

Sacrum è una delle occasioni in cui studiosi italiani e stranieri possono incontrarsi per scoprire nuovi documenti, compararli o mettere in discussione opinioni che sembrano superate. Questo volume è dedicato alle figure sacre: alle divinità, ai sacerdoti e ai devoti, scoprendo con piacere studi che si completano o dialogano tra loro, al di là delle fonti studiate, archeologiche, epigrafiche, iconografiche o letterarie.