7 - Roman Theologies in the Roman Cities of Italy and the Provinces

Summary

The colonies and municipalities of Italy and the provinces were not merely representations of Roman traditions. How, then, can we understand the theologies of the cities? It is possible to do this through general theological discourse, since the local elites had received the same education as Romans. But there were certainly differences, albeit not apparent to us because of our lack of precise information about the local mythologies and deities. A study of the public gods of certain cities in Gallia Belgica and Germania Inferior allow us to discern certain factors that could be behind the theological rationale that was to emerge at the moment that local magistrates defined the religious obligations of the new city foundations. Two examples allow a glimpse into the inspiration for the creation of private divinities in Latin literature.

In Rome, several theologies existed (i.e., several types of discourse and knowledge concerning the gods), for the Romans’ religion had neither revelation nor a Book or a truth set by a god. Only multiple truths existed, connected to this or that context or this or that moment. Even when a deity pronounced an opinion, it related to a specific event or answered a specific question. It did not lay down a global revelation as the God of monotheism does. We thus find ancestral theology implicit in the practice of worship, the themes developed by mythology, and philosophers’ speculations on the nature of the gods. Each of these types of knowledge and discourse had its own autonomy.

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1

Usually, research on this knowledge addresses only Rome (i.e., the religion of the Roman People, and Roman families) and not the innumerable colonies, municipia or peregrine cities of Italy and the provinces. For the religion of Rome, on the banks of the Tiber, concerned only the Roman State, the Respublica of the Roman People, and, of course, the Roman citizen, wherever he was, as a member of that State. But this religion and this theology did not impose themselves on the second homeland of every Roman citizen – the colony or municipium in which he was born – and where, for the majority of them, he lived. In the framework of this study, I will not consider the peregrine cities.

When a city became Roman, or when a Roman colony was founded, the totality of the Roman state’s religious obligations was not spread. The inhabitants who were already there were not converted, and when a colony was founded by the Romans, they did not install a pure facsimile of the religious system of Rome. Not to mention the fact that these changes did not concern the domestic sects of these cities, which were a matter for each family to decide.

How then can we understand the theologies of the colonies and municipia of Italy and the provinces? Did they show the same theological practices that we observe in Rome itself? And if so, how? For philosophy, the answer is certainly yes, since the elites had the same education as in the metropolis. As for mythology, it is much more difficult because we do not know or understand the local mythology that existed prior to the Roman occupation, to which the inhabitants of the provincial Roman cities allude. I have only to mention the Pillar of the Boatmen in Paris: a mixture of local mythological themes and references to Roman theology, all accompanied by a dedication to Tiberius and Jupiter. This obliges us to wonder how this ensemble functioned: should we imagine it in the Romans’ mythology as related to Greek mythology, which became a reservoir from which the Romans drew themes either to link their mythology to certain Greek myths or to construct new Roman myths? Unfortunately, our ignorance of local myths is such that we cannot answer this question.

On the other hand, it is possible to provide some answers for civic and private theologies. I do not wish to enter into the classic subject of the description of Gallic religions by Caesar or Tacitus.¹ I prefer to look at what is expressed on the ground. When a colony or a municipium was founded in Gaul or Germania, what took place from a religious point of view? Even if the Romans were not in the habit of converting subjugated peoples or imposing their religion on them, this does not mean that nothing happened. Thus, when the Syllanian colony settled in Pompeii, the altar of the temple of Apollo was redone, which gave rise to a new consecration by the quattuorviri.² We can therefore assume that the rites were celebrated according to the rites of the colony. This corresponded, of course, to a system of worship and theology similar to that of Rome. There are, however, differences between the two types of practices. For example, the local deities are enriched by novelties. Venus had long been worshipped in Pompeii, but she was now also the protector of Sylla, and in the days of the Julio-Claudians, the Venus of the Romans and the Iulii. This was to be understood in the prayers – in the invocations of the goddess. Evolution is not usually seen, since no new epiclesis characterized the great gods. It was only from the time of the Empire that divinities could bear the epiclesis “Augustus,” which is ambiguous and difficult to interpret but which clearly sets the divinities in a Roman context. But from a theological point of view? Was civic theological thought active in the thoughts and actions of the founders?

At Pompeii, I would imagine that, owing to the long relations that had developed between the Osci and the Romans, a code of transposition or translation of the names of the reciprocal divinities had existed for a long time. The Roman colonists had no problem addressing the Pompeian Apollo, Jupiter or Venus. This was certainly more complicated when a remote community became a colony, or a colony was settled there. I would like to examine a number of examples. But let us first take a look at the document I was already inviting to take into account in 1991,³ namely the municipal laws of the Genetiva colony at Urso.

Those statutes derived from Roman municipal law in the time of Caesar, which was applied to each foundation in perhaps a slightly different context. In chapter 64, we see the provisions of the constitution that interest us: “Those who will be duumvirs after the deductio of the colony must, within ten days of beginning their position, pose to the decurions – provided not less than two-thirds are present – the question of which and how many feast days there shall be, which rites must be celebrated publicly, and who is to celebrate these rites. What the majority of the decurions that shall then be present decide shall be legal and ratified, and those sacred rites and feast days shall be in force in this colony.”⁴ This text is of great importance for our purposes. It proves that the local public calendar was set by the local authorities, year after year, and could therefore be amended during this procedure. The text does not explicitly say that the first magistrates of the colony proceeded in the same manner (i.e., that they established the calendar within ten days after taking office). Article 70, for example, distinguishes between the first magistrates and their successors, and in chapter 69, which concerns the religious budget, the lex mentions the first magistrates alongside their successors. Therefore, if the constitution does not mention the first duumvirs here, it is most certainly intentional. This is also J. Rüpke’s opinion.⁵ Should one infer that the essential features of the calendar were in fact imposed by the founder of the colony? In my opinion, this is impossible because otherwise article 64 would no longer make any sense, since it stipulates that the calendar must be officially established each year without saying in the least that this calendar must not change the one that had been established “according to this lex.” The situation is not the same as in article 66, which refers to the appointment of the first augurs and pontiffs by the person who had founded the colony. We must therefore conclude that chapter 64 either allows more time for the first magistrates or does not concern itself with this aspect of the question. It is sometimes difficult to see the reason for these differences in the wording. In chapter 70, which prescribes Games for the Capitoline Triad and Venus, the first duumvirs are excluded, probably because during the first year of the colony, it was difficult to organize this Games. However, the calendar’s construction is not linked to immediate budgetary and organizational issues. In any case, it is certain that the first duumvirs built, shortly after the deductio, the essential calendar of the Colonia Genetiva. Additions could be made by their successors, but it was essential that they put the calendar in place at the time of foundation.

What is the scope of all this for our subject? I will pass over the material elements that the choices led to: the places of worship concerned or the location of new places of worship, the choice of an annual date, the financing and the responsibility for worship. Let us focus only on one aspect: the calendar itself and what it immediately implied.

What is the meaning of quos et quot dies festos esse et quae sacra fieri publice placeat (“the question of when the feast days shall be, what their number shall be, and what rites must be publicly celebrated”)? As Rüpke has rightly pointed out, the text speaks only of dies festi (“feast days”), and not of feriae (“holidays”), which were in some way the temporal property of the gods, as if these distinctions did apply, or did not apply any more, to the provinces or colonies. However, it is difficult to rely too heavily on this finding. It’s clear that a colony did not have to keep to the same calendar as the magistrates, the priests and the Senate of Rome. It was, if you will, an obligation of the Roman citizen in relation to Rome, but here we are speaking of something else: the city where the citizen lived his daily institutional and religious life, far from Rome. The districts of Rome themselves did not have the same festive life as the Forum and temples of Rome.

So, what did this citation mean? That at the beginning of each year (and for our direct interests here, ten days after the founding of a colony), the local senate had to consider a motion from the duumvirs to construct the calendar – the public calendar, as the text states. These are the rites that were celebrated publice (i.e., in the name of the populus and for it). We should note that nothing was foreseen, if not indirectly, for private religious life, since the domain of public worship was carefully delimited.

We must insert here an aside regarding documents such as the lex of Urso, which I have just cited. Much has been written on this subject, and I myself have drawn attention to this document to understand the meaning of the creation of a Roman or Latin colony in the Roman Empire. In an article on this law J. Rüpke quite rightly points out that all these rules apply to the public religion of the colony, and he also notes that the lex says little about observed celebrations and rites, called sacra, aside from an indication of the Games in honor of the Capitoline Triad and Venus, patron of the Iulii.⁶ He cites the passage on the calendar, pointing out that it was not necessarily the same as that of Rome, and he imagines it similar to that of the Fasti of Guidizzolo, near Mantua.⁷ In this situation, the individual who had this copy made had available to him, besides the Fasti, a list of the years’ festivals. This is possible, but let us not forget that the Fasti of Praeneste, which date from the Augustan period, even include the annual holidays of the great local temple of Fortuna Primigenia in the Fasti’s text.⁸ There should have been several opportunities to set the local holiday calendar in writing. We shall recall here the arvals’ calendar, which adds a second document to the ordinary Fasti that includes the movable dates of the annual sacrifice of Dea Dia. So, in Rome itself, this sort of supplement to the basic calendar could have existed.

Things are actually more complicated. A document like that of Urso shows us the institutional life of a colony in Caesar’s time, when the document was written for the first time and then, under Domitian, when it was reexamined and engraved. How were the sacra present in public life? For this is indeed what the Romans called public worship. Rüpke considers that this document is ignorant of our concept of religion, but only speaks of sacra, of feast days, of funding, of priests and of magistri. That’s completely correct. But as every Latinist knows, our concept of religion did not exist in ancient cities before Christianization. This disturbs the modern scholar, since the term religio exists in Latin, but it means something else: “ritual obligation, care in ritual practice,” hence “fear, meticulousness in a given practice,” such as spelling, for example. In other words, in the positive sense, religio actually means, in an abstract way, the same thing as sacra, “rites.” It is therefore unnecessary to be surprised by the absence of the modern category of “religion” in this document. It did not exist in the Romans’ language or thinking. This did not present as a religious decadence or incapacity, in the modern sense, which would make it possible to seek elsewhere the religious sentiments of the Romans. It is therefore necessary to bring together the various rules regarding religious practice through the text’s various sections to reconstitute the set of rules concerned. This dispersion is not surprising, as Roman legal documents are never synthetic and reasoned; they often present a series of successive rules, which we modern scholars would set out in a more synthetic fashion. As public worship belonged to the religious duties of the city, their regulations are set out in the same way as the other prescriptions relating to the functioning of the city.

But let us return to the gods. If we are discussing worship and feast days, we must also investigate the target of that worship. In short, we must theologize. Discussing worship and festive days amounted to composing what we call the official pantheon of the city. It was at this time that the decurions also had to make an official decision on the names of their public gods, translating or transposing, adding epicleses or not, including one god and excluding another in accordance with internal political equilibria. We do not know much about this procedure. The law of Urso reveals nothing, except that it provides that the duumvirs celebrate the Games in honor of the Capitoline Triad each year, presumably on September 13, which was in some way an obligation common to all Roman cities;⁹ the aediles also provided three days of performances to the circus or scenic games and a day of performances at the circus or at the forum in honor of Venus.¹⁰

2

The area I have chosen for this survey of local theologies, namely the western provinces of the North, excludes whether the settlers were Romans from Rome or from Italy and whether they had their own religious traditions that they would have potentially taken with them and transplanted into their new city. I will therefore only consider colonies which were “honorary,” as is often said, partly to deny the reality of the integration policy of conquered peoples. But this is a legal contradiction, because honorary or not, from a legal point of view, they were real colonies.

Therefore, this founding – or re-founding – activity contained a theological activity that was perhaps based on traditions that were already ancient, acquired by these populations over the course of decades of contact with the Romans. The local elites who sat in the colonial senates did not necessarily include Varros and Ciceros, but certain personalities, already Roman knights and charged with public offices of the Empire, may have been largely acquainted with Roman customs and public worship and therefore have been familiar with Roman religion. It was not possible to exercise a command in the Roman army or administration, for example, without being obliged by these functions to fill Roman cult obligations.

How could local senates function when, within ten days of the first magistrates’ taking office, they had to define the new colony’s public calendar? To attempt to uncover the facts, we must make use of examples, and I shall begin with four cases: Trier, Cologne, and the Batavi and the Tungri. We will discuss public theology, and I will add some elements of private theology, as far as is possible. I am well aware of the hypothetical nature of this reconstruction, which we must deduce from sources, albeit direct, but particularly laconic. And in such an exercise, errors are always possible.

Let us begin with Trier, the Colonia Augusta of the Treveri.

We know the gods of this colony, but more of the private gods than the public gods. We must thus make do with what we have – which is not nothing. We have found some dedications addressed to the Roman deities Aesculapius, Bellona, Apollo and Mars Victor, who probably had temples, chapels, or altars in the city. But these inscriptions and deities cannot be related to the theological activities that were carried out at the time of foundation. Not only because their date is often belated in relation to the origins of the Roman Trier, but precisely because they are deities who were probably not “translated”: they represented the Roman part of the colony’s theology such as it was purely and simply transferred. We must not forget that the Latin colony of Trier had a dual identity: local and Roman. In this case, this is the Roman side.

A cult that is nevertheless particularly important for our purposes is that of Lenus Mars. He was the god of the great temple located outside the city, where representatives of the colony’s pagi also gathered for days of collective worship. There were other local Marses: Intarabus, Gnabetius and Loucetios. First, a detail: in a chapter devoted to gods and worship, Greg Woolf wonders about the epicleses.¹¹ He wonders, in particular, whether, once the conquest was over, the local deities would not have offered the indigenous peoples the possibility of having their own identity. In Lenus Mars or Hercules Magusanus, does not the presence of the epiclesis suggest the existence of a reserve thus manifested with respect to the Roman gods Mars and Hercules? Why were they not satisfied with Mars or Hercules? G. Woolf’s answer is not very clear; he is content to lay out the problem. But it is significant that he cites Hercules Magusanus, which shows that he is influenced by the ideas of N. Roymans, who refused to accept, at the time those lines were written, the idea that the Batavi could have adopted a Roman way of life. It is also significant that he refers in the page I cited to the god of Jews and Christians as though the situations were the same. That is precisely the problem. Even in the Gallo-Roman or Germanic world, religion was not necessarily identical to Judaism or Christianity. We can see beneath this comparison a number of exaggerated positions adopted for a time by G. Woolf on the religion of the Romans themselves.

But let us return to our Treveran gods. Lenus Mars is interesting. He was doubtless the Treveri’s great god, who had another great place of worship in the territory near Koblenz, at the Martberg,¹² which was also a public place, considering his importance and historical profundity. Two elements related to this god’s chief place of worship immediately attract attention. First is the position of his temple, which was located outside the ramparts. That of the Herrenbrünnchen, which belonged perhaps to Mars Victor, also was located near the rampart, which was built later. Yet this was a Roman rule of worship. As Trier was founded from 17 BC ex nihilo, the location of Lenus Mars’ temple reflects a clearly theological intention, even though it may have been conveyed by the architects of the Roman army, who were likely involved in the organization of the capital Augusta Treverorum. The fact remains that the members of the elite who were the sponsors apparently saw nothing shocking in the fact that the great local god was located outside the city.

Lenus Mars, whose epiclesis “lenus” is incomprehensible, provides other interesting indications. The first comes from the statue that was found in the temple and represents a young Mars, different from the bearded figure of Mars Ultor used in Mandeure, for example. The personality of the Treveran god from whom Lenus Mars took over is unknown, but the choice of Mars – and Lenus Mars – provides two pieces of information. The territory of Trier has been blessed by archaeology. Its excavators have been excellent professionals for over a century, and to top it all off, the Treveri were great chatterboxes, leaving plenty of inscriptions. Perhaps it is necessary to add, more prosaically, that the tender sandstone of the Treveran countryside is very easy to carve. In any case, if we were to plot on a map all the places where a dedication to Mars has been found, and assuredly placed, we would see a very particular image emerge. In the capital, there were temples, altars, and dedications made to Lenus Mars and Mars Intarabus, who were, according to the current data, gods of the left bank of the Moselle River. On the other hand, Mars Gnabetius and Mars Loucetios are neither represented on the left bank nor in Trier. Also, these gods were not necessarily small local gods. Take, for example, Mars Loucetios, who had a temple with Nemetona near Mainz,¹³ thus on former Treveran territory, cut off from a section after the Roman occupation and various uprisings. And the mention of Aresaces on the first stone refers to the Treveri, since it was during the first c. AD. a local unit of the Treveran people in the Roman Army, the cohors Aresacum, that had been commanded by one of Lenus Mars’ flamines. The social level of those who dedicated a second inscription to Nemetona, the legatus Augusti A. Didius Gallus Fabricius Veiento and his wife, prove that it was an important place of worship. Another dedication should be mentioned here. It comes from Bath,¹⁴ is addressed to Mars Loucetios and Nemetona, and was placed by a Treveran citizen. Perhaps a Trevir from the Hunsrück or the Mainz region? We also note that the Matronae or Matres, who were apparently removed from the public cults of Trier, received a dedication at Vetera in Germania Inferior, probably from a ciuis Treuir.¹⁵

I would explain the exclusion of Mars Loucetius from the Trier pantheon by the fact that the Hunsrück Treveri had been underrepresented in the colony’s deductio and had therefore not been able to impose the presence of their local Mars among the public, collective gods, contrary to what the western Treveri did. We may even see in this the effect of an internal conflict, due to the resistance of certain Treveran groups first to the Roman alliance, and then to the course adopted, from 17 BC onwards, to transform the Treveran people into a city of the Mediterranean type. This conflict was expressed in the various uprisings that took place after the conquest. Even though the city did not immediately become a Latin colony – doing so only a generation after its foundation – decisions had to be made that would be given validity on the day it became a colony. It should be borne in mind that archaeological chance can always reverse this type of hypothesis, but for the time being, the number of inscriptions is sufficient to allow it to advance. I would add that, unlike Otzenhausen and Donnersberg, two large oppida of the right bank of the Moselle, those of the left bank, the Titelberg and the Martberg (which likely remained a Treveran property even after the diminution of their territory) were not abandoned under the Empire. This tends to suggest certain pro-Roman Treveran groups’ seizing power on the left bank of the Moselle from 30 BC onwards.

For our purposes, this means that at the time when it was decided to create a collective pantheon for the city and then for the Augustan colony of the Treveri, a list of the public rites to be performed for this or that god was put together, and the choice of the great god of the city was made, according to local political imperatives.

But we can go further by moving to a more strictly theological level. Why choose, from among the names of available gods, Mars rather than some other god? Why not Jupiter, Apollo or Mercury? A word about the epiclesis: It’s a necessity if one wishes to express the local, colonial nature of the god. This was done in the same way in Rome, in neighborhoods and in families, according to historical circumstances, and of course also in Italy. Let us not forget that this was a polytheistic regime, and that there was not a single Roman Mars. To go further, it is necessary to compare the Treveran choice with those made by other cities. Mars, with various epicleses, was chosen by many cities of Gaul: Mars Camulus by the Remi, Mars Mullo by the Redones and by the Aulerci Cenomani. But this was not the case further north, among the Batavi and Tungri. The evidence tends to show that it was Hercules, rather, who was designated there as the great local god. To understand, we must examine the Roman gods involved.

In Rome, Mars was the god of war and of those who made it. What was at issue was violent, brutal war, the violent outbreak of warfare-driven rage, and not the war envisaged from the point of view of the fine strategist’s cunningness (a role that would more be that of Minerva, who was the technician of the military art taught by instructors), or the brutal imposition of sovereignty (Jupiter). But, contrary to the traditions of certain Italic peoples, Mars was not the principal god in Rome, even though mythology had made him the father of the city’s founder. Thus, when the Treveri adopted Mars as their principal god, it wasn’t the figure of the community’s supreme leader, of a sovereign (Jupiter) or guide (Apollo) that they sought, but rather a figure close to the one claimed by those who recognized themselves in him, the armed citizens. But this did not preclude a versed dedication offered by the Martberg presenting Lenus Mars in a very Roman manner.¹⁶

Let us return to the difference between the Batavi and Tungri and the other Gallic peoples. As T. Derks has shown,¹⁷ the Batavi made another choice, although their intentions were certainly identical. Instead of Mars, they chose Hercules to be their principal god, a god who by myth (and by Roman topography) was tied to livestock farming and especially to adventure, to the victorious return after successfully carrying out exploits in faraway lands. Another difference separates this choice from the one made by the Treveri: Hercules was a known god, but he did not belong to the first rank of the great Roman gods, unlike Mars. This also reveals the fact that the Batavi sought in Hercules special qualities rather than his status in the Roman public pantheon. On the other hand, Mars refers to a structured universe, a city with a defined space to defend with armed citizens collectively fighting; in short, a universe with institutions. Hercules, on the contrary, participates only marginally in these activities, for example, at the celebration of a triumph. His exploits take place in another setting. According to his mythology, they are accomplished even before the birth of cities and their institutions. Mars is a citizen god and Hercules a civilizing god, accomplishing his exploits alone or with a handful of companions. One might say that the Batavi chose the myth of the solitary hero as a source of inspiration. This was also, according to a recent study by G. Ræpsæt, the choice of the Tungri.¹⁸ Ræpsæt studies the ethnogenesis of the Ubii, Batavi and Tungri. He also evokes the cult of Hercules as a principal cult, relying on the example of the Batavi. He first quotes Tacitus, who in his text on Germania, mentions the importance of Hercules.¹⁹ Tacitus also mentions Mars, however. Near Tongeren, a ring was found bearing the inscription, and a bracelet (the Herculi Magusano restitution being certain according to similar specimens found in Germania).²⁰ In Jeuk-Goyer,²¹ still in Tongeren country, a series of altars dedicated to Hercules has been discovered, which seem to confirm this fact. What is especially interesting is the dedication made to Hercules and Alcmene, an absolute hapax, which confirms the suspicion that in these regions, the search for a Roman god as a local god’s equivalent had passed through the mythology. In addition, in Millingen,²² in Germania Inferior, near Xanten, on another dedication, we find Hercules Magusanus together with Haeva. It was supposed that it could be a local goddess, elsewhere translated by Alcmene, or rather the misspelled version of Hebe, Heracles’ wife, who would be the equivalent of a local goddess, for example Nehalennia, who is connected to a successful journey like those performed by Hercules, and whose certain steles at Colijnsplaat or Domburg also represented Hercules. Finally, on Hadrian’s Wall, an inscription placed by the first cohort of the Tungri dedicated an altar to Hercules, Jupiter, and the imperial numina;²³ another base had to do with Hercules Magusanus and emanated from a duplicarius of the ala Tungrorum.²⁴ On the territory of the neighboring Cugerni we have also a dedication in Xanten,²⁵ a ring at Kalkar and a temple in Elfrath, near Krefeld, where the cella is decorated with scenes from the adventures of Hercules.²⁶

In this distribution of Mars and Hercules, we also see the opposition between grain-farming regions and livestock-farming ones.

Let’s return to Trier with another question: Why choose Mars as supreme god, and not Jupiter or Apollo? The answer is probably that at the time of the transposition of the name of their god to Latin, at the latest at the time of the city’s foundation or the colony’s deductio, the Treveri still saw themselves as warriors, or at least as armed men. They saw themselves less in the forum’s togati, in civilians, than as men bearing arms. For them, a citizen was essentially an armed man. This was evident in their funerary customs at the beginning of the Empire. Later, apparently, things changed, but the choices made at the beginning of the colony were thereafter definitive and presented as an echo of the past of the Treveran people. The preeminent role of Lenus Mars informs us how the Treveri represented the profession of the citizen, how the city and the colony were founded, and perhaps about the distant political conflicts between clans that the map of the epicleses of Mars hints at in the background. The reflections revealed by these choices suggest that the Treveri were not ignorant of Roman institutions and culture. By having distinguished the role and figure of the god Mars from those of other gods of the Roman pantheon, they revealed their knowledge of Roman theology and religion. In building the temple of Lenus Mars at the gates of the city, they clearly applied a Roman religious rule. They left one more indication that confirms the very conscious way in which their pantheon and their religion were elaborated.

It may be argued that the Gauls perhaps did not have a feminine goddess as their principal deity, like the Junos of Latium and Southern Etruria, or the Fortuna of Praeneste. This is an argument that must be qualified, at least in part.

Located next to the Treveri, Tungri and Batavi was Cologne.²⁷ The city’s history is very particular. First, the historical occupants of the space, the Eburones, were largely exterminated by Caesar, notably with the Treveri’s help. The survivors, along with Ubian groups transplanted from the other side of the Rhine, settled in the liberated space and founded at the beginning of the first century a city that was to serve as a metropolis for the new province of Germania. As this city, which was the seat of Germania’s legate, was closely linked to the Julio-Claudian dynasty, the Emperor Claudius transformed it into a Roman colony, which even received the Italic right, meaning that it was legally considered to be city of Italy. Now, if we were to look at the public worship practiced in Cologne, we would find no evidence of either Mars or Hercules as a great local deity. Of course, the city has left fewer cultual remains than Trier, but one noticeable fact emerges from the epigraphic data: One of the public cults was that of the Matronae. It was a mixture of local cults, found mostly in the Claudian colony and marginally in neighboring cities, as well as cults adhered to by legionaries and veterans who, at the beginning of the Empire, were largely from Cisalpine and Narbonese Gaul, where there were similar godesses. The Matronae and Mothers were, for example, attested to at Glanum and Nîmes. Clearly, this cult of the Matronae had developed from the foundation of this peregrine city of Ara Ubiorum and when the Claudian colony was founded around AD 50, this cult was so well established that it belonged to the religious landscape of the colony. One of its great temples was even in the immediate vicinity of the Legio I Minervia camp in Bonn, which was located inside the colony’s territory.

We have thus seen three examples of how public religion developed in new colonies, each of which followed different paths according to their culture and historical context. Of course, these cities also possessed a temple dedicated to the Capitoline Triad, or at least a cult for it, especially on September 13 (the day of the Roman Games), and also other Roman deities, but our purpose here was to follow the way in which they outlined their pantheons.

I have two further remarks to make on this subject. The Treveri’s thought was apparently quite advanced. Thus, as T. Derks has shown,²⁸ one would find parents making votive offerings in Lenus Mars’ temple for their children. To explain these rites, Derks refers to those we know from Rome, on the day of the Liberalia, the day when young boys became adults, celebrated with a sacrifice that they offered at the temple of Jupiter. In Trier, the founders, and then gradually the rest of the population, began to celebrate their boys’ reaching the age of majority with Lenus Mars, who held the role of supreme god.

There has also been some progress in the interpretation of divinities. In Cologne and in the territory of Colonia Claudia, a series of dedications has been found that mention curiae associated with the cult of the Matronae (i.e., groups and clans that bore the same name as the Matronae). Chr. Rüger notes that most of these curiae’s dedications are addressed to male deities and wonders if these gods were not the Matronae’s consorts.²⁹ Thus he brings the famous Matronae Aufaniae together with the epithet of their neighbor in Bonn, Mercurius Gebrinius, and the representation of a mythical animal (three goat bodies with a single head) on an altar of the Matronae Aufaniae. For Rüger, this would be evidence of the theriomorphic stage of the Matronae, who would originally be goat goddesses, and whose husband would be Gebrinius (*gabro-, cf. caper). Without further emphasizing the fanciful nature of this combination, powerfully inspired by the modern myth of the mother goddess and primitive representations of divinity, Chr. Rüger’s hypothesis poses an additional problem, which also raises the Matronae’s identification with their mythical ancestors that he makes. On the one hand, there would be a single god before a group of Matronae: Who represents whom? Why a single god facing a plurality of mothers connected to a clan? It would be more prudent to remember that finding several deities in the same place of worship is commonplace, even supposing that it is indeed a common place of worship. And if we are dealing with two different temples, there is no reason to connect the Aufaniae and Mercury Gebrinius. On the other hand, how did the Matronae represent the clan’s female ancestor? Which of the three is that famous ancestor? Would not all three of them be the deified matrons of the lineage or group concerned? Add to this the fact that in representations of the Matronae, two wear headdresses and appear older than the middle one, who does not wear the headdress typical of the other two. There is obviously something missing here, and I would be very careful before interpreting this type of collective divinity further.

T. Derks has once again subjected the whole question to criticism, relying on M. Th. Ræpsæt-Charlier’s chronological supplements in particular.³⁰ He rightly dismantles the schematic reconstructions developed by Rüger, who presupposes an evolution of the Matronae’s cult from a pre-anthropomorphic stage to an anthropomorphic stage, the beginning of which would be marked by the beautiful sculptures discovered under the Bonn Minster. Derks has especially pointed out that the very form of the matronal names, which are based on the suffix -inehae, meaning “those (f.) of, the women of,” quite evidently refers to an anthropomorphic group. Moreover, the absence of images of the Matronae before the AD 160s does not mean that the cult was aniconic before that date, as Chr. Rüger presumes. The earliest dedication addressed to the Matronae in this region comes from Jülich,³¹ and it dates from the years between AD 71 and about AD 120, which is in agreement with the archaeological data found in exhumed places of worship, such as in Pesch in the Colonia Claudia’s territory.

We are still waiting for a clue that would allow us to decipher the figure of the Matronae or Mothers. Nevertheless, with these cults, we have some evidence of a theological thought that has led us toward clans and groups that seem to belong to the private domain, which are in any case subordinate to the level of the colony. Let us now go further into the theology of individuals.

3

The first example comes from the Altbachtal temple area, the Altbach valley in Trier.³² This sacred precinct was developed at the same time as the city, since the main axis of the precinct coincides with that of the city. There were perhaps temples of public worship, but the large buildings are unfortunately anonymous. The divinities represented were largely Treveran, and they were also found to be present on the territory of the Colonia Augusta Treverorum. It was obvious that the families brought these gods with them when they settled in Trier. Associations also chose to install their place of worship in this area. And significantly, in the late period, a Mithraic sanctuary was located there. This set can add two interesting pieces of data to our research.

First, Mercury. Two things are interesting. To begin with, the location of the temple, situated at the western entrance to the sacred precinct,³³ or in any case just outside. I won’t go into detail. We know that the god Mercury was the god of travelers, of mediation, of commerce. He was therefore often present at borders, at entrances, near gates (in Rome, for example). He was also connected to currency circulation, the production of interest and the reproduction of livestock. There are then inscriptions found in and near the temple, which testify to the fact that the Treveri had become quite capable of thinking of the gods in Roman terms, at least in the second century AD. The first,³⁴ by Securius Severus, does not inform us of much, as it is too laconic. The other two are a bit more talkative. The second,³⁵ which is later, based on the layers on which the altar was placed (but it may have been displaced), concerns the domain for which the god was best known – commerce – as it comes from an ancient seaman of the fleet of Germania who was a beer trader or brewer and a dyer. The third inscription is the most interesting.³⁶ It concerns the Mercury of the peregrini. What’s it about? The god is presented as a sort of patron of the peregrini: deus Mercurius peregrinorum. The peregrini are not pilgrims but foreigners established in the Colonia Augusta Treverorum. They were in all likelihood incolae, residents who did not have full local citizenship, and who often formed associations in Roman cities. However, there is no indication that this temple served as the seat of an association, as is the case for other temples in the Altbachtal. In any case, these associations of residents were often directed toward the Genius peregrinorum, venerating the divine double of the association, which is structurally linked to it. The dedicator of our altar made another choice, which denotes his perfect knowledge of Roman theology, since it refers to the domain patronized by the god Mercury: circulation and passage. Even better than the knowledge of the Genius, who was a typically Roman deity, the ability to analyze Mercury’s domain to relate it to those who are passing through testifies to a theological knowledge that is not merely superficial.

Even less banal is the following dedication. It reads: Deo Vertumno siue Pisinto C. Fruendus VSLM (“To the God Vertumnus, or Pisintus, Gaius Fruendus has fulfilled his vow willingly and properly”).³⁷ Pisintus was a local god about whom we know nothing else. But the dedicator, toward the middle of the second century AD, proposed a Latin translation (and the Latin figure in the first place) of Pisintus’ name to Vertumnus. Yet Vertumnus was a well-known Roman god. He was the god of metamorphosis, of change. He was not a very active god in the ritual calendar. He was best known by Varro, Propertius and Ovid. According to certain Roman traditions, there was a desire to make him into an Etruscan god, based on the fact that during the fall of Volsinii, a local god had been installed in Rome under the name of Vortumnus (probably Voltumnus from Voltumna). Yet other sources say that the god had already existed in Rome before Vortumnus’ arrival, who was installed, not on the Forum as Vertumnus, but on Aventine Hill. I refer you to the research that I completed with J. Svenbro on this god.³⁸ The altar of the Altbachtal is all the more important in that the dedication, in a way, translates the domain, the fundamental identity of the god, with siue, “either, or”: he’s the “or” god. Vertumnus is one whom certain attributes immediately transform into another character or god. His entire domain is there; Propertius and Ovid provide dozens of illustrations of this, in which the cycle of the seasons, in particular, plays an important role, insofar as the god Vertumnus is associated with gardens and the seasons. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, he courts Pomona, the goddess who made the fruits of the garden grow. Yet a glance at our altar shows that this characteristic was perfectly known and understood by Fruendus or the Treveri, since the four figures that encircle the altar’s crown most likely represent the seasons. We cannot explain the sword or the torch, but perhaps they have to do with other attributes that explain Pisintus’ transformation into Vertumnus, or the opposite. The altar stood inside the small enclosure with altars and dedications consecrated to the Dii Casus or Cassus. If this name properly conveys the chance, the accidental or the fortuitous, we can grasp the reason for which Pisintus-Vertumnus was associated with the Dii Casus: The two types of deities were connected with chance, and the appearance of Vertumnus is a function of opportunity and context.

Another element that is no less interesting is that to know all this, one had to be literate, for the god himself, as I have said, was rare even in Rome, and it was only by reading, for example, the poets that someone in Trier could acquire information on this god, who was here assimilated to Pisintus. This literary knowledge, which serves as a theological operator, is attested to by another inscription, which was found in Raetia.

We now leave Belgica to go first to Raetia, to the city of Cambodunum (Kempten), where a lead curse tablet was found with the following inscription:³⁹ “Silent Mutes! Let Quartus be dumb, or be distraught; he wanders like a fleeing mouse or a bird before a basilisk, let his mouth be mute, Mutes! Let the Mutes be dread! Let the Mutes remain silent! Mutes! Mutes! Let Quartus go mad, let Quartus be brought to the Erinyes and Orcus. Let the Silent Mutes remain silent near the golden doors.” A classic curse tablet, but what is less classic is the invocation made to the Mutae Tacitae. This goddess, in the singular, is set by Ovid in the etiological myth of the Feralia, the festival of the dead at the end of February. This is the story that is connected to the birth of the Lares. A talkative nymph, Lara, from Lala, etymologically the “Talkative one,” revealed to Juno that her husband Jupiter was going to woo the nymph Juturna. She was punished and sent by the all-powerful to the underworld, to silence. It was Mercury who took her. Mercury, who was also the god of thieves and thugs, rapes her on the way. She clearly remained there and gave birth to two boys, who became the Lares. On our fragment of a curse tablet, Ovid’s Tacita Muta has become the Mutae Tacitae, following a relatively conventional practice that will not surprise us. The Eileithyiae, the Furrinae, the Camenae and others attest to this, being sometimes in the plural, sometimes in the singular. What is extraordinary, however, is the fact that Tacita Muta was only known to Ovid.⁴⁰ His etiology is a small masterpiece of the kind, to the extent that he could be considered as having invented everything, including the name of the goddess. In addition, we will note the fate reserved for the brave Quartus, sent to Orcus like Lara, and the role attributed to the mouse that already intervenes in the rite as it is described by Ovid (placing incense in a hole dug by a mouse), as if the author of the curse tablet were winking at the poet with these allusions.

But – and this is what interests us – we see the name Mutae Tacitae show up in Raetia! From two things to one. Either Tacita Muta was a real divine figure, or the author of the curse tablet was literate and had composed his invocation according to Ovid, himself creating a specialized goddess intended to silence a rival or an enemy. Which solution to choose? I am inclined toward the first, for the change from the singular to the plural Tacitae indicates in my opinion a religious practice known for decades. This was also the case for Furrina, found in the singular in the name of her lucus, until the time of Varro, in the middle of the first century BC, and then it appears in the plural on inscriptions from the end of the second and third centuries AD found in this sacred wood.

***

We can thus appreciate the value of this brief survey. In Rome, we almost never know how a cult was born, how a divinity was introduced. Not only do the origins explain nothing, as H. Versnel writes, but we never particularly know the origins, especially of the most important divinities. How was the Capitoline Triad installed in Rome? We have at our disposal only myths, and we must deduce the rest of the observations that we can make for the historical period, say in the first century BC and under the Empire. The religious restorations of Octavian/Augustus themselves, for which we have an impressive amount of evidence, are far from clear. Remember the arval brethren and their cult’s reinvention. Situations such as these that enable us to see the new cities of the provinces, especially in the colonies or the municipia, constitute a very privileged field of experimentation, the importance of which is just beginning to be seen. This is partly because we lack a document that suddenly helps us understand everything.

One of the most interesting lines of research is the following: the Roman deities – that is, those of Rome on the banks of the Tiber – were local and connected with their city and the families. They were not expected to be adopted far away and by foreigners, even if these foreigners became Roman citizens. Yet this is what happened. Those responsible for public religious life, family fathers in the settings of family devotions, and even individuals reflected, at the moment when they came into contact with a new institutional context, on how to reconstruct their collective religions. They chose Roman names for their gods – or sanctioned even older traditions – and gave them epicleses: Lenus, Intarabus, and others. They also adopted, qua members of a Roman collectivity, Roman deities. Seen from the Roman side, this new device made it possible to extend the domain of the gods of a Roman city. Somewhat like the provincial government extended, without too much distortion, the jurisdiction of the magistrates of the city of Rome. As the law, which was intended only to regulate relations between citizens in Rome, theology and sacred law were extended by a sort of legal fiction to divinities that were not Roman but henceforth had a vocation to act in a Roman context. It was, incidentally, the extension, according to strict guidelines, of the great Roman principles to the various cities of the empire that made possible the cohesion and the survival of the whole, as a recent study by Clifford Ando shows.⁴¹ In religion, the question has not hitherto been studied, but it is also more difficult, inasmuch as, when the Roman world was Christianized and then destroyed by the Barbarians, Roman sacred law, the jurisprudence of which perhaps contained important data for this issue, fell into the trash cans of history.