On North African Cults in Roman Dacia

Abstract

The contact between the Greek-Roman civilization and the Carthage one led to the overlapping of the African plural-stratified polytheisms and the classic ones and to the disolution of the ancient divine characters into the Roman religious system. The barbarian and Punic theonomies preserved in Roman Africa are few: one Saturnus Balcaranensis, one Aulisua, Iocolon, Bacax, Bonchor, Varsutina. Africitascan be traced in the art of the votive monuments, in the practiced rituals, in the preference for a pantheosgod, Saturnus, preference that contradicts the Roman “polytheist” availability. Saturnus, Caelestis, Aesculapius, Mercurius Silvanus, Liber Pater, Hercules, Venus, Pluton, Mars, Neptunus are merely Latin names that the Africans chose for designating in a more or less consistent manner their Punic-Barbarian gods: Ba’al Hammon, Tanit, Eshmoun, a Berber god whose attribute is a scorpion, Shadrapha, Milk’ashtart, Astarté, Baal Addir, El Qone Aras, Arish, etc.

The modern research discovers – depending on the adopted perspective – different valences of these interpretationes: one of the components, the classic or the Berber-Punic one, is minimized in order to support the Africanization or the Romanization of these divine characters, the Romanization of the North-African worshipers or their resistence in front of the Romanization. These categorical and generalizing interpretations are both abusive. The Africanization and Romanization vary depending on their loyal people, on the social environments, on the epoch. The Africans in Dacia repeat – mutatis mutandis – the gestures of the ones left home. For the African P. Raecius Primus, Ba’al Hammon and Tanit form a new couple (Saturnus and Latona) that does not appear this way in the Greek-Roman pantheon and mythological system. Olus Terentius Pudens Uttedianus worships a Roman-African quasi-official divinity, Caelestis, together with the popular gods from Lepcis Magna - Eshmoun and Astarté and the Genius of the Dacians. An erudite Roman like M. Herennius Faustus classicizes by connecting some rare cultural epithets with the African Ba’al Hammon, turned into Saturnus securus. The soldiers from Micia are Romanized enough too in order not to use any barbarian theonomy: the prefect Rufus worships Silvanus, Liber Pater and Pluton.

The inhabitants of Roman North-Africa did not place on antithetical, irreducible positions the inheritance of the ancient civilization and the contribution of Rome. These divine characters of African essence and Roman aspect show that their loyal worshipers found the way of interpretation, conciliation and syncretism.