Dis deabusque immortalibus ...On the invocations to the gods and the goddesses in Dacia

Abstract

The ignorance of the real name of a god responsible for a disaster opens the door to the invocation of the anonymous gods, especially of the plurality of the unknown gods. The Romans, too, when they do not know the identity of the force causing an earthquake, for example, sacrifice to the “god or goddesses.” We know that type of de­dication from a series of inscriptions, disseminated throughout the Empire, containing the invocation dis deabusque secundum interpretationem oraculi Clarii Apollinis (ten cases in Latin, an inscription in Greek). For the interpretation of this surprisingly homogeneous corpus of inscriptions dedicated to the gods and goddesses according to the interpretation of the oracles of Apollo in Claros, was chosen solution related to the form and destination of the monuments (considered exposed written stones, i.e. stones to be set on the walls of city fortifications). C. P. Jones thought that these stone blocks and slabs were built in the wall of cities and find, therefore, an explanation for the entire corpus: an imperial supplication occasioned by a widespread plague, that is to say the Antonine plague (started after the return of Lucius Verus armies of the East). His conclusion seems well accepted today.

In Dacia, there is no dedication dis deabusque according with the interpretation of Clarian oracles, but there are some echoes of a significant religious event (consultation of oracles by the Emperor, and then a general supplication). Disparate data entries are the inscriptions dedicated dis deabusque immortalibus (in explicit relation with Caracalla, like the altars of M. Aurelius Frontonianus and C. Aurelius Sigillius) and the altar of P. Didius Italicus which includes the expression secundum interpretationem.