CHAPTER SEVEN
Religions and the Integration
of Cities in the Empire in
the Second Century AD:
The Creation of a Common
Religious Language
William Van Andringa
An inscription discovered in 1973 in the city wall of Lugo (Léon), capital of a con-
ventus 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 ; AE1985, 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 reli-
gious one (AE1980, 595 bis) rather than reflecting the career itself. At the begin-
ning of the text, the imperial numinaappear 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 continu-
ing existence, several centuries after the conquest of Africa, of divinities of provin-
cial origin, some of which, among them Caelestis, the goddess of Carthage, even
had temples in Rome. The name of the city Augusta Emerita in this list may seem
unusual, but it was normal religious custom at the time to associate cities or groups
of people with the gods and imperial power within the sphere of the divine.