else, but a city, like any other autonomous community, by definition determined its
own cults and religious calendar. This was particularly true of peregrine cities, where
cultic sites were not managed according to Roman sacred law (Pliny, Epist.10.50).
The notion of religious autonomy was equally valid for the colonies, even if, as the
altar regulations at Narbonne or Salona testify, the foundation and management of
cultic sites followed Roman rules. If, indeed, we believe one of the rare surviving
municipal laws (M. Crawford 1996: no. 25), from Urso in Baetica, the document
issued at the foundation of a colony only foresaw, in principle, the establishment of
a cult of the Capitoline triad: the adoption of the great gods of the Roman state as
patron gods of all Roman communities followed on logically (Beard et al. 1998).
As regards all other cults, the authorities had free choice, guided as much by the
basic criteria of ancient tradition as by the community’s specific needs.
It is no surprise, therefore, to see that, in the provinces of Africa, most of the
Capitolia were constructed in the second and the beginning of the third centuries
ad, the period when most of the cities were promoted to the status of municipium
or colony. At Sabratha, the successive procurement of the status of municipiumand
then colony was further sanctioned by the construction of an imposing Capitolium
in the monumental center that already contained a temple to Liber Pater and Serapis.
At Cuicul (Djemila), it seems that the Capitolium was built at the time of the colony’s
foundation, under Nerva or Trajan. Nevertheless, the link between legal promotion
and the implantation of a cult was not automatic. Thus, at Thugga, the Capitolium
was consecrated under Marcus Aurelius by both the pagus(rural district) and the
civitas, even though the city was still attached to the colony of Carthage. However,
this was probably undertaken in response to the cult of the Capitoline triad, long
established in the colony of Carthage, at a time when Thugga was about to obtain
the status of an autonomous city.
On the other hand, it is obvious that municipiaand colonies, once promoted,
operated publicly like Roman communities. That was when cults which further ratified
the institutional rapprochement with Rome established themselves in the city, as it
can be seen by the statues erected in the forum of Cuicul. The 20 effigies identified
from the second centuryad are all representations of the emperor or civic concord:
the colony lived in step with Roman power. One also wonders if these institutional
transformations were not sometimes at the root of the abandonment of certain
practices that were no longer adapted to the new communal reality. Thus, archae-
ologists have noted that Sabratha’s tophet ceased to be active toward the end of
the first centuryad. At Vertault in Gaul, the sacrifice of horses and dogs attested at
a suburban cultic site appears to cease around the middle of the first centuryad,
perhaps in connection with the development of the nearby city that is known to
have obtained the status of vicus.
The provincial cities’ ongoing and ever more frequent promotion undeniably played
an important role in the Romanization of cults. In the beginning, the generalization
of the ius Latinum– in Gaul and Hispania, this phenomenon took place during the
first centuryad – made it possible to frame religious changes within municipal struc-
tures. Rapprochement with Rome and its cults was later reinforced by numerous pro-
motional policies throughout the second centuryad, notably under the Antonines
Religions and the Integration of Cities 89