of the world over which peace was guaranteed by the imperial victories. During the
same period, at Dura-Europos on the eastern limits of the empire, international gods
such as Adonis, Zeus, and Artemis were invoked just as frequently as the local Aphlad
and Azzanathkona, again for the health of the emperor. At Gerasa, at least 50
dedications for the health of the emperor can be found from the second centuryad,
some of which, in a revealing way, link the emperors’ health with the concord
of the people. Also beginning in the second century, African populations started to
invoke the gods for the health of the emperor (Smadja 1986). The safety of the world
and the preservation of the city: these were the major questions which preoccupied
provincial communities at a time when political integration had joined the destiny
of Rome with that of the provincial populations.
All communities were involved, as can be seen from the altars erected on Mount
Pfaffenberg throughout the second century and at the beginning of the third cen-
tury by the Roman citizens settled in Carnuntum. In Germania, most of the public
and private dedications made to the gods from the middle of the second century
ad onward contain the abbreviation in h(onorem) d(omus) d(ivinae). The Divine
House and the gods – thus piety located individuals within the established world.
Again during the same period, the stage of the theater of Belginum-Wederath, vicus
of the Treveri, was inaugurated with a joint invocation of the domus divina, the god
Cretus and the Geniusof the pagus: imperial power, the local god, and the Genius
of the district – the inaugural sacrifice drew the precise institutional limits of the
community at a specific moment in its history. The formulae were many and varied,
as witnessed by the use of different phrases linked to local customs in the provinces
of Gaul: among the Bituriges Cubi, imperial power was invoked in the form of
the divine power (numen) of Augustus; the Aedui preferred to invoke Augustus in
religious dedications. Such invocations appeared on most of the edifices paid for by
the civic elites: arches, temples to the gods, theaters, fountains – all the monuments
which defined urbanitaswere built thanks to the prosperity of the elite and the city
itself (the two were indistinguishable in ancient societies), a prosperity made poss-
ible by the emperor.
The result of provincial integration strictly defined in relation to the Roman power
in Rome, the piety of this era universally demanded that people worship the gods
for the emperor’s sake. The populations of the empire knew that peace and happi-
ness depended as much on divine benevolence as on the emperor’s immense
powers. This conception of world order resulted in the appearance and spread of
peculiar monuments. In Egypt, statuettes represented the gods Horus, Bes, or Anubis
in Roman military attire, following the example of cuirassed imperial statues. In the
frontier provinces of Germania and eastern Gaul, columns crowned with a horse-
man trampling an anguipede, symbol of the triumph of civilization over barbarism,
appeared throughout the region (550 are known) in cities as well as in rural domains
between, essentially,ad 170 and 240. At a time when the Roman empire was encoun-
tering its first problems along the borders, such monuments clearly spelled out the
communities’ desire to encourage imperial victories and the health of the empire
with which they were connected.
94 William Van Andringa