Dedicatory Inscriptions
The most numerous sources for religions in the Roman world are the so-called
dedicatory or votive inscriptions, that is, inscriptions on dedicated monumental objects
such as temples, altars, statues, vases, etc. or referring to these things. They were
already a frequent phenomenon in the Greek world. They informed the reader to
which god or goddess the object in question had been consecrated and by whom.
Generally these texts are brief and highly formalized. Standard elements are: the
name of the god (normally in the dative, sometimes in the genitive), the name of
the donor (normally in the nominative and during imperial times regularly in the
second position – differently in earlier Greek inscriptions: Naumann 1933: 70, 72),
and an often abbreviated dedicatory formula, such as d(ono) d(edit)or v(otum) s(olvit)
l(aetus) l(ibens) m(erito) –in Greek anétheken– (is the wider use of aphíerosen– and
kathíerosen – in Greek inscriptions of imperial times the consequence of a Roman
influence?). These elements were only left out in cases where the context made
them really superfluous – as for example if a pater familiasdedicated an object in the
lararium, the shrine of the Lares, of his house. There was apparently no equivalent
to the practice of some Jews and Christians in late antiquity who explicitly renounced
giving their names because these were known to the Jewish and Christian God and
only this was important. Even if only the initials of a donor were engraved, as was
sometimes the case in inscriptions of the high empire (ILS3225), his contempor-
aries could probably identify the donor all the same.
These three standard elements tell us the things about which we are best
informed: the names of the donors and the names of the gods. Both are important
tools to determine certain aspects of religious life in the Roman world, and both
are problematic ones. The Roman nomenclature with its three elements – the
praenomen, the nomen gentile, and the cognomen– is a complicated and distinctive
one compared to the nomenclatures used in other societies. Therefore, Roman names
can be a good indicator in order to ascertain the identity of a person mentioned in
two or more sources and to determine the geographical and – in some cases – social
origin of a person. But there were only about two handfuls of first names. What is
even worse is the fact that all people who obtained their Roman citizenship from a
Roman emperor and all persons descending from such people or liberated by them
took the nomen gentileof the emperor in question. Because of this, certain nomina
gentiliaalso lost their value as a distinctive element of a name, and we are left with
only the cognomenas a distinctive element. If the donors were given by their par-
ents a very common cognomenor if the Roman army did it, as was common in the
east, there are no possibilities of determining the donors’ ethnic origin.
Donors quite often – but not always (Eck 1989: 39) – give not only their names,
but also indications of their social status. They point to their senatorial or eques-
trian offices or to their rank in the Roman army or in the familia Caesaris, that is,
the slaves and freedmen of the emperor. Thus, we are in general relatively well informed
about the social structure of these adherents of a certain god, who venerated him
by dedicating objects with inscriptions. In some cases we even get information about
180 Rudolf Haensch