the practice of writing down vows on columns and walls at the Clitumna Springs
(Pliny, Epist.8.8.7).
Not all dedications that we can still read explicitly tell us what the nature of the
contract was. The majority only publish it after its fulfillment (uotum soluit, euxa-
menos), making the offering once the vow has been satisfied. A certain Tullia offers
the counterpart for her vow after her hair has been recovered (CIL11.1305). Other
inscriptions more or less clearly record despair, fear (ILS3411), pain (paschousain
Greek), or dangers from which the faithful escaped safely (IG10, 2.1.67: sôtheis ek
megalou kindunou tou kata thalassan; Veyne 2005: 518 –19). Other devotees, who
were saved from shipwreck (ultimum uotum, Petronius 103 – 4), or who have been
abandoned by doctors (ILS3513: derelictus a medicis), thank the gods the more
warmly the more they were considered by men as lost. The gods took care of a faith-
ful person’s bodily health even without his visiting specialized curative sanctuaries
(cf. infra). During festivals, sacrificial meat that was shared by participants once the
god had got his part (the exta) was welcome to enrich the ordinary diet, as such
feriaewere expected to be times of good cheer (Plautus, Curculio532). Last but
not least, gods played a role as guarantors for property, temples being used as deposit
banks (Plautus, Bacchis306 –13). Except during the night, when they were closed
(Plautus, Bacchis900 –1), they remained open all the time for the most anxious of
the faithful. Seneca, who had an abstract idea of the divine as a Stoic, considered as
dementia(folly) and furor(deluded madness) the way some devotees undertook an
intimate relationship with cult statues: “There are men who summon the gods to
give bond for them, and some who offer them lawyers’ briefs and explain their case”
(De superstitione, apudAug. Civ.6.10; Lactantius, Institutiones divinae2.2.14; see
Estienne 2001). In Florence, a devotee called for Isis to recover a tax unduly paid
to the imperial fiscusby his city (RICIS511/0208).
To put it shortly, the votive relationship was a ritual product of routine and uni-
versal preoccupations, like desire for well-being and apprehension about the future,
even without a specific expected wish or trouble. A devotee of the Magna Mater
declared he had performed a taurobolium“for happiness’ sake” (symbolon eutychiès)
(Duthoy 1969: no. 33.4). Gods were thus invoked as “custos,” “conservator,” “adi-
utor,” “salutaris”; “sôter” in Greek. Religious issues embraced the worldly conduct
of life; they aimed at negotiating possible critical steps (discriminain Latin, Juvenal
12.24) as best they could, and feeling secure with peaceful promises. One of the
most famous cases of political negotiation through a uotumis that of Camillus, in
367 bce: after he had been created a dictator in the midst of a harsh conflict between
patricians and plebeians, he promised to dedicate a temple to Concordia(Plutarch,
Camillus42). From a sociological analysis, the votive relationship offered a super-
natural legitimacy for decisions or actions. From a psychological approach, it
entailed being assisted and reassured, through the forwarding of hopes or dis-
appointments, anger or contentment, to superior powers (Versnel 1981b). Whatever
topographical or functional competency each power had according to each occasion,
their whole community could appear as a possible alternative. We can easily find
epigraphs calling for the whole pantheon (dis deabusque omnibus; in Greek “to X
kai tois allois theois”) or to the peculiar gods of a community, for instance “the Twelve
Religious Actors in Daily Life 283