Cult Servants of “State Cults” Paid by the
Roman State, the Cities, or the Sacrificing
Magistrates or Priests
Many of the attendants and servants to the priests and magistrates in the city of Rome
were not paid for their specific duties but were taken care of as dependants of the
state or of individuals. These servants and attendants were slaves sustained by the
state, called servi publicior publici, or to a lesser extent by their private owners
(magistrates or priests); others were freedmen. Both slaves and free citizens could
be called ministri– servants to the priests. Our sources for these attendants are restricted
to a few remarks in literary sources and later lexica, a few funerary inscriptions of
ministri, and some other inscriptional evidence, as well as reliefs and other monu-
ments depicting scenes of ritual processions and of sacrifices.
Although we know of some of the duties of the different servants and attendants,
it is impossible to give exact definitions or detailed descriptions for all of the duties
and functions of these ministri. The ostiarius (janitor) was someone keeping a
sanctuary’s keys, the aeditumusin charge of a temple was a kind of sacristan, fictores
were bakers of the sacrificial cakes, the pullariiwere keepers of sacred chickens, the
victimariiassistants at (animal) sacrifices. The victimariihad different functions and
names. For example, the one who had to beat the animal-victim with an axe or a
hammer was called popa. According to the inscriptional evidence of the city of Rome,
most victimariiwere freedmen, but according to late antique literary sources, Isidor
and Servius, the popawas a public slave. Moreover, we know of dancers and musicians,
tibicines(flute-players), fidicines(lyre-players), liticines(players on a lituus, that is,
trumpeters), and cornicines(players on a cornu) being all part of some of the cultic
processions and other rites (Fless 1995: 79–93; and chapter 18 above). Vicoministri
were public slaves who assisted the vicomagistri, representatives of the quarters or
viciof the city of Rome, during their ritual performances of the compitalia, a festival
honoring the Lares, gods of the crossroads.
However, there were not only adult ministribut also young ones called camilli
andcamillae(boy- or girl-attendants of the flamen Dialisand the flaminica) or pueri
et puellae patrimi matrimique, boys and girls with father and mother alive if serv-
ing other priests than the flamenand his wife. The camilliand other boys (and girls
only to the flaminica, the wife of the rex, and the empresses as members of im-
perial cult service) serving at the sacrifices all seem to be freeborn. The servants’ and
attendants’ sustenance by parents, masters, former masters, the cities, or the city of
Rome did not depend on the attendants’ specific duties, such as at a sacrifice or pro-
cession; their living had to be guaranteed whatsoever duty they had to perform. It
is likely that freedmen like the kalatores(Rüpke 2005a: 595– 6, 1517–36) assisting
their former masters were paid or rewarded by their masters for these specific duties,
but we have no direct evidence for that.
For the time of the empire, we have evidence of such freedmen as kalatores
(personal servants of a priest) of the Arval Brethren, the flamines, the augurs, the
332 Marietta Horster