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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Article
Four Rare and Unusual Dedications From Areas of Viminacium and Nais
Author(s)
Radmila Zotović
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DOI:10.17265/1537-1506/2018.02.004
Affiliation(s)
Institute of Archaeology, Belgrade, Serbia
ABSTRACT
In the areas of Viminacium
and Nais four rare and unusual votive dedications were identified. These are
the dedications Deus Aeternus, Dii Angeli, Hero (Viminacium), and Atta
(Naissus). The dedications Deus Aeternus and Dii Angeli may perhaps indicate
Christianity, while the dedications Hero and Atta may indicate settlers of
Greek origin. The dedication to goddess Atta could have been made by a freed
man, since her cult was to an extent related to the cult of Heracles who,
thanks to his loyal service to Omphale, where he was to repent his sins, was
freed from slavery, and thus was also a protector of freed man. Main
methodological approach in this paper is the analysis of cults as well as their
backgrounds as conditions for their realisation. Until now for the territory of
Serbia there was not corpus of analyzing cults. There is only corpus of grave
and votive monuments for the territory of Serbia with very rare and sporadic
comments of cult. So, the main topic of this article is analyzing of cults. It
includes the main meaning of the cult, dateing of monuments and historical and
archeological backgrounds of the cults. At the same time it was the main method
in the analyzing of the mentioned votive monuments. By this method as the
result appeared the dateing of the monuments and improvement of existing Greek
settlers. At the same time there were the main research questions which should
be ensolved. For ensolved the dateing of the monuments was used the system of
analyzing syllabic formulae and for the improvement of existing Greek settlers
the method of “healty mind” and connections of analogies. As a result the
dateing of monuments of Deus Aeternus, Dii Angeli, and Hero was early 2-nd
century, and for Atta from the beginning of 2-nd to the end of 3-rd century.
KEYWORDS
Roman period, Viminacium, Naissus, votive monuments, cult of Deus Aeternus, Dii Angeli, Hero and Atta, early dateing of Christianity, improvement of existing Greek settlers
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