Tabula ansata of Lucius from Bremenium

TNMM 566 ↔ CIMRM 876

Tabula lapidea magna litteris bonis.

Deo invicto Soli soc(io) / sacrum. Pro salute / et incolumitate imp(eratoris) Caes(aris) / M. Aureli Antonini pii felic(is) / aug(usti) L. Caecilius Optatus / trib(unus) coh(ortis) I Vardul(lorum) cum con[sa]/craneis votum l[i]be[n]s [s(olvit) aedemq(ue)] / a solo extrux[it d(e) s(ua) p(ecunia)].

Probabiliter M. Aurelium Antoninum hunc Elagabalum esse statuit Bruce. Between 219-222 A.D.

L. Caecilius Optatus: cf. CIL VII 1035 in which he occurs in an inscription dedicated to Minerva.

From consacranei it appears, that the inscription is dedicated to Mithras (Cumont). ’The latest treatment of this inscription by Richmond in Northumberland County History XV, 145, High Rochester No. 5, where he discusses the reading’ (Wright).

The inscription is engraved on a limestone slab, in a tabula ansata in relief, found as a replacement shortly before 1730 on the site of Bremenium, an outpost on Hadrian’s Wall in northern Brittany.

The tribune L. Caecilius Optatus, known from two other texts from the same site, also wrote a dedication to Minerva and Genius loci (RIB 1268). Here, he dedicates to Mithras and Sol the construction of a building (probably a small mithreum, which has not been found) in the company of a group of people, the consacranei.

The term is not very common, and is only found in Tertullian (Apol. 16,6), in the History of Augustus (Gord. 14,1) and in three inscriptions: a dedication from Tolosa to a Gallic divinity (CIL XII 5379), one from Salona (CIL III 2109) where the dedicator is referred to as col(lega) and consacranius, and another from Novae which concerns a collegius consacrani lovaianorum, thus dedicated to the Capitoline triad.

The word is used to describe the members of a religious association, united in the same cult, and its use in the Bremenium inscription indicates that the terminology in use for this form of community organisation could also be applied to the cults of Mithras.