Album of Sentinum

TNMM 570 ↔ CIMRM 688

Cultores D(ei) S(olis) I(nvicti) Mithrae / (Palm-branch). Patroni, prosedente C. Propertio Profuturo /.

First column:
Coiedius Proculus / Ligurius Theodotus / Mussius Vindex / Coiedius Hilarianus / Sentin(as) pater leonum Ianuarius / Titius Castor / Pompe(i)us Pompeianus / Gessius Optabilis / Ligurius Clementinus / Plotius Fortunatus / Licinius Faustus / Aetrius Romanus / Asinius Commo[dus] / Visenn(ius) Quinqu[ennalis].

Second column:
Pompon(ius) Victor / Statius Velox / Vassiden(us) Verus / Helvenat(ius) Celer / Carfan(ius) Achille(s) / Casidius Rufin(us) / Antist(ius) Benign(us) / Aetrius Irenaeus / Helven(atius) Semellinus / Sentin(as) Valentin(us) / lulius Victorin(us) / [Ca]ecil(ius) Sozo[n] . . . / Ve[recund(us)]? . . .

Third column:
Rantif(ius) Verus / Caesoni(us) Dexter / Ianuarius Sent(inatium) / Aelius Ylas / Coied(ius) Pamphilus / Aduren(us) Theseus / Coied(ius) Auxa[n]on (follows a space for five lines). D. menesterio / T. Sevio Felice.

Ianuarius and Valentinus seem to be liberti of Sentinum.

According to a decree from 260 A.D. (CIL XI 5748) Aetrius Romanus, Casidius Rufinus and Statius Velox belong to a collegium fabrum. This inscription is thus of a later date than the preceding one. The materials too, in which they have been engraved, are different: the first is in marble, the other in lime-stone.

The album of Sentinum gives the names of 38 followers, all male.

In Sentinum, in the middle of the third century, with the exception of the public slave Ianuarius, all the cultores mentioned have a name and a nickname. They are therefore free men. Some of them, however, have Greek cognomina (Theseus, [H]ylas, Irenaeus, Achille[s], Theodotus), which reveal a servile origin and suggest, therefore, that there were probably freedmen among these devotees.

The onomastic study also shows that several of the gentilices listed are also found in the epigraphic material of Sentinum. The followers of Mithras were thus linked or related to families well identified in the city – the Aelii, the Coiedii, the Rantifanii and the Vassidenii in particular – but none of them seemed to belong to the ruling elite of the municipe. For Clauss, most of these men must have belonged to the middle strata (Mittelschicht) of the civic population, mixing ingenues and freedmen, such as Sentinas Ianuarius, pater leonum (Father of Lions) and public freedman of the city.

In Sentinum, as in other cities (Poctovio, Ostia, etc.), some of the followers of Mithras were recruited from the world of trades and among the members of professional corporations. Here, the names of Aetrius Romanus, Statius Velox and Casidius Rufinus also appear in the enumeration of the delegates of the collegium fabrum, dispatched to a new patron (CIL XI 5748). Casidius Rufinus is even named there as quinquennalis of the collegium fabrum. These collegiati therefore belonged to both a trade association and a religious community.

The patronus honoured on the first line of the inscription bears the same name as a sacerdos of the community, Caius Propertius Augurinus, who had been active some forty years earlier. The same is true of the minister Sevius Felix, who bears the same gentilice as another president of the community, Sevius Facundus (CIMRM 689), suggesting a form of generational continuity in the leadership of the group.

From Sentinum there is an inscribed marble plaque of the association of the cultores d(ei) S(olis) I(nvicti) Mithrae (CIL XI 5737). Most likely dating to the 260s CE, the album lists 36 names, organized in three columns and corresponding to at least three groups. Schematically, the initial names in the left column appear to be the patroni of the group, Line 5 of Column I seems to record a senior priest (pater leonum), and the remaining names in Columns I, II, and III seem to pertain to regular rank and file initiates. Yet there is much debate about how to interpret the organization of the names and the identification of the cultores of Mithras listed here. Noting the numerous grades of membership in the Mithraic cult spread throughout the Roman world, Clauss argues that the men registered in this Sentinum album were only the patrons and the higher-ranking or full members, likely referred to as leones, which explains the presence of a single pater leonum.

The membership list of this cult includes two men classified as probable municipal freedmen of Sentinum. Sentin(as) Ianuarius was the high priest pater leonum recorded in Column I, Line 5, and then among the larger group of members was Sentin(as) Valentin(us) in Column II, Line 10. Besides the fact that they have the municipal gentilicium of Sentinum, their identification as ex-slaves of the town is strengthened by the presence of a current municipal slave in Column III, Line 3, Ianuarius, whose entry reads Ianuarius Sent(inatium). In fact, Bormann proposed that this slave could be the son of the pater leonum Sentin(as) Ianuarius, since the two share the same cognomen.

It is somewhat striking to find a slave among these free(d) members, especially if they represented the most senior cultores in the association. Certainly, there are parallels for municipal slaves belonging to local voluntary associations, such as Zosimus of Saepinum, for whom the cultores Flaminiani erected an epitaph (CIL IX 2483), and, even more remarkably, the two municipal slaves, from Puteoli and Liternum, who were listed as corporati in the Augustales at Liternum (AE 2001, 854). How widespread such membership was among slaves cannot be determined. Tran has pointed out that this phenomenon of slaves entering local associations was for the most privileged among them a form of social mobility within an otherwise severely restricted life.