Sentinas Ianuarius

Sentinas Ianuarius was a member of the Mithraic community at Sentinum, in Umbria, where he is named in the remarkable album of cultores Dei Solis Invicti Mithrae as pater leonum (TNMM 570; CIL XI 5737; ILS 4215; CIMRM 688; Canciani 2022, no. 51c; Chalupa 2023, no. 009-Umb-004).

His title is significant. Rather than simply identifying him as a Leo, pater leonum appears to designate a senior figure responsible for the Leones, a group that may have occupied an especially prominent place within the local Mithraic community. Richard Gordon and Jaime Alvar have both stressed the unusual importance of the grade Leo in the surviving evidence, and Alvar notes that the Sentinum inscription may even use Leones in a broader sense for fully recognised members of the cult (Alvar 2008, pp. 369–371).

Ianuarius was probably a municipal freedman of Sentinum. His nomen, Sentinas, derives from the name of the town and is shared by Sentinas Valentinus, another probable municipal freedman appearing in the same list. The inscription also records a Ianuarius Sentinatium, explicitly a public slave belonging to the municipality. This combination has led scholars to identify Sentinas Ianuarius and Sentinas Valentinus as former municipal slaves (Bastianelli 2018, pp. 112–113; Easton 2019; Chalupa 2023, pp. 236–237). Bormann even suggested that the public slave Ianuarius might have been related to the pater leonum, although the shared cognomen alone cannot establish such a relationship (Easton 2019).

The album was probably compiled over an extended period. Its beginnings may go back to the earlier third century, while several of its members also appear in a decree of the collegium fabrum of Sentinum dated 18 September 260. This provides a terminus around which the later phases of the list can be situated and places Ianuarius within a Mithraic community active during the middle decades of the third century.