Aelius Maximus

Aelius Maximus was a soldier (miles) of the Legio V Macedonica and a follower of Mithras at Potaissa, the legion’s base in Roman Dacia. He is known from a small marble relief found at Turda in 1859, on which he identifies himself simply as Ael(ius) Maximus miles leg(ionis) V Mac(edonicae) and records that he willingly fulfilled his vow by setting up the monument votum solvit libens posuit (TNMM 668; CIL III 899; Vermaseren 1956, CIMRM 1920–1921; EDH HD049039).

The relief is considerably more elaborate than the inscription. Around the central tauroctony are a series of episodes from the Mithraic myth, including Mithras carrying and riding the bull, the water miracle and the god’s birth from the rock, together with Sol, Luna and Oceanus. The dedication provides unusually direct evidence for the participation of an ordinary legionary in the Mithraic community of Potaissa.

Maximus was not the only member of the V Macedonica associated with Mithras there. Manfred Clauss places him among a small group of identifiable Mithraic adherents from Potaissa that also includes the soldiers Aurelius Dolens and Aurelius Montanus and the tesserarius Flavius Marcellinus (Clauss 1992, pp. 200–201). Later studies likewise identify Maximus specifically as one of the ordinary soldiers of the V Macedonica represented in the Mithraic epigraphy of the settlement (Boda 2004–2005, p. 205).

His praenomen, origin, Mithraic grade and subsequent career are unknown. The inscription itself cannot be dated closely: the Epigraphic Database Heidelberg assigns it to AD 167–275 (EDH HD049039). No evidence currently establishes a connection between this soldier and the homonymous Publius Aelius Maximus, a prominent magistrate of nearby Napoca.