Adiectus

Adiectus was a slave and a member of the Mithraic community at Carnuntum, attested in the second century by a votive inscription (TNMM 753; CIL III 4414; CIMRM 1676; Vorbeck 1980, no. 43; Kremer 2012, no. 355) from Mithraeum I. His name is not entirely certain. Earlier editions generally read Adlectus, while the more recent examination of the inscription by Kremer favours Adiectus (Kremer 2012, pp. 182–183).

The inscription explicitly identifies him as a servus, although the abbreviated words that follow, Ti C V, remain difficult to interpret. They have traditionally been understood as identifying his owner, but Kremer has proposed a different expansion, possibly involving c(onductoris) v(ilicus). Adiectus’s precise position and the identity of his master therefore remain uncertain.

What is clear is that Adiectus made a vow to the invincible Mithras. The inscription apparently invokes the god as genitor luminis, ‘begetter of light’, an exceptional formula in Mithraic epigraphy. Vágási discusses the dedication in connection with the complex relationship between Mithras and Sol in Pannonia (Vágási 2018, pp. 359–360), while Silnović notes that genitor is otherwise unattested as an epithet of Mithras and mentions the possibility that the dedicant was of Palmyrene origin (Silnović 2024, p. 108). This latter suggestion remains hypothetical.

Adiectus thus provides one of the comparatively rare examples of an enslaved individual who can be identified by name within the Mithraic community of Carnuntum, although little else about his life can presently be established.