Pylades

Pylades was a slave active within the imperial administrative world of Roman Gaul during the second half of the 2nd century CE. He is known from a marble inscription discovered in the Mithraeum of Angers (ancient Iuliomagus), where he dedicated a vow to the “invincible god Mithras”.

The inscription identifies him as the slave of Felix Agathangelianus, who himself was an imperial slave (seruus Augusti). This means that Pylades was probably a uicarius, effectively a slave belonging to another slave within the imperial household administration. Although Roman law denied slaves independent legal personality, imperial slaves could possess a peculium and maintain their own subordinate servants, creating highly stratified hierarchies even within servile status.

His master, Felix Agathangelianus, appears to have risen from private slavery into the imperial administration, a form of social advancement associated with the familia Caesaris. Through this connection, Pylades belonged to the orbit of the imperial bureaucracy operating in the provincial capital of Iuliomagus. The inscription therefore provides rare evidence for the presence of imperial administrative personnel involved in the cult of Mithras in western Gaul.

His Greek name, common among slaves throughout the Roman world, does not necessarily indicate Greek ethnic origin. The inscription also preserves the unusual formula “Augusto. Deo Invicto Mithrae”, linking the imperial cult and Mithraic devotion, something relatively uncommon in Mithraic epigraphy from Gaul.

The dedication suggests that the Mithraic community of Angers included not only military personnel, but also civil servants, imperial dependants, and members of the administrative middle ranks of Roman provincial society.