Aulus Caedicius Priscianus

A. Caedicius Priscianus was a Roman eques and a prominent member of the Mithraic community established in the castra peregrinorum on the Caelian Hill in Rome, beneath the present church of Santo Stefano Rotondo. He is identified by Bianchi with the A. Caedic(ius) Priscianus, egregius vir, named among the sacerdotes domus Augustae under Commodus, in a list probably dating to c. 180–184 CE (Bianchi 1979; CIL VI 2010b, 22).

Within the mithraeum, Caedicius held the grade of Pater. His name appears in connection with the dedication of the petra genetrix (TNMM 152), and Bianchi regarded him as the more prominent of the two Fathers attested in the sanctuary, the other being Aurelius Sabinus, Pater huius loci (Bianchi 1979). The coexistence of the two men led Bianchi to reject, as unlikely, a simple succession of Sabinus by Caedicius and to favour the contemporaneity of the relevant dedications.

Caedicius is also named in the acclamation Leo vivas cum Caedicio Patre, added to the sides of the two altars dedicated to Cautes and Cautopates. Bianchi interpreted the formula as celebrating the promotion of an initiate to the grade of Leo and suggested that the initiate may have been Baebius Quintianus, one of the dedicators of the altars. Gordon later accepted the identification of the Leo with Baebius Quintianus and cited the inscriptions as evidence for the symbolic relationship between a Mithraic initiate and his Father (Gordon 2001).

Bianchi further proposed that the group of dedications could belong to the initial establishment or furnishing of the mithraeum, which would place its foundation in the reign of Commodus and associate one of its earliest leading figures with the domus Augusta. Mastrocinque subsequently described Caedicius Priscianus as a sacerdos of the domus Augusta of Commodus who built and dedicated the Mithraeum of Santo Stefano Rotondo within the castra peregrinorum (Mastrocinque 2017).