Book contents
- Religion and the Making of Roman Africa
- Religion and the Making of Roman Africa
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Colonial Histories
- Part II Themes in the Making of Hegemony
- 3 Making Africa with Punic Signs
- 4 Making a God
- 5 Making Sanctuary Communities
- 6 Making Children Subjects of Empire
- 7 Making Offerings
- 8 Remaking Spaces and Societies
- 9 Making Empire
- Book part
- References
- Index
5 - Making Sanctuary Communities
from Part II - Themes in the Making of Hegemony
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2024
- Religion and the Making of Roman Africa
- Religion and the Making of Roman Africa
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part I Colonial Histories
- Part II Themes in the Making of Hegemony
- 3 Making Africa with Punic Signs
- 4 Making a God
- 5 Making Sanctuary Communities
- 6 Making Children Subjects of Empire
- 7 Making Offerings
- 8 Remaking Spaces and Societies
- 9 Making Empire
- Book part
- References
- Index
Summary
While most accounts see worshippers of Saturn as indigenous Africans or rural peasants, this chapter argues that stele-dedicants used stelae to articulate positions for themselves within the frameworks of the wider empire. Unlike earlier stelae, which worked to imagine stele-dedicants as a horizontal community of equals, stelae dedicated from the first century BCE onward became billboards that asserted the prestige of dedicants in the deeply localized but also vertically structured world of the Roman Empire. This can be seen in the adoption of new anthropocentric iconographies that adapt a koine of imagery, the composition of stelae, and new titles for worshippers like sacerdos that are borrowed from a civic sphere.
Keywords
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- Information
- Religion and the Making of Roman AfricaVotive Stelae, Traditions, and Empire, pp. 176 - 228Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024