Carlos López-Gómez, José

The Religious Landscape of Pax Iulia (Beja) during the Early Roman Empire - 2021.


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This paper will examine the religious manifestations discovered in the city of Pax Iulia (Beja) during the Early Imperial Period. These include a series of honorary monuments dated on the first century AD linked to the priesthood of the imperial cult, the remains of a monumental temple located at the head of the city’s forum, and a set of four religious epigraphic monuments dated between the mid-second and early third century dedicated to Isis, Mitra, Mater Magna and Bona Dea respectively. The major aim of this study is to investigate the peculiarities of the gods and their worshippers in order to understand how the city was prematurely integrated into the state religious trend at the beginning of the Principatus, as well as into the new cultic shifts that permeated in the city throughout the second century and provided the embeddedness of all social groups within the civic religious system.