1 Earliest Rome

ILS6U9; Vidman, Sylloge no.556
12.4 Isis
To Drusus Fabius Florus Vera[n]us, son of Drusus, of the Palatine tribe, priest of the holy
queen , by verdict of her majesty chosen as a devotee of Anubis, 1
councillor in
the Augustan village of the Laurentines, chief magistrate, 2
having filled all positions and
functions in the fifth shipping corporation of the lighter-men of Ostia, fellow member of
the corporations of the five regions of the coloniaof Ostia. To him Flavius Moschylus of
senatorial rank, an Isiac of this place, remembering his reverence and chastity, ordered in
his will the statue to be put up by his heirs, to an elegant patron who well deserved it.
The spot was given publicly by decree of the town council.
In honour of the day he was made priest, It was dedicated 17 days
before the Kalends of A[pril/August] [the Decii being] consul for
the third and first time . The spot was given by Julius Faustinus pontifexof
Vulcan and the sacred shrines, by permission of the agent of Flavius Moschylus, during
the five-year period of the censorship of Quintus Veturius Firmus Felix Socrates and
Lucius Florus Euprepes. 3
along with the officials of the basilica.
For the dedication he gave to the councillors 3000 sestertii,
1. On Anubis see 12.4d n.3.
2. The offices of councillor and chief magistrate were inscribed subsequently in place of a
line that was erased.
3. The proper local procedures were followed for putting up the statue in a public place.
12.4d The attraction for women
Roman writers often claim that women were particularly attracted to the cult of
Isis. In the famous (or infamous) satire devoted to the failings of women (see
also 8.7b and 13.4), Juvenal criticizes all kinds of female religious excesses:
involvement with the Magna Mater (Cybele), with Judaism, with illicit divining
and with magical practices. In this passage he is characterizing-venomously
- the devotion of a particular woman to the rituals of Isis.
It goes without saying that we should be chary of accepting uncritically the
views of a male satirist about female religiosity. If ancient crirics mean to imply
that women predominated in the cult, they are in conflict with the epigraphic
evidence. The subscribing inscriptions suggest: (a) that women did not outnumber
men in the cult at all (12.4f for example, refers only to men - though
this is, admittedly, an extreme case); (h) that the principal offices in the cult
were generally held by men not women. The seeming discrepancy between
Juvenal and the epigraphic evidence may be explained in various ways: for
example, Juvenal might be expressing the anxiety felt by Roman upper-class
men resulting from any independent religious activity on the part of their
wives; alternatively, it could be that the cultural misogyny of the authors made
them particularly associate women with marginal religious groups, on the lines
of the Bacchic women. (See Vol. 1, 96 andn.88; 11.4, 12.1.)
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