Fitz Jenő (szerk.): Religions and Cults in Pannonia. Exhibiton an Székesfehérvár, Csók István Gallery 15 May - 30 September 1996 – Szent István Király Múzeum közleményei: A. sorozat 33. (1998)

HEALING DEITIES К. Póczy The healing deity of the Greeks, Asklepios, was venerated in Rome under the name of Aesculapius. His cult spread from Greece, in Pannónia we find on several inscriptions the name Asklepios in its original form. (KÁDÁR 1981, 78) His paredros is Hygieia; the divine couple is usually depicted together, facing the onlooker; Aesculapius holding in his hand a long staff, around which the snake applied in the healing is coiling. The deities represented thus on two reliefs of Aquincum, whose style is, though, different but their identical measures and find places in the canabae point to their belonging together (ERDÉLYI 1976, 119-120; 111. 164-165). The rites, formed in the famous sacred areas of Thessalonike, the island of Kos and Epidauros did not undergo a change when the borders of the Imperium Romanum were widened. The afflicted persons or their relatives appealed to the deity for help and when they were healed, they kept their vow, setting up an altar on which they made their names engraved or - as a general use - they hanged up in the sacred grove at the statue of the god and goddess, on the wall of the chapel or on a branch a so-called votive representing the healed member. These votives were made of wood, pottery etc. In Savaria the stock-room of a pottery workshop preserved, some unfinished, wastage items of such a votive ensemble meant for Aesculapius were found. The stock must have been made to the order of a merchant of devotional objects. (BUÓCZ 1967, 10). In the cult of the Western Celts a healing goddess Sirona figured as well, thought after the Roman conquest the paredros of Apollo. The Emperor Caracalla promoted their cult from the time on when he was healed from a wound inflicted in his campaign in Germania; he rendered thank to the deities for his survival in 213, in the famous sanctuary of Apollo in Phoebiana, Raetia. His next station was Pannónia, where he offered up in 214 to Apollo and Sirona in Brigetio and Aquincum. The erroneous coupling of the deities under different names on the inscriptions of the altars proves that there existed really only one cult of Aesculapius and Hygieia (POCZY 1980, 21). Physicians also appealed to the deities when curing. We know e.g. eight medical men by name from Aquincum, which belongs even in imperial relations to the rarities. Two among them practised in the civil town, the other ones were military surgeons, one of them calls himself "castrensis medicus" (KORBULY 1937, 44,114). The hospital might have stood in the legionary camp of Aquincum, in the neighbourhood of the military public bath. One of the two Aesculapius-Hygieia-reliefs came also from this environment as well as the altar dedicated to the divine couple Aesculapius and Hygieia by the surgeon Marcus Marcellus. Another votive slab was dedicated by the supervisor of the hospital, T. Venusius Aper. to the deity. A further inscribed slab was set up by a certain Aurelius to the tutelary genius of the valetudinarium, i.e. hospital, which led to the hypothesis that its place was in the chapel of this building (KABA 1991, 52; NEUMANN 1967, 114). The sacred area of the healing gods was unearthed at the starting point of the aqueduct of Aquincum, on the territory of the Forest Pool of the present Római-fürdő, where well-houses - fourteen in number - were built which were used also as chapels. Two larger temples and an open-air sacrificial place belonged to the complex. Near the stair of one pediment temple an altar stood dedicated to the most august Iuppiter (POCZY 1972, 22 and 111. 9). At the entrance of the sacred grove several steps led to the sacrificial place of Iuppiter, at the same place the sacred water was kept in small stone basins. In the chapels of the well group next the entrance the inscribed altars of the divine couple Aesculapius and Hygieia stood, i.e. of Apollo and Sirona identified with them. At the mineral springs sacrifices were broguht also to Silvanus who was considered almost as a "local" deity of Pannónia and in the new chapel in the middle of the enlargened sacred grove only the altars of this deity took place. In the course of the 3rd century Sol invictus, the invincible solar deity, received a separate sacrificial place there. The devotees of this cult came, in an ever increasing number, from the followers of a synchretistic religion streaming in from the Orient (ALFÖLDY 1963, 54 and 65). In the altar stone found in a chapel of the Aquincum well group the date of the days before May 1 is incised. It is wellknown from the Roman calendar that the feast of Floralia was held in this time, mentioned by several poets (Ovidius Fasti V, 117). Floralia, i.e. the feast of flowers, figures on the official list of several Pannonian municipal festivities. Dates on several altar stones remember us to this date, which was sort of a spring feast, beginning on April 28 and ending on May 1, on the anniversary of the municipal Lars. After the official sacrifice on the forum the procession, led by two duumviri, left the town for some place of worship, sacred area, ancient grove in the neighbourhood. In Aquincum this occasional procession went on a pilgrimage to the well group, springing in the neighbourhood of the town, and here, at the start point of the aquaeductus, sacrifices were brought to the deities impersonating the waters which fed and vivified the town. The official part of the festivities was finished by a wide public entertainment. Every collegium marched under the flag of its own led by its leadership. 33