Marisia - Maros Megyei Múzeum Évkönyve 31/1. (2011)
Articles
276 I. BoDA-Cs. Szabó Thracian environment, where the stag is associated with the eagle. The Roman conquering had consequences still difficult to reconstruct on a spiritual plane, one of them being the votive relief at Mehadia. The authors propose a quite interesting interpretation, which leads to explaining the politico-social relations. The stag was a terrestrial animal, dominant in woodland, and the eagle’s significance should be viewed as a symbol of the cult of Iuppiter’s supreme divinity, at the same time a symbol of the imperial power; proving this is the bay leaf crown in the bird’s beak. Basically, the representation could be viewed as a symbol of the Imperial House, associated with the universal power of the Roman State. Fig. 1. Dolichenian Relief from Mehadia (photo: C. Timoc). We wish to provide an interpretation form the stylistic and religious point of view, fitting the object in the syncretic, Dolichenian cult. To achieve this goal, we searched for analogies throughout the Empire, as well as in Dacia province, where Iuppiter Dolichenus appears on monuments with - or as - an eagle, with his paredra, Iuno, associated with a deer. The interpretation of the relief appears as a central element even in the archaeological monograph of the excavation, because the object’s rich symbolic - being the only interpretable relief - poses a central problem in the sanctuary’s affinity and in the correct identification of the cults practiced here during its different stages. From the archaeological material we can see that the edifice served as a cult sanctuary from the beginning and in first stage (2nd century AD) it was probably dedicated to the god Apollo (Benea 2008,101-103). In the second phase modifications appear, by the adding of a new cella, indicating a change in the religious life of the edifice, signalling the appearance of a new deity. To this archaeological context belongs an inscription (Fig. 2), a representation of an eagle (Fig. 3), and the actual relief. These sources collectively show - according to the archaeologists - that the newly appeared divinity is Iuppiter Dolichenus. The association of Apollo with Dolichenus is not an unusual phenomenon, analogies being present in the Empire: Britannia (Benea 2008, 107), Dura Europos (CCID, no. 36), Rome (CCID, no. 380) and also in Dacia (Gudea-Tamba 2001). It is however, harder to determine the iconographic relation of these deities, many of their attributes being similar, from the apollonian
