Difference between revisions of " CIL 06, 01779, cfr. pp. 3174, 3814, 4757-4759; CLE 0111 (Q11794)"

Part 1: To the spirits of Marcus Vettius Agorius Praetextatus, augur, priest of Vesta, priest of the Sun, member of the Board of Fifteen, curial priest of Hercules, consecrated to Bacchus and the Eleusinian goddesses, hierophant (of Hecate), sacristan (of Serapis), initiated in the taurobolium, father of fathers (in the Mithraic hierarchy); in politics Caesar's candidate as quaestor, praetor urbanus, corrector of Etruria and Umbria, consular governor of Lusitania, proconsul of Achaea, urban prefect, sent on five embassies by the senate, twice praetorian prefect, of Italy and Illyricum, designated consul ordinarius. Also Aconia Fabia Paulina, a lady of senatorial rank, consecrated to Ceres and the Eleusinian goddesses, consecrated to Hecate at Aegina, initiated in the taurobolium, hierophant (of Hecate). They lived together united for forty years. The distinction of my parents gave me no greater gift than that even then I appeared worthy of my husband. But all my glory and honour consisted in your name, my husband Agorius, who, born from proud stock, give lustre to your country, the senate, and your wife with your integrity of mind, your character and also your studies, through which you have attained the summit of merit. Whatever has been set forth in both languages by the devotion of the wise, to whom the gate of heaven stands open, either the poetry which skilled writers have produced or what has been put forth in prose - all this you leave in a better state than when you took it up for your reading. But these are trivialities: you, a pious initiate, keep silent in the recesses of your mind the things discovered in secret mysteries, and in scholarly wise worship the manifold divinity of the gods, of your kindness linking your wife, the faithful companion who shares the thoughts of your heart, to the sacred things of men and gods. Why should I now speak of offices and positions of authority and the joys sought by the prayers of men? For you always declared them to be transient and trivial, and have your fame as the priest of the gods, marked out by the sacred headband. You, my husband, rescuing me from the lot of death, bring me, made pure and chaste by the blessing of your teachings, into the temples and consecrate me as a servant to the gods. In your presence I am initiated into all mysteries; you, my dedicated husband, honour me as priestess of Cybele and Attis with the ceremony of the bull's blood; while I function as a servant of Hecate you teach me her threefold secrets; you make me worthy of the rites of the Greek Ceres. Because of you, all celebrate me as blessed and holy, because you yourself spread abroad fair report of me; though unknown, I am known to all throughout the world. For why should I not win favour when you are my husband? The Roman mothers seek a pattern from me and think their offspring handsome if it is like yours. Both men and women approve and long for the marks of dinstinction which by your teaching you bestowed on me. Now that these have been taken away I, your wife, pine in sorrow. I would have been happy if the gods had granted that my husband should survive me, yet I am still happy because I am and was and presently after death shall be yours.