The cult of Silvanus: rethinking provincial identities in Roman Dalmatia

Abstract

Izvorni znanstveni radEarlier scholarship saw the worship of Silvanus in Dalmatia from two different perspectives.Firstly, as a continuance of the pre-Roman indigenous cult which became recognized as the italic deity Silvanus through the interpretatio Romana, and secondly, as a product of indigenous assimilation in Roman culture.This article reconsiders these opinions from a different perspective, making the point that we deal here with an entirely new cultural practice, rather than the survival of the pre-Roman traditions, or with the assimilation of the indigenous population into the Roman identity.It is argued that the worship of Silvanus was used as an interface for communication and display of identity of different provincial sub-cultural groups in the early imperial times.It was a new, inventive and multifaceted religious practice, which incorporated existing local traditions and visual aesthetics with global symbolics of Silvanus, bringing together distinct societies and including Dalmatian communities into the global world of Roman Empire.