Stata Mater

Inscription of a small altar base, which was erected in honor of the Stata Mater Augusta around the year 42/43 in Rome outside the Porta Pinciana by the vici magistri des vicus Minervi ( CIL 6, 766). The district was located in Regio VII.

Stata or Stata Mater was a Roman goddess who is considered in modern research as one of the so-called " special deities ". As such, she was probably counted among the indigetes , the gods worshiped only on certain occasions.

Stata Mater was a deity associated with fire, especially fiery aromas. It brought the expansion of such fires to a standstill, which was of great importance in a city like Rome with its narrow streets and the tenements built mainly from wood in the upper area . Time and again devastating fires raged in the city and claimed numerous victims.

According to Sextus Pompeius Festus , a statue of the Stata Mater stood in the Roman Forum , where it was worshiped. After probably in the year 22 BC After a privately financed fire brigade had been introduced by Marcus Egnatius Rufus and trained by his slaves , Augustus soon afterwards entrusted this task to a public institution, the vigiles ("guardians"). Responsible for this urban fire brigade, made up of public slaves, were initially the vici magistri , the heads of the individual districts of Rome called vicus .

As part of this responsibility, the vici magistri were given the cult of the Stata Mater as a deity connected with fire and now found their way into each of the 265 vici established by Augustus . Even when the vigiles were militarily organized into cohorts (cohortes vigilum) and formed from freed persons in 6 AD , the responsibility for the vigiles was thus withdrawn from the vicomagistri and transferred to a praefectus vigilum , concern for the cult of the Stata Mater remained in theirs Hands. Numerous inscriptions testify to this. One of these was the district on the Caelius located vicus Statae Matri , who owed the deity's name. The vicus Statae Siccianae from the 14th region of Rome, named on the basis of Capitolina , may also be connected with Stata Mater. Outside of Rome, it can be proven in Sutrium , where it probably spread as part of the imperial cult under the name Stata Mater Augusta.

Without making any further specification, called Cicero the deity associated with the later Victoria mentioned Vica Pota , Jupiter Stator , Salus , ops and Victoria. They all have one thing in common that the name represents something figuratively. In the case of the stata mater, this is standing.

Her connection to Vulcanus is just as unclear as the question of whether her festival with that of other deities from the area fell on August 23.

literature

• Rudolf Peter: Idigitamenta: Stata mater . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 2.1, Leipzig 1894, Col. 223 f. ( Digitized version ).
• Otto Höfer : Stata . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 4, Leipzig 1915, column 1422 ( digitized version ).
• Georg Wissowa : Stata Mater. In: Paulys Realencyclopadie der classischen Antiquity Science (RE). Volume III A, 2, Stuttgart 1929, Col. 2167 f.
• Lawrence Richardson Jr .: A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore MD 1992, ISBN 0-8018-4300-6 , p. 157 fsv Fortuna Augusta Stata.

Remarks

1. ^ Samuel Ball Platner , Thomas Ashby : A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome . Oxford University Press, London 1929, p. 576 ( online ).
2. ↑ Festus 416.25 L .
3. ↑ Cassius Dio 55.8.7.
4. ↑ Festus 416.25 L; Paulus Deacon 's excerpt from the work of Festus 417.4 L.
5. ↑ CIL 6, 00763 . 764 . 765 . 766 .
6. ↑ CIL 6, 36809
7. ↑ CIL 6, 00975 .
8. ↑ CIL 11, 03321 .
9. ↑ Cicero, De legibus 2,11,28.