The aim of this paper is to evaluate the substance and significance of cults both
Roman and non-Roman in Histria. The investigation is carried out with a particular
methodological approach. Indeed, whereas the institution of official cults and the
monumentalization of sacred locations, or even the creation of such ex novo, are
phenomena which can be framed as ‘political’ acts par excellence, and which thus
endowed with absolute visibility, it is not easy to ascertain what the value of local
cults may have been within Romanised contexts, interpreting them as examples of
resistance / survival / mediation. Within the landscape of sacra, it is of essence to
distinguish testimonies of individual devotion, more or less residual, from those
which refer to the official dimension of indigenous cults, which would have been
instituted by direct intervention of a civic magistrate at a given time in the life of a
given community.
The picture which emerges from this investigation highlights once again the paramount
importance of avoiding the use of isolated items for the posthumous reconstruction of
complex systems to explain how indigenous religious cultures survived or ‘resisted’,
especially in the presence of non-homogenous sources
