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Abstract
The question is whether the inscriptions (above discussed) are Christian or not. Two of them can be read on gold glass disks, and the third on a glass cup. Inscriptions like these occurred fairly often, and are generally interpreted as Christian'ones because of the phrase in nomine Dei or in Deo. But this interpretation does not seem to be quite clear. The so called pagan people are used to tell each other good wishes drinking wine or offering Dis Manibus. Then we can experience these phrases are connected with both the drink and the life. On the other hand, also the pagan Romans confessed the oneness of the God (Unum Deum). The life meant for Romans partly the felicitas temporum on the earth, partly the immortality on the afterlife. The Greek and Latin sources have given evidences for reconstruction the rites connected with the death. One moment of the series of the rites is the circumpotatio, which was continued even in the Christian era. Relatives, friends said to the deceased good wishes with wine, and the wine refreshed him/her or them. The wine meant the life as the blood did. This point is the connection between the wine and blood. The most important act is the refresh (refrigerium), and the grave goods (first of all the glass vessels) provide evidences for this interpretation. The inscriptions in question correlate the life and drinking; that is why it can be supposed the glass vessels without inscription concern for also the life and drinking as the representation of jug and cup does. But the practice to refresh the deceased, i. e. the circumpotatio was pagan custom even in the Christian era. The reason of the burial ad sanctos should be based on the custom circumpotatio through which the deceased could get physically strength. The wine gives life, and the blood does the same. The blood of the martyrs can give life, so it was worth lying by them. Martyrs were martyred for Christ whose blood grants really life, eternal life. That is why also the mensa (the communion table) was used for circumpotatio even in the saint Peter basilica. This, however, was not an agape. The agapé always followed the fractio panis, the circumpotatio, on the other hand, always belonged to the burial celebration and commemorating.
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This study will focus on the differences in the way that Roman Paganism and Christianity organize systems of beliefs. It rejects the theory that "beliefs" have no place in the Roman religion, but stresses the differences between Christian orthodoxy, in which mandatory dogmas define group identity, and the essentially polythetic nature of Roman religious organization, in which incompatible beliefs could exist simultaneously in the community without conflict. In explaining how such beliefs could coexist in Rome, the study emphasizes three main conceptual mechanisms: (1) polymorphism, the idea that gods could have multiple identities with incompatible attributes, (2) orthopraxy, the focus upon standardized ritual rather than standardized belief, and (3) pietas, the Roman ideal of reciprocal obligation, which was flexible enough to allow Romans to maintain relationships simultaneously with multiple gods at varying levels of personal commitment. © 2003 by The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.