Lucus Feroniae Emeritensis

Abstract

The recently published fifty votive inscriptions of Sta. Lucia de Alcuéscar (Cáceres), of which fifteen are dedicated to Ataecina, allows us to propose the identification of the site with the lucus Feroniae quoted by the literary texts in territorium Emeritense, doubtless an interpretatio Romana of the local divinity temenos. Besides those altars dedicated to Ataecina there is an important number dedicated to an innominated divinity dea domina sancta and still others altars which are anepigraphics, possible testimonies of different cult formulations to the same divinity. The sanctuary, in the frontier between five different peoples and by the iter ab Emerita Asturicam, had to play an important role as an extraurban place of cult. Its captation by the Romans while the Emeritan deductio possibly implied the introduction of the divinity as adoptiva dea, whose representation can be recognised in the Emeritan coinage and in a sculpture of the Merida museum.