Apronianus

Apronianus is known from several inscriptions found at the site of San Silvestro. Among these is a dedication to Mithras, dated 25 June 172, made through the pater of the community, Claudius Arennius Reatinus. A third inscription (CIMRM 648) reveals that he had a Mithraic cult restored at his own expense, for the salvation of the local senate and people (pro salute ordinis et populi) of the res publica of the Aequiculi, of which he was the public treasurer. The chronological proximity of the three inscriptions, certainly of the same origin, is very likely. The precise mention of the day of the dedication, which must correspond to the summer solstice, is not accidental. It was also precisely eight days before the July calends that the restoration of another mithraeum, at Virunum in Noricum, was dedicated in 239.

On an unspecified date, while still a public slave, in the company of his children Aequicula Bassilla and Aequiculus Apronianus, whose names indicate that they themselves had been freed by the municipe, he donated statues of Serapis and Isis and an aedicula placed in a schola with the permission of the ordo, on a site given by decree of the decurions (RICIS 508/0601 = CIL IX 4112). These various evergesias, at the crossroads of the private and public spheres, are the work of a wealthy man anxious to participate financially in the proper functioning of various cults by reactivating or building places conducive to their practice, whether of a private (Mithras) or public (Serapis and Isis) nature, but also to enhance his image and promote his family within the city.