Prayer to Diana

A votive inscription of the Roman knight Titus Aurelius Saturninus: official formulae above and below, three verses in the middle.

This two-storey arrangement is normal in epigraphy, and here it is laid out visibly. "Sacred to Diana Augusta … set up willingly in fulfilment of a vow" is the legal frame, the document; and between them stand the verses, where a personal voice appears.

And the verses take a curious turn. The vow is described as something the goddess herself "exacts": it was not the man who decided to bring a gift but the deity who inclined him to it by her favouring will. Roman votive logic works this way generally — the initiative is credited to the god, and the man merely discharges what has been laid on him.

The editor marks the reading exigor as doubtful, and the verb here may have been another.