Prayer to Hercules

An inscription from Rome, in verse: the line scans as a hexameter and turns on the cult address Alcide … invicte — Alcides Unconquered, the standard title of Hercules in dedications.

The prayer is spoken after the rite, not before: "your rites having been performed duly". This is not a request but a receipt — a declaration that what was owed has been done, and done correctly. In texts of this kind the word rite carries legal weight: a rite not performed rite counted as not performed at all.

Dona ferens meritis — gifts in proportion to deserts, that is, to favour already received. The order is the reverse of a vow: the god has performed, and now he is paid.

The card holds two verses out of six. Buecheler prints the inscription entire as no. 868: it goes on to say that "our slender Muse" can offer no more than this, and that the god alone can make the thanks worthy — and it names the dedicator: Cilo, praetor urbanus, setting up statues at Hercules' altars. The editor identifies him with Lucius Fabius Cilo, consul in 193 and again in 204.

The number needs settling. The card cites CIL VI.312; in the available scan of Buecheler the poem is referred to "CIL. VI 132". One of the two is a transposition of digits, and the scan does not allow a decision between them.