Extract

A ritual by which, in the course of a war, a Roman general would attempt to deprive the enemy of divine protection, by formally offering their protecting deity a new home and cult at Rome. The clearest recorded case is the evocation of *Juno Regina from the Etruscan city of *Veii in 396 bce (Livy, 5. 21 ff.); the ritual led to the establishment of her cult on the *Aventine hill in Rome. There has been some debate as to how long the ritual continued to be practised, and (in particular) whether the record of the evocation of Juno from Carthage in 146 bce (Serv. on Aen. 12. 841) is anything more than antiquarian invention. The discovery of an inscription at Isaura Vetus (in modern Turkey), apparently recording an evocatio in c.75 bce, suggests that the ritual survived at least to the late republic. There are, however, changes from earlier practice: in 75 bce the deity seems to have been offered a home not in Rome, but in provincial territory.