That is, Saturno Augusto sacrum. Gaius Memmius Pudens sacerdos intrauit sub iugum libens animo. Intrauit sub iugum is peculiar to this text, but it is reasonable to suppose that the plain intrauit used in other inscriptions of priests of the African Saturnus is a shorter equivalent. Professor Schulten has suggested that some symbolical act indicating the assumption of priesthood is thereby indicated. We may go a little further.

Authorities on Apollo and Apollo cults are still divided into two camps. Some believe the god to have been Anatolian—Homeric god of the Troad, god of Branchidae and Lycia, a hawk-god, Smintheus, Lykios, with a western outpost at Carian-Ionian Delos, worshipped too in Crete, whence he passed to Pytho. In the other camp Apollo is, at least in part, believed to be a northerner, fair-haired, descending on Greece from the land of the Hyperboreans, the people ‘Behind the Beyond.’ And the (...) mainstay of those who claim a partially northern origin for Apollo is in tales which both at Delos and at Delphi link him with the Hyperboreans. (shrink)