At the dawn of the Roman Empire, as the future imperial powerhouse was still getting its footing, Rome’s leaders conquered faraway lands and pursued diverse methods of expanding and unifying their territory. Under Rome’s first emperor, Augustus (reigned 27 b.c.–a.d. 14), the borders of Roman sovereignty were continually pushed outward. The emperor instituted cultural programs, commissioned writers and poets, revived religious cults, and erected innumerable temples and sculptural monuments. The arts and architecture thrived, and Rome itself was transformed. After Augustus’ death, his stepson, Tiberius (reigned a.d. 14–37), made a contentious but ultimately successful bid for power. Although he was initially credited with military and economic successes, Tiberius’ rule was increasingly marked by mistrust and political purges that he pursued until his death. The emperor’s growing contempt for the Senate and what he deemed its conniving politicians jockeying for position led to the execution of many states men for treason. In a.d. 19, in an effort to exert control over his subjects’ spiritual life, Tiberius outlawed Egyptian and Jewish rites within Rome, and perhaps beyond, and even required that religious paraphernalia associated with them be burned.
More than 300 miles from the capital, on a small island in the turquoise waters of the Adriatic Sea, at the Roman settlement of Cissa, four limestone altars dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis stood as a rebuke to Tiberius and his prohibition of Egyptian deities. As early as 35 b.c., the Romans annexed the region, including what is now Caska Cove on Croatia’s island of Pag—once home to the native Liburni—and folded it into what would become the Roman province of Dalmatia. There, a Roman noble woman named Calpurnia lived in a
