Religious syncretism in the ancient world is a topic of continual interest among scholars; for it concerns a fundamental aspect of cultural change. This is particularly apparent when studying the miscellany of beliefs attested in the alae and cohortes of the Roman army. Soldiers venerated the ‘official’ gods of the Roman pantheon, deities of specifically military interest, local gods and goddesses, and embraced some of the seductive eastern cults that swept the empire. In addition some probably continued to worship the gods of their regimental homelands. The myriad of ideas and practices involved are often impossible to reconstruct and need not delay us here; instead this paper aims to examine the role of religion in transforming the cultural identity of auxiliary regiments. This necessitates assessing which beliefs had the greatest significance to ordinary soldiers, a task complicated by the latter's poor representation in the epigraphic record.