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WIKIMAG n. 9 - Agosto 2013
Religion in ancient Rome
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Religion in
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Practices
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Priesthoods |
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Deities |
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Religion in ancient Rome encompasses the practices and beliefs
the
ancient Romans regarded as their own, as well as the many cults
imported to Rome or practiced by
peoples
under Roman rule.
The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed
their success as a world power to their collective piety (pietas)
in maintaining
good relations with the gods. According to
legendary history, most of Rome's religious institutions could be
traced to its
founders, particularly
Numa Pompilius, the
Sabine second
king of Rome, who negotiated directly with
the gods. This archaic religion was the foundation of the
mos maiorum, "the way of the ancestors" or simply "tradition",
viewed as central to Roman identity.
The priesthoods of public religion were held by members of the
elite classes. There was no principle analogous to "separation
of church and state" in ancient Rome. During the
Roman Republic (509 BC–27 BC), the same men who were
elected public officials might also serve as
augurs
and
pontiffs. Priests married, raised families, and led politically
active lives.
Julius Caesar became
Pontifex Maximus before he was elected
consul.
The augurs read the will of the gods and supervised the marking of
boundaries as a reflection of universal order, thus sanctioning Roman
expansionism as a matter of divine destiny. The
Roman triumph was at its core a religious procession in which the
victorious general displayed his piety and his willingness to serve the
public good by dedicating a portion of his spoils to the gods,
especially
Jupiter, who embodied just rule. As a result of the
Punic Wars (264–146 BC), when Rome struggled to establish itself as
a dominant power, many new
temples were built by magistrates in
fulfillment
of a vow to a deity for assuring their military success.
Roman religion was thus practical and contractual, based on the
principle of
do ut des, "I give that you might give." Religion depended on
knowledge and the
correct practice of prayer, ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or
dogma, although
Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the
divine and its relation to human affairs. Even the most skeptical among
Rome's intellectual elite such as
Cicero,
who was an augur, saw religion as a source of social order.
For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life.[1]
Each home had a household shrine at which prayers and
libations to the family's domestic deities were offered.
Neighborhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted
the city.[2]
The
Roman calendar was structured around religious observances.
Women,
slaves, and children all participated in a range of religious
activities. Some public rituals could be conducted only by women, and
women formed what is perhaps Rome's most famous priesthood, the
state-supported
Vestal Virgins, who tended Rome's sacred hearth for centuries, until
disbanded under Christian domination.
The Romans are known for the
great number of deities they honored, a capacity that earned the
mockery of early
Christian polemicists.[3]
The presence of
Greeks on the Italian peninsula from the beginning of the historical
period influenced Roman culture, introducing some religious practices
that became as fundamental as the cult of
Apollo.
The Romans looked for common ground between their major gods and those
of the Greeks, adapting
Greek myths and iconography for Latin literature and
Roman
art.
Etruscan religion was also a major influence, particularly on the
practice of
augury, since Rome had once been ruled by Etruscan kings.
Imported
mystery religions, which offered initiates salvation in the
afterlife, were a matter of personal choice for an individual, practiced
in addition to carrying on one's
family rites and participating in public religion. The mysteries,
however, involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, conditions that
conservative Romans viewed with suspicion as characteristic of "magic",
conspiracy (coniuratio), and subversive activity. Sporadic and
sometimes brutal attempts were made to suppress religionists who seemed
to threaten traditional morality and unity, as with the
senate's efforts to
restrict the Bacchanals in 186 BC.
As the Romans extended their dominance throughout the Mediterranean
world, their policy in general was to absorb the deities and cults of
other peoples rather than try to eradicate them,[4]
since they believed that preserving tradition promoted social stability.[5]
One way that Rome incorporated diverse peoples was by supporting their
religious heritage, building temples to local deities that framed their
theology within the hierarchy of Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout
the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities,
including dedications made by Romans to local gods.[6]
By the height of the Empire, numerous
international deities were cultivated at Rome and had been carried
to even the most remote
provinces, among them
Cybele,
Isis,
Epona,
and gods of
solar monism such as
Mithras and
Sol Invictus, found as far north as
Roman Britain. Because Romans had never been obligated to cultivate
one god or one cult only,
religious tolerance was not an issue in the sense that it is for
competing
monotheistic systems.[7]
The monotheistic rigor of
Judaism
posed difficulties for Roman policy that led at times to compromise and
the granting of special exemptions, but sometimes to intractable
conflict.
In the wake of the
Republic's collapse, state religion had adapted to support the new
regime of the emperors.
Augustus, the first Roman emperor, justified the novelty of one-man
rule with a vast program of religious revivalism and reform.
Public vows formerly made for the security of the republic now were
directed at the wellbeing of the emperor. So-called "emperor worship"
expanded on a grand scale the traditional Roman
veneration of the ancestral dead and of the
Genius, the divine
tutelary of every individual.
Imperial cult became one of the major ways Rome advertised its
presence in the provinces and cultivated shared cultural identity and
loyalty throughout the Empire. Rejection of the state religion was
tantamount to treason. This was the context for Rome's conflict with
Christianity, which Romans variously regarded as a form of atheism
and novel superstitio.
From the 2nd century onward, the
Church Fathers began to condemn the diverse religions practiced
throughout the Empire collectively as "pagan."[8]
In the early 4th century,
Constantine I became the first emperor to
convert to Christianity, launching the era of Christian
hegemony. The emperor
Julian made a short-lived attempt to revive traditional and
Hellenistic religion and to affirm the special status of Judaism,
but in 391 under
Theodosius I,
Nicene Christianity became the official
state religion of the Roman Empire, to the exclusion of all others.
Pleas for religious tolerance from traditionalists such as the senator
Symmachus (d. 402) were rejected, and Christian monotheism became a
feature of Imperial domination.
Heretics as well as non-Christians were subject to exclusion from
public life or persecution, but Rome's original religious hierarchy and
many aspects of its ritual influenced Christian forms,[9]
and many pre-Christian beliefs and practices survived in Christian
festivals and local traditions.
Founding myths and divine destiny
The
Roman mythological tradition is particularly rich in historical
myths, or
legends, concerning the foundation and rise of the city. These
narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from
deities but a pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny. For Rome's
earliest period, history and myth are difficult to distinguish.[10]
Rome had a semi-divine ancestor in the
Trojan refugee
Aeneas,
son of
Venus, who was said to have established the nucleus of Roman
religion when he brought the
Palladium,
Lares and
Penates from Troy to Italy. These objects were believed in
historical times to remain in the keeping of the
Vestals, Rome's female priesthood. Aeneas had been given refuge by
King
Evander, a Greek exile from
Arcadia,
to whom were attributed other religious foundations: he established the
Ara Maxima, "Greatest Altar," to
Hercules at the site that would become the
Forum Boarium, and he was the first to celebrate the
Lupercalia, an archaic festival in February that was celebrated as
late as the 5th century of the Christian era.[11]
The myth of a Trojan founding with Greek influence was reconciled
through an elaborate genealogy (the
Latin kings of Alba Longa) with the well-known legend of Rome's
founding by
Romulus and Remus. The most common version of the twins' story
displays several aspects of hero myth. Their mother,
Rhea Silvia, had been ordered by her uncle the king to remain a
virgin, in order to preserve the throne he had usurped from her father.
Through divine intervention, the rightful line was restored when Rhea
Silvia was impregnated by the god
Mars. She gave birth to twins, who were duly
exposed by order of the king but saved through a series of
miraculous events.
Romulus and Remus regained their grandfather's throne and set out to
build a new city, consulting with the gods through
augury, a characteristic religious institution of Rome that is
portrayed as existing from earliest times. The brothers quarrel while
building the city walls, and Romulus kills Remus, an act that is
sometimes seen as sacrificial. Fratricide thus became an integral part
of Rome's founding myth.[12]
Romulus was credited with several religious institutions. He founded
the
Consualia festival, inviting the neighbouring
Sabines
to participate; the ensuing
rape of the Sabine women by Romulus's men further embedded both
violence and cultural assimilation in Rome's myth of origins. As a
successful general, Romulus is also supposed to have founded Rome's
first temple to
Jupiter Feretrius and offered the
spolia opima, the prime spoils taken in war, in the celebration
of the first
Roman triumph. Spared a mortal's death, Romulus was mysteriously
spirited away and deified.[13]
Aeneas urged by the Penates to continue his journey to found
Rome (4th century AD illustration) [14]
His Sabine successor
Numa was pious and peaceable, and credited with numerous political
and religious foundations, including the first
Roman calendar; the priesthoods of the
Salii,
flamens,
and Vestals; the cults of
Jupiter, Mars, and
Quirinus; and the Temple of
Janus,
whose doors stayed open in times of war but in Numa's time remained
closed. After Numa's death, the doors to the Temple of Janus were
supposed to have remained open until the reign of Augustus.[15]
Each of Rome's legendary or semi-legendary kings was associated with
one or more religious institutions still known to the later Republic.
Tullus Hostilius and
Ancus Marcius instituted the
fetial
priests. The first "outsider" Etruscan king,
Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, founded a
Capitoline temple to the triad Jupiter,
Juno and
Minerva
which served as the model for the highest official cult throughout the
Roman world. The benevolent, divinely fathered
Servius Tullius established the
Latin League, its
Aventine Temple to
Diana, and the
Compitalia to mark his social reforms. Servius Tullius was murdered
and succeeded by the arrogant
Tarquinius Superbus, whose expulsion marked the beginning of Rome as
a republic with annually elected
magistrates.[16]
Roman historians[17]
regarded the essentials of Republican religion as complete by the end of
Numa's reign, and confirmed as right and lawful by the
Senate and
people of Rome: the sacred
topography of the city, its monuments and temples, the histories of
Rome's leading
families, and oral and ritual traditions.[18]
According to Cicero, the Romans considered themselves the most religious
of all peoples, and their rise to dominance was proof they received
divine favor in return.[19]
Roman deities
Rome offers no native
creation myth, and little
mythography to explain the character of its deities, their mutual
relationships or their interactions with the human world, but Roman
theology acknowledged that di immortales (immortal gods) ruled
all realms of the heavens and earth. There were gods of the upper
heavens, gods of the underworld and a myriad of lesser deities between.
Some evidently favoured Rome because Rome honoured them, but none were
intrinsically, irredeemably foreign or alien. The political, cultural
and religious coherence of an emergent Roman super-state required a
broad, inclusive and flexible network of lawful cults. At different
times and in different places, the sphere of influence, character and
functions of a divine being could expand, overlap with those of others,
and be redefined as Roman. Change was embedded within existing
traditions.[20]
Several versions of a semi-official, structured
pantheon were developed during the political, social and religious
instability of the Late Republican era.
Jupiter, the most powerful of all gods and "the fount of the
auspices upon which the relationship of the city with the gods rested",
consistently personified the divine authority of Rome's highest offices,
internal organization and external relations. During the archaic and
early Republican eras, he shared
his temple, some aspects of cult and several divine characteristics
with
Mars and
Quirinus, who were later replaced by
Juno and
Minerva.[21]
A conceptual tendency toward
triads may be indicated by the later agricultural or
plebeian
triad of
Ceres,
Liber and
Libera, and by some of the complementary threefold deity-groupings
of Imperial cult.[22]
Other major and minor deities could be single, coupled, or linked
retrospectively through myths of divine marriage and sexual adventure.
These later Roman
pantheistic hierarchies are part literary and mythographic, part
philosophical creations, and often Greek in origin. The
Hellenization of Latin literature and
culture supplied literary and artistic models for
reinterpreting Roman deities in light of the
Greek Olympians, and promoted a sense that the two cultures had a
shared heritage.[23]
Three goddesses on a panel of the Augustan
Ara Pacis, consecrated in 9 BC; the iconography is open
to multiple interpretations
The impressive, costly, and centralised rites to the deities of the
Roman state were vastly outnumbered in everyday life by commonplace
religious observances pertaining to an individual's domestic and
personal deities, the patron divinities of Rome's various
neighborhoods and communities, and the often idiosyncratic blends of
official, unofficial, local and personal cults that characterised lawful
Roman religion.[24]
In this spirit, a provincial Roman citizen who made the long journey
from
Bordeaux to Italy to consult the
Sibyl at Tibur did not neglect his devotion to his own goddess from
home:
I wander, never ceasing to pass through the whole world, but I am
first and foremost a faithful worshiper of
Onuava.
I am at the ends of the earth, but the distance cannot tempt me to
make my vows to another goddess. Love of the truth brought me to
Tibur, but Onuava’s favorable powers came with me. Thus, divine
mother, far from my home-land, exiled in Italy, I address my vows
and prayers to you no less.[25]
Holidays and
festivals
Roman calendars show roughly forty annual religious festivals. Some
lasted several days, others a single day or less: sacred days (dies
fasti) outnumbered "non-sacred" days (dies
nefasti).[26]
A comparison of surviving Roman religious calendars suggests that
official festivals were organized according to broad seasonal groups
that allowed for different local traditions. Some of the most ancient
and popular festivals incorporated
ludi
("games," such as
chariot races and
theatrical performances), with examples including those held at
Palestrina in honour of Fortuna Primigenia during
Compitalia, and the
Ludi Romani in honour of
Liber.[27]
Other festivals may have required only the presence and rites of their
priests and acolytes,[28]
or particular groups, such as women at the
Bona
Dea rites.[29]
Other public festivals were not required by the calendar, but
occasioned by events. The
triumph of a Roman general was celebrated as the fulfillment of
religious
vows, though these tended to be overshadowed by the political and
social significance of the event. During the late Republic, the
political elite competed to outdo each other in public display, and the
ludi attendant on a triumph were expanded to include
gladiator contests. Under the
Principate, all such spectacular displays came under Imperial
control: the most lavish were subsidised by emperors, and lesser events
were provided by magistrates as a sacred duty and privilege of office.
Additional festivals and games celebrated Imperial accessions and
anniversaries. Others, such as the traditional Republican
Secular Games to mark a new era (saeculum), became imperially
funded to maintain traditional values and a common Roman identity. That
the spectacles retained something of their sacral aura even in
late antiquity is indicated by the admonitions of the Church Fathers
that Christians should not take part.[30]
The meaning and origin of many archaic festivals baffled even Rome's
intellectual elite, but the more obscure they were, the greater the
opportunity for reinvention and reinterpretation — a fact lost neither
on Augustus in his program of religious reform, which often cloaked
autocratic innovation, nor on his only rival as mythmaker of the era,
Ovid. In
his
Fasti, a long-form poem covering Roman holidays from January to
June, Ovid presents a unique look at Roman
antiquarian lore, popular customs, and religious practice that is by
turns imaginative, entertaining, high-minded, and scurrilous;[31]
not a priestly account, despite the speaker's pose as a
vates
or inspired poet-prophet, but a work of description, imagination and
poetic etymology that reflects the broad humor and burlesque spirit of
such venerable festivals as the
Saturnalia,
Consualia, and feast of
Anna Perenna on the
Ides of March, where Ovid treats the assassination of the newly
deified Julius Caesar as utterly incidental to the festivities among the
Roman people.[32]
But official calendars preserved from different times and places also
show a flexibility in omitting or expanding events, indicating that
there was no single static and authoritative calendar of required
observances. In the later Empire under Christian rule, the new Christian
festivals were incorporated into the existing framework of the Roman
calendar, alongside at least some of the traditional festivals.[33]
Temples and
shrines
Main article:
Roman temple
The Latin word
templum originally referred not to the temple building itself,
but to a sacred space surveyed and plotted ritually through augury: "The
architecture of the ancient Romans was, from first to last, an art of
shaping space around ritual."[34]
The Roman architect
Vitruvius always uses the word templum to refer to this
sacred precinct, and the more common Latin words
aedes,
delubrum, or
fanum for a temple or shrine as a building. The ruins of temples
are among the most visible monuments of ancient Roman culture.
Animal sacrifice took place at an altar outdoors, as did public
religious ceremonies. The main room (cella) inside a temple
housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated, and
often a small altar for incense or
libations. It might also display art works looted in war and
rededicated to the gods.
Temple buildings and shrines within the city commemorated significant
political settlements in its development: the Aventine Temple of Diana
supposedly marked the founding of the Latin League under Servius
Tullius.[35]
Many temples in the Republican era were built as the fulfillment of a
vow made
by a general in exchange for a victory.
Religious practice
Prayers,
vows, and oaths
All sacrifices and offerings required an accompanying prayer to be
effective.
Pliny the Elder declared that "a sacrifice without prayer is thought
to be useless and not a proper consultation of the gods."[36]
Prayer by itself, however, had independent power. The spoken word was
thus the single most potent religious action, and knowledge of the
correct verbal formulas the key to efficacy.[37]
Accurate naming was vital for tapping into the desired powers of the
deity invoked, hence the proliferation of cult epithets among Roman
deities.[38]
Public
prayers were offered loudly and clearly by a priest on behalf of the
community. Public religious ritual had to be enacted by specialists and
professionals faultlessly; a mistake might require that the action, or
even the entire festival, be repeated from the start.[39]
The historian
Livy reports an occasion when the presiding magistrate at the
Latin festival forgot to include the "Roman people" among the list
of beneficiaries in his prayer; the festival had to be started over.[40]
Even private prayer by an individual was formulaic, a recitation rather
than a personal expression, though selected by the individual for a
particular purpose or occasion.[41]
Oaths—sworn for the purposes of business,
clientage and service, patronage and protection, state office,
treaty and loyalty—appealed to the witness and sanction of deities.
Refusal to swear a lawful oath (sacramentum)
and breaking a sworn oath carried much the same penalty: both repudiated
the fundamental bonds between the human and divine.[38]
A votum
or vow was a promise made to a deity, usually an offer of sacrifices or
a votive offering in exchange for benefits received.
Sacrifice
In Latin, the word
sacrificium means the performance of an act that renders
something
sacer, sacred. Sacrifice reinforced the powers and attributes of
divine beings, and inclined them to render
benefits in return.
Offerings to
household deities were part of daily life.
Lares
might be offered spelt wheat and grain-garlands, grapes and first fruits
in due season, honey cakes and honeycombs, wine and incense,[42]
food that fell to the floor during any family meal,[43]
or at their
Compitalia festival, honey-cakes and a pig on behalf of the
community.[44]
Their supposed underworld relatives, the malicious and vagrant
Lemures,
might be placated with midnight offerings of black beans and spring
water.[45]
The most potent offering was
animal sacrifice, typically of domesticated animals such as cattle,
sheep and pigs. Each was the best specimen of its kind, cleansed, clad
in sacrificial regalia and garlanded; the horns of oxen might be gilded.
Sacrifice sought the
harmonisation of the earthly and divine, so the victim must seem
willing to offer its own life on behalf of the community; it must remain
calm and be quickly and cleanly despatched.[46]
Sacrifice to deities of the heavens (di superi, "gods above")
was performed in daylight, and under the public gaze. Deities of the
upper heavens required white, infertile victims of their own sex:
Juno a white heifer (possibly a white cow);
Jupiter a white, castrated ox (bos mas) for the annual
oath-taking by the
consuls. Di superi with strong connections to the earth, such
as Mars, Janus, Neptune and various
genii – including the Emperor's – were offered fertile victims.
After the sacrifice, a banquet was held; in state cults, the images of
honoured deities took pride of place on banqueting couches and by means
of the sacrificial fire consumed their proper portion (exta,
the innards). Rome's officials and priests reclined in order of
precedence alongside and ate the meat; lesser citizens may have had to
provide their own.[47]
Denarius issued under Augustus, with a bust of Venus on
the
obverse, and ritual implements on the reverse: clockwise
from top right, the augur's staff (lituus),
libation bowl (patera),
tripod, and ladle (simpulum)
Chthonic gods such as
Dis pater, the
di
inferi ("gods below"), and the collective shades of the departed
(di Manes)
were given dark, fertile victims in nighttime rituals. Animal sacrifice
usually took the form of a
holocaust or burnt offering, and there was no shared banquet, as
"the living cannot share a meal with the dead".[48]
Ceres and other underworld goddesses of fruitfulness were sometimes
offered pregnant female animals;
Tellus was given a pregnant cow at the
Fordicidia festival. Color had a general symbolic value for
sacrifices. Demigods and heroes, who belonged to the heavens and the
underworld, were sometimes given black-and-white victims.
Robigo (or
Robigus) was given red dogs and libations of red wine at the
Robigalia for the protection of crops from blight and red mildew.[47]
A sacrifice might be made in thanksgiving or as an expiation of a
sacrilege or potential sacrilege (see
piaculum). The same divine agencies who caused disease or harm
also had the power to avert it, and so might be placated in advance.
Divine consideration might be sought to avoid the inconvenient delays of
a journey, or encounters with banditry, piracy and shipwreck, with due
gratitude to be rendered on safe arrival or return. In times of great
crisis, the Senate could decree collective public rites, in which Rome's
citizens, including women and children, moved in procession from one
temple to the next, supplicating the gods.[49]
Extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary sacrifice: in
one of the many crises of the
Second Punic War, Jupiter Capitolinus was promised every animal born
that spring (see
ver
sacrum), to be rendered after five more years of protection from
Hannibal and his allies.[50]
The "contract" with Jupiter is exceptionally detailed. All due care
would be taken of the animals. If any died or were stolen before the
scheduled sacrifice, they would count as already sacrificed, since they
had already been consecrated. Normally, if the gods failed to keep their
side of the bargain, the offered sacrifice would be withheld. In the
imperial period, sacrifice was withheld following
Trajan's
death because the gods had not kept the Emperor safe for the stipulated
period.[51]
In
Pompeii, the Genius of the living emperor was offered a bull:
presumably a standard practise in Imperial cult, though minor offerings
(incense and wine) were also made.[52]
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice in ancient Rome was rare but documented. After the
Roman defeat at Cannae two Gauls and two Greeks were buried under
the
Forum Boarium, in a stone chamber "which had on a previous occasion
[228 BC] also been polluted by human victims, a practice most repulsive
to Roman feelings".[53]
Livy avoids the word "sacrifice" in connection with this bloodless human
life-offering; Plutarch does not. The rite was apparently repeated in
113 BC, preparatory to an invasion of Gaul. Its religious dimensions and
purpose remain uncertain.[54]
In the early stages of the
First Punic War (264 BC) the first known Roman
gladiatorial munus was held, described as a funeral
blood-rite to the
manes
of a Roman military aristocrat.[55]
The gladiator munus was never explicitly acknowledged as a human
sacrifice, probably because death was not its inevitable outcome or
purpose. Even so, the gladiators swore their lives to the infernal gods,
and the combat was dedicated as an offering to the di manes or
other gods. The event was therefore a sacrificium in the strict
sense of the term, and Christian writers later condemned it as human
sacrifice.[56]
The small woolen dolls called Maniae, hung on the Compitalia
shrines, were thought a symbolic replacement for child-sacrifice to
Mania, as Mother of the Lares. The
Junii took credit for its abolition by their ancestor
L. Junius Brutus, traditionally Rome's Republican founder and first
consul.[57]
Political or military executions were sometimes conducted in such a way
that they evoked human sacrifice, whether deliberately or in the
perception of witnesses;
Marcus Marius Gratidianus was a gruesome example.
Officially, human sacrifice was obnoxious "to the laws of gods and
men." The practice was a mark of the "Other",
attributed to Rome's traditional enemies such as the Carthaginians and
Gauls. Rome banned it on several occasions under extreme penalty. A law
passed in 81 BC characterised human sacrifice as murder committed for
magical purposes.
Pliny saw the ending of human sacrifice conducted by the
druids as
a positive consequence of the conquest of Gaul and Britain. Despite an
empire-wide ban under
Hadrian,
human sacrifice may have continued covertly in
North Africa and elsewhere.[58]
Domestic
and private cult
Small bronze statues of gods for a lararium (1st to
3rd century AD,
Vindobona)
The mos maiorum established the dynastic authority and
obligations of the citizen-paterfamilias ("the father of the
family" or the "owner of the family estate"). He had priestly duties to
his lares,
domestic
penates, ancestral Genius and any other deities with whom
he or his family held an interdependent relationship. His own
dependents, who included his slaves and freedmen, owed cult to his
Genius.[59][60]
Genius was the essential spirit and generative power –
depicted as a serpent or as a perennial youth, often winged – within an
individual and their clan (gens
(pl. gentes). A paterfamilias could confer his name, a
measure of his genius and a role in his household rites,
obligations and honours upon those he fathered or adopted. His freed
slaves owed him similar obligations.[61]
A pater familias was the senior priest of his household. He
offered daily cult to his lares and penates, and to his
di parentes/divi parentes at his domestic shrines and in the
fires of the household hearth.[62]
His wife (mater familias) was responsible for the household's
cult to Vesta. In rural estates, bailiffs seem to have been responsible
for at least some of the household shrines (lararia) and their deities.
Household cults had state counterparts. In Vergil's Aeneid,
Aeneas brought the Trojan cult of the
lares
and
penates from Troy, along with the
Palladium which was later installed in the temple of
Vesta.[63]
Religio
and the state
Roman
religio (religion) was an everyday and vital affair, a
cornerstone of the
mos maiorum, Roman tradition or ancestral custom.
Care for the gods, the very meaning of religio, had
therefore to go through life, and one might thus understand why
Cicero wrote that religion was "necessary". Religious behavior –
pietas in Latin, eusebeia in Greek – belonged to action
and not to contemplation. Consequently religious acts took place
wherever the faithful were: in houses, boroughs, associations,
cities, military camps, cemeteries, in the country, on boats. 'When
pious travelers happen to pass by a
sacred
grove or a cult place on their way, they are used to make a vow,
or a fruit offering, or to sit down for a while' (Apuleius,
Florides 1.1).[64]
Religious law centered on the ritualised system of honours and
sacrifice that brought divine blessings, according to the principle
do ut des ("I give, that you might give"). Proper, respectful
religio brought social harmony and prosperity. Religious neglect was
a form of
atheism: impure sacrifice and incorrect ritual were
vitia (impious errors). Excessive devotion, fearful grovelling
to deities and the improper use or seeking of divine knowledge were
superstitio. Any of these moral deviations could cause divine
anger (ira deorum) and therefore harm the State.[65]
The official deities of the state were identified with its lawful
offices and institutions, and Romans of every class were expected to
honour the beneficence and protection of mortal and divine superiors.
Participation in public rites showed a personal commitment to their
community and its values.[66]
Official cults were state funded as a "matter of public interest" (res
publica). Non-official but lawful cults were funded by private
individuals for the benefit of their own communities. The difference
between public and private cult is often unclear. Individuals or
collegial associations could offer funds and cult to state deities. The
public Vestals prepared ritual substances for use in public and private
cults, and held the state-funded (thus public) opening ceremony for the
Parentalia festival, which was otherwise a private rite to household
ancestors. Some rites of the domus (household) were held in
public places but were legally defined as privata in part or
whole. All cults were ultimately subject to the approval and regulation
of the censor and pontifices.[67]
Public priesthoods and religious law
Flamens wearing their distinctive pointed headgear (grouped
to the left), in a panel from the
Ara Pacis
Rome had no separate priestly caste or class. The highest authority
within a community usually sponsored its cults and sacrifices,
officiated as its priest and promoted its assistants and acolytes.
Specialists from the religious colleges, and professionals such as
haruspices and oracles were available for consultation. In household
cult, the paterfamilias functioned as priest, and members of his
familia as acolytes and assistants. Public cults required greater
knowledge and expertise. The earliest public priesthoods were probably
the
flamines (singular, flamen), attributed to king Numa: the major
flamines, dedicated to Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, were
traditionally drawn from patrician families. Twelve lesser flamines
were each dedicated to a single deity, whose archaic nature is indicated
by the relative obscurity of some. Flamines were constrained by
the requirements of ritual purity; Jupiter's flamen in particular
had virtually no simultaneous capacity for a political or military
career.[68]
In the Regal era, a
rex sacrorum (king of the sacred rites) supervised regal and
state rites in conjunction with the king (rex) or in his absence,
and announced the public festivals. He had little or no civil authority.
With the abolition of monarchy, the collegial power and influence of the
Republican pontifices increased. By the late Republican era, the
flamines were supervised by the pontifical collegia. The rex
sacrorum had become a relatively obscure priesthood with an entirely
symbolic title: his religious duties still included the daily, ritual
announcement of festivals and priestly duties within two or three of the
latter but his most important priestly role – the supervision of the
Vestals and their rites – fell to the more politically powerful and
influential
pontifex maximus.[69]
Public priests were appointed by the collegia. Once elected, a
priest held permanent religious authority from the eternal divine, which
offered him lifetime influence, privilege and immunity. Therefore civil
and religious law limited the number and kind of religious offices
allowed an individual and his family. Religious law was collegial and
traditional; it informed political decisions, could overturn them, and
was difficult to exploit for personal gain.[70]
Priesthood was a costly honour: in traditional Roman practice, a priest
drew no stipend. Cult donations were the property of the deity, whose
priest must provide cult regardless of shortfalls in public funding –
this could mean subsidy of acolytes and all other cult maintenance from
personal funds.[71]
For those who had reached their goal in the
Cursus honorum, permanent priesthood was best sought or granted
after a lifetime's service in military or political life, or preferably
both: it was a particularly honourable and active form of retirement
which fulfilled an essential public duty. For a freedman or slave,
promotion as one of the Compitalia seviri offered a high local
profile, and opportunities in local politics; and therefore business.[72]
During the Imperial era, priesthood of the Imperial cult offered
provincial elites full Roman citizenship and public prominence beyond
their single year in religious office; in effect, it was the first step
in a provincial cursus honorum. In Rome, the same Imperial cult
role was performed by the
Arval Brethren, once an obscure Republican priesthood dedicated to
several deities, then co-opted by Augustus as part of his religious
reforms. The Arvals offered prayer and sacrifice to Roman state gods at
various temples for the continued welfare of the Imperial family on
their birthdays, accession anniversaries and to mark extraordinary
events such as the quashing of conspiracy or revolt. Every January 3
they consecrated the annual vows and rendered any sacrifice promised in
the previous year, provided the gods had kept the Imperial family safe
for the contracted time.[73]
The Vestals
The
Vestals were a public priesthood of six women devoted to the
cultivation of
Vesta, goddess of the
hearth of the Roman state and its vital flame. A girl chosen to be a
Vestal achieved unique religious distinction, public status and
privileges, and could exercise considerable political influence. Upon
entering her office, a Vestal was emancipated from her
father's authority. In archaic Roman society, these priestesses were
the only women not required to be under the legal guardianship of a man,
instead answering directly to the Pontifex Maximus.[74]
A Vestal's dress represented her status outside the usual categories
that defined Roman women, with elements of both virgin bride and
daughter, and Roman matron and wife.[75]
Unlike male priests, Vestals were freed of the traditional obligations
of marrying and producing children, and were required to take a vow of
chastity that was strictly enforced: a Vestal polluted by the loss of
her chastity while in office was buried alive.[76]
Thus the exceptional honor accorded a Vestal was religious rather than
personal or social; her privileges required her to be fully devoted to
the performance of her duties, which were considered essential to the
security of Rome.[77]
The Vestals embody the profound connection between domestic cult and
the religious life of the community.[78]
Any householder could rekindle their own household fire from Vesta's
flame. The Vestals cared for the
Lares and
Penates of the state that were the equivalent of those enshrined in
each home. Besides their own festival of
Vestalia, they participated directly in the rites of
Parilia,
Parentalia and
Fordicidia. Indirectly, they played a role in every official
sacrifice; among their duties was the preparation of the
mola salsa, the salted flour that was sprinkled on every
sacrificial victim as part of its immolation.[79]
One mythological tradition held that the mother of Romulus and Remus
was a Vestal virgin of royal blood. A tale of miraculous birth also
attended on
Servius Tullius, sixth king of Rome, son of a virgin slave-girl
impregnated by a disembodied
phallus
arising mysteriously on the royal hearth; the story was connected to the
fascinus that was among the cult objects under the guardianship
of the Vestals.
Augustus' religious reformations raised the funding and public
profile of the Vestals. They were given high-status seating at games and
theatres. The emperor
Claudius appointed them as priestesses to the cult of the deified
Livia,
wife of Augustus.[80]
They seem to have retained their religious and social distinctions well
into the 4th century, after political power within the Empire had
shifted to the Christians. When the Christian emperor
Gratian
refused the office of pontifex maximus, he took steps toward the
dissolution of the order. His successor
Theodosius I extinguished Vesta's sacred fire and vacated her
temple.
Augury
Public religion took place within a sacred precinct that had been
marked out ritually by an
augur.
The original meaning of the Latin word templum was this sacred
space, and only later referred to a building.[47]
Rome itself was an intrinsically sacred space; its ancient boundary (pomerium)
had been marked by Romulus himself with oxen and plough; what lay within
was the earthly home and protectorate of the gods of the state. In Rome,
the central references for the establishment of an augural templum
appear to have been the
Via
Sacra (Sacred Way) and the pomerium.[81]
Magistrates sought divine opinion of proposed official acts through an
augur, who read the divine will through observations made within the
templum before, during and after an act of sacrifice.[82]
Divine disapproval could arise through unfit sacrifice, errant rites (vitium)
or an unacceptable plan of action. If an unfavourable sign was given,
the magistrate could repeat the sacrifice until favourable signs were
seen, consult with his augural colleagues, or abandon the project.
Magistrates could use their right of augury (ius augurum) to
adjourn and overturn the process of law, but were obliged to base their
decision on the augur's observations and advice. For Cicero, himself an
augur, this made the augur the most powerful authority in the Late
Republic.[83]
By his time (mid 1st century BC) augury was supervised by the college of
pontifices, whose powers were increasingly woven into the
magistracies of the
cursus honorum.[84]
Haruspicy
The bronze
Liver of Piacenza is an Etruscan artifact that probably
served as an instructional model for the haruspex
Haruspicy was also used in public cult, under the supervision of the
augur or presiding magistrate. The haruspices divined the will of the
gods through examination of entrails after sacrifice, particularly the
liver. They also interpreted omens, prodigies and portents, and
formulated their expiation. Most Roman authors describe haruspicy as an
ancient, ethnically Etruscan "outsider" religious profession, separate
from Rome's internal and largely unpaid priestly hierarchy, essential
but never quite respectable.[85]
During the mid-to-late Republic, the reformist
Gaius Gracchus, the populist politician-general
Gaius Marius and his antagonist
Sulla,
and the "notorious
Verres"
justified their very different policies by the divinely inspired
utterances of private diviners. The senate and armies used the public
haruspices: at some time during the late Republic, the Senate decreed
that Roman boys of noble family be sent to Etruria for training in
haruspicy and divination. Being of independent means, they would be
better motivated to maintain a pure, religious practice for the public
good.[86]
The motives of private haruspices – especially females – and their
clients were officially suspect: none of this seems to have troubled
Marius, who employed a Syrian prophetess.[87]
Omens and
prodigies
Omens observed within or from a divine augural templum – especially
the flight of birds – were sent by the gods in response to official
queries. A magistrate with ius augurium (the right of augury)
could declare the suspension of all official business for the day (obnuntiato)
if he deemed the omens unfavourable.[88]
Conversely, an apparently negative omen could be re-interpreted as
positive, or deliberately blocked from sight.[89]
Prodigies were transgressions in the natural, predictable order of
the cosmos – signs of divine anger that portended conflict and
misfortune. The Senate decided whether a reported prodigy was false, or
genuine and in the public interest, in which case it was referred to the
public
priests,
augurs and haruspices for ritual expiation.[90]
In 207 BC, during one of the Punic Wars' worst crises, the Senate dealt
with an unprecedented number of confirmed prodigies whose expiation
would have involved "at least twenty days" of dedicated rites.[91]
Livy presents these as signs of widespread failure in Roman
religio. The major prodigies included the spontaneous combustion of
weapons, the apparent shrinking of the sun's disc, two moons in a daylit
sky, a cosmic battle between sun and moon, a rain of red-hot stones, a
bloody sweat on statues, and blood in fountains and on ears of corn: all
were expiated by sacrifice of
"greater victims". The minor prodigies were less warlike but equally
unnatural; sheep become goats, a hen become a
cock
(and vice-versa) – these were expiated with "lesser victims". The
discovery of an androgynous four-year old child was expiated by its
drowning[92]
and the holy procession of 27 virgins to the temple of
Juno Regina, singing a hymn to avert disaster: a lightning strike
during the hymn rehearsals required further expiation.[93]
Religious restitution is proved only by Rome's victory.[94][95]
In the wider context of Graeco-Roman religious culture, Rome's
earliest reported portents and prodigies stand out as atypically dire.
Whereas for Romans, a comet presaged misfortune, for Greeks it might
equally signal a divine or exceptionally fortunate birth.[96]
In the late Republic, a daytime comet at the murdered Julius Caesar's
funeral games confirmed his deification; a discernable Greek influence
on Roman interpretation.[97]
Funerals
and the afterlife
Roman beliefs about an afterlife varied, and are known mostly for the
educated elite who expressed their views in terms of their chosen
philosophy. The traditional care of the dead, however, and the
perpetuation after death of their status in life were part of the most
archaic practices of Roman religion. Ancient votive deposits to the
noble dead of Latium and Rome suggest elaborate and costly funeral
offerings and banquets in the company of the deceased, an expectation of
afterlife and their association with the gods.[98]
As Roman society developed, its Republican nobility tended to invest
less in spectacular funerals and extravagant housing for their dead, and
more on monumental endowments to the community, such as the donation of
a temple or public building whose donor was commemorated by his statue
and inscribed name.[99]
Persons of low or negligible status might receive simple burial, with
such grave goods as relatives could afford.
One of the
earliest Christian inscriptions (3rd century), this
funerary
stele preserves the traditional abbreviation D. M.,
Dis Manibus, "for the Manes gods", with the Christian
motto in Greek Ikhthus zōntōn ("fish of the living")
and the identity of the deceased in Latin
Funeral and commemorative rites varied according to wealth, status
and religious context. In Cicero's time, the better-off sacrificed a sow
at the funeral pyre before cremation. The dead consumed their portion in
the flames of the pyre, Ceres her portion through the flame of her
altar, and the family at the site of the cremation. For the less
well-off, inhumation with "a libation of wine, incense, and fruit or
crops was sufficient". Ceres functioned as an intermediary between the
realms of the living and the dead: the deceased had not yet fully passed
to the world of the dead and could share a last meal with the living.
The ashes (or body) were entombed or buried. On the eighth day of
mourning, the family offered further sacrifice, this time on the ground;
the shade of the departed was assumed to have passed entirely into the
underworld. They had become one of the di Manes, who were
collectively celebrated and appeased at the
Parentalia, a multi-day festival of remembrance in February.[100]
A standard Roman funerary inscription is Dis Manibus (to the
Manes-gods). Regional variations include its Greek equivalent, theoîs
katachthoníois[101]
and
Lugdunum's commonplace but mysterious "dedicated under the trowel"
(sub ascia dedicare).[102]
In the later Imperial era, the burial and commemorative practises of
Christian and non-Christians overlapped. Tombs were shared by Christian
and non-Christian family members, and the traditional funeral rites and
feast of novemdialis found a part-match in the Christian
Consitutio Apostolica.[103]
The customary offers of wine and food to the dead continued; St
Augustine (following St Ambrose) feared that this invited the "drunken"
practices of Parentalia but commended funeral feasts as a Christian
opportunity to give alms of food to the poor. Christians attended
Parentalia and its accompanying
Feralia
and
Caristia in sufficient numbers for the
Council of Tours to forbid them in AD 567. Other funerary and
commemorative practices were very different. Traditional Roman practice
spurned the corpse as a ritual pollution; inscriptions noted the day of
birth and duration of life. The Christian Church fostered the veneration
of saintly
relics, and inscriptions marked the day of death as a transition to
"new life".[104]
Religion
and the military
A
Genius of the legion (2nd–3rd century CE)
Military success was achieved through a combination of personal and
collective virtus (roughly, "manly virtue") and the divine will:
lack of virtus, civic or private negligence in religio and
the growth of superstitio provoked divine wrath and led to
military disaster. Military success was the touchstone of a special
relationship with the gods, and to Jupiter Capitolinus in particular;
triumphal generals were dressed as Jupiter, and laid their victor's
laurels at his feet.[105][106]
Roman commanders offered vows to be fulfilled after success in battle
or siege; and further vows to expiate their failures.
Camillus promised Veii's goddess Juno a temple in Rome as incentive
for her desertion (evocatio),
conquered the city in her name, brought her cult statue to Rome "with
miraculous ease" and dedicated a temple to her on the Aventine Hill.[107]
Roman camps followed a standard pattern for defense and religious
ritual; in effect they were Rome in miniature. The commander's
headquarters stood at the centre; he took the auspices on a dais in
front. A small building behind housed the legionary standards, the
divine images used in religious rites and in the Imperial era, the image
of the ruling emperor. In one camp, this shrine is even called
Capitolium. The most important camp-offering appears to have been the
suovetaurilia performed before a major, set battle. A ram, a boar
and a bull were ritually garlanded, led around the outer perimeter of
the camp (a lustratio exercitus) and in through a gate, then
sacrificed: Trajan's column shows three such events from his Dacian
wars. The perimeter procession and sacrifice suggest the entire camp as
a divine templum; all within are purified and protected.[108]
Each camp had its own religious personnel; standard bearers, priestly
officers and their assistants, including a haruspex, and housekeepers of
shrines and images. A senior magistrate-commander (sometimes even a
consul) headed it, his chain of subordinates ran it and a ferocious
system of training and discipline ensured that every citizen-soldier
knew his duty. As in Rome, whatever gods he served in his own time seem
to have been his own business; legionary forts and vici included
shrines to household gods, personal deities and deities otherwise
unknown.[109]
From the earliest Imperial era, citizen legionaries and provincial
auxiliaries gave cult to the emperor and his familia on Imperial
accessions, anniversaries and their renewal of annual vows. They
celebrated Rome's official festivals in absentia, and had the
official triads appropriate to their function – in the Empire, Jupiter,
Victoria and
Concordia were typical. By the early Severan era, the military also
offered cult to the Imperial divi, the current emperor's numen,
genius and domus (or familia), and special cult to
the Empress as "mother of the camp." The near ubiquitous legionary
shrines to
Mithras of the later Imperial era were not part of official cult
until Mithras was absorbed into
Solar and Stoic
Monism
as a focus of military
concordia and Imperial loyalty.[110][111][112]
The
devotio was the most extreme offering a Roman general could
make, promising to offer his own life in battle along with the enemy as
an offering to the underworld gods. Livy offers a detailed account of
the devotio carried out by
Decius Mus; family tradition maintained that
his son and
grandson, all bearing the same name, also devoted themselves. Before
the battle, Decius is granted a prescient dream that reveals his fate.
When he offers sacrifice, the victim's liver appears "damaged where it
refers to his own fortunes". Otherwise, the haruspex tells him, the
sacrifice is entirely acceptable to the gods. In a
prayer recorded by Livy, Decius commits himself and the enemy to the
dii Manes
and
Tellus, charges alone and headlong into the enemy ranks, and is
killed; his action cleanses the sacrificial offering. Had he failed to
die, his sacrificial offering would have been tainted and therefore
void, with possibly disastrous consequences.[113]
The act of devotio is a link between military ethics and those of
the Roman
gladiator.
The efforts of military commanders to channel the divine will were on
occasion less successful. In the early days of Rome's war against
Carthage, the commander
Publius Claudius Pulcher (consul 249 BC) launched a sea campaign
"though the sacred chickens would not eat when he took the auspices." In
defiance of the omen, he threw them into the sea, "saying that they
might drink, since they would not eat. He was defeated, and on being
bidden by the senate to appoint a dictator, he appointed his messenger
Glycias, as if again making a jest of his country's peril." His impiety
not only lost the battle but ruined his career.[114]
Women and religion
- See also
Women in ancient Rome: Religious life
Roman women were present at most festivals and cult observances. Some
rituals specifically required the presence of women, but their active
participation was limited. As a rule women did not perform animal
sacrifice, the central rite of most major public ceremonies.[115]
In addition to the public priesthood of the Vestals, some cult practices
were reserved for women only. The rites of the
Bona
Dea excluded men entirely.[116]
Because women enter the public record less frequently than men, their
religious practices are less known, and even family cults were headed by
the paterfamilias. A host of deities, however, are associated
with motherhood.
Juno,
Diana,
Lucina, and
specialized divine attendants presided over the life-threatening act
of giving birth and the perils of caring for a baby at a time when the
infant mortality rate was as high as 40 percent.
Literary sources vary in their depiction of women's religiosity: some
represent women as paragons of Roman virtue and devotion, but also
inclined by temperament to self-indulgent religious enthusiasms,
novelties and the seductions of superstitio.[117]
Superstitio
and magic
Mosaic from
Pompeii depicting masked characters in a scene from a
play: two women consult a witch
Excessive devotion and enthusiasm in religious observance were
superstitio, in the sense of "doing or believing more than was
necessary",[118]
to which women and foreigners were considered particularly prone.[119]
The boundaries between religio and superstitio are perhaps
indefinite. The famous tirade of
Lucretius, the Epicurean rationalist, against what is usually
translated as "superstition" was in fact aimed at excessive religio.
Roman religion was based on knowledge rather than faith,[120]
but superstitio was viewed as an "inappropriate desire for
knowledge"; in effect, an abuse of religio.[118]
In the everyday world, many individuals sought to divine the future,
influence it through magic, or seek vengeance with help from "private"
diviners. The state-sanctioned taking of auspices was a form of public
divination with the intent of ascertaining the will of the gods, not
foretelling the future. Secretive consultations between private diviners
and their clients were thus suspect. So were divinatory techniques such
as astrology when used for illicit, subversive or magical purposes.
Astrologers and magicians were officially expelled from Rome at various
times, notably in 139 BC and 33 BC. In 16 BC Tiberius expelled them
under extreme penalty because an astrologer had predicted his death.
"Egyptian rites" were particularly suspect: Augustus banned them within
the pomerium to doubtful effect; Tiberius repeated and extended
the ban with extreme force in AD 19.[121]
Despite several Imperial bans, magic and astrology persisted among all
social classes. In the late 1st century AD, Tacitus observed that
astrologers "would always be banned and always retained at Rome".[122][123][124]
In the Graeco-Roman world, practitioners of magic were known as
magi
(singular magus), a "foreign" title of Persian priests.
Apuleius, defending himself against accusations of casting magic
spells, defined the magician as "in popular tradition (more vulgari)
... someone who, because of his community of speech with the immortal
gods, has an incredible power of spells (vi cantaminum) for
everything he wishes to."[125]
Pliny the Elder offers a thoroughly skeptical "History of magical
arts" from their supposed Persian origins to Nero's vast and futile
expenditure on research into magical practices in an attempt to control
the gods.[126]
Philostratus takes pains to point out that the celebrated
Apollonius of Tyana was definitely not a magus, "despite his
special knowledge of the future, his miraculous cures, and his ability
to vanish into thin air".[127]
Lucan
depicts
Sextus Pompeius, the doomed son of
Pompey the Great, as convinced "the gods of heaven knew too little"
and awaiting the
Battle of Pharsalus by consulting with the
Thessalian witch
Erichtho, who practices
necromancy and inhabits deserted graves, feeding on rotting corpses.
Erichtho, it is said, can arrest "the rotation of the heavens and the
flow of rivers" and make "austere old men blaze with illicit passions".
She and her clients are portrayed as undermining the natural order of
gods, mankind and destiny. A female foreigner from Thessaly, notorious
for witchcraft, Erichtho is the stereotypical witch of Latin literature,[128]
along with Horace's Canidia.
Bound tablets with magic inscriptions from late antiquity
The Twelve Tables forbade any harmful incantation (malum
carmen, or 'noisome metrical charm'); this included the
"charming of crops from one field to another" (excantatio frugum)
and any rite that sought harm or death to others.
Chthonic deities functioned at the margins of Rome's divine and
human communities; although sometimes the recipients of public rites,
these were conducted outside the sacred boundary of the pomerium.
Individuals seeking their aid did so away from the public gaze, during
the hours of darkness. Burial grounds and isolated crossroads were among
the likely portals.[129]
The barrier between private religious practices and "magic" is
permeable, and Ovid gives a vivid account of rites at the fringes of the
public
Feralia festival that are indistinguishable from magic: an old woman
squats among a circle of younger women, sews up a fish-head, smears it
with pitch, then pierces and roasts it to "bind hostile tongues to
silence". By this she invokes Tacita, the "Silent One" of the
underworld.
Archaeology confirms the widespread use of binding spells (defixiones),
magical papyri and so-called "voodoo dolls" from a very early era.
Around 250 defixiones have been recovered just from
Roman Britain, in both urban and rural settings. Some seek
straightforward, usually gruesome revenge, often for a lover's offense
or rejection. Others appeal for divine redress of wrongs, in terms
familiar to any Roman magistrate, and promise a portion of the value
(usually small) of lost or stolen property in return for its
restoration. None of these defixiones seem produced by, or on
behalf of the elite, who had more immediate recourse to human law and
justice. Similar traditions existed throughout the empire, persisting
until around the 7th century AD, well into the Christian era.[130]
History of
Roman religion
Religion and
politics
Rome's government, politics and religion were dominated by an
educated, male, landowning military aristocracy. Approximately half
Rome's population were slave or free non-citizens. Most others were
plebeians, the lowest class of Roman citizens. Less than a quarter
of adult males had voting rights; far fewer could actually exercise
them. Women had no vote.[131]
However, all official business was conducted under the divine gaze and
auspices, in the name of the senate and people of Rome. "In a very real
sense the senate was the caretaker of the Romans’ relationship with the
divine, just as it was the caretaker of their relationship with other
humans".[132]
The links between religious and political life were vital to Rome's
internal governance, diplomacy and development from kingdom, to Republic
and to Empire. Post-regal politics dispersed the civil and religious
authority of the kings more or less equitably among the patrician elite:
kingship was replaced by two annually elected consular offices. In the
early Republic, as presumably in the regal era, plebeians were excluded
from high religious and civil office, and could be punished for offenses
against laws of which they had no knowledge.[133]
They resorted to
strikes and violence to break the oppressive patrician monopolies of
high office, public priesthood, and knowledge of civil and religious
law. The senate appointed
Camillus as
dictator to handle the emergency; he negotiated a settlement, and
sanctified it by the dedication of a temple to
Concordia.[134]
The religious calendars and
laws were eventually made public.
Plebeian tribunes were appointed, with sacrosanct status and the
right of veto in legislative debate. In principle, the augural and
pontifical colleges were now open to plebians.[135]
In reality, the patrician and to a lesser extent, plebeian nobility
dominated religious and civil office throughout the Republican era and
beyond.[136]
While the new plebeian nobility made social, political and religious
inroads on traditionally patrician preserves, their electorate
maintained their distinctive political traditions and religious cults.[137]
During the Punic crisis, popular cult to
Dionysus emerged from southern Italy; Dionysus was equated with
Father Liber,
the inventor of plebeian augury and personification of plebeian
freedoms, and with Roman
Bacchus. Official consternation at these enthusiastic, unofficial
Bacchanalia cults was expressed as moral outrage at their supposed
subversion, and was followed by ferocious suppression. Much later, a
statue of
Marsyas, the
silen
of Dionysus flayed by
Apollo,
became a focus of brief symbolic resistance to Augustus' censorship.
Augustus himself claimed the patronage of Venus and Apollo; but his
settlement appealed to all classes. Where loyalty was implicit, no
divine hierarchy need be politically enforced;
Liber's festival continued.[138][139]
The Augustan settlement built upon a cultural shift in Roman society.
In the middle Republican era, even
Scipio's tentative hints that he might be Jupiter's special protege
sat ill with his colleagues.[140]
Politicians of the later Republic were less equivocal; both
Sulla and
Pompey
claimed special relationships with
Venus.
Julius Caesar went further, and claimed her as
his ancestress. Such claims suggested personal character and policy
as divinely inspired; an appointment to priesthood offered divine
validation. In 63 BC, Julius Caesar's appointment as pontifex maximus
"signaled his emergence as a major player in Roman politics".[141]
Likewise, political candidates could sponsor temples, priesthoods and
the immensely popular, spectacular public ludi and munera
whose provision became increasingly indispensable to the factional
politics of the Late Republic.[142]
Under the
principate, such opportunities were limited by law; priestly and
political power were consolidated in the person of the princeps ("first
citizen").
"Because of you we are living, because of you we can travel the
seas, because of you we enjoy liberty and wealth." A thanksgiving
prayer offered in Naples' harbour to the princeps Augustus, on his
return from Alexandria in 14 AD, shortly before his death.[143]
Early Republic
By the end of the
regal period Rome had developed into a city-state, with a large
plebeian, artisan class excluded from the old patrician
gentes
and from the state priesthoods. The city had commercial and political
treaties with its neighbours; according to tradition, Rome's
Etruscan connections established a temple to
Minerva
on the predominantly plebeian
Aventine; she became part of a new Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno
and Minerva, installed in a Capitoline temple, built in an Etruscan
style and dedicated in a new September festival,
Epulum Jovis.[144]
These are supposedly the first Roman deities whose images were adorned,
as if noble guests, at their own inaugural banquet.
Rome's diplomatic agreement with her neighbours of
Latium
confirmed the
Latin league and brought the cult of
Diana from
Aricia to the Aventine.[145]
and established on the Aventine in the "commune Latinorum Dianae
templum":[146]
At about the same time, the temple of
Jupiter Latiaris was built on the
Alban mount, its stylistic resemblance to the new Capitoline temple
pointing to Rome's inclusive hegemony. Rome's affinity to the Latins
allowed two Latin cults within the
pomoerium:[147]
and the cult to
Hercules at the
ara maxima in the
Forum Boarium was established through commercial connections with
Tibur.[148]
and the
Tusculan cult of
Castor as the patron of cavalry found a home close to the
Forum Romanum:[149]
Juno Sospita and
Juno Regina were brought from Italy, and
Fortuna Primigenia from
Praeneste. In 217,
Venus was brought from Sicily and installed in a temple on the
Capitoline hill.[150]
Later
Republic to Principate
Defaced
Dea Roma holding
Victory and regarding an altar with a
cornucopia and other offerings, copy of a relief panel
from an altar or statue base
The disasters of the early part of Rome's
second Punic War were attributed, in Livy's account, to a growth of
superstitious cults, errors in augury and the neglect of Rome's
traditional gods, whose anger was expressed directly in Rome's defeat at
Cannae (216 BC). The Sibilline books were consulted. They
recommended a general vowing of the ver sacrum[151]
and in the following year, the burial of two Greeks and two Gauls; not
the first or the last of its kind, according to Livy.
The introduction of new or equivalent deities coincided with Rome's
most significant aggressive and defensive military forays. In 206 BC the
Sibylline books commended the introduction of cult to the aniconic
Magna Mater (Great Mother) from
Pessinus, installed on the
Palatine in 191 BC. The mystery cult to
Bacchus
followed; it was suppressed as subversive and unruly by decree of the
Senate in 186 BC.[152]
Greek deities were brought within the sacred pomerium: temples were
dedicated to
Juventas (Hebe)
in 191 BC,[153]
Diana (Artemis)
in 179 BC,
Mars (Ares)
in 138 BC), and to
Bona
Dea, equivalent to
Fauna, the female counterpart of the rural
Faunus,
supplemented by the Greek goddess
Damia. Further Greek influences on cult images and types represented
the Roman
Penates as forms of the Greek
Dioscuri. The military-political adventurers of the Later Republic
introduced the Phrygian goddess Ma (identified with Roman
Bellona, the Egyptian mystery-goddess
Isis and
Persian
Mithras.)
The spread of Greek literature, mythology and philosophy offered
Roman poets and antiquarians a model for the interpretation of Rome's
festivals and rituals, and the embellishment of its mythology.
Ennius
translated the work of Graeco-Sicilian
Euhemerus, who explained the genesis of the gods as
apotheosized mortals. In the last century of the Republic,
Epicurean and particularly
Stoic
interpretations were a preoccupation of the literate elite, most of whom
held - or had held - high office and traditional Roman priesthoods;
notably,
Scaevola and the polymath
Varro. For Varro - well versed in Euhemerus' theory - popular
religious observance was based on a necessary fiction; what the people
believed was not itself the truth, but their observance led them to as
much higher truth as their limited capacity could deal with. Whereas in
popular belief deities held power over mortal lives, the skeptic might
say that mortal devotion had made gods of mortals, and these same gods
were only sustained by devotion and cult.
Just as Rome itself claimed the favour of the gods, so did some
individual Romans. In the mid-to-late Republican era, and probably much
earlier, many of Rome's leading clans acknowledged a divine or
semi-divine ancestor and laid personal claim to their favour and cult,
along with a share of their divinity. Most notably in the very late
Republic, the
Julii claimed
Venus
Genetrix as ancestor; this would be one of many foundations for the
Imperial cult. The claim was further elaborated and justified in
Vergil's poetic, Imperial vision of the past.[11]
In the late Republic, the
Marian reforms lowered an existing property bar on conscription and
increased the efficiency of Rome's armies but made them available as
instruments of political ambition and factional conflict.[154]
The consequent civil wars led to changes at every level of Roman
society. Augustus'
principate established peace and subtly transformed Rome's religious
life – or, in the new ideology of Empire, restored it (see
below).
Towards the end of the Republic, religious and political offices
became more closely intertwined; the office of
pontifex maximus became a de facto consular prerogative.[84]
Augustus was personally vested with an extraordinary breadth of
political, military and priestly powers; at first temporarily, then for
his lifetime. He acquired or was granted an unprecedented number of
Rome's major priesthoods, including that of ponifex maximus; as
he invented none, he could claim them as traditional honours. His
reforms were represented as adaptive, restorative and regulatory, rather
than innovative; most notably his elevation (and membership) of the
ancient
Arvales, his timely promotion of the plebeian Compitalia shortly
before his election and his patronage of the
Vestals as a visible restoration of Roman morality.[155]
Augustus obtained the pax deorum, maintained it for the rest of
his reign and adopted a successor to ensure its continuation. This
remained a primary religious and social duty of emperors.
Roman Empire
Absorption of
cults
The Roman Empire expanded to include different peoples and cultures;
in principle, Rome followed the same inclusionist policies that had
recognised Latin, Etruscan and other Italian peoples, cults and deities
as Roman. Those who acknowledged Rome's hegemony retained their own cult
and religious calendars, independent of Roman religious law.[156]
Newly municipal
Sabratha built a Capitolium near its existing temple to
Liber Pater and
Serapis.
Autonomy and concord were official policy, but new foundations by Roman
citizens or their Romanised allies were likely to follow Roman cultic
models.[157]
Romanisation offered distinct political and practical advantages,
especially to local elites. All the known effigies from the 2nd century
AD forum at
Cuicul are of emperors or
Concordia. By the middle of the 1st century AD, Gaulish
Vertault seems to have abandoned its native cultic sacrifice of
horses and dogs in favour of a newly established, Romanised cult nearby:
by the end of that century, Sabratha’s so-called
tophet
was no longer in use.[158]
Colonial and later Imperial provincial dedications to Rome's Capitoline
Triad were a logical choice, not a centralised legal requirement.[159]
Major cult centres to "non-Roman" deities continued to prosper: notable
examples include the magnificent Alexandrian
Serapium, the temple of Aesculapeus at Pergamum and Apollo's sacred
wood at Antioch.[160]
The overall scarcity of evidence for smaller or local cults does not
always imply their neglect; votive inscriptions are inconsistently
scattered throughout Rome's geography and history. Inscribed dedications
were an expensive public declaration, one to be expected within the
Graeco-Roman cultural ambit but by no means universal. Innumerable
smaller, personal or more secretive cults would have persisted and left
no trace.[161]
Military settlement within the empire and at its borders broadened
the context of Romanitas. Rome's citizen-soldiers set up altars
to multiple deities, including their traditional gods, the Imperial
genius and local deities – sometimes with the usefully open-ended
dedication to the diis deabusque omnibus (all the gods and
goddesses). They also brought Roman "domestic" deities and cult
practices with them.[162]
By the same token, the later granting of citizenship to provincials and
their conscription into the legions brought their new cults into the
Roman military.[163]
Traders, legions and other travellers brought home cults originating
from Egypt, Greece, Iberia, India and Persia. The cults of
Cybele,
Isis,
Mithras, and
Sol Invictus were particularly important. Some of those were
initiatory religions of intense personal significance, similar to
Christianity in those respects.
Imperial cult
In the early Imperial era, a ruling
princeps (lit. "first head of the Senate) was offered genius-cult
as the symbolic paterfamilias of Rome. His cult had further
precedents: popular, unofficial cult offered to powerful benefactors in
Rome: the kingly, god-like honours granted a Roman general on the day of
his
triumph; and in the divine honours paid to Roman magnates in the
Greek East from at least 195 BC.[164][165]
The deification of deceased emperors had precedent in Roman domestic
cult to the dii parentes (deified ancestors) and the mythic
apotheosis of Rome's founders. A deceased emperor granted apotheosis
by his successor and the Senate became an official State divus
(divinity). Members of the Imperial family could be granted similar
honours and cult; an Emperor's deceased wife, sister or daughter could
be promoted to diva (female divinity).
The first and last Roman known as a living divus was
Julius Caesar, who seems to have aspired to divine monarchy; he was
murdered soon after. Greek allies had their own traditional cults to
rulers as divine benefactors, and offered similar cult to Caesar's
successor, Augustus, who accepted with the cautious proviso that
expatriate Roman citizens refrain from such worship; it might prove
fatal.[166]
By the end of his reign, Augustus had appropriated Rome's political
apparatus – and most of its religious cults – within his "reformed" and
thoroughly integrated system of government. Towards the end of his life,
he cautiously allowed cult to his numen. By then the Imperial
cult apparatus was fully developed, first in the Eastern Provinces, then
in the West.[167]
Provincial Cult centres offered the amenities and opportunities of a
major Roman town within a local context; bathhouses, shrines and temples
to Roman and local deities, amphitheatres and festivals. In the early
Imperial period, the promotion of local elites to Imperial priesthood
gave them Roman citizenship.[168]
In an empire of great religious and cultural diversity, the Imperial
cult offered a common Roman identity and dynastic stability. In Rome,
the framework of government was recognisably Republican. In the
Provinces, this would not have mattered; in Greece, the emperor was "not
only endowed with special, super-human abilities, but... he was indeed a
visible god" and the little Greek town of Akraiphia could offer official
cult to "liberating Zeus Nero for all eternity".[169]
In Rome, state cult to a living emperor acknowledged his rule as
divinely approved and constitutional. As
princeps (first citizen) he must respect traditional Republican
mores; given virtually monarchic powers, he must restrain them. He was
not a living divus but father of his country (pater patriae),
its pontifex maximus (greatest priest) and at least notionally, its
leading Republican. When he died, his ascent to heaven, or his descent
to join the dii manes was decided by a vote in the Senate. As a
divus, he could receive much the same honours as any other state
deity – libations of wine, garlands, incense, hymns and sacrificial oxen
at games and festivals. What he did in return for these favours is
unknown, but literary hints and the later adoption of divus as a
title for Christian Saints suggest him as a heavenly intercessor.[170]
In Rome, official cult to a living emperor was directed to his genius;
a small number refused this honour and there is no evidence of any
emperor receiving more than that. In the crises leading up to the
Dominate, Imperial titles and honours multiplied, reaching a peak under
Diocletian. Emperors before him had attempted to guarantee traditional
cults as the core of Roman identity and well-being; refusal of cult
undermined the state and was treasonous.[171]
Jews and
Roman religion
For at least a century before the establishment of the Augustan
principate, Jews and Judaism were tolerated in Rome by diplomatic treaty
with Judaea's Hellenised elite.
Diaspora Jews had much in common with the overwhelmingly Hellenic or
Hellenised communities that surrounded them. Early Italian synagogues
have left few traces; but one was dedicated in Ostia around the mid-1st
century BC and several more are attested during the Imperial period.
Judaea's enrollment as a client kingdom in 63 BC increased the Jewish
diaspora; in Rome, this led to closer official scrutiny of their
religion. Their synagogues were recognised as legitimate collegia
by Julius Caesar. By the Augustan era, the city of Rome was home to
several thousand Jews.[172][173]
In some periods under Roman rule, Jews were legally exempt from official
sacrifice, under certain conditions. Judaism was a superstitio to
Cicero, but the
Church Father
Tertullian described it as
religio licita (an officially permitted religion) in contrast to
Christianity.[174]
Christianity in the Roman Empire
Roman investigations into early Christianity found it an irreligious,
novel, disobedient, even atheistic sub-sect of Judaism: it appeared to
deny all forms of religion and was therefore superstitio. By the
end of the Imperial era, Nicene Christianity was the one permitted Roman
religio; all other cults were heretical or pagan
superstitiones.[175]
After the
Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, Emperor
Nero
accused the Christians as convenient scapegoats who were later
persecuted and killed. From that point on, Roman official policy
towards Christianity tended towards persecution. During the various
Imperial crises of the 3rd century, “contemporaries were predisposed to
decode any crisis in religious terms”, regardless of their allegiance to
particular practices or belief systems. Christianity drew its
traditional base of support from the powerless, who seemed to have no
religious stake in the well-being of the Roman State, and therefore
threatened its existence.[176]
The majority of Rome’s elite continued to observe various forms of
inclusive Hellenistic monism; Neoplatonism in particular accommodated
the miraculous and the ascetic within a traditional Graeco-Roman cultic
framework. Christians saw these ungodly practices as a primary cause of
economic and political crisis.
In the wake of religious riots in Egypt, the emperor
Decius
decreed that all subjects of the Empire must actively seek to benefit
the state through witnessed and certified sacrifice to "ancestral gods"
or suffer a penalty: only Jews were exempt.[177]
Decius' edict appealed to whatever common mos maiores might
reunite a politically and socially fractured Empire and its multitude of
cults; no ancestral gods were specified by name. The fulfillment of
sacrificial obligation by loyal subjects would define them and their
gods as Roman.[178]
Roman oaths of loyalty were traditionally collective; the Decian oath
has been interpreted as a design to root out individual subversives and
suppress their cults,[179]
but
apostasy was sought, rather than capital punishment.[180]
A year after its due deadline, the edict expired.[181]
Valerian's first religious edict singled out Christianity as a
particularly self-interested and subversive foreign cult, outlawed its
assemblies and urged Christians to sacrifice to Rome's traditional gods.[182][183]
His second edict acknowledged a Christian threat to the Imperial system
– not yet at its heart but close to it, among Rome’s equites and
Senators. Christian apologists interpreted his disgraceful capture and
death as divine judgement. The next forty years were peaceful; the
Christian church grew stronger and its literature and theology gained a
higher social and intellectual profile, due in part to its own search
for political toleration and theological coherence.
Origen
discussed theological issues with traditionalist elites in a common
Neoplatonist frame of reference – he had written to Decius' predecessor
Philip the Arab in similar vein – and Hippolytus recognised a
“pagan” basis in Christian heresies.[184]
The Christian churches were disunited; Paul of Samosata, Bishop of
Antioch was deposed by a synod of 268 for "dogmatic reasons – his
doctrine on the human nature of Christ was rejected – and for his
lifestyle, which reminded his brethren of the habits of the
administrative elite". The reasons for his deposition were widely
circulated among the churches.[185]
Meanwhile
Aurelian (270-75) appealed for harmony among his soldiers (concordia
militum), stabilised the Empire and its borders and successfully
established an official, Hellenic form of unitary cult to the
Palmyrene
Sol Invictus in Rome's
Campus Martius.[186]
In 295, a certain
Maximilian refused military service; in 298
Marcellus renounced his military oath. Both were executed for
treason; both were Christians.[182]
At some time around 302, a report of ominous
haruspicy in
Diocletian's domus and a subsequent (but undated) dictat of
placatory sacrifice by the entire military triggered
a series of edicts against Christianity.[187]
The first (303 AD) "ordered the destruction of church buildings and
Christian texts, forbade services to be held, degraded officials who were
Christians, re-enslaved imperial freedmen who were Christians, and
reduced the legal rights of all Christians... [Physical] or capital
punishments were not imposed on them" but soon after, several Christians
suspected of attempted arson in the palace were executed.[188]
The second edict threatened Christian priests with imprisonment and the
third offered them freedom if they performed sacrifice.[189]
An edict of 304 enjoined universal sacrifice to traditional gods, in
terms that recall the Decian edict.
In some cases and in some places the edicts were strictly enforced:
some Christians resisted and were imprisoned or martyred. Others
complied. Some local communities were not only pre-dominantly Christian,
but powerful and influential; and some provincial authorities were
lenient. Diocletian's successor Galerius maintained anti-Christian
policy until his deathbed revocation in 311, when he asked Christians to
pray for him. "This meant an official recognition of their importance in
the religious world of the Roman empire, although one of the tetrarchs,
Maximinus Daia, still oppressed Christians in his part of the empire up
to 313."[190]
Emperor Constantine and Christianity
With the abatement of persecution, St. Jerome acknowledged the Empire
as a bulwark against evil but insisted that "imperial honours" were
contrary to Christian teaching.[191]
His was an authoritative but minority voice: most Christians showed no
qualms in the veneration of even "pagan" emperors. The peace of the
emperors was the peace of God; as far as the Church was concerned,
internal dissent and doctrinal schism were a far greater problem. The
solution came from a hitherto unlikely source: as pontifex maximus
Constantine I favoured the "Catholic Church of the Christians"
against the
Donatists because:
it is contrary to the divine law... that we should overlook such
quarrels and contentions, whereby the Highest Divinity may perhaps
be roused not only against the human race but also against myself,
to whose care he has by his celestial will committed the government
of all earthly things. Official letter from Constantine, dated
314 CE.[192]
Constantine successfully balanced his own role as an instrument of
the
pax deorum with the power of the Christian priesthoods in
determining what was (in traditional Roman terms) auspicious - or in
Christian terms, what was orthodox. The edict of Milan (313) redefined
Imperial ideology as one of mutual toleration. Constantine had triumphed
under the signum (sign) of the Christ: Christianity was therefore
officially embraced along with traditional religions and from his new
Eastern capital, Constantine could be seen to embody both Christian
and Hellenic religious interests. He may have officially ended – or
attempted to end – blood sacrifices to the genius of living
emperors but his Imperial iconography and court ceremonial outstripped
Diocletian's in their supra-human elevation of the Imperial hierarch.[193]
His later direct
intervention in Church affairs proved a political masterstroke.
Constantine united and re-founded the empire as an absolute head of
state, and on his death, he was honored as a Christian, Imperial, and "divus".[194]
While Constantine's personal devotion to the Christian faith is
debatable, there can be no argument on how Constantine's financial and
political support helped Christianity become solidified as an organized,
majority religion that had substantial influence on the history of the
Roman Empire.[195]
Constantine passed laws that prevented anyone from persecuting
Christians, and because of this, the religion spread quickly.[196]
In fact, Christianity flourished. Not only were Christians were no
longer
martyred and persecuted, but Constantine built
cathedrals all over the Roman Empire. These churches gave Christians
a place to worship and practice their faith, thus strengthening
Christianity. The most famous cathedral that Constantine built is called
Saint Peter's basilica. Although the cathedral was burned down
twice, it was also rebuilt twice, and remains a pilgrimage site for
Christians from all over the world. Saint Peter's basilica is also the
largest church in the world, and is located in
Vatican City, which is in Rome. Constantine also passed laws that
gave Christians legal privileges and that prevented them from being
taxed. Many people converted to Christianity to get certain rights, and
to get out of paying taxes.[197]
At the time, there were many heresies about Christianity, and many
Christians did not know what to believe. The Christian faith was being
torn apart. In order to reunite Christianity, Constantine called a
meeting of all the Christian bishops throughout the Roman Empire. The
point of this meeting was to combat
Christian heresies. Constantine and the bishops at the meeting
clarified all Christian beliefs by writing the
Nicene Creed, which clearly states the basic Christian beliefs. This
helped Christians better understand their faith, which reunited the
Christians, helping the religion spread more rapidly than ever before.
[198]
[199] Later,
Philostorgius criticized Christians who offered sacrifice at statues
of the divus Constantine.[200][201]
Transition to Christian hegemony
Constantine's unique form of Imperial orthodoxy did not outlast him.
After his death in 337, two of his sons,
Constantius II and
Constans, took over the leadership of the empire and re-divided
their Imperial inheritance. Constantius was an
Arian
and his brothers were Nicene Christians.
Constantine's nephew
Julian rejected the "Galilean madness" of his upbringing for an
idiosyncratic synthesis of
neo-Platonism, Stoic asceticism and universal solar cult. Julian
became Augustus in 361 and actively but vainly fostered a religious and
cultural pluralism, attempting a restitution of non-Christian practices
and rights.[202]
He proposed the rebuilding of Jerusalem's temple as an Imperial project
and argued against the "irrational impieties" of Christian doctrine.[203]
His attempt to restore an Augustan form of principate, with himself as
primus inter pares ended with his death in 363 in Persia, after
which his reforms were reversed or abandoned. The empire once again fell
under Christian control, this time permanently.
The Western emperor
Gratian
refused the office of pontifex maximus, and against the protests
of the senate, removed the
altar of Victory from the senate house and began the
disestablishment of the Vestals.
Theodosius I briefly re-united the Empire: in 391 he officially
adopted Nicene Christianity as the Imperial religion and ended official
support for all other creeds and cults. He not only refused to restore
Victory to the senate-house, but extinguished the Sacred fire of the
Vestals and vacated their temple: the senatorial protest was expressed
in a letter by
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus to the Western and Eastern emperors.
Ambrose,
the influential
Bishop of Milan and future saint, wrote on their behalf to reject
Symmachus's request for tolerance.[204]
Yet Theodosius accepted comparison with Hercules and Jupiter as a living
divinity in the panegyric of Pacatus, and despite his active dismantling
of Rome's traditional cults and priesthoods could commend his heirs to
its overwhelmingly Hellenic senate in traditional Hellenic terms.[clarification
needed] He was the last emperor of both East and
West.[205][206]
See also
Notes
-
^
Jörg Rüpke, "Roman Religion – Religions of Rome," in A
Companion to Roman Religion (Blackwell, 2007), p. 4.
-
^
Apuleius, Florides 1.1; John Scheid, "Sacrifices for
Gods and Ancestors," in A Companion to Roman Religion
(Blackwell, 2007), p. 279.
-
^ For an overview of
the representation of Roman religion in early Christian authors,
see R.P.C. Hanson, "The Christian Attitue to Pagan Religions up
to the Time of Constantine the Great," and Carlos A. Contreras,
"Christian Views of Paganism," in Aufstieg und Niedergang der
römischen Welt II.23.1 (1980) 871–1022.
-
^ "This mentality,"
notes John T. Koch, "lay at the core of the genius of cultural
assimilation which made the Roman Empire possible"; entry on
"Interpretatio romana," in Celtic Culture: A Historical
Encyclopedia (ABC-Clio, 2006), p. 974.
-
^ Rüpke, "Roman
Religion – Religions of Rome," p. 4; Benjamin H. Isaac, The
Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton
University Press, 2004, 2006), p. 449; W.H.C. Frend,
Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of
Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Doubleday, 1967), p.
106.
-
^ Janet Huskinson,
Experiencing Rome: Culture, Identity and Power in the Roman
Empire (Routledge, 2000), p. 261. See, for instance, the
altar dedicated by a Roman citizen and depicting a sacrifice
conducted in the Roman manner for the Germanic goddess
Vagdavercustis in the 2nd century CE.
-
^ A classic essay on
this topic is
Arnaldo Momigliano, "The Disadvantages of Monotheism for a
Universal State," Classical Philology 81.4 (1986)
285–297.
-
^ See Peter Brown,
in Bowersock et al, Late antiquity: a guide to the
postclassical world, Harvard University Press, (1999), for
"pagan" as a mark of socio-religious inferiority in Latin
Christian polemic:
[1]
-
^ Stefan Heid, "The
Romanness of Roman Christianity," in A Companion to Roman
Religion (Blackwell, 2007), pp. 406–426; on vocabulary in
particular, Robert Schilling, "The Decline and Survival of Roman
Religion", Roman and European Mythologies (University of
Chicago Press, 1992, from the French edition of 1981), p. 110.
-
^ Alexandre
Grandazzi, The Foundation of Rome: Myth and History
(Cornell University Press, 1997), pp. 45–46.
-
^
a
b
Beard et al., Vol. 1, 1; 189
- 90 (Aeneas and Vesta): 123 - 45 (Aeneas and Venus as Julian
ancestors). See also Vergil,
Aeneid.
-
^
T.P. Wiseman, Remus: A Roman Myth (Cambridge
University Press, 1995), passim.
-
^ Or else was
murdered by his resentful senate, who successfully concealed
their crime. See Beard et al, Vol. 1, 1; Vol. 2, 4.8a for
Livy, 1.9 & 5 - 7 (Sabines and temple to Jupiter) and Plutarch,
Romulus, 11, 1 - 4.
-
^ Illustration of
Vergil,
Aeneid 3.147; MS Vat. lat. 3225, folio 28 recto
-
^ Beard et al., Vol.
1, 1 - 2 & Vol. 2: 1.2, (Livy, 1.19.6): 8.4a (Plutarch, Numa,
10). For Augustus' closure of Janus's temple doors, see
Augustus,
Res Gestae, 13. Festus connects Numa to the triumphal
spolia opima and Jupiter Feretrius.
-
^ Beard et al,
Vol. 1, 3, and footnotes 4 & 5.
-
^ The
Augustan historian
Livy
places Rome's foundation more than 600 years before his own
time. His near contemporary
Dionysius of Halicarnassus appear to share some common
sources, including an earlier history by
Quintus Fabius Pictor, of which only a terse summary
survives. See also
Diocles of Peparethus,
Romulus and Remus and Plutarch, The Parallel Lives, Life
of Romulus, 3. Loeb edn. available at Thayer's site:
[2]. Fragments of an important earlier work (now lost) of
Quintus Ennius are cited by various later Roman authors. On
the chronological problems of the kings' list, see Cornell, pp.
21–26, and 199–122.
-
^ Beard et al,
Vol. 1, 8-10; Cornell, pp. 1–30; Feeney, in Rüpke (ed), 129 -
42, on religious themes in Roman Historiography and epic; Smith,
in Rüpke (ed), 31 - 42 for broad discussion of sources, modern
schools of thought and divergent interpretations.
-
^ Cicero, On the
Responses of the Haruspices, 19.
-
^ Rüpke, in Rüpke
(ed) 4 and Beard et al., Vol. 1, 10 - 43; in particular,
30 - 35.
-
^ The reasons for
this change remain unclear, though they are attributed to
Etruscan influence. For a summary of Jupiter's complex
development from the Regal to Republican eras, see Beard et
al.,, Vol. 1, 59 - 60. Jupiter's image in the Republican and
Imperial Capitol bore regalia associated with Rome's ancient
kings and the highest consular and Imperial honours. Jupiter,
Mars and Quirinus were collectively and individually associated
with Rome's agricultural economy, social organisation and
success in war.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 134 - 5, 64 - 67.
-
^ Orlin, in Rüpke
(ed), 58. For related conceptual and interpretive difficulties
offered by Roman deities and their cults, see Rüpke, in Rüpke
(ed) 1 - 7.
-
^ Rüpke, in Rüpke
(ed), 4 - 5.
-
^ CIL 13.581,
quotation from Van Andringa, in Rüpke (ed), 91.
-
^ Beard et al.,
6 - 7; those titled in capital letters on Roman calendars were
probably more important and ancient than those titled in small
letters: it is not known how ancient they were, nor to whom they
were important. Their attribution to Numa or Romulus is
doubtful. The oldest surviving religious calendars date to the
late Republic; the most detailed are Augustan and later. Beard
et al., Vol. 1, 6: a selection of festivals is given in
Vol. 2, 3.1 - 3. For a list of Fasti, with bibliography and
sources, see Degrassi, Inscriptiones Italiae, Vol. XIII -
Fasti et elogia, fasc. II - Fasti anni Numani et Iuliani,
Rome, 1963. See also Scullard, 1981.
-
^ Beard et al, Vol.
1, 134 - 5, 64 - 67: citing Cicero.
-
^ Rüpke, in Rüpke
(ed), 4.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 47 - 49, 296.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Religions of Rome, p. 262.
-
^ Beard et al., Vol.
2, 6.4a; Vol. 1, 174 - 6 & 207 - 8.
-
^ Carole E.
Newlands, Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Cornell
University Press, 1995), passim; "Transgressive Acts:
Ovid's Treatment of the Ides of March," Classical Philology
91.4 (1996) 320-338.
-
^ See the
Calendar of Filocalus (AD 354), cited in Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 250, and that of
Polemius Silvius. See also early and later Christian
festivals in Beard et al., Vol. 1, 378 - 80, 382 - 3.
-
^ Clarke, 1, citing
Frank E. Brown, Roman Architecture, (New York) 1961, 9.
-
^ Beard, et al.,
Vol. 1, 321 - 3
-
^ Pliny, Natural
History 28.10.
-
^ Halm, in Rüpke
(ed), 235–236 et passim. The Roman belief in the power of
the word may be reflected also in the importance of persuasive
speech, formally oratory, in political life and the law courts.
-
^
a
b
Halm, in Rüpke (ed), 241 - 2.
-
^ Hahn, in Rüpke
(ed), 239 - 45.
-
^ Livy, 41.16.1.
-
^ Hahn, in Rüpke
(ed), 235 - 6.
-
^ Orr, 23.
-
^ Pliny the Elder,
Natural History, 28, 27.
-
^ Lott, 31:
Dionysius of Halicarnassus claims the Compitalia contribution of
honey-cakes as a Servian institution.
-
^ Ovid, Fasti,
2.500 - 539. See also Thaniel, G., Lemures and Larvae, The
American Journal of Philology, 94.2, (1973) 182–187: the
offering of black beans is distinctively
chthonic. Beans were considered seeds of life. Lemures may
have been the restless dead who had not passed into the
underworld, and still craved the life they has lost. Beans were
a ritual pollution for Jupiter's priesthood, possibly because
his offerings must be emasculated and thus devoid of generative
power.
-
^ Halm, in Rüpke
(ed), 239.
-
^
a
b
c
Scheid, in Rüpke (ed), 263 - 271.
-
^ Though the
household Lares do just that, and at least some Romans
understood them to be ancestral spirits. Sacrifices to the
spirits of deceased mortals are discussed below in
Funerals and the afterlife.
-
^ Hahn, in Rüpke
(ed), 238.
-
^ Beard et al, Vol
1, 32-36.
-
^ Gradel, 21: but
this need not imply sacrifice as a mutual contract, breached in
this instance. Evidently the gods had the greater power and
freedom of choice in the matter. See Beard et al, 34: "The gods
would accept as sufficient exactly what they were offered - no
more, no less." Human error in the previous annual vows and
sacrifice remains a possibility.
-
^ Gradel, 78, 93
-
^ Livy 22.55-57
-
^ Livy, 22.57.4;
Plutarch, Roman Questions, 83 & Marcellus, 3. For
further context and interpretive difficulties, see Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 81: the live burial superficially resembles the
punishment of Vestals who broke their vows. A living entombment
assuages the blood-guilt of the living: the guilty are consigned
to earth deities. But the Vestals are entombed outside the city
limits, not its centre; no sacrificial victims are burned in
either case, and the Gauls and Greeks appear to be personally
guiltless.
-
^ Welch, 18-19:
citing Livy, summary 16.
-
^ For example,
Prudentius, Contra Symmachum 1.379–398; see Donald G.
Kyle, Spectacles of Death in Ancient Rome (Routledge,
1998, 2001), p. 59.
-
^ The sacrifice was
demanded by an oracle during the reign of the last king, the
Etruscan
Tarquinius Superbus. See Macrobius, Saturnalia, 1.7 & Lilly
Ross Taylor, "The Mother of the Lares", American Journal of
Archaeology, 29.3, (July - September 1925), pp 299 -
313.
-
^ Beard et al., Vol.
1, 233 - 4, 385.
-
^ Gradel, 36-8: the
paterfamilias held – in theory at least, and through
ancient right – powers of life and death over every member of
his extended familia, including children, slaves and
freedmen. In practice, the extreme form of this right was seldom
exercised, and was eventually limited by law.
-
^ See also Severy,
9-10 for interpretation of the social, economic and religious
role of the paterfamilias within the immediate and
extended family and the broader community.
-
^ Beard et al,
vol 1, 67-8.
-
^ Brent, 62-3.
-
^ Beard et al,
1997, 2-3, citing Vergil, Aeneid, 8,306-58.
-
^ Belayche,
(verbatim) in Rüpke (ed), 279.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 217.
-
^ Gradel, 3, 15.
-
^ Gradel, 9-15:
citing legal definitions from Festus (epitome of Verrius
Flaccus) "De verborum significatu" p.284 L: in Wissowa, 1912,
398ff: and Geiger, 1914): see also Beard et al., Vol. 1,
251.
-
^ Smith, in Rüpke
(ed), 39 - 40.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 18 - 34, 54 - 61: "[the underlying purpose being that]
whoever bore the title rex should never again be in a
position to threaten the city with tyranny." See also
Religion and politics in this article.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 104 - 8: there can be no doubt that politicians
attempted to manipulate religious law and priesthoods for gain;
but were compelled to do so lawfully, and often failed.
-
^ Horster, in Rüpke
(ed), 331 - 2.
-
^ See Gradel, 9-15.
-
^ Gradel, 21.
-
^ Gary Forsythe,
A Critical History of Early Rome: From Prehistory to the First
Punic War (University of California Press, 2005, 2006), p.
141.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 52 - 53.
-
^ Beard et al,
Vol. 1, 51 - 54, 70 - 71, 297. For comparison of Vestal
constraints to those of Jupiter's flamen, see Smith, in Rüpke
(ed), 39 - 40
-
^ Forsythe, A
Critical History of Early Rome, p. 141.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 50 - 53.
-
^ Ariadne Staples,
From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in
Roman Religion (Routledge, 1998), pp. 154–155.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 193-4.
-
^ Smith, in Rüpke
(ed), 36.
-
^ Beard et al, Vol
1, 12-20.
-
^ Brent, 17-20:
citing Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 2.4.
-
^
a
b
Brent, 21-25.
-
^ Beard et al, Vol
1, 12-20. See also Scheid, in Rüpke (ed), 266.
-
^ Horster, in Rüpke
(ed) 336 - 7.
-
^ Cicero finds all
forms of divination false, except those used in State rituals;
most Romans were less skeptical. See Rosenberger, in Rüpke (ed),
300, and Orlin, in Rüpke (ed), 67.
-
^ Caesar used his
ius augurium to declare obnuntiato to Cicero's
disadvantage: and vice versa.
-
^ Orlin, in Rüpke
(ed), 65 - 66.
-
^ Orlin, in Rüpke
(ed), 60.
-
^ Rosenberger, in
Rüpke (ed), 297.
-
^ Rosenberger, in
Rüpke (ed), 295 - 8: the task fell to the haruspex, who set the
child to drown in the sea. The survival of such a child for four
years after its birth would have between regarded as extreme
dereliction of religious duty.
-
^ Livy, 27.37.5–15;
the hymn was composed by the poet
Livius Andronicus. Cited by Halm, in Rüpke (ed) 244. For
remainder, see Rosenberger, in Rüpke (ed), 297.
-
^ See Livy, 22.1 ff:
The expiatory
burial of living human victims in the Forum Boarium followed
Rome's defeat at Cannae in the same wars. In Livy's account,
Rome's victory follows its discharge of religious duties to the
gods.
-
^ For Livy's use of
prodigies and portents as markers of Roman impiety and military
failure, see Feeney, in Rüpke (ed), 138 - 9. For prodigies in
the context of political decision-making, see Rosenberger, in
Rüpke (ed), 295 - 8.
-
^ Rosenberger, in
Rüpke (ed), 293.
-
^ Hertz, in Rüpke
(ed), 315.
-
^ Smith, in Rüpke
(ed), 35 - 6: Rome's Latin neighbours significantly influenced
the development of its domestic and funerary architecture.
-
^ Smith, in Rüpke
(ed), 35 - 6.
-
^ Scheid, in Rüpke
(ed), 267, 270 - 71.
-
^ From an
Romano-Athenian veteran's tomb; Cagnat, René, Inscriptiones
Graecae ad res Romanas pertinentes. Paris 1906–27, 3.917.
-
^ Haensch, in Rüpke,
(ed) 186 - 7.
-
^ This recommended
Christian commemorative rites on the 3rd, 9th & 30th days after
death.
-
^ Saltzman, in
Rüpke, (ed), 114 - 116.
-
^ Orlin, in Rüpke
(ed), 58.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 44, 59 - 60, 143.
-
^ Cornell, T., in
Walbank et al., 299, citing Livy 21.8-9 and 22.3-6. Livy
describes this as
evocatio (a "calling forth") initiated by Roman soldiers
who snatched the goddess's sacrificial portion during her Veiian
rites; the Veiian priest had announced that whoever possessed
the sacred entrails would win the coming battle. Preview via
googlebooks
[3]
-
^ Moede, in Rüpke
(ed), 171, & Beard et al., Vol. 1, 326 - 7.
-
^ Beard et al., Vol.
1, 324 - 6.
-
^ Brent, 268-9.
-
^
Books.Google.co.uk, Le Bohec, 249: limited preview available
via Google Books
-
^
Books.Google.co.uk, Dixon, 78: limited preview available
from Google Books
-
^ Livy, 5.21.3., &
8.9.8; Beard et al., Vol 1, 35 - 36; Hertz, in Rüpke
(ed), 312; Halm, in Rüpke (ed), 239.
-
^ Rosenberger, in
Rüpke (ed), 3OO, citing Suetonius, Tiberius, 2.2.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 297.
-
^ Beard et
al., Vol. 1, 296 - 7. This exclusion prompted prurient
speculation on the part of men, and a scandalous, impious
intrusion by
Publius Clodius Pulcher.
-
^ Beard et al,
Vol. 1, 297. Ibid 217, citing the obituary of a woman
whose virtues included "religio without superstitio"
(ILS
8393.30-31 of "Turia").
-
^
a
b
Rüpke, in Rüpke (ed), 5.
-
^ See Beard et al,
Vol. 1, 217.
-
^
Clifford Ando, The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the
Roman Empire (University of California Press, 2008), p. 13.
-
^ Beard et al., 230
- 31.
-
^ Phillips, in Rüpke
(ed), 14.
-
^ Ogden, in Flint
et al., 83: citing Pliny, Natural History, 28.17 -
18; Seneca, Natural Questions, 4.7.2.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 231 - 233, citing Tacitus, Histories, 1.22.
Tacitus' prediction was accurate: in the late 3rd century,
Diocletian issued a general ban on astrology.
-
^ Apuleius,
Apologia, 26.6.
-
^ Pliny the Elder,
Natural History, 30.1 - 18; see also Beard et al., Vol.
1, 219.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 217 - 219 & 224, citing Philostratus, Life of
Apollonius, I.2, IV.18, V.12, VII.11,20,33-4,39,
VIII.5,7,19,30.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 219 - 20, citing Lucan, Pharsalia,VI.413 - 830.
-
^ Scheid, in Rüpke
(ed), 263.
-
^ Haensch, in Rüpke
(ed), 186: about 200 of these British defixiones are from
Sulla-Minerva's spring in urban Bath and the remainder from a
shrine to a Celtic deity (Nodens),
at rural Uley. For defixiones as direct appeals to divine
justice, see Belayche, in Rüpke (ed), 286. For the widespread
persistence of curse-tablet rituals, see Ogden, in Flint et
al., 3 - 5.
-
^ During the
Augustan era, the city of Rome probably housed around a million
people, including an unknown number of provincials: by
Mouritsen's estimate, around 200,000 Roman citizens were
eligible to vote in Rome itself during the late Republican era
but during major elections, the influx of rural voters and the
bottleneck of the city's ancient electoral apparatus meant that
perhaps 12% of eligible citizens actually voted. This
nevertheless represents a substantial increase from the
estimated 1% adult male enfranchisement rights of 145 BC. At any
time, the overwhelming majority of citizens – meaning the plebs
– had minimal direct involvement in central government. See
Henrik Mouritsen, Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic
(Cambridge, U.K., Cambridge University Press, 2001), 32ff.
-
^ Orlin, in Rüpke
(ed), 61.
-
^ Orlin, in Rüpke
(ed), 59 - 60.
-
^ Belayche, in Rüpke
(ed), 283: citing Plutarch, Camillus, 42. Belayche describes
this as a votive offering (uotum), which "offered a
supernatural legitimacy for decisions or actions... [and]
entailed being assisted and reassured, through the forwarding of
hopes or dis- appointments, anger or contentment, to superior
powers." See also Versnel, Henrik S., (ed), "Religious mentality
in ancient prayer," in Versnel, Henrik S., Faith, Hope and
Worship: Aspects of Religious Mentality in the Ancient World,
Leyden, 1981, pp 1 – 64.
-
^ The collegia
were opened to plebs by the
Lex Ogulnia of 300 BC.
-
^ "The change that
comes about at the end of the republic and solidifies under
Augustus is not political, but cultural". Galinsky, in Rüpke
(ed), 72: citing Habinek, T., and Schiesaro, A., (eds.) The
Roman Cultural Revolution. Princeton, New Jersey, 1997 &
Wallace-Hadrill, A., "Mutatas formas: the Augustan
transformation of Roman knowledge", in: Galinsky, K., (ed.)
The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Augustus, Cambridge,
2005, pp 55 – 84: contra Syme, R., The Roman Revolution,
1939.
-
^ Smith, in Rüpke
(ed), 42.
-
^ Galinsky, in Rüpke
(ed), 72: "...the change that comes about at the end of the
republic and solidifies under Augustus is not political, but
cultural. Most of the members of the priestly colleges in
Augustus’ time continued to be aristocrats, but the real power
and control over religion and the calendar now flowed from
professional experts, such as the polymath Varro, because they
had the power of knowledge.
-
^ Two centuries
later, when Decius and Diocletian required universal sacrifice
to Roman gods as a test of loyalty, any traditional gods served
the purpose: loyal compliance with Imperial dictat made them
Roman.
-
^ Scipio did not
claim personal connections with Jupiter; but he did not deny
rumours to that effect. Contrary to usual practice, his
imago (funeral mask) was stored in the Temple of
Jupiter.
-
^ Orlin, in Rüpke
(ed), 66.
-
^ Otherwise,
electoral bribery (ambitus):
see Cicero, Letters to friends, 2.3: see also Beard et
al, Vol. 1, 65 - 67.
-
^ Hertz, in Rüpke
(ed), 310.
-
^ "From Etruria the
Romans derived the idea of housing a deity in a temple and of
providing him with a cult statue. ... The most famous ...
dedicated in the first year of the Republic to the Etruscan
triad, Tinia, Uni and Minerva. Of these deities, however, two
were Italian, Juno and Minerva, while Tinia was identified with
Jupiter." Howard Hayes Scullard, (2003), A History of the Roman
World, 753 to 146 BC, page 397. Routledge
-
^ "Her cult at
Aricia was first attested in Latin literature by
Cato the Elder, in a surviving quote by the late grammarian
Priscian. Supposed Greek origins for the Aricia cult are
strictly a literary
topos."
Arthur E. Gordon, "On the Origin of Diana", Transactions and
Proceedings of the American Philological Association 63 (1932,
pp. 177-192) page 178 note, and page 181.
-
^ Varro, Ling.
Lat. v. 43
-
^
Pomoerium, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities, page 930-1. London, 1875.
-
^
Ara Maxima Herculis, A Topographical Dictionary of
Ancient Rome, page 253-4. Oxford University Press, 1929.
-
^ "Traditionally in
499, the cult of Castor and Pollux was introduced from Tusculum
and temple was erected in the Forum." Howard Hayes Scullard,
(2003), A History of the Roman World, 753 to 146 BC, page 398.
Routledge
-
^ Livy, 23.31.
-
^
Ver Sacrum, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman
Antiquities, page 1189, London, 1875.
-
^
Dionysius and the Bacchanalia, 186 B.C. from Livy:
History of Rome.
-
^ Hebe entry
in A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology.
1867
-
^ Orlin, in Rüpke,
(ed), 65
-
^ Galinsky, in Rüpke
(ed), 76. See also
Res Gestae.
-
^ Pliny the Elder,
Epistles, 10.50.
-
^ As at Narbonne and
Salona. See Andringa, in Rüpke (ed), 89.
-
^ Van Andringa, in
Rüpke (ed), 89.
-
^ Beard et al.
1998
-
^ Van Andringa, in
Rüpke (ed), 88.
-
^ Haensch, in Rüpke
(ed), 180 - 3.
-
^
Kaufmann-Heinimann, in Rüpke (ed), 200.
-
^ Haensch, in Rüpke
(ed), 184.
-
^ Gradel, 32-52.
-
^ Beard, 272-5.
-
^ Fishwick, Vol 3,
part 1, 3: citing Cassius Dio, 51, 20, 6-7
-
^ Fishwick, Vol 1,
book 1, 77 & 126-30.
-
^ Fishwick, Vol 1,
book 1, 97-149.
-
^ Hertz, in Rüpke
(ed), 309.
-
^ Gradel, 263-8,
199.
-
^ Rees, 46-56, 73-4.
-
^ Beard et al.,
Vol. 1, 266 - 7, 270.
-
^ Smallwood, 2-3,
4-6: the presence of practicing Jews in Rome is attested "at
least a century" before 63 BC. Smallwood describes the preamble
to Judaea's clientage as the Hellenising of ruling Jewish
dynasties, their claims to kingly messianism and their popular,
traditionalist rejection in the Maccabaean revolt. In Rome, the
more "characteristically Jewish" beliefs and customs were
subjects of scorn and mockery.Books.Google.co.uk
Ibid, 120-143 for early Roman responses to Judaistic
practice; but see also Tessa Rajack, "Was there a Roman Charter
for the Jews?" Journal of Roman Studies, 74, (1984)
107-23; no "Roman charter" for Judaism should be inferred from
local, ad hoc attempts to suppress anti-Jewish acts (as
in Josephus' account); Judaism as religio licita is only
found later, in Tertullian. Cicero, pro Flacco, 66,
refers to Judaism as superstitio.
-
^ Smallwood, 2-3,
4-6: superstitio in Cicero, pro Flacco, 66, but
legislation by Julius Caesar recognised the synagogues in Rome
as legitimate collegia and Augustus maintained their
status. Josephus infers an early "charter" offering protection
to Jews, but Tessa Rajack, "Was there a Roman Charter for the
Jews?" Journal of Roman Studies, 74, (1984) 107-23, finds
evidence only for Rome's official suppression of anti-Jewish
activities. Religio licita is first found much later than
this, in Tertullian.
-
^ Beard et al,
vol. 1, 225: citing Pliny the Younger, Letters, 10.96.8,
& Beard et al, Vol. 2, 11.11a: citing Tacitus, Annals,
15.44.5.
-
^ Leppin, in Rüpke
(ed), 98.
-
^ Potter, 241-3: see
242 for Decian "libellus" (certificate) of oath and sacrifice on
papyrus, dated to 250 AD.
-
^ Beard et al,
Vol. 1, 241.
-
^ Leppin, in Rüpke,
(ed), 100.
-
^
Books.Google.co.uk, Rees, 60. Limited preview available at
Google Books
-
^
Bowman et al, 622-33. Books.Google.co.uk, Limited
preview available at Google Books
-
^
a
b
Rees, 60.
-
^ Beard et al,
241.
-
^ See Leppin, in
Rüpke (ed), 98 - 99; citing Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica
6.19.15; 21.3–4; 36.3
-
^ Leppin, in Rüpke
(ed), 99; citing Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica,
7.29–30: Paul actually remained in office until "Aurelian’s
victory over Palmyra in 272, when he was forced to leave the
'building of the church'... Political conflicts, local rivalry,
and theological debates converged in this quarrel."
-
^ Cascio, in Bowman
et al. (eds), 171.
-
^ Lactantius,
II.6.10.1-4. A date of 302 is regarded as likely.
Eusebius also says the persecutions of Christians began in
the army; see Eusebius, II.8.1.8.
-
^ Leppin, in Rüpke
(ed), 103: citing Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum,
14.2; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica, 8.6.6.
-
^ Eusebius,
Historia ecclesiastica 8.2.5, 8.6.10.
-
^ Leppin, in Rüpke
(ed), 103: citing Lactantius, De mortibus persecutorum,
34 & 13 & ; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 8.17.3–10 &
8.2.3–4.
-
^ Jerome's
interpretations of Imperial ceremonial are heavily reliant on
Eusebius' polemical ecclesiastical-Imperial history. Price,
203 : limited preview available at Google Books
Books.Google.co.uk
-
^ cited in Beard
et al, Vol 1, 370.
-
^ Constantine's
permission for a new cult temple to himself and his family in
Umbria is extant: the terms are vague – cult "should not be
polluted by the deception of any contagious superstition". See
Momigliano, 104.
-
^
Bunson, Matthew (2002).
Encyclopedia of the Roman Empire (revised ed.). Facts on
File.
-
^
Mulryan, M.
"Victory at Verona". History Today.
Retrieved 3 February 2013.
-
^
Kelly, Christopher (2006). The
Roman Empire: A Very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford
UP.
-
^
Kelly, Christopher. [<http://web.ebscohost.com/hrc/detail?vid=2&sid=a1493199-4e1b-41a1-a883
5cc564c0e491%40sessionmgr113&hid=108&bdata=JnNpdGU9aHJjLWxpd
mU%3d#db=khh&AN=21432949>. "Constantine's Britain's Roman
Emperor"]. History Today.
Retrieved 5 February 2013.
-
^
Morgan, Julian (2003).
Constantine Ruler of Christian Rome. New York: Rosen
Central.
-
^
"Roman Emperor Constantine I". Columbia Electronic
Encyclopedia. Retrieved 3
February 2013.
-
^ Momigliano, 104.
-
^ Constantine took
great pains to assuage traditionalist and Christian anxieties;
see Heid, in Rüpke (ed),413 - 6.
-
^ A summary of
relevant legislation is available online at the Wisconsin
Lutheran College website -
FourthCentury.com (accessed 30 August 2009)
-
^ See Julian's
Against the Galilaeans (trans. Wright, from Cyril of
Alexandria's later refutation, Contra Julianum) at
Tertullian.org (accessed 30 August 2009). Julian admired the
work of the Platonist (or neo-Platonist)
Iamblichus.
-
^ The correspondence
is available online at Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Letter of
St. Ambrose, trans. H. De Romestin, 1896.,
Fordham.edu (accessed 29 August 2009)
-
^
Books.Google.co.uk, Williams & Friell, 65-67. Limited
preview at googlebooks
-
^ Nixon & Rodgers,
437-48: Full text of
Latinus Pacata Drepanius, Panegyric of Theodosius
(389) with commentary and context.
References and further reading
-
Beard, M.,
North, J., Price, S., Religions of Rome, Volume I,
illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
ISBN 0-521-31682-0
- Beard, M., North, J., Price, S., Religions of Rome,
Volume II, illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998.
ISBN 0-521-45646-0
- Beard, M., The Roman Triumph, The Belknap Press of
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, England,
2007.
ISBN 978-0-674-02613-1
- Clarke, John R., The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 BC-AD 250.
Ritual, Space and Decoration, illustrated, University Presses of
California, Columbia and Princeton, 1992.
ISBN 978-0-520-08429-2
- Cornell, T., The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the
Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC), Routledge, 1995.
ISBN 978-0-415-01596-7
- Fishwick, Duncan. The Imperial Cult in the Latin West:
Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman
Empire, volume 1, Brill Publishers, 1991.
ISBN 90-04-07179-2
- Fishwick, Duncan. The Imperial Cult in the Latin West:
Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman
Empire, volume 3, Brill Publishers, 2002.
ISBN 90-04-12536-1
- Flint, Valerie I. J., et al.., Athlone History of
Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome, Vol. 2,
Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1998.
ISBN 978-0-485-89002-0
-
Fox, R. L., Pagans and Christians
- Lott, John. B., The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome,
Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004.
ISBN 0-521-82827-9
-
MacMullen, R., Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to
Eighth Centuries, Yale University Press, 1997.
ISBN 0-300-08077-8
- MacMullen, R., Paganism in the Roman Empire, Yale
University Press, 1984.
- Momigliano, Arnaldo, On Pagans, Jews, and Christians,
reprint, Wesleyan University Press, 1987.
ISBN 0-8195-6218-1
- Orr, D. G., Roman domestic religion: the evidence of the
household shrines, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt,
II, 16, 2, Berlin, 1978, 1557‑91.
- Rees, R., Diocletian and the Tetrarchy, Edinburgh
University Press, 2004.
ISBN 978-0-7486-1661-9
- Revell, L., "Religion and Ritual in the Western Provinces",
Greece and Rome, volume 54, number 2, October 2007.
- Rüpke, Jörg (Editor), A Companion to Roman Religion,
Wiley-Blackwell, 2007.
ISBN 978-1-4051-2943-5
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