Religion in ancient Rome
Encyclopedia
Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious belief
s and cult practices regarded by the Romans
as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities who influenced every aspect of both the natural world and human affairs. Their temples
were the visible, sacred, and enduring manifestations of Rome's history and institutions.
Romans could offer cult to any deity or combination of deities, as long as it did not offend the mos maiorum
, the "custom of the ancestors," that is, Roman tradition. Good relations between mortals and the divine (pax deorum
) were maintained by piety through the correct offering of ritual and divine honours, especially in the form of sacrifice. The gods were supposed to provide benefits in return. Impieties such as religious negligence, superstition and self-indulgence could provoke divine wrath against the State.
Participation in traditional religious rituals was considered a practical and moral necessity in personal, domestic and public life. Religion was not confined to particular occasions nor sacred places, but permeated daily life and every aspect of society. Cult within the Roman home was served by the head of household (the paterfamilias) and his familia, a broader term than the English word "family" that included his wife, children, slaves, and others under the protection of his household. Some deities were served by women, others by freedmen and slaves. The imported mystery cults
were open only to initiates.
Some of Rome's cult practices were explained or justified by myths
, while others remained obscure in origin and purpose. Latin literature
preserves theological and philosophical 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
, acknowledged the necessity of religion as a form of social order despite its obvious irrational elements. Religious law offered curbs to personal and factional ambition, and political and social changes had to be justified in religious terms.
The establishment of Rome's oldest form of religion, sometimes known as the "religion of Numa
," was attributed to Rome's divine ancestors, founders, and kings. Ancient Rome had no principle equivalent to the separation of "church and state"
. The priesthoods and cult maintenance of major deities, as well as the highest offices of state
, were originally the preserve of the patricians, the hereditary elite whose privileges were said to have been charter
ed by the founding father Romulus
himself. Quite early in Roman history, however, most priesthoods were opened to plebeians
, along with political office. Some Romans, both patricians and noble plebeians
, claimed divine ancestry to justify their position among the ruling elite, most notably Julius Caesar
, who asserted his descent from the goddess Venus
.
After the civil wars
and social upheavals that led to the collapse of the Roman Republic
, Caesar's heir Augustus
carried out a program of religious revivalism designed to frame his ascent to sole power as a restoration of peace, tradition, and rectitude in accordance with divine will. The Augustan institution of Imperial cult
put pious respect for tradition on display, and aimed to foster religious unity and mutual toleration among Rome's newly acquired provinces. The preservation of the "religion of Numa" remained the foundation of Rome's security and continued success.
But as Rome had extended its dominance throughout the Mediterranean world, its religious mode was to absorb the deities and cults of other peoples rather than to eradicate and replace them. Both fascinated by and deeply suspicious of religious novelty, Romans looked for ways to understand and reinterpret the divinities of others by means of their own, and acknowledged religion in the provinces or foreign territories as an expression of local identity and traditions. Some religious practices were embraced officially, others merely tolerated. A few were condemned as alien hysteria, magic or superstition, and thus unwanted at Rome. Attempts, sometimes brutal, were made periodically to suppress religionists who seemed to threaten traditional morality and unity. In the eyes of conservative Romans, the Dionysian mysteries
encouraged illicit behaviour and subversion; Christianity
was superstition, or atheism, or both; druidism employed human sacrifice. The monotheistic rigor of Judaism
led sometimes to compromise and the granting of special exemptions, and sometimes to intractable conflict. By the height of the Roman Empire
, however, numerous foreign cults were practiced at Rome and throughout even the most remote provinces, among them the mystery cult of the syncretized
Egyptian goddess Isis
and deities of solar monism
such as Mithras and Sol Invictus
, found as far north as Roman Britain
.
From the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers
began to condemn the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire collectively as "pagan." When the Roman Emperor
Constantine I
converted to Christianity in the 4th century, he launched the era of Christian hegemony
. Despite a short-lived attempt by the Emperor Julian
to revive and preserve traditional and Hellenistic religion
and to affirm the special status of Judaism, in 391 under Theodosius I
Christianity became the official state religion of Rome
, 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. Other religions were gradually transformed, absorbed or strictly suppressed. Many forms of traditional religious practice, particularly festivals
and games (ludi
), which might be divorced from theological implications, retained their vitality through the 4th and 5th centuries. Rome's religious hierarchy and many aspects of ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian beliefs and practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.
The Roman mythological tradition
is particularly rich in historical myths, or legend
s, 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.
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.
The myth of a Trojan founding with Greek influence was reconciled through an elaborate genealogy (see 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. Divine communication did not prevent brotherly disagreement, and Romulus kills Remus, an act that is sometimes seen as sacrificial. Fratricide thus became an integral part of Rome's founding myth.
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
. Romulus became increasingly autocratic, but in popular tradition was spared a normal human death and instead was mysteriously spirited away and deified.
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
, flamen
s, 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 remained open until the reign of Augustus, or so the claim went.
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
.
The Roman historians
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 equally important oral and ritual traditions. Rome's history was represented as a coherent and sacred continuity, imperiled by religious negligence and personal ambition. According to Cicero, the Romans considered themselves the most religious of all peoples; and their extraordinary success proved it.
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.
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
. 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. 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.
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. 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:
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). 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
. Other festivals may have required only the presence and rites of their priests and acolytes, or particular groups, such as women at the Bona Dea
rites.
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.
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; 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. 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.
"The architecture of the ancient Romans was, from first to last, an art of shaping space around ritual." Roman religion was not confined to temples and shrines.
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.
declared that "a sacrifice without prayer is thought to be useless and not a proper consultation of the gods." 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. Accurate naming was vital for tapping into the desired powers of the deity invoked, hence the proliferation of cult epithets among Roman deities. 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. 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. 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.
Oaths 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, and a sworn oath broken carried much the same penalty; both repudiated the fundamental bonds between the human and divine.
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, food that fell to the floor during any family meal, or at their Compitalia
festival, honey-cakes and a pig on behalf of the community. Their supposed underworld relatives, the malicious and vagrant Lemures, might be placated with midnight offerings of black beans and spring water.
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.
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.
Underworld (chthonic
) gods such as Dis pater
and the collective shades of the departed (di Manes
) were given dark, fertile victims in nighttime rituals; there was no shared banquet, as "the living cannot share a meal with the dead". Ceres
and other underworld goddesses of fruitfulness were sometimes offered pregnant female animals; Tellus was given a pregnant cow at the Fordicidia
festival. Color seems to have had a symbolic value generally 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.
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, to be rendered after five more years of protection from Hannibal and his allies. Had the gods failed to keep their side of the bargain, sacrifice would have been 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. 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.
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". 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.
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. 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.
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. Political or military executions were sometimes conducted in such a way that they evoked human sacrifice, whether deliberately or in the perception of witnesses; for a gruesome example, see Marcus Marius Gratidianus
.
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, notably in 81 BC. Its alleged practice helped justify the conquest of Gaul and both invasions of Britain as righteous acts of war in suppression of the Druids, the elite priestly class among the Gauls: according to Pliny the Elder
, the British clung to the practice for as long as they could. Despite an empire-wide ban under Hadrian
, human sacrifice may have continued covertly in North Africa and elsewhere.
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
.
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.
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. 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
.
(the customs and traditions "of the ancestors").
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. 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.
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.
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, and later, to Capitoline Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, were traditionally drawn from patrician families. Twelve lesser flamines were each dedicated to a single deity. 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.
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
.
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. 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. 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.
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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
The Vestals embody the profound connection between domestic cult and the religious life of the community. 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.
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. 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.
. The original meaning of the Latin word templum was this sacred space, and only later referred to a building. 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. 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. 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. 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
.
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. 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. 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.
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. 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.
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 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. Religious restitution is proved only by Rome's victory.
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. 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.
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.
A standard Roman funerary inscription is Dis Manibus (to the Manes-gods). Regional variations include its Greek equivalent, theoîs katachthoníois and Lugdunum
's commonplace but mysterious "dedicated under the trowel" (sub ascia dedicare).
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. 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 relic
s, and inscriptions marked the day of death as a transition to "new life".
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, 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.
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.
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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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.
, in the sense of "doing or believing more than was necessary"; to which women and foreigners were considered particularly prone. The boundaries between religio and superstitio were negotiable.
"In vulgar tradition (more vulgari)...a magician is 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." Apuleius, Apologia, 26.6.
Superstitio was often "seen to be motivated by an inappropriate desire for knowledge"; in effect, this was an abuse of religio. Secretive consultations between private diviners and their clients were 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. 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. Despite several Imperial bans, magic and astrology persisted among all social classes. In the late 1st century AD, Tacitus could claim that astrologers "would always be banned and always retained at Rome".
In the Graeco-Roman world, practitioners of magic were known as magi
(s. magus) – a "foreign" title of Persian priests. Pliny the Elder
offers a thoroughly skeptical "History of magical arts" from their supposed Persian origins to the ill-fated emperor Nero's vast and futile expenditure on research into magical practices, in an attempt to control the gods. Lucan
's Pharsalia
has Pompey
's doomed and wretched son
await the battle of Pharsalus
. Convinced that "the gods of heaven knew too little" of the outcome; he resorts to the "disgusting" necromancy of Erichtho
, the Thessalian
witch who inhabits deserted graves and feeds on rotting corpses. She can arrest "the rotation of the heavens and the flow of rivers" and make "austere old men blaze with illicit passions"; an ideal, stereotypical witch – a female foreigner from Thessaly, notorious for its witchcraft and wizardry. She and her clients clearly undermine the natural order of gods, mankind and destiny. Philostratus
takes pains to point out that the celebrated Apollonius of Tyana
was definitely not a magician (magus) – "despite his special knowledge of the future, his miraculous cures, and his ability to vanish into thin air".
In the everyday world, many individuals sought to divine the future, influence it through magic, seek vengeance with help from "private" diviners; chthonic
deities functioned at the margins of Rome's divine and human communities, and the living might gain their favour and help – somewhat less dramatically than Lucan's Erictho, but usually away from the public gaze, during the hours of darkness. Burial grounds and isolated crossroads were among the likely portals, but Ovid gives a vivid account of what might be magical rites at the fringes of the public Feralia
festival: 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": she thus invokes Tacita, the underworld's "silent one". Archaeological evidence confirms the widespread use of so-called curse tablets (defixiones or "binding spells"), magical papyri and so-called "voodoo dolls" from a very early era. Around 250 defixiones have been recovered from urban and rural Britain; 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 of lost or stolen property in return for its restoration. In general, the values involved are quite low. None of these defixiones seem produced by, or on behalf of elite Romano-Britons; presumably, those without ready resort to human law and justice must hope to persuade the gods to act directly on their behalf. The archaeology suggests similar traditions throughout the empire, persisting until around the 7th century AD, well into the Christian era.
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. 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
. 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. In reality, the patrician and to a lesser extent, plebeian nobility dominated religious and civil office throughout the Republican era and beyond.
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. 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.
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. 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". 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. Under the principate
, such opportunities were limited by law; priestly and political power were consolidated in the person of the princeps ("first citizen").
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
. 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. and established on the Aventine in the "commune Latinorum Dianae templum": 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
: and the cult to Hercules
at the ara maxima
in the Forum Boarium
was established through commercial connections with Tibur. and the Tusculan
cult of Castor as the patron of cavalry found a home close to the Forum Romanum: Juno Sospes 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.
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 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. Greek deities were brought within the sacred pomerium: temples were dedicated to Juventas (Hebe
) in 191 BC, 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.
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. 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. 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. 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.
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. 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. Colonial and later Imperial provincial dedications to Rome's Capitoline Triad were a logical choice, not a centralised legal requirement. 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.
The overall scarcity of evidence for smaller or local cults does not always infer 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.
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. 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.
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.
(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.
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. 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. 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.
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".
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. 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.
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. 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.
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. 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. 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. 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, but apostasy
was sought, rather than capital punishment. A year after its due deadline, the edict expired.
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. 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. 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. 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
.
In 295, a certain Maximilian refused military service; in 298 Marcellus
renounced his military oath. Both were executed for treason; both were Christians. 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. 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. The second edict threatened Christian priests with imprisonment and the third offered them freedom if they performed sacrifice. 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."
With the abatement of persecution, St. Jerome acknowledged Empire as a bulwark against evil but insisted that "imperial honours" were contrary to Christian teaching. 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:
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. His later direct intervention
in Church affairs proved a political masterstroke. Constantine united and re-founded the empire as an absolute head of state by divine dispensation and on his death, he was honoured as a Christian, Imperial and apostolic divus. Granted apotheosis, he ascended to heaven; Philostorgius
later criticised Christians who offered sacrifice at statues of the divus Constantine.
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
, however, 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. He proposed the rebuilding of Jerusalem's temple as an Imperial project and argued fulsomely against the "irrational impieties" of Christian doctrine. 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. 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. He was the last emperor of both East and West. When the Western Roman Empire ended with the abdication of Emperor Romulus Augustus
in 476, Christianity survived.
Religious belief
Religious belief is a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny. Such a state may relate to the existence, characteristics and worship of a deity or deities, divine intervention in the universe and human life, or values and practices centered on the teachings of a...
s and cult practices regarded by the Romans
Ancient Rome
Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....
as indigenous and central to their identity as a people, as well as the various and many cults imported from other peoples brought under Roman rule. Romans thus offered cult to innumerable deities who influenced every aspect of both the natural world and human affairs. Their temples
Roman temple
Ancient Roman temples are among the most visible archaeological remains of Roman culture, and are a significant source for Roman architecture. Their construction and maintenance was a major part of ancient Roman religion. The main room housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was...
were the visible, sacred, and enduring manifestations of Rome's history and institutions.
Romans could offer cult to any deity or combination of deities, as long as it did not offend the mos maiorum
Mos maiorum
The mos maiorum is the unwritten code from which the ancient Romans derived their social norms. It is the core concept of Roman traditionalism, distinguished from but in dynamic complement to written law. The mos maiorum The mos maiorum ("ancestral custom") is the unwritten code from which the...
, the "custom of the ancestors," that is, Roman tradition. Good relations between mortals and the divine (pax deorum
Pax Deorum
Pax Deorum may refer to:*"Pax Deorum", a song from The Memory of Trees, an album by Enya*"Pax Deorum", a cover of the aforementioned song from the album Maiden of Mysteries: The Music of Enya, by the Taliesin Orchestra...
) were maintained by piety through the correct offering of ritual and divine honours, especially in the form of sacrifice. The gods were supposed to provide benefits in return. Impieties such as religious negligence, superstition and self-indulgence could provoke divine wrath against the State.
Participation in traditional religious rituals was considered a practical and moral necessity in personal, domestic and public life. Religion was not confined to particular occasions nor sacred places, but permeated daily life and every aspect of society. Cult within the Roman home was served by the head of household (the paterfamilias) and his familia, a broader term than the English word "family" that included his wife, children, slaves, and others under the protection of his household. Some deities were served by women, others by freedmen and slaves. The imported mystery cults
Greco-Roman mysteries
Mystery religions, sacred Mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious cults of the Greco-Roman world, participation in which was reserved to initiates....
were open only to initiates.
Some of Rome's cult practices were explained or justified by myths
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans...
, while others remained obscure in origin and purpose. Latin literature
Latin literature
Latin literature includes the essays, histories, poems, plays, and other writings of the ancient Romans. In many ways, it seems to be a continuation of Greek literature, using many of the same forms...
preserves theological and philosophical 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
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
, who was an augur
Augur
The augur was a priest and official in the classical world, especially ancient Rome and Etruria. His main role was to interpret the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds: whether they are flying in groups/alone, what noises they make as they fly, direction of flight and what kind of...
, acknowledged the necessity of religion as a form of social order despite its obvious irrational elements. Religious law offered curbs to personal and factional ambition, and political and social changes had to be justified in religious terms.
The establishment of Rome's oldest form of religion, sometimes known as the "religion of Numa
Numa Pompilius
Numa Pompilius was the legendary second king of Rome, succeeding Romulus. What tales are descended to us about him come from Valerius Antias, an author from the early part of the 1st century BC known through limited mentions of later authors , Dionysius of Halicarnassus circa 60BC-...
," was attributed to Rome's divine ancestors, founders, and kings. Ancient Rome had no principle equivalent to the separation of "church and state"
Separation of church and state
The concept of the separation of church and state refers to the distance in the relationship between organized religion and the nation state....
. The priesthoods and cult maintenance of major deities, as well as the highest offices of state
Roman Magistrates
The Roman Magistrates were elected officials in Ancient Rome. During the period of the Roman Kingdom, the King of Rome was the principal executive magistrate. His power, in practice, was absolute. He was the chief priest, lawgiver, judge, and the sole commander of the army...
, were originally the preserve of the patricians, the hereditary elite whose privileges were said to have been charter
Charter
A charter is the grant of authority or rights, stating that the granter formally recognizes the prerogative of the recipient to exercise the rights specified...
ed by the founding father Romulus
Romulus
- People:* Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome* Romulus Augustulus, the last Western Roman Emperor* Valerius Romulus , deified son of the Roman emperor Maxentius* Romulus , son of the Western Roman emperor Anthemius...
himself. Quite early in Roman history, however, most priesthoods were opened to plebeians
Plebs
The plebs was the general body of free land-owning Roman citizens in Ancient Rome. They were distinct from the higher order of the patricians. A member of the plebs was known as a plebeian...
, along with political office. Some Romans, both patricians and noble plebeians
Nobiles
During the Roman Republic, nobilis was a descriptive term of social rank, usually indicating that a member of the family had achieved the consulship. Those who belonged to the hereditary patrician families were noble, but plebeians whose ancestors were consuls were also considered nobiles...
, claimed divine ancestry to justify their position among the ruling elite, most notably Julius Caesar
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, who asserted his descent from the goddess Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
.
After the civil wars
Roman civil wars
There were several Roman civil wars, especially during the late Republic. The most famous of these are the war in the 40s BC between Julius Caesar and the optimate faction of the senatorial elite initially led by Pompey and the subsequent war between Caesar's successors, Octavian and Mark Antony in...
and social upheavals that led to the collapse of the Roman Republic
Roman Republic
The Roman Republic was the period of the ancient Roman civilization where the government operated as a republic. It began with the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, traditionally dated around 508 BC, and its replacement by a government headed by two consuls, elected annually by the citizens and...
, Caesar's heir Augustus
Augustus
Augustus ;23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14) is considered the first emperor of the Roman Empire, which he ruled alone from 27 BC until his death in 14 AD.The dates of his rule are contemporary dates; Augustus lived under two calendars, the Roman Republican until 45 BC, and the Julian...
carried out a program of religious revivalism designed to frame his ascent to sole power as a restoration of peace, tradition, and rectitude in accordance with divine will. The Augustan institution of Imperial cult
Imperial cult (ancient Rome)
The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with the divinely sanctioned authority of the Roman State...
put pious respect for tradition on display, and aimed to foster religious unity and mutual toleration among Rome's newly acquired provinces. The preservation of the "religion of Numa" remained the foundation of Rome's security and continued success.
But as Rome had extended its dominance throughout the Mediterranean world, its religious mode was to absorb the deities and cults of other peoples rather than to eradicate and replace them. Both fascinated by and deeply suspicious of religious novelty, Romans looked for ways to understand and reinterpret the divinities of others by means of their own, and acknowledged religion in the provinces or foreign territories as an expression of local identity and traditions. Some religious practices were embraced officially, others merely tolerated. A few were condemned as alien hysteria, magic or superstition, and thus unwanted at Rome. Attempts, sometimes brutal, were made periodically to suppress religionists who seemed to threaten traditional morality and unity. In the eyes of conservative Romans, the Dionysian mysteries
Dionysian Mysteries
The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques to remove inhibitions and social constraints, liberating the individual to return to a natural state. It also provided some liberation for those marginalized by Greek...
encouraged illicit behaviour and subversion; Christianity
Early Christianity
Early Christianity is generally considered as Christianity before 325. The New Testament's Book of Acts and Epistle to the Galatians records that the first Christian community was centered in Jerusalem and its leaders included James, Peter and John....
was superstition, or atheism, or both; druidism employed human sacrifice. The monotheistic rigor of Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
led sometimes to compromise and the granting of special exemptions, and sometimes to intractable conflict. By the height of the Roman Empire
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire was the post-Republican period of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean....
, however, numerous foreign cults were practiced at Rome and throughout even the most remote provinces, among them the mystery cult of the syncretized
Syncretism
Syncretism is the combining of different beliefs, often while melding practices of various schools of thought. The term means "combining", but see below for the origin of the word...
Egyptian goddess Isis
Isis
Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...
and deities of solar monism
Monism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
such as Mithras and Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...
, found as far north as Roman Britain
Roman Britain
Roman Britain was the part of the island of Great Britain controlled by the Roman Empire from AD 43 until ca. AD 410.The Romans referred to the imperial province as Britannia, which eventually comprised all of the island of Great Britain south of the fluid frontier with Caledonia...
.
From the 2nd century onward, the Church Fathers
Church Fathers
The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were early and influential theologians, eminent Christian teachers and great bishops. Their scholarly works were used as a precedent for centuries to come...
began to condemn the diverse religions practiced throughout the Empire collectively as "pagan." When the Roman Emperor
Roman Emperor
The Roman emperor was the ruler of the Roman State during the imperial period . The Romans had no single term for the office although at any given time, a given title was associated with the emperor...
Constantine I
Constantine I
Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...
converted to Christianity in the 4th century, he launched the era of Christian hegemony
Hegemony
Hegemony is an indirect form of imperial dominance in which the hegemon rules sub-ordinate states by the implied means of power rather than direct military force. In Ancient Greece , hegemony denoted the politico–military dominance of a city-state over other city-states...
. Despite a short-lived attempt by the Emperor Julian
Julian the Apostate
Julian "the Apostate" , commonly known as Julian, or also Julian the Philosopher, was Roman Emperor from 361 to 363 and a noted philosopher and Greek writer....
to revive and preserve traditional and Hellenistic religion
Hellenistic religion
Hellenistic religion is any of the various systems of beliefs and practices of the people who lived under the influence of ancient Greek culture during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire . There was much continuity in Hellenistic religion: the Greek gods continued to be worshiped, and the...
and to affirm the special status of Judaism, in 391 under Theodosius I
Theodosius I
Theodosius I , also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland...
Christianity became the official state religion of Rome
State church of the Roman Empire
The state church of the Roman Empire was a Christian institution organized within the Roman Empire during the 4th century that came to represent the Empire's sole authorized religion. Both the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox churches claim to be the historical continuation of this...
, to the exclusion of all others. Pleas for religious tolerance from traditionalists such as the senator
Roman Senate
The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...
Symmachus
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus was a Roman statesman, orator, and man of letters. He held the offices of governor of Africa in 373, urban prefect of Rome in 384 and 385, and consul in 391...
(d. 402) were rejected, and Christian monotheism became a feature of Imperial domination. Other religions were gradually transformed, absorbed or strictly suppressed. Many forms of traditional religious practice, particularly festivals
Roman festivals
In ancient Roman religion, holidays were celebrated to worship and celebrate a certain god or divine event, and consisted of religious observances and festival traditions, usually with a large feast, and often featuring games . The most important festivals were the Saturnalia, the Consualia, the...
and games (ludi
Ludi
Ludi were public games held for the benefit and entertainment of the Roman people . Ludi were held in conjunction with, or sometimes as the major feature of, Roman religious festivals, and were also presented as part of the cult of state.The earliest ludi were horse races in the circus...
), which might be divorced from theological implications, retained their vitality through the 4th and 5th centuries. Rome's religious hierarchy and many aspects of ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian beliefs and practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.
Founding myths and divine destiny
Roman mythology
Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans...
is particularly rich in historical myths, or legend
Legend
A legend is a narrative of human actions that are perceived both by teller and listeners to take place within human history and to possess certain qualities that give the tale verisimilitude...
s, 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.
Rome had a semi-divine ancestor in the Trojan
Trojan War
In Greek mythology, the Trojan War was waged against the city of Troy by the Achaeans after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta. The war is among the most important events in Greek mythology and was narrated in many works of Greek literature, including the Iliad...
refugee Aeneas
Aeneas
Aeneas , in Greco-Roman mythology, was a Trojan hero, the son of the prince Anchises and the goddess Aphrodite. His father was the second cousin of King Priam of Troy, making Aeneas Priam's second cousin, once removed. The journey of Aeneas from Troy , which led to the founding a hamlet south of...
, son of Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
, who was said to have established the nucleus of Roman religion when he brought the Palladium
Palladium (mythology)
In Greek and Roman mythology, a palladium or palladion was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend. "Palladium" especially signified the wooden statue of Pallas Athena that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to the...
, Lares
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
and Penates from Troy to Italy. These objects were believed in historical times to remain in the keeping of the Vestals
Vestal Virgin
In ancient Roman religion, the Vestals or Vestal Virgins , were priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. The College of the Vestals and its well-being was regarded as fundamental to the continuance and security of Rome, as embodied by their cultivation of the sacred fire that could not be...
, Rome's female priesthood. Aeneas had been given refuge by King Evander
Evander
In Roman mythology, Evander , also spelled Euander, was a deific culture hero from Arcadia, Greece, who brought the Greek pantheon, laws and alphabet to Italy, where he founded the city of Pallantium on the future site of Rome, sixty years...
, a Greek exile from Arcadia
Arcadia
Arcadia is one of the regional units of Greece. It is part of the administrative region of Peloponnese. It is situated in the central and eastern part of the Peloponnese peninsula. It takes its name from the mythological character Arcas. In Greek mythology, it was the home of the god Pan...
, to whom were attributed other religious foundations: he established the Ara Maxima, "Greatest Altar," to Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
at the site that would become the Forum Boarium
Forum Boarium
The Forum Boarium was the cattle forum venalium of Ancient Rome and the oldest forum that Rome possessed. It was located on a level piece of land near the Tiber between the Capitoline, the Palatine and Aventine hills. Here, too, is where the first bridges were built...
, and he was the first to celebrate the Lupercalia
Lupercalia
Lupercalia was a very ancient, possibly pre-Roman pastoral festival, observed on February 13 through 15 to avert evil spirits and purify the city, releasing health and fertility...
, an archaic festival in February that was celebrated as late as the 5th century of the Christian era.
The myth of a Trojan founding with Greek influence was reconciled through an elaborate genealogy (see Latin kings of Alba Longa
Latin kings of Alba Longa
The Latin kings of Alba Longa, also referred to as the Latin kings of Rome or Alban kings of Rome, are a series of legendary kings of Latium ruling mainly from Alba Longa. In the mythic tradition of the founding of Rome, they fill the 400-year gap between the settlement of Aeneas in Italy and the...
) with the well-known legend of Rome's founding by Romulus and Remus
Romulus and Remus
Romulus and Remus are Rome's twin founders in its traditional foundation myth, although the former is sometimes said to be the sole founder...
. The most common version of the twins' story displays several aspects of hero myth. Their mother, Rhea Silvia
Rhea Silvia
Rhea Silvia , and also known as Ilia, was the mythical mother of the twins Romulus and Remus, who founded the city of Rome...
, 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
Mars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...
. 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. Divine communication did not prevent brotherly disagreement, and Romulus kills Remus, an act that is sometimes seen as sacrificial. Fratricide thus became an integral part of Rome's founding myth.
Romulus was credited with several religious institutions. He founded the Consualia
Consualia
The Consuales Ludi or Consualia is a festival instituted by Romulus, which honors Consus, the god of counsel, and the one who protects the harvest which is in storage at the time of the festival, which took place about the middle of Sextilis . According to Livy the festival honors Neptune...
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
Spolia opima
Spolia opima refers to the armor, arms, and other effects that an ancient Roman general had stripped from the body of an opposing commander slain in single combat...
, the prime spoils taken in war, in the celebration of the first Roman triumph
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...
. Romulus became increasingly autocratic, but in popular tradition was spared a normal human death and instead was mysteriously spirited away and deified.
His Sabine successor Numa
Numa
Numa may refer to:* Numa Pompilius, legendary second king of Rome* Numa Morikazu, Meiji era Japanese politician* Numa, Iowa, U.S. town* The Numa Numa Internet meme* The Northern Paiute people...
was pious and peaceable, and credited with numerous political and religious foundations, including the first Roman calendar
Roman calendar
The Roman calendar changed its form several times in the time between the founding of Rome and the fall of the Roman Empire. This article generally discusses the early Roman or pre-Julian calendars...
; the priesthoods of the Salii
Salii
In ancient Roman religion, the Salii were the "leaping priests" of Mars supposed to have been introduced by King Numa Pompilius. They were twelve patrician youths, dressed as archaic warriors: an embroidered tunic, a breastplate, a short red cloak , a sword, and a spiked headdress called an apex...
, flamen
Flamen
In ancient Roman religion, a flamen was a priest assigned to one of fifteen deities with official cults during the Roman Republic. The most important three were the flamines maiores , who served the three chief Roman gods of the Archaic Triad. The remaining twelve were the flamines minores...
s, and Vestals; the cults of Jupiter
Jupiter (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....
, Mars, and Quirinus
Quirinus
In Roman mythology, Quirinus was an early god of the Roman state. In Augustan Rome, Quirinus was also an epithet of Janus, as Janus Quirinus. His name is derived from Quiris meaning "spear."-History:...
; and the Temple of Janus
Janus
-General:*Janus , the two-faced Roman god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings, and endings*Janus , a moon of Saturn*Janus Patera, a shallow volcanic crater on Io, a moon of Jupiter...
, 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 remained open until the reign of Augustus, or so the claim went.
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
Tullus Hostilius
Tullus Hostilius was the legendary third of the Kings of Rome. He succeeded Numa Pompilius, and was succeeded by Ancus Marcius...
and Ancus Marcius
Ancus Marcius
Ancus Marcius was the legendary fourth of the Kings of Rome.He was the son of Marcius and Pompilia...
instituted the fetial
Fetial
A fetial was a type of priest in Ancient Rome. They formed a collegium.Their duties included advising the senate on foreign affairs and international treaties, making formal proclamations of peace and of war, and confirming treaties. They also carried out the functions of traveling heralds or...
priests. The first "outsider" Etruscan king, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, founded a Capitoline temple to the triad
Capitoline Triad
In ancient Roman religion, the Capitoline Triad was a group of three supreme deities who were worshipped in an elaborate temple on Rome's Capitoline Hill, the Capitolium. Two distinct Capitoline Triads were worshipped at various times in Rome's history, both originating in ancient traditions...
Jupiter, Juno
Juno (mythology)
Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...
and Minerva
Minerva
Minerva was the Roman goddess whom Romans from the 2nd century BC onwards equated with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic...
which served as the model for the highest official cult throughout the Roman world. The benevolent, divinely fathered Servius Tullius
Servius Tullius
Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of ancient Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned 578-535 BC. Roman and Greek sources describe his servile origins and later marriage to a daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome's first Etruscan king, who was assassinated in 579 BC...
established the Latin League
Latin league
The Latin League was a confederation of about 30 villages and tribes in the region of Latium near ancient Rome, organized for mutual defense...
, its Aventine
Aventine Hill
The Aventine Hill is one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built. It belongs to Ripa, the twelfth rione, or ward, of Rome.-Location and boundaries:The Aventine hill is the southernmost of Rome's seven hills...
Temple to Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
, and the Compitalia
Compitalia
In ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia was a festival celebrated once a year in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways meet. The word comes from the Latin compitum, a cross-way.This festival is...
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
Roman Magistrates
The Roman Magistrates were elected officials in Ancient Rome. During the period of the Roman Kingdom, the King of Rome was the principal executive magistrate. His power, in practice, was absolute. He was the chief priest, lawgiver, judge, and the sole commander of the army...
.
The Roman historians
Roman historiography
Roman Historiography is indebted to the Greeks, who invented the form. The Romans had great models to base their works upon, such as Herodotus and Thucydides. Roman historiographical forms are different from the Greek ones however, and voice very Roman concerns. Unlike the Greeks, Roman...
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
SPQR
SPQR is an initialism from a Latin phrase, Senatus Populusque Romanus , referring to the government of the ancient Roman Republic, and used as an official emblem of the modern day comune of Rome...
: the sacred topography of the city
Topography of ancient Rome
The topography of ancient Rome is a multidisciplinary field of study that draws on archaeology, epigraphy, cartography and philology.The classic English-language work of scholarship is A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome , written by Samuel Ball Platner, completed and published after his...
, its monuments and temples, the histories of Rome's leading families
Gens
In ancient Rome, a gens , plural gentes, referred to a family, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor. A branch of a gens was called a stirps . The gens was an important social structure at Rome and throughout Italy during the...
, and equally important oral and ritual traditions. Rome's history was represented as a coherent and sacred continuity, imperiled by religious negligence and personal ambition. According to Cicero, the Romans considered themselves the most religious of all peoples; and their extraordinary success proved it.
Roman deities
Rome offers no native creation myth, and little mythographyMythography
A mythographer, or a mythologist is a compiler of myths. The word derives from the Greek "μυθογραφία" , "writing of fables", from "μῦθος" , "speech, word, fact, story, narrative" + "γράφω" , "to write, to inscribe". Mythography is then the rendering of myths in the arts...
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.
Several versions of a semi-official, structured pantheon
Pantheon (gods)
A pantheon is a set of all the gods of a particular polytheistic religion or mythology.Max Weber's 1922 opus, Economy and Society discusses the link between a...
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
Capitoline Triad
In ancient Roman religion, the Capitoline Triad was a group of three supreme deities who were worshipped in an elaborate temple on Rome's Capitoline Hill, the Capitolium. Two distinct Capitoline Triads were worshipped at various times in Rome's history, both originating in ancient traditions...
, some aspects of cult and several divine characteristics with Mars
Mars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...
and Quirinus
Quirinus
In Roman mythology, Quirinus was an early god of the Roman state. In Augustan Rome, Quirinus was also an epithet of Janus, as Janus Quirinus. His name is derived from Quiris meaning "spear."-History:...
, who were later replaced by Juno
Juno (mythology)
Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...
and Minerva
Minerva
Minerva was the Roman goddess whom Romans from the 2nd century BC onwards equated with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic...
. A conceptual tendency toward triads may be indicated by the later agricultural or plebeian
Plebs
The plebs was the general body of free land-owning Roman citizens in Ancient Rome. They were distinct from the higher order of the patricians. A member of the plebs was known as a plebeian...
triad of Ceres, Liber
Liber
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber , also known as Liber Pater was a god of viticulture and wine, fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia became associated with free speech and the rights...
and Libera
Libera (mythology)
Libera is a fertility goddess in ancient Roman religion. Her origins are unknown; she may have been a fertility goddess of archaic or pre-Roman Magna Graecia. Her Latin name is the feminine form of Liber,...
, and by some of the complementary threefold deity-groupings of Imperial cult. Other major and minor deities could be single, coupled, or linked retrospectively through myths of divine marriage and sexual adventure. These later Roman pantheistic
Pantheism
Pantheism is the view that the Universe and God are identical. Pantheists thus do not believe in a personal, anthropomorphic or creator god. The word derives from the Greek meaning "all" and the Greek meaning "God". As such, Pantheism denotes the idea that "God" is best seen as a process of...
hierarchies are part literary and mythographic, part philosophical creations, and often Greek in origin. The Hellenization
Hellenization
Hellenization is a term used to describe the spread of ancient Greek culture, and, to a lesser extent, language. It is mainly used to describe the spread of Hellenistic civilization during the Hellenistic period following the campaigns of Alexander the Great of Macedon...
of Latin literature and culture
Culture of ancient Rome
Ancient Roman culture existed throughout the almost 1200-year history of the civilization of Ancient Rome. The term refers to the culture of the Roman Republic, later the Roman Empire, which, at its peak, covered an area from Lowland Scotland and Morocco to the Euphrates.Life in ancient Rome...
supplied literary and artistic models for reinterpreting
Interpretatio graeca
Interpretatio graeca is a Latin term for the common tendency of ancient Greek writers to equate foreign divinities to members of their own pantheon. Herodotus, for example, refers to the ancient Egyptian gods Amon, Osiris and Ptah as "Zeus", "Dionysus" and "Hephaestus", respectively.-Roman...
Roman deities in light of the Greek Olympians
Twelve Olympians
The Twelve Olympians, also known as the Dodekatheon , in Greek mythology, were the principal deities of the Greek pantheon, residing atop Mount Olympus. Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Hestia, and Hades were siblings. Ares, Hermes, Hephaestus, Athena, Apollo, and Artemis were children of Zeus...
, and promoted a sense that the two cultures had a shared heritage.
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
Vicus (Rome)
In ancient Rome, the vicus was a neighborhood. During the Republican era, the four regiones of the city of Rome were subdivided into vici. In the 1st century BC, Augustus reorganized the city for administrative purposes into 14 regions, comprising 265 vici. Each vicus had its own board of...
and communities, and the often idiosyncratic blends of official, unofficial, local and personal cults that characterised lawful Roman religion. In this spirit, a provincial Roman citizen who made the long journey from Bordeaux
Bordeaux
Bordeaux is a port city on the Garonne River in the Gironde department in southwestern France.The Bordeaux-Arcachon-Libourne metropolitan area, has a population of 1,010,000 and constitutes the sixth-largest urban area in France. It is the capital of the Aquitaine region, as well as the prefecture...
to Italy to consult the Sibyl at Tibur
Tiburtine Sibyl
The Tiburtine Sibyl was a Roman sibyl, whose seat was the ancient Etruscan town of Tibur .The mythic meeting of Cæsar Augustus with the Sibyl, of whom he inquired whether he should be worshiped as a god, was a favored motif of Christian artists. Whether the sibyl in question was the Etruscan Sibyl...
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 OnuavaOnuavaOnuava is a Celtic fertility goddess. She is associated with the earth and is known only from inscriptions in Gaul....
. 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.
Holidays and festivals
Ludi
Ludi were public games held for the benefit and entertainment of the Roman people . Ludi were held in conjunction with, or sometimes as the major feature of, Roman religious festivals, and were also presented as part of the cult of state.The earliest ludi were horse races in the circus...
("games," such as chariot races and theatrical performances
Theatre of ancient Rome
The theatre of ancient Rome was a thriving and diverse art form, ranging from festival performances of street theatre, nude dancing, and acrobatics, to the staging of Plautus's broadly appealing situation comedies, to the high-style, verbally elaborate tragedies of Seneca...
), with examples including those held at Palestrina in honour of Fortuna Primigenia during Compitalia
Compitalia
In ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia was a festival celebrated once a year in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways meet. The word comes from the Latin compitum, a cross-way.This festival is...
, and the Ludi Romani
Ludi Romani
The Ludi Romani were a religious festival in ancient Rome. They were held annually starting in 366 BC from September 12 to September 14, later extended to September 5 to September 19. In the last 1st century BC, an extra day was added in honor of the deified Julius Caesar on 4 September...
in honour of Liber
Liber
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber , also known as Liber Pater was a god of viticulture and wine, fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia became associated with free speech and the rights...
. Other festivals may have required only the presence and rites of their priests and acolytes, or particular groups, such as women at the Bona Dea
Bona Dea
Bona Dea was a divinity in ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility in women, healing, and the protection of the Roman state and people...
rites.
Other public festivals were not required by the calendar, but occasioned by events. The triumph
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...
of a Roman general was celebrated as the fulfillment of religious vows
Votum
In ancient Roman religion, a votum, plural vota, is a vow or promise made to a deity. The word comes from the past participle of the Latin verb voveo, vovere, "vow, promise." As the result of this verbal action, a votum is also that which fulfills a vow, that is, the thing promised, such as...
, 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
Principate
The Principate is the first period of the Roman Empire, extending from the beginning of the reign of Caesar Augustus to the Crisis of the Third Century, after which it was replaced with the Dominate. The Principate is characterized by a concerted effort on the part of the Emperors to preserve the...
, 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
Secular games
The Secular Games were a religious celebration, involving sacrifices and theatrical performances, held in ancient Rome for three days and nights to mark the end of a saeculum and the beginning of the next...
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
Late Antiquity
Late Antiquity is a periodization used by historians to describe the time of transition from Classical Antiquity to the Middle Ages, in both mainland Europe and the Mediterranean world. Precise boundaries for the period are a matter of debate, but noted historian of the period Peter Brown proposed...
is indicated by the admonitions of the Church Fathers that Christians should not take part.
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
Ovid
Publius Ovidius Naso , known as Ovid in the English-speaking world, was a Roman poet who is best known as the author of the three major collections of erotic poetry: Heroides, Amores, and Ars Amatoria...
. In his Fasti
Fasti (poem)
The Fasti is a six-book Latin poem by Ovid believed to have been left unfinished when the poet was exiled to Tomis by the emperor Augustus in the year 8...
, a long-form poem covering Roman holidays from January to June, Ovid presents a unique look at Roman antiquarian
Antiquarian
An antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
lore, popular customs, and religious practice that is by turns imaginative, entertaining, high-minded, and scurrilous; not a priestly account, despite the speaker's pose as a vates
Vates
The earliest Latin writers used vātēs to denote "prophets" and soothsayers in general; the word fell into disuse in Latin until it was revived by Virgil...
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
Saturnalia
Saturnalia is an Ancient Roman festival/ celebration held in honour of Saturn , the youngest of the Titans, father of the major gods of the Greeks and Romans, and son of Uranus and Gaia...
, Consualia
Consualia
The Consuales Ludi or Consualia is a festival instituted by Romulus, which honors Consus, the god of counsel, and the one who protects the harvest which is in storage at the time of the festival, which took place about the middle of Sextilis . According to Livy the festival honors Neptune...
, and feast of Anna Perenna
Anna Perenna
Anna Perenna was an old Roman deity of the circle or "ring" of the year, as the name clearly indicates. Her festival fell on the Ides of March , which would have marked the first full moon in the year in the old lunar Roman calendar when March was reckoned as the first month of the year, and was...
on the Ides of March
Ides of March
The Ides of March is the name of the 15th day of March in the Roman calendar, probably referring to the day of the full moon. The word Ides comes from the Latin word "Idus" and means "half division" especially in relation to a month. It is a word that was used widely in the Roman calendar...
, where Ovid treats the assassination of the newly deified Julius Caesar as utterly incidental to the festivities among the Roman people. 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.
Temples and shrines
"The architecture of the ancient Romans was, from first to last, an art of shaping space around ritual." Roman religion was not confined to temples and shrines.
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.
Prayers, vows, and oaths
All sacrifices and offerings required an accompanying prayer to be effective. Pliny the ElderPliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
declared that "a sacrifice without prayer is thought to be useless and not a proper consultation of the gods." 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. Accurate naming was vital for tapping into the desired powers of the deity invoked, hence the proliferation of cult epithets among Roman deities. 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. The historian Livy
Livy
Titus Livius — known as Livy in English — was a Roman historian who wrote a monumental history of Rome and the Roman people. Ab Urbe Condita Libri, "Chapters from the Foundation of the City," covering the period from the earliest legends of Rome well before the traditional foundation in 753 BC...
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. 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.
Oaths of business, clientage and service, patronage and protection
Patronage in ancient Rome
Patronage was the distinctive relationship in ancient Roman society between the patronus and his client . The relationship was hierarchical, but obligations were mutual. The patronus was the protector, sponsor, and benefactor of the client...
, state office, treaty and loyalty appealed to the witness and sanction of deities. Refusal to swear a lawful oath, and a sworn oath broken carried much the same penalty; both repudiated the fundamental bonds between the human and divine.
Sacrifice
In Latin, the word sacrificium means the performance of an act that is sacer, sacred. Sacrifice reinforced the powers and attributes of divine beings, and inclined them to render benefits in return. Family meals, rites of passage, crops and livestock were ritually purified by vows, prayers, and sacrifices. The divine agencies who caused disease might be placated with the appropriate rituals. The inconvenient delays of a journey, or the more fraught encounters of banditry, piracy and wreck might be averted by prayers for divine protection before setting out, with due gratitude to be rendered on safe arrival. In times of great crisis, the senate could decree collective public worship, in which Rome's citizens – men, women and children – moved in procession from one temple to the next, to supplicate the gods for their help.Offerings to household deities
Household deity
A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in pagan religions as well as in folklore across many parts of the world....
were part of daily life. Lares
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
might be offered spelt wheat and grain-garlands, grapes and first fruits in due season, honey cakes and honeycombs, wine and incense, food that fell to the floor during any family meal, or at their Compitalia
Compitalia
In ancient Roman religion, the Compitalia was a festival celebrated once a year in honor of the Lares Compitales, household deities of the crossroads, to whom sacrifices were offered at the places where two or more ways meet. The word comes from the Latin compitum, a cross-way.This festival is...
festival, honey-cakes and a pig on behalf of the community. Their supposed underworld relatives, the malicious and vagrant Lemures, might be placated with midnight offerings of black beans and spring water.
The most potent offering was animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice
Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...
, 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.
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
Juno (mythology)
Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...
a white heifer (possibly a white cow); Jupiter
Jupiter (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Jupiter or Jove is the king of the gods, and the god of the sky and thunder. He is the equivalent of Zeus in the Greek pantheon....
a white, castrated ox (bos mas) for the annual oath-taking by the consuls
Roman consul
A consul served in the highest elected political office of the Roman Republic.Each year, two consuls were elected together, to serve for a one-year term. Each consul was given veto power over his colleague and the officials would alternate each month...
. Di superi with strong connections to the earth, such as Mars, Janus, Neptune and various genii
Genius (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...
– 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.
Underworld (chthonic
Chthonic
Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land or the land as territory...
) gods such as Dis pater
Dis Pater
Dis Pater, or Dispater was a Roman god of the underworld, later subsumed by Pluto or Hades. Originally a chthonic god of riches, fertile agricultural land, and underground mineral wealth, he was later commonly equated with the Roman deities Pluto and Orcus, becoming an underworld deity.Dis Pater...
and the collective shades of the departed (di Manes
Manes
In ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent the souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Genii, and Di Penates as deities that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult...
) were given dark, fertile victims in nighttime rituals; there was no shared banquet, as "the living cannot share a meal with the dead". Ceres
CERES
CERES may refer to:* California Environmental Resources Evaluation System * Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies of the University of Toronto...
and other underworld goddesses of fruitfulness were sometimes offered pregnant female animals; Tellus was given a pregnant cow at the Fordicidia
Fordicidia
In ancient Roman religion, the Fordicidia was a festival of fertility, held April 15, that pertained to animal husbandry. It involved the sacrifice of a pregnant cow to Tellus, or Mother Earth, in proximity to the festival of Ceres on April 19....
festival. Color seems to have had a symbolic value generally 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
Robigalia
In ancient Roman religion, the Robigalia was a festival held April 25. Its main ritual was a dog sacrifice to protect grain fields from disease. Games in the form of "major and minor" races were held...
for the protection of crops from blight and red mildew.
Extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary sacrifice: in one of the many crises of the Second Punic War
Second Punic War
The Second Punic War, also referred to as The Hannibalic War and The War Against Hannibal, lasted from 218 to 201 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean. This was the second major war between Carthage and the Roman Republic, with the participation of the Berbers on...
, Jupiter Capitolinus was promised every animal born that spring, to be rendered after five more years of protection from Hannibal and his allies. Had the gods failed to keep their side of the bargain, sacrifice would have been withheld. In the imperial period, sacrifice was withheld following Trajan
Trajan
Trajan , was Roman Emperor from 98 to 117 AD. Born into a non-patrician family in the province of Hispania Baetica, in Spain Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of emperor Domitian. Serving as a legatus legionis in Hispania Tarraconensis, in Spain, in 89 Trajan supported the emperor against...
's death because the gods had not kept the Emperor safe for the stipulated period. In Pompeii
Pompeii
The city of Pompeii is a partially buried Roman town-city near modern Naples in the Italian region of Campania, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Along with Herculaneum, Pompeii was destroyed and completely buried during a long catastrophic eruption of the volcano Mount Vesuvius spanning...
, 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.
Human sacrifice
Human sacrifice in ancient Rome was rare but documented. After the Roman defeat at CannaeBattle of Cannae
The Battle of Cannae was a major battle of the Second Punic War, which took place on August 2, 216 BC near the town of Cannae in Apulia in southeast Italy. The army of Carthage under Hannibal decisively defeated a numerically superior army of the Roman Republic under command of the consuls Lucius...
two Gauls and two Greeks were buried under the Forum Boarium
Forum Boarium
The Forum Boarium was the cattle forum venalium of Ancient Rome and the oldest forum that Rome possessed. It was located on a level piece of land near the Tiber between the Capitoline, the Palatine and Aventine hills. Here, too, is where the first bridges were built...
, 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". 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.
In the early stages of the First Punic War
First Punic War
The First Punic War was the first of three wars fought between Ancient Carthage and the Roman Republic. For 23 years, the two powers struggled for supremacy in the western Mediterranean Sea, primarily on the Mediterranean island of Sicily and its surrounding waters but also to a lesser extent in...
(264 BC) the first known Roman gladiatorial munus
Gladiator
A gladiator was an armed combatant who entertained audiences in the Roman Republic and Roman Empire in violent confrontations with other gladiators, wild animals, and condemned criminals. Some gladiators were volunteers who risked their legal and social standing and their lives by appearing in the...
was held, described as a funeral blood-rite to the manes
Manes
In ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent the souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Genii, and Di Penates as deities that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult...
of a Roman military aristocrat. 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.
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 Mother of the Lares
The Mother of the Lares has been identified with any of several minor Roman deities. She appears twice in the records of the Arval Brethren as Mater Larum, elsewhere as Mania and Larunda...
. The Junii took credit for its abolition by their ancestor L. Junius Brutus
Lucius Junius Brutus
Lucius Junius Brutus was the founder of the Roman Republic and traditionally one of the first consuls in 509 BC. He was claimed as an ancestor of the Roman gens Junia, including Marcus Junius Brutus, the most famous of Caesar's assassins.- Background :...
, traditionally Rome's Republican founder and first consul. Political or military executions were sometimes conducted in such a way that they evoked human sacrifice, whether deliberately or in the perception of witnesses; for a gruesome example, see Marcus Marius Gratidianus
Marcus Marius Gratidianus
Marcus Marius Gratidianus was a praetor and a partisan of the popularist faction led by his uncle Gaius Marius during the Roman Republican civil wars of the 80s...
.
Officially, human sacrifice was obnoxious "to the laws of gods and men." The practice was a mark of the "Other
Other
The Other or Constitutive Other is a key concept in continental philosophy; it opposes the Same. The Other refers, or attempts to refer, to that which is Other than the initial concept being considered...
", attributed to Rome's traditional enemies such as the Carthaginians and Gauls. Rome banned it on several occasions under extreme penalty, notably in 81 BC. Its alleged practice helped justify the conquest of Gaul and both invasions of Britain as righteous acts of war in suppression of the Druids, the elite priestly class among the Gauls: according to Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
, the British clung to the practice for as long as they could. Despite an empire-wide ban under Hadrian
Hadrian
Hadrian , was Roman Emperor from 117 to 138. He is best known for building Hadrian's Wall, which marked the northern limit of Roman Britain. In Rome, he re-built the Pantheon and constructed the Temple of Venus and Roma. In addition to being emperor, Hadrian was a humanist and was philhellene in...
, human sacrifice may have continued covertly in North Africa and elsewhere.
Domestic and private cult
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
, 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
Genius (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing.-Nature of the genius:...
.
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
Gens
In ancient Rome, a gens , plural gentes, referred to a family, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor. A branch of a gens was called a stirps . The gens was an important social structure at Rome and throughout Italy during the...
(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.
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. 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
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
and penates from Troy, along with the Palladium
Palladium (mythology)
In Greek and Roman mythology, a palladium or palladion was an image of great antiquity on which the safety of a city was said to depend. "Palladium" especially signified the wooden statue of Pallas Athena that Odysseus and Diomedes stole from the citadel of Troy and which was later taken to the...
which was later installed in the temple of Vesta
Vesta (mythology)
Vesta was the virgin goddess of the hearth, home, and family in Roman religion. Vesta's presence was symbolized by the sacred fire that burned at her hearth and temples...
.
Religio and the state
Roman religio (religion) was an everyday and vital affair, a cornerstone of Rome's mos maiorumMos maiorum
The mos maiorum is the unwritten code from which the ancient Romans derived their social norms. It is the core concept of Roman traditionalism, distinguished from but in dynamic complement to written law. The mos maiorum The mos maiorum ("ancestral custom") is the unwritten code from which the...
(the customs and traditions "of the ancestors").
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 groveLucusIn ancient Roman religion, a lucus is a sacred grove.Lucus was one of four Latin words meaning in general "forest, woodland, grove" , but unlike the others it was primarily used as a religious designation...
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' (ApuleiusApuleiusApuleius was a Latin prose writer. He was a Berber, from Madaurus . He studied Platonist philosophy in Athens; travelled to Italy, Asia Minor and Egypt; and was an initiate in several cults or mysteries. The most famous incident in his life was when he was accused of using magic to gain the...
, Florides 1.1).
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
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
: 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. 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.
Official cults were state funded as a "matter of public interest" (res publica
Res publica
Res publica is a Latin phrase, loosely meaning "public affair". It is the root of the word republic, and the word commonwealth has traditionally been used as a synonym for it; however translations vary widely according to the context...
). 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
Parentalia
In ancient Rome, the Parentalia or dies parentales was a nine-day festival held in honor of family ancestors, beginning February 13....
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.
Public priesthoods and religious law
Flamen
In ancient Roman religion, a flamen was a priest assigned to one of fifteen deities with official cults during the Roman Republic. The most important three were the flamines maiores , who served the three chief Roman gods of the Archaic Triad. The remaining twelve were the flamines minores...
(singular, flamen), attributed to king Numa: the major flamines, dedicated to Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, and later, to Capitoline Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, were traditionally drawn from patrician families. Twelve lesser flamines were each dedicated to a single deity. 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.
In the Regal era, a rex sacrorum
Rex Sacrorum
In ancient Roman religion, the rex sacrorum was a senatorial priesthood reserved for patricians. Although in the historical era the pontifex maximus was the head of Roman state religion, Festus says that in the ranking of priests, the rex sacrorum was of highest prestige, followed by the flamines...
(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
Pontifex Maximus
The Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome. This was the most important position in the ancient Roman religion, open only to patricians until 254 BC, when a plebeian first occupied this post...
.
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. 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. For those who had reached their goal in the Cursus honorum
Cursus honorum
The cursus honorum was the sequential order of public offices held by aspiring politicians in both the Roman Republic and the early Empire. It was designed for men of senatorial rank. The cursus honorum comprised a mixture of military and political administration posts. Each office had a minimum...
, 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.
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
Arval Brethren
In ancient Roman religion, the Arval Brethren or Arval Brothers were a body of priests who offered annual sacrifices to the Lares and gods to guarantee good harvests...
, 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.
The Vestals
Vestal Virgin
In ancient Roman religion, the Vestals or Vestal Virgins , were priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. The College of the Vestals and its well-being was regarded as fundamental to the continuance and security of Rome, as embodied by their cultivation of the sacred fire that could not be...
were a public priesthood of six women devoted to the cultivation of Vesta
Vesta
-Astronomy:* 4 Vesta, second largest asteroid in the solar system, also a proto-planet, named after the Roman deity* Vesta family, group of asteroids that includes 4 Vesta- Places :* Monte Vesta, Lombardy, Italy* Temple of Vesta, Rome, Italy...
, goddess of the hearth of the Roman state and its vital flame
Sacred fire of Vesta
The sacred fire of Vesta was a holy fire in Ancient Rome. The Vestal Virgins were selected by lot and served for thirty years, tending the holy fire and performing other rituals connected to domestic life—among them were the ritual sweeping of the temple on June 15 and the preparation of...
. 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.
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. 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. 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.
The Vestals embody the profound connection between domestic cult and the religious life of the community. Any householder could rekindle their own household fire from Vesta's flame. The Vestals cared for the Lares
Lares
Lares , archaically Lases, were guardian deities in ancient Roman religion. Their origin is uncertain; they may have been guardians of the hearth, fields, boundaries or fruitfulness, hero-ancestors, or an amalgam of these....
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
Parilia
thumb|250px|Festa di Pales, o L'estate , a reimagining of the Festival of Pales by [[Joseph-Benoît Suvée]]In ancient Roman religion, the Parilia is an agricultural festival performed annually on April 21, aimed at cleansing both sheep and shepherd. It is carried out in acknowledgment to the Roman...
, Parentalia
Parentalia
In ancient Rome, the Parentalia or dies parentales was a nine-day festival held in honor of family ancestors, beginning February 13....
and Fordicidia
Fordicidia
In ancient Roman religion, the Fordicidia was a festival of fertility, held April 15, that pertained to animal husbandry. It involved the sacrifice of a pregnant cow to Tellus, or Mother Earth, in proximity to the festival of Ceres on April 19....
. Indirectly, they played a role in every official sacrifice; among their duties was the preparation of the mola salsa
Mola salsa
In ancient Roman religion, mola salsa was a mixture of coarse-ground, toasted emmer flour and salt prepared by the Vestal Virgins and used in every official sacrifice. It was sprinkled on the forehead and between the horns of animal victims before they were sacrificed, as well as on the altar and...
, the salted flour that was sprinkled on every sacrificial victim as part of its immolation.
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
Servius Tullius
Servius Tullius was the legendary sixth king of ancient Rome, and the second of its Etruscan dynasty. He reigned 578-535 BC. Roman and Greek sources describe his servile origins and later marriage to a daughter of Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, Rome's first Etruscan king, who was assassinated in 579 BC...
, sixth king of Rome, son of a virgin slave-girl impregnated by a disembodied phallus
Phallus
A phallus is an erect penis, a penis-shaped object such as a dildo, or a mimetic image of an erect penis. Any object that symbolically resembles a penis may also be referred to as a phallus; however, such objects are more often referred to as being phallic...
arising mysteriously on the royal hearth; the story was connected to the fascinus
Fascinus
In ancient Roman religion and magic, the fascinus or fascinum was the embodiment of the divine phallus. The word can refer to the deity himself , to phallus effigies and amulets, and to the spells used to invoke his divine protection...
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
Claudius
Claudius , was Roman Emperor from 41 to 54. A member of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, he was the son of Drusus and Antonia Minor. He was born at Lugdunum in Gaul and was the first Roman Emperor to be born outside Italy...
appointed them as priestesses to the cult of the deified Livia
Livia
Livia Drusilla, , after her formal adoption into the Julian family in AD 14 also known as Julia Augusta, was a Roman empress as the third wife of the Emperor Augustus and his adviser...
, wife of Augustus. 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
Gratian
Gratian was Roman Emperor from 375 to 383.The eldest son of Valentinian I, during his youth Gratian accompanied his father on several campaigns along the Rhine and Danube frontiers. Upon the death of Valentinian in 375, Gratian's brother Valentinian II was declared emperor by his father's soldiers...
refused the office of pontifex maximus, he took steps toward the dissolution of the order. His successor Theodosius I
Theodosius I
Theodosius I , also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland...
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 augurAugur
The augur was a priest and official in the classical world, especially ancient Rome and Etruria. His main role was to interpret the will of the gods by studying the flight of birds: whether they are flying in groups/alone, what noises they make as they fly, direction of flight and what kind of...
. The original meaning of the Latin word templum was this sacred space, and only later referred to a building. Rome itself was an intrinsically sacred space; its ancient boundary (pomerium
Pomerium
The pomerium or pomoerium , was the sacred boundary of the city of Rome. In legal terms, Rome existed only within the pomerium; everything beyond it was simply territory belonging to Rome.-Location and extensions:Tradition maintained that it was the original line ploughed by Romulus around the...
) 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
Via Sacra
The Via Sacra was the main street of ancient Rome, leading from the top of the Capitoline Hill, through some of the most important religious sites of the Forum , to the Colosseum....
(Sacred Way) and the pomerium. 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. 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. 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
Cursus honorum
The cursus honorum was the sequential order of public offices held by aspiring politicians in both the Roman Republic and the early Empire. It was designed for men of senatorial rank. The cursus honorum comprised a mixture of military and political administration posts. Each office had a minimum...
.
Haruspicy
HaruspicyHaruspex
In Roman and Etruscan religious practice, a haruspex was a man trained to practice a form of divination called haruspicy, hepatoscopy or hepatomancy. Haruspicy is the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially the livers of sacrificed sheep and poultry...
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. During the mid-to-late Republic, the reformist Gaius Gracchus
Gaius Gracchus
Gaius Sempronius Gracchus was a Roman Populari politician in the 2nd century BC and brother of the ill-fated reformer Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus...
, the populist politician-general Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius
Gaius Marius was a Roman general and statesman. He was elected consul an unprecedented seven times during his career. He was also noted for his dramatic reforms of Roman armies, authorizing recruitment of landless citizens, eliminating the manipular military formations, and reorganizing the...
and his antagonist Sulla, and the "notorious Verres
Verres
Gaius Verres was a Roman magistrate, notorious for his misgovernment of Sicily. It is not known what gens he belonged to, though some give him the nomen Licinius.-As governor:...
" 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. 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.
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. Conversely, an apparently negative omen could be re-interpreted as positive, or deliberately blocked from sight.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. 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.
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 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. Religious restitution is proved only by Rome's victory.
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. 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.
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. 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. Persons of low or negligible status might receive simple burial, with such grave goods as relatives could afford.Parentalia
In ancient Rome, the Parentalia or dies parentales was a nine-day festival held in honor of family ancestors, beginning February 13....
, a multi-day festival of remembrance in February.
A standard Roman funerary inscription is Dis Manibus (to the Manes-gods). Regional variations include its Greek equivalent, theoîs katachthoníois and Lugdunum
Lugdunum
Colonia Copia Claudia Augusta Lugdunum was an important Roman city in Gaul. The city was founded in 43 BC by Lucius Munatius Plancus. It served as the capital of the Roman province Gallia Lugdunensis. To 300 years after its foundation Lugdunum was the most important city to the west part of Roman...
's commonplace but mysterious "dedicated under the trowel" (sub ascia dedicare).
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. 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
Feralia
Feralia was an ancient Roman public festival celebrating the Manes which fell on the 21st of February as recorded by Ovid in Book II of his Fasti. This day marked the end of Parentalia, a nine day festival honoring the dead ancestors...
and Caristia
Caristia
In ancient Rome, the Caristia, also known as the Cara Cognatio, was an official but privately observed holiday on February 22 that celebrated love of family with banqueting and gifts. Families gathered to dine together and offer food and incense to the Lares as their household gods...
in sufficient numbers for the Council of Tours
Council of Tours
In the medieval Roman Catholic church there were several Councils of Tours, that city being an old seat of Christianity, and considered fairly centrally located in France. Athenius, Bishop of Rennes, took part in the First Council of Tours in AD 461...
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 relic
Relic
In religion, a relic is a part of the body of a saint or a venerated person, or else another type of ancient religious object, carefully preserved for purposes of veneration or as a tangible memorial...
s, and inscriptions marked the day of death as a transition to "new life".
Religion and the military
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.Roman commanders offered vows to be fulfilled after success in battle or siege; and further vows to expiate their failures. Camillus
Marcus Furius Camillus
Marcus Furius Camillus was a Roman soldier and statesman of patrician descent. According to Livy and Plutarch, Camillus triumphed four times, was five times dictator, and was honoured with the title of Second Founder of Rome....
promised Veii's goddess Juno a temple in Rome as incentive for her desertion, 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.
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.
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. 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
Victoria (mythology)
In ancient Roman religion, Victoria was the personified goddess of victory. She is the Roman equivalent of the Greek goddess Nike, and was associated with Bellona. She was adapted from the Sabine agricultural goddess Vacuna and had a temple on the Palatine Hill...
and Concordia
Concordia (mythology)
In Roman religion, Concord was the goddess of agreement, understanding, and marital harmony. Her Greek version is Harmonia, and the Harmonians and some Discordians equate her with Aneris. Her opposite is Discordia ....
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
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...
and Stoic Monism
Monism
Monism is any philosophical view which holds that there is unity in a given field of inquiry. Accordingly, some philosophers may hold that the universe is one rather than dualistic or pluralistic...
as a focus of military concordia
Concordia (mythology)
In Roman religion, Concord was the goddess of agreement, understanding, and marital harmony. Her Greek version is Harmonia, and the Harmonians and some Discordians equate her with Aneris. Her opposite is Discordia ....
and Imperial loyalty.
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
Manes
In ancient Roman religion, the Manes or Di Manes are chthonic deities sometimes thought to represent the souls of deceased loved ones. They were associated with the Lares, Genii, and Di Penates as deities that pertained to domestic, local, and personal cult...
and Tellus
Tellus
Tellus is a Latin word meaning "earth" and may refer to:* Terra or Terra Mater, the Roman Earth Mother goddess* Tellus , a citizen of ancient Athens who was thought to be the happiest of men...
, 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. 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.
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. In addition to the public priesthood of the Vestals, some cult practices were reserved for women only. The rites of the Bona Dea
Bona Dea
Bona Dea was a divinity in ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility in women, healing, and the protection of the Roman state and people...
excluded men entirely. 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
Juno (mythology)
Juno is an ancient Roman goddess, the protector and special counselor of the state. She is a daughter of Saturn and sister of the chief god Jupiter and the mother of Mars and Vulcan. Juno also looked after the women of Rome. Her Greek equivalent is Hera...
, Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
, 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.
Superstitio and magic
Excessive devotion and enthusiasm in religious observance were superstitioGlossary of ancient Roman religion
This glossary of ancient Roman religion provides explanations of Latin concepts pertaining to religious practices and beliefs, with links to articles on major topics such as priesthoods, forms of divination, and rituals...
, in the sense of "doing or believing more than was necessary"; to which women and foreigners were considered particularly prone. The boundaries between religio and superstitio were negotiable.
"In vulgar tradition (more vulgari)...a magician is 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." Apuleius, Apologia, 26.6.
Superstitio was often "seen to be motivated by an inappropriate desire for knowledge"; in effect, this was an abuse of religio. Secretive consultations between private diviners and their clients were 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. 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. Despite several Imperial bans, magic and astrology persisted among all social classes. In the late 1st century AD, Tacitus could claim that astrologers "would always be banned and always retained at Rome".
In the Graeco-Roman world, practitioners of magic were known as magi
Magi
Magi is a term, used since at least the 4th century BC, to denote a follower of Zoroaster, or rather, a follower of what the Hellenistic world associated Zoroaster with, which...
(s. magus) – a "foreign" title of Persian priests. Pliny the Elder
Pliny the Elder
Gaius Plinius Secundus , better known as Pliny the Elder, was a Roman author, naturalist, and natural philosopher, as well as naval and army commander of the early Roman Empire, and personal friend of the emperor Vespasian...
offers a thoroughly skeptical "History of magical arts" from their supposed Persian origins to the ill-fated emperor Nero's vast and futile expenditure on research into magical practices, in an attempt to control the gods. Lucan
Lucan
Lucan is the common English name of the Roman poet Marcus Annaeus Lucanus.Lucan may also refer to:-People:*Arthur Lucan , English actor*Sir Lucan the Butler, Knight of the Round Table in Arthurian legend...
's Pharsalia
Pharsalia
The Pharsalia is a Roman epic poem by the poet Lucan, telling of the civil war between Julius Caesar and the forces of the Roman Senate led by Pompey the Great...
has Pompey
Pompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey or Pompey the Great , was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic...
's doomed and wretched son
Gnaeus Pompeius
Gnaeus Pompeius should not be confused with his father, Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, known as "Pompey the Great."Gnaeus Pompeius , also known as Pompey the Younger , was a Roman politician and general from the late Republic .Gnaeus Pompeius was the elder son of Pompey the Great Gnaeus Pompeius should...
await the battle of Pharsalus
Battle of Pharsalus
The Battle of Pharsalus was a decisive battle of Caesar's Civil War. On 9 August 48 BC at Pharsalus in central Greece, Gaius Julius Caesar and his allies formed up opposite the army of the republic under the command of Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus...
. Convinced that "the gods of heaven knew too little" of the outcome; he resorts to the "disgusting" necromancy of Erichtho
Erichtho
In Roman literature, Erichtho is a legendary Thessalian witch. In the epic by the poet Lucan, Pharsalia , she summons a spirit to reveal to Pompey the Great's son, Sextus Pompeius, the outcome of the Battle of Pharsalus...
, the Thessalian
Thessaly
Thessaly is a traditional geographical region and an administrative region of Greece, comprising most of the ancient region of the same name. Before the Greek Dark Ages, Thessaly was known as Aeolia, and appears thus in Homer's Odyssey....
witch who inhabits deserted graves and feeds on rotting corpses. She can arrest "the rotation of the heavens and the flow of rivers" and make "austere old men blaze with illicit passions"; an ideal, stereotypical witch – a female foreigner from Thessaly, notorious for its witchcraft and wizardry. She and her clients clearly undermine the natural order of gods, mankind and destiny. Philostratus
Philostratus
Philostratus or Lucius Flavius Philostratus , , called "the Athenian", was a Greek sophist of the Roman imperial period. His father was a minor sophist of the same name. He was born probably around 172, and is said by the Suda to have been living in the reign of emperor Philip the Arab . His death...
takes pains to point out that the celebrated Apollonius of Tyana
Apollonius of Tyana
Apollonius of Tyana was a Greek Neopythagorean philosopher from the town of Tyana in the Roman province of Cappadocia in Asia Minor. Little is certainly known about him...
was definitely not a magician (magus) – "despite his special knowledge of the future, his miraculous cures, and his ability to vanish into thin air".
In the everyday world, many individuals sought to divine the future, influence it through magic, seek vengeance with help from "private" diviners; chthonic
Chthonic
Chthonic designates, or pertains to, deities or spirits of the underworld, especially in relation to Greek religion. The Greek word khthon is one of several for "earth"; it typically refers to the interior of the soil, rather than the living surface of the land or the land as territory...
deities functioned at the margins of Rome's divine and human communities, and the living might gain their favour and help – somewhat less dramatically than Lucan's Erictho, but usually away from the public gaze, during the hours of darkness. Burial grounds and isolated crossroads were among the likely portals, but Ovid gives a vivid account of what might be magical rites at the fringes of the public Feralia
Feralia
Feralia was an ancient Roman public festival celebrating the Manes which fell on the 21st of February as recorded by Ovid in Book II of his Fasti. This day marked the end of Parentalia, a nine day festival honoring the dead ancestors...
festival: 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": she thus invokes Tacita, the underworld's "silent one". Archaeological evidence confirms the widespread use of so-called curse tablets (defixiones or "binding spells"), magical papyri and so-called "voodoo dolls" from a very early era. Around 250 defixiones have been recovered from urban and rural Britain; 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 of lost or stolen property in return for its restoration. In general, the values involved are quite low. None of these defixiones seem produced by, or on behalf of elite Romano-Britons; presumably, those without ready resort to human law and justice must hope to persuade the gods to act directly on their behalf. The archaeology suggests similar traditions throughout the empire, persisting until around the 7th century AD, well into the Christian era.
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. 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".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. They resorted to strikes and violence
Conflict of the Orders
The Conflict of the Orders, also referred to as the Struggle of the Orders, was a political struggle between the Plebeians and Patricians of the ancient Roman Republic, in which the Plebeians sought political equality with the Patricians. It played a major role in the development of the...
to break the oppressive patrician monopolies of high office, public priesthood, and knowledge of civil and religious law. The senate appointed Camillus
Marcus Furius Camillus
Marcus Furius Camillus was a Roman soldier and statesman of patrician descent. According to Livy and Plutarch, Camillus triumphed four times, was five times dictator, and was honoured with the title of Second Founder of Rome....
as dictator
Roman dictator
In the Roman Republic, the dictator , was an extraordinary magistrate with the absolute authority to perform tasks beyond the authority of the ordinary magistrate . The office of dictator was a legal innovation originally named Magister Populi , i.e...
to handle the emergency; he negotiated a settlement, and sanctified it by the dedication of a temple to Concordia
Concordia (mythology)
In Roman religion, Concord was the goddess of agreement, understanding, and marital harmony. Her Greek version is Harmonia, and the Harmonians and some Discordians equate her with Aneris. Her opposite is Discordia ....
. The religious calendars and laws
Twelve Tables
The Law of the Twelve Tables was the ancient legislation that stood at the foundation of Roman law. The Law of the Twelve Tables formed the centrepiece of the constitution of the Roman Republic and the core of the mos maiorum...
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. In reality, the patrician and to a lesser extent, plebeian nobility dominated religious and civil office throughout the Republican era and beyond.
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. During the Punic crisis, popular cult to Dionysus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
emerged from southern Italy; Dionysus was equated with Father Liber
Liber
In ancient Roman religion and mythology, Liber , also known as Liber Pater was a god of viticulture and wine, fertility and freedom. He was a patron deity of Rome's plebeians and was part of their Aventine Triad. His festival of Liberalia became associated with free speech and the rights...
, the inventor of plebeian augury and personification of plebeian freedoms, and with Roman Bacchus
Bacchus
Bacchus is the Roman name for Dionysus, the god of wine and intoxication.Bacchus can also refer to:* Temple of Bacchus, a Roman temple at a large classical antiquity complex in Baalbek, Lebanon...
. Official consternation at these enthusiastic, unofficial Bacchanalia
Bacchanalia
The bacchanalia were wild and mystic festivals of the Greco-Roman god Bacchus , the wine god. The term has since come to describe any form of drunken revelry.-History:...
cults was expressed as moral outrage at their supposed subversion, and was followed by ferocious suppression. Much later, a statue of Marsyas, the silen
Silenus
In Greek mythology, Silenus was a companion and tutor to the wine god Dionysus.-Evolution of the character:The original Silenus resembled a folklore man of the forest with the ears of a horse and sometimes also the tail and legs of a horse...
of Dionysus flayed by Apollo
Apollo
Apollo is one of the most important and complex of the Olympian deities in Greek and Roman mythology...
, 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
Liberalia
The Liberalia is the festival of Liber Pater and his consort Libera. The Romans celebrated Liberalia with sacrifices, processions, ribald and gauche songs, and masks which were hung on trees....
continued.
The Augustan settlement built upon a cultural shift in Roman society. In the middle Republican era, even Scipio
Scipio Africanus
Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus , also known as Scipio Africanus and Scipio the Elder, was a general in the Second Punic War and statesman of the Roman Republic...
's tentative hints that he might be Jupiter's special protege sat ill with his colleagues. Politicians of the later Republic were less equivocal; both Sulla and Pompey
Pompey
Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus, also known as Pompey or Pompey the Great , was a military and political leader of the late Roman Republic...
claimed special relationships with Venus
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
. 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". 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. Under the principate
Principate
The Principate is the first period of the Roman Empire, extending from the beginning of the reign of Caesar Augustus to the Crisis of the Third Century, after which it was replaced with the Dominate. The Principate is characterized by a concerted effort on the part of the Emperors to preserve the...
, 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.
Early Republic
By the end of the regal periodRoman Kingdom
The Roman Kingdom was the period of the ancient Roman civilization characterized by a monarchical form of government of the city of Rome and its territories....
Rome had developed into a city-state, with a large plebeian, artisan class excluded from the old patrician gentes
Gens
In ancient Rome, a gens , plural gentes, referred to a family, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor. A branch of a gens was called a stirps . The gens was an important social structure at Rome and throughout Italy during the...
and from the state priesthoods. The city had commercial and political treaties with its neighbours; according to tradition, Rome's Etruscan
Etruscan civilization
Etruscan civilization is the modern English name given to a civilization of ancient Italy in the area corresponding roughly to Tuscany. The ancient Romans called its creators the Tusci or Etrusci...
connections established a temple to Minerva
Minerva
Minerva was the Roman goddess whom Romans from the 2nd century BC onwards equated with the Greek goddess Athena. She was the virgin goddess of poetry, medicine, wisdom, commerce, weaving, crafts, magic...
on the predominantly plebeian Aventine
Aventine Hill
The Aventine Hill is one of the seven hills on which ancient Rome was built. It belongs to Ripa, the twelfth rione, or ward, of Rome.-Location and boundaries:The Aventine hill is the southernmost of Rome's seven hills...
; 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
Epulum Jovis
In ancient Roman religion, the Epulum Jovis was a sumptuous ritual feast offered to Jove on the Ides of September and a smaller feast on the Ides of November . It was celebrated during the Ludi Romani and the Ludi Plebeii .The gods were formally invited, and attended in the form of statues...
. 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
Latium
Lazio is one of the 20 administrative regions of Italy, situated in the central peninsular section of the country. With about 5.7 million residents and a GDP of more than 170 billion euros, Lazio is the third most populated and the second richest region of Italy...
confirmed the Latin league
Latin league
The Latin League was a confederation of about 30 villages and tribes in the region of Latium near ancient Rome, organized for mutual defense...
and brought the cult of Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
from Aricia
Aricia
Aricia can refer to:*Aricia, a genus of gossamer-winged butterflies usually included in Aricia *Aricia , historical figure in ancient Britain*Aricia , minor figure in Greek mythology*Aricia, Italy...
to the Aventine. and established on the Aventine in the "commune Latinorum Dianae templum": At about the same time, the temple of Jupiter Latiaris was built on the Alban mount
Alban Hills
The Alban Hills are the site of a quiescent volcanic complex in Italy, located southeast of Rome and about north of Anzio.The dominant peak is Monte Cavo. There are two small calderas which contain lakes, Lago Albano and Lake Nemi...
, 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
Pomerium
The pomerium or pomoerium , was the sacred boundary of the city of Rome. In legal terms, Rome existed only within the pomerium; everything beyond it was simply territory belonging to Rome.-Location and extensions:Tradition maintained that it was the original line ploughed by Romulus around the...
: and the cult to Hercules
Hercules
Hercules is the Roman name for Greek demigod Heracles, son of Zeus , and the mortal Alcmene...
at the ara maxima
Great Altar of Hercules
The Great Altar of Unconquered Hercules stood in the Forum Boarium of ancient Rome. It was the earliest cult-centre of Hercules in Rome, predating the circular Temple of Hercules Victor. The altar stood until it was demolished by order of Pope Sixtus IV...
in the Forum Boarium
Forum Boarium
The Forum Boarium was the cattle forum venalium of Ancient Rome and the oldest forum that Rome possessed. It was located on a level piece of land near the Tiber between the Capitoline, the Palatine and Aventine hills. Here, too, is where the first bridges were built...
was established through commercial connections with Tibur. and the Tusculan
Tusculum
Tusculum is a ruined Roman city in the Alban Hills, in the Latium region of Italy.-Location:Tusculum is one of the largest Roman cities in Alban Hills. The ruins of Tusculum are located on Tuscolo hill—more specifically on the northern edge of the outer crater ring of the Alban volcano...
cult of Castor as the patron of cavalry found a home close to the Forum Romanum: Juno Sospes and Juno Regina were brought from Italy, and Fortuna Primigenia from Praeneste. In 217, Venus
Venus (mythology)
Venus is a Roman goddess principally associated with love, beauty, sex,sexual seduction and fertility, who played a key role in many Roman religious festivals and myths...
was brought from Sicily and installed in a temple on the Capitoline hill.
Later Republic to Principate
The disasters of the early part of Rome's second Punic WarSecond Punic War
The Second Punic War, also referred to as The Hannibalic War and The War Against Hannibal, lasted from 218 to 201 BC and involved combatants in the western and eastern Mediterranean. This was the second major war between Carthage and the Roman Republic, with the participation of the Berbers on...
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
Battle of Cannae
The Battle of Cannae was a major battle of the Second Punic War, which took place on August 2, 216 BC near the town of Cannae in Apulia in southeast Italy. The army of Carthage under Hannibal decisively defeated a numerically superior army of the Roman Republic under command of the consuls Lucius...
(216 BC). The Sibilline books were consulted. They recommended a general vowing of the ver sacrum 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
Pessinus
Pessinus was a city in Anatolia, the Asian part of Turkey on the upper course of the river Sakarya River , from which the mythological King Midas is said to have ruled a greater Phrygian realm...
, installed on the Palatine
Palatine Hill
The Palatine Hill is the centermost of the Seven Hills of Rome and is one of the most ancient parts of the city...
in 191 BC. The mystery cult to Bacchus
Dionysus
Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...
followed; it was suppressed as subversive and unruly by decree of the Senate
Roman Senate
The Senate of the Roman Republic was a political institution in the ancient Roman Republic, however, it was not an elected body, but one whose members were appointed by the consuls, and later by the censors. After a magistrate served his term in office, it usually was followed with automatic...
in 186 BC. Greek deities were brought within the sacred pomerium: temples were dedicated to Juventas (Hebe
Hebe (mythology)
In Greek mythology, Hēbē is the goddess of youth . She is the daughter of Zeus and Hera. Hebe was the cupbearer for the gods and goddesses of Mount Olympus, serving their nectar and ambrosia, until she was married to Heracles ; her successor was the young Trojan prince Ganymede...
) in 191 BC, Diana
Diana (mythology)
In Roman mythology, Diana was the goddess of the hunt and moon and birthing, being associated with wild animals and woodland, and having the power to talk to and control animals. She was equated with the Greek goddess Artemis, though she had an independent origin in Italy...
(Artemis
Artemis
Artemis was one of the most widely venerated of the Ancient Greek deities. Her Roman equivalent is Diana. Some scholars believe that the name and indeed the goddess herself was originally pre-Greek. Homer refers to her as Artemis Agrotera, Potnia Theron: "Artemis of the wildland, Mistress of Animals"...
) in 179 BC, Mars
Mars (mythology)
Mars was the Roman god of war and also an agricultural guardian, a combination characteristic of early Rome. He was second in importance only to Jupiter, and he was the most prominent of the military gods worshipped by the Roman legions...
(Ares
Ares
Ares is the Greek god of war. He is one of the Twelve Olympians, and the son of Zeus and Hera. In Greek literature, he often represents the physical or violent aspect of war, in contrast to the armored Athena, whose functions as a goddess of intelligence include military strategy and...
) in 138 BC), and to Bona Dea
Bona Dea
Bona Dea was a divinity in ancient Roman religion. She was associated with chastity and fertility in women, healing, and the protection of the Roman state and people...
, equivalent to Fauna
Fauna (goddess)
In ancient Roman religion, Fauna is a goddess said in differing ancient sources to be the wife, sister, or daughter of Faunus. Varro regarded her as the female counterpart of Faunus, and said that the fauni all had prophetic powers...
, the female counterpart of the rural Faunus
Faunus
In ancient Roman religion and myth, Faunus was the horned god of the forest, plains and fields; when he made cattle fertile he was called Inuus. He came to be equated in literature with the Greek god Pan....
, supplemented by the Greek goddess Damia
Damia
Damia may refer to:* Damia, a place in Jordan; see City of Adam and Damia Bridge*Damia , a Greek deity similar to Demeter and the Roman Bona Dea...
. 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
Bellona (goddess)
Bellona was an Ancient Roman goddess of war, similar to the Ancient Greek Enyo. Bellona's attribute is a sword and she is depicted wearing a helmet and armed with a spear and a torch....
, the Egyptian mystery-goddess Isis
Isis
Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...
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
Ennius
Quintus Ennius was a writer during the period of the Roman Republic, and is often considered the father of Roman poetry. He was of Calabrian descent...
translated the work of Graeco-Sicilian Euhemerus
Euhemerus
Euhemerus was a Greek mythographer at the court of Cassander, the king of Macedon. Euhemerus' birthplace is disputed, with Messina in Sicily as the most probable location, while others champion Chios, or Tegea.-Life:...
, who explained the genesis of the gods as apotheosized
Apotheosis
Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...
mortals. In the last century of the Republic, Epicurean
Epicureanism
Epicureanism is a system of philosophy based upon the teachings of Epicurus, founded around 307 BC. Epicurus was an atomic materialist, following in the steps of Democritus. His materialism led him to a general attack on superstition and divine intervention. Following Aristippus—about whom...
and particularly Stoic
Stoicism
Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy founded in Athens by Zeno of Citium in the early . The Stoics taught that destructive emotions resulted from errors in judgment, and that a sage, or person of "moral and intellectual perfection," would not suffer such emotions.Stoics were concerned...
interpretations were a preoccupation of the literate elite, most of whom held - or had held - high office and traditional Roman priesthoods; notably, Scaevola
Quintus Mucius Scaevola Augur
Quintus Mucius Scaevola Augur was a politician of the Roman Republic and an early authority on Roman law. He was first educated in law by his father and in philosophy by the stoic Panaetius of Rhodes....
and the polymath Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro
Marcus Terentius Varro was an ancient Roman scholar and writer. He is sometimes called Varro Reatinus to distinguish him from his younger contemporary Varro Atacinus.-Biography:...
. 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
Venus
Venus is the second planet from the Sun, orbiting it every 224.7 Earth days. The planet is named after Venus, the Roman goddess of love and beauty. After the Moon, it is the brightest natural object in the night sky, reaching an apparent magnitude of −4.6, bright enough to cast shadows...
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.
In the late Republic, the Marian
Marian
Marian may refer to:* Marian , people with the given name Marian* Maid Marian, companion of Robin Hood* Marian, an adjective for things relating to Gaius Marius...
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. The consequent civil wars led to changes at every level of Roman society. Augustus' principate
Principate
The Principate is the first period of the Roman Empire, extending from the beginning of the reign of Caesar Augustus to the Crisis of the Third Century, after which it was replaced with the Dominate. The Principate is characterized by a concerted effort on the part of the Emperors to preserve the...
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
Pontifex Maximus
The Pontifex Maximus was the high priest of the College of Pontiffs in ancient Rome. This was the most important position in the ancient Roman religion, open only to patricians until 254 BC, when a plebeian first occupied this post...
became a de facto consular prerogative. 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
Arval Brethren
In ancient Roman religion, the Arval Brethren or Arval Brothers were a body of priests who offered annual sacrifices to the Lares and gods to guarantee good harvests...
, his timely promotion of the plebeian Compitalia shortly before his election and his patronage of the Vestals as a visible restoration of Roman morality. 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.
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. Newly municipal SabrathaSabratha
Sabratha, Sabratah or Siburata , in the Zawiya District in the northwestern corner of modern Libya, was the westernmost of the "three cities" of Tripolis. From 2001 to 2007 it was the capital of the former Sabratha wa Sorman District. It lies on the Mediterranean coast about west of Tripoli...
built a Capitolium near its existing temple to Liber Pater and Serapis
Serapis
Serapis or Sarapis is a Graeco-Egyptian name of God. Serapis was devised during the 3rd century BC on the orders of Ptolemy I of Egypt as a means to unify the Greeks and Egyptians in his realm. The god was depicted as Greek in appearance, but with Egyptian trappings, and combined iconography...
. Autonomy and concord were official policy, but new foundations by Roman citizens or their Romanised allies were likely to follow Roman cultic models. 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
Concordia (mythology)
In Roman religion, Concord was the goddess of agreement, understanding, and marital harmony. Her Greek version is Harmonia, and the Harmonians and some Discordians equate her with Aneris. Her opposite is Discordia ....
. By the middle of the 1st century AD, Gaulish Vertault
Vertault
Vertault is a commune in the Côte-d'Or department in eastern France.-Population:-References:*...
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
Tophet
Tophet or Topheth is believed to be a location in Jerusalem, in the Valley of Hinnom, where the Canaanites sacrificed children to the god Moloch by burning them alive. The Hebrew Bible also mentions what appears to be child sacrifice practiced at a place called the Tophet by the Canaanites,...
was no longer in use. Colonial and later Imperial provincial dedications to Rome's Capitoline Triad were a logical choice, not a centralised legal requirement. 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.
The overall scarcity of evidence for smaller or local cults does not always infer 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.
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. 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.
Traders, legions and other travellers brought home cults originating from Egypt, Greece, Iberia, India and Persia. The cults of Cybele
Cybele
Cybele , was a Phrygian form of the Earth Mother or Great Mother. As with Greek Gaia , her Minoan equivalent Rhea and some aspects of Demeter, Cybele embodies the fertile Earth...
, Isis
Isis
Isis or in original more likely Aset is a goddess in Ancient Egyptian religious beliefs, whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. She was worshipped as the ideal mother and wife as well as the matron of nature and magic...
, Mithras, and Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...
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 princepsPrinceps
Princeps is a Latin word meaning "first in time or order; the first, chief, the most eminent, distinguished, or noble; the first man, first person."...
(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
Roman triumph
The Roman triumph was a civil ceremony and religious rite of ancient Rome, held to publicly celebrate and sanctify the military achievement of an army commander who had won great military successes, or originally and traditionally, one who had successfully completed a foreign war. In Republican...
; and in the divine honours paid to Roman magnates in the Greek East from at least 195 BC.
The deification of deceased emperors had precedent in Roman domestic cult to the dii parentes (deified ancestors) and the mythic apotheosis
Apotheosis
Apotheosis is the glorification of a subject to divine level. The term has meanings in theology, where it refers to a belief, and in art, where it refers to a genre.In theology, the term apotheosis refers to the idea that an individual has been raised to godlike stature...
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
Julius Caesar
Gaius Julius Caesar was a Roman general and statesman and a distinguished writer of Latin prose. He played a critical role in the gradual transformation of the Roman Republic into the Roman Empire....
, 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. 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. 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.
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".
In Rome, state cult to a living emperor acknowledged his rule as divinely approved and constitutional. As princeps
Princeps
Princeps is a Latin word meaning "first in time or order; the first, chief, the most eminent, distinguished, or noble; the first man, first person."...
(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. 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.
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 JewsJewish diaspora
The Jewish diaspora is the English term used to describe the Galut גלות , or 'exile', of the Jews from the region of the Kingdom of Judah and Roman Iudaea and later emigration from wider Eretz Israel....
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. 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
Tertullian
Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, anglicised as Tertullian , was a prolific early Christian author from Carthage in the Roman province of Africa. He is the first Christian author to produce an extensive corpus of Latin Christian literature. He also was a notable early Christian apologist and...
described it as religio licita
Religio licita
Religio licita is a phrase used in the Apologeticum of Tertullian to describe the special status of Judaism under Roman Imperial rule...
(an officially permitted religion) in contrast to Christianity.
Christianization
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.After the Great Fire of Rome
Great Fire of Rome
The Great Fire of Rome was an urban fire that occurred beginning July 19, AD 64.-Background:According to Tacitus, the fire spread quickly and burned for six days. Only four of the fourteen districts of Rome escaped the fire; three districts were completely destroyed and the other seven suffered...
in 64 AD, Emperor Nero
Nero
Nero , was Roman Emperor from 54 to 68, and the last in the Julio-Claudian dynasty. Nero was adopted by his great-uncle Claudius to become his heir and successor, and succeeded to the throne in 54 following Claudius' death....
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. 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
Decius
Trajan Decius , was Roman Emperor from 249 to 251. In the last year of his reign, he co-ruled with his son Herennius Etruscus until they were both killed in the Battle of Abrittus.-Early life and rise to power:...
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. 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. 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, but apostasy
Apostasy
Apostasy , 'a defection or revolt', from ἀπό, apo, 'away, apart', στάσις, stasis, 'stand, 'standing') is the formal disaffiliation from or abandonment or renunciation of a religion by a person. One who commits apostasy is known as an apostate. These terms have a pejorative implication in everyday...
was sought, rather than capital punishment. A year after its due deadline, the edict expired.
Valerian
Valerian (emperor)
Valerian , also known as Valerian the Elder, was Roman Emperor from 253 to 260. He was taken captive by Persian king Shapur I after the Battle of Edessa, becoming the only Roman Emperor who was captured as a prisoner of war, resulting in wide-ranging instability across the Empire.-Origins and rise...
'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. 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
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...
discussed theological issues with traditionalist elites in a common Neoplatonist frame of reference – he had written to Decius' predecessor Philip the Arab
Philip the Arab
Philip the Arab , also known as Philip or Philippus Arabs, was Roman Emperor from 244 to 249. He came from Syria, and rose to become a major figure in the Roman Empire. He achieved power after the death of Gordian III, quickly negotiating peace with the Sassanid Empire...
in similar vein – and Hippolytus recognised a “pagan” basis in Christian heresies. 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. Meanwhile Aurelian
Aurelian
Aurelian , was Roman Emperor from 270 to 275. During his reign, he defeated the Alamanni after a devastating war. He also defeated the Goths, Vandals, Juthungi, Sarmatians, and Carpi. Aurelian restored the Empire's eastern provinces after his conquest of the Palmyrene Empire in 273. The following...
(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
Palmyra
Palmyra was an ancient city in Syria. In the age of antiquity, it was an important city of central Syria, located in an oasis 215 km northeast of Damascus and 180 km southwest of the Euphrates at Deir ez-Zor. It had long been a vital caravan city for travellers crossing the Syrian desert...
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus
Sol Invictus was the official sun god of the later Roman empire. In 274 Aurelian made it an official cult alongside the traditional Roman cults. Scholars disagree whether the new deity was a refoundation of the ancient Latin cult of Sol, a revival of the cult of Elagabalus or completely new...
in Rome's Campus Martius
Campus Martius
The Campus Martius , was a publicly owned area of ancient Rome about in extent. In the Middle Ages, it was the most populous area of Rome...
.
In 295, a certain Maximilian refused military service; in 298 Marcellus
Marcellus of Tangier
Saint Marcellus of Tangier or Saint Marcellus the Centurion is venerated as a Martyr Saint by the Roman Catholic Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church...
renounced his military oath. Both were executed for treason; both were Christians. At some time around 302, a report of ominous haruspicy in Diocletian
Diocletian
Diocletian |latinized]] upon his accession to Diocletian . c. 22 December 244 – 3 December 311), was a Roman Emperor from 284 to 305....
's domus and a subsequent (but undated) dictat of placatory sacrifice by the entire military triggered a series of edicts against Christianity. 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. The second edict threatened Christian priests with imprisonment and the third offered them freedom if they performed sacrifice. 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."
With the abatement of persecution, St. Jerome acknowledged Empire as a bulwark against evil but insisted that "imperial honours" were contrary to Christian teaching. 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
Constantine I
Constantine the Great , also known as Constantine I or Saint Constantine, was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337. Well known for being the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity, Constantine and co-Emperor Licinius issued the Edict of Milan in 313, which proclaimed religious tolerance of all...
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.
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
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
, 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. His later direct intervention
First Council of Nicaea
The First Council of Nicaea was a council of Christian bishops convened in Nicaea in Bithynia by the Roman Emperor Constantine I in AD 325...
in Church affairs proved a political masterstroke. Constantine united and re-founded the empire as an absolute head of state by divine dispensation and on his death, he was honoured as a Christian, Imperial and apostolic divus. Granted apotheosis, he ascended to heaven; Philostorgius
Philostorgius
Philostorgius was an Anomoean Church historian of the 4th and 5th centuries. Anomoeanism questioned the Trinitarian account of the relationship between God the Father and Christ and was considered a heresy by the Orthodox Church, which adopted the term "homoousia" in the Nicene Creed. Very little...
later criticised Christians who offered sacrifice at statues of the divus Constantine.
Persecution of Pagans by the Christian Roman Empire
Constantine's unique form of Imperial orthodoxy did not outlast him. After his death in 337, two of his sons, Constantius IIConstantius II
Constantius II , was Roman Emperor from 337 to 361. The second son of Constantine I and Fausta, he ascended to the throne with his brothers Constantine II and Constans upon their father's death....
and Constans
Constans
Constans , was Roman Emperor from 337 to 350. He defeated his brother Constantine II in 340, but anger in the army over his personal life and preference for his barbarian bodyguards saw the general Magnentius rebel, resulting in Constans’ assassination in 350.-Career:Constans was the third and...
, took over the leadership of the empire and re-divided their Imperial inheritance. Constantius was an Arian
Arianism
Arianism is the theological teaching attributed to Arius , a Christian presbyter from Alexandria, Egypt, concerning the relationship of the entities of the Trinity and the precise nature of the Son of God as being a subordinate entity to God the Father...
and his brothers were Nicene Christians.
Constantine's nephew Julian
Julian the Apostate
Julian "the Apostate" , commonly known as Julian, or also Julian the Philosopher, was Roman Emperor from 361 to 363 and a noted philosopher and Greek writer....
, however, 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. He proposed the rebuilding of Jerusalem's temple as an Imperial project and argued fulsomely against the "irrational impieties" of Christian doctrine. His attempt to restore an Augustan form of principate, with himself as primus inter pares
Primus inter pares
Primus inter pares is Latin phrase describing the most senior person of a group sharing the same rank or office.When not used in reference to a specific title, it may indicate that the person so described is formally equal, but looked upon as an authority of special importance by their peers...
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
Gratian
Gratian was Roman Emperor from 375 to 383.The eldest son of Valentinian I, during his youth Gratian accompanied his father on several campaigns along the Rhine and Danube frontiers. Upon the death of Valentinian in 375, Gratian's brother Valentinian II was declared emperor by his father's soldiers...
refused the office of pontifex maximus, and against the protests of the senate, removed the altar of Victory
Altar of Victory
The Altar of Victory was located in the Roman Senate House bearing a gold statue of the goddess Victory. The altar was established by Octavian in 29 BC in honor of the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at Actium. The statue depicted a winged woman, holding a palm and descending to present a laurel...
from the senate house and began the disestablishment of the Vestals. Theodosius I
Theodosius I
Theodosius I , also known as Theodosius the Great, was Roman Emperor from 379 to 395. Theodosius was the last emperor to rule over both the eastern and the western halves of the Roman Empire. During his reign, the Goths secured control of Illyricum after the Gothic War, establishing their homeland...
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
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus was a Roman statesman, orator, and man of letters. He held the offices of governor of Africa in 373, urban prefect of Rome in 384 and 385, and consul in 391...
to the Western and Eastern emperors. Ambrose
Ambrose
Aurelius Ambrosius, better known in English as Saint Ambrose , was a bishop of Milan who became one of the most influential ecclesiastical figures of the 4th century. He was one of the four original doctors of the Church.-Political career:Ambrose was born into a Roman Christian family between about...
, the influential Bishop of Milan and future saint, wrote on their behalf to reject Symmachus's request for tolerance. 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. He was the last emperor of both East and West. When the Western Roman Empire ended with the abdication of Emperor Romulus Augustus
Romulus Augustus
Romulus Augustus , was the last Western Roman Emperor, reigning from 31 October 475 until 4 September 476...
in 476, Christianity survived.
See also
- Religion in ancient Greece
- Hellenistic religionHellenistic religionHellenistic religion is any of the various systems of beliefs and practices of the people who lived under the influence of ancient Greek culture during the Hellenistic period and the Roman Empire . There was much continuity in Hellenistic religion: the Greek gods continued to be worshiped, and the...
- Roman festivalsRoman festivalsIn ancient Roman religion, holidays were celebrated to worship and celebrate a certain god or divine event, and consisted of religious observances and festival traditions, usually with a large feast, and often featuring games . The most important festivals were the Saturnalia, the Consualia, the...
- Roman mythologyRoman mythologyRoman mythology is the body of traditional stories pertaining to ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system, as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans...
- Sibylline OraclesSibylline oraclesThe Sibylline Oracles are a collection of oracular utterances written in Greek hexameters ascribed to the Sibyls, prophetesses who uttered divine revelations in a frenzied state. Fourteen books and eight fragments of Sibylline Oracles survive...
- Dii ConsentesDii ConsentesThe Dii Consentes were a list of twelve major deities, six gods and six goddesses, in the pantheon of Ancient Rome. Their gilt statues stood in the Forum, later apparently in the Porticus Deorum Consentium....
- Nova RomaNova RomaNova Roma is an international Roman revivalist and reconstructionist organization created in 1998 by Joseph Bloch and William Bradford, later incorporated in Maine as a non-profit organization with an educational and religious mission...