Religion in ancient Rome

Religion in ancient Rome encompassed the religious beliefs 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. The establishment of these cults was credited to Rome's divine ancestors, founders, and kings, and to conquered nations and allies. Their temples provided the most visible and sacred manifestations of Rome's history and institutions. Rome's ancient boundary enclosed an intrinsically sacred city.

Participation in traditional religious rituals was a practical and moral necessity for Romans of every class and occupation, and was embedded in personal, domestic and public life. Cult could be offered any deity or any combination of deities, as long as it did not offend the mos maiorum, the "custom of the ancestors," that is, Roman tradition. Piety was the correct application of ritual and divine honours, especially in the form of sacrificial offerings. In return, the gods were likely to benefit their worshipers. Impieties such as religious negligence, superstition and self-indulgence could provoke divine wrath against the State.

The priesthoods and cult maintenance of major deities, like the highest offices of state, were regarded as the traditional preserve of the patricians, the hereditary elite whose privileges were said to have been chartered by the founding father Romulus himself. Early in the history of the Republic, however, many 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 class, most notably Julius Caesar, who asserted his descent from the goddess Venus. Cult to Roman household deities was served by the paterfamilias and his familia, a broader term than the English word "family" that included kin, slaves, and others under the protection of his household. Some deities were served by women, others by freedmen and slaves. Rome's mystery cults were open only to initiates who were bound not to reveal the rites; little is known of them.

As Rome extended its influence and presence throughout the Mediterranean world, it encountered and absorbed deities and practices by seeking (and often finding) their equivalence to its own or acknowledging their role in local identity and tradition. Some were officially embraced, others tolerated and a few might be condemned as alien hysteria, magic or superstition. Attempts were made periodically to suppress religions that seemed to threaten traditional morality and unity; the Dionysian mysteries provoked unseemly exhibitions of enthusiasm and wild behaviour, Christianity was superstition, or atheism, or both; and druidism was thought to employ human sacrifice. Judaism was merely tolerated.

Many of Rome's own cult practices were explained or justified by myths, while others remained obscure in origin and purpose. All provided sources for theological and philosophical speculation on the nature of the divine and its relationship with human affairs. Even the most skeptical among Rome's intellectual elite such as Cicero 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 must be justified in religious terms. Religion played an essential part in the political rivalries and civil wars of the Late Republic; it was also central to their settlement. Julius Caesar's heir Augustus claimed his principate as a restoration of peace, tradition and religious rectitude. His institution of the Imperial cult showed pious respect for tradition, and fostered religious unity and mutual toleration among Rome's newly acquired provinces. Traditional religious practice remained the core of Rome's foundation, development and continued success. Religious novelty remained a source of fascination and mistrust.

By late antiquity, numerous foreign cults had gained vast popularity in the farthest reaches of the Empire, including 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.

The era of Christian hegemony began with the conversion of Constantine I. In 391, Christianity became the state religion of Rome under Theodosius I, to the exclusion of all other cults. Beginning with the patristic writers of the 4th century, the diverse traditional religions practiced throughout the Empire were condemned collectively as "pagan",^[1] and were gradually transformed, absorbed or suppressed.

Despite the Christianization of empire, many forms of traditional religious practice, particularly festivals and games (ludi), which could be divorced from specific 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.

Religion in Roman histories

Rome had a semi-divine ancestor in the Trojan refugee Aeneas, a descendant of Venus. Aeneas brought the Palladium, the Lares and the Penates from Troy to Italy, where he settled. He was given refuge by Evander, a Greek exile from Arcadia who had set up the Ara Maxima (Greatest Altar) to Hercules at the future site of Rome's Forum Boarium and had founded the Lupercalia.^[2]

Rome was founded by descendants of Aeneas, Romulus and his twin brother Remus, divinely fathered by Mars or Hercules on a virgin princess or priestess of Vesta, exposed to die but saved by a series of miraculous interventions. They were eventually restored to their royal birthright but decided to found a new city for themselves and their followers. When they could not agree on its site, they used augury to seek the opinion of the gods. Romulus was sent the most favourable signs, established a city on the Capitoline Hill and created its sacred boundary; Remus insulted the new city and was killed. Romulus named the new city "Rome" after himself, appointed its first senate and organised its armies. Faced with a shortage of marriageable young women, he invented a religious festival, the Consualia, invited the neighbouring Sabines then kidnapped their daughters. In gratitude for his success in war he founded Rome's first temple to Jupiter Feretrius and offered him the spoils in the first Roman triumph. Romulus became increasingly autocratic, mysteriously disappeared and was deified.^[3]

His successor Numa was pious and peaceable. His religious foundations included Rome's first religious calendar, the Salii, the priesthoods (flamines) and cults of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, the Vestal Virgins and the temple of Janus, whose doors stayed open in times of war. In Numa's time, they were closed. After his death, they remained open until the reign of Augustus.^[4]

Each of Rome's legendary or semi-legendary kings was associated with one or more of the religious institutions familiar to the later Republic. Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius devised the fetial priests and their rites. The first "outsider" Etruscan king, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus founded a Capitoline temple to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva which served as a later model for the highest official cult throughout the Roman world. The benevolent, divinely fathered Servius Tullius established the Latin League and built its Aventine Temple to Diana, and instituted the Compitalia to mark his social reforms. His arrogant successor (and murderer) Tarquinius "the Proud" was expelled, and Rome became a Republic, run by annually appointed consuls.^[5]

For the later Roman historians who compiled these accounts, the essentials of Republican religion were complete by the end of Numa's reign, and were confirmed as right and lawful by the Senate and people of Rome,^[6] the sacred topology of the city, its monuments and temples, the histories of Rome's leading families, and equally important oral and ritual traditions.^[7][8] Rome's history was represented as a coherent and sacred continuity, imperiled by religious negligence and personal ambition.^[9][10][11] According to Cicero, the Romans considered themselves the most religious of all peoples; and their extraordinary success proved it.^[12]

Frameworks of Roman religion

"Care for the gods, the very meaning of religio, had therefore to go through life, and one might thus understand why Cicero wrote that religion was "necessary". Religious behavior – pietas in Latin, eusebeia in Greek – belonged to action and not to contemplation. Consequently religious acts took place wherever the faithful were: in houses, boroughs, associations, cities, military camps, cemeteries, in the country, on boats. 'When pious travelers happen to pass by a sacred grove or a cult place on their way, they are used to make a vow, or a fruit offering, or to sit down for a while' (Apuleius, Florides 1.1)."^[13]

Roman religio (religion) was an everyday and vital affair, a cornerstone of Rome's mos maiorum (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.^[14] 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.^[15]

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.^[16]

Festivals

Roman calendars show roughly forty annual religious festivals. Some lasted several days, others a single day or less: sacred days (dies fasti) outnumbered "non-sacred" days (dies nefasti).^[17] Comparison of particular Roman religious calendars suggests the official organisation of festivals according to broad seasonal groups which allow for a range of different local ritual traditions. Some of the most ancient and popular festivals incorporated ludi (games) such as those in held at Palestrina in honour of Fortuna Primigenia during Compitalia, and the Ludi Romani in honour of Liber^[18] Other festivals may have required only the presence and rites of their priests and acolytes,^[19] or particular groups. Bona Dea's rites excluded men entirely. Saturnalia may have involved only slaves and their masters. One Equirria festival purified the army; the other was cause for ritualised battle between the young bloods of the Regia and Subura.^[20]

Roman men celebrating a religious festival, probably the Compitalia. From a fresco outside Pompeii.

Other public festivals were held as need arose. Triumphs were celebrated as important social, political and religious events in fulfillment of religious vows: their attendant ludi were inflated during the politically competitive late Republic 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) were imperially funded to maintain traditional values and a common Roman identity.

The older a particular festival, the greater the opportunities for its reinterpretation and reinvention. "The richest source of all is Ovid's Fasti, a witty verse account of the first six months of the Roman calendar and its rituals," written during the reign of the emperor Augustus and a sign of the vitality in Roman religion of the time.^[21] In calendars of the later pre-Christian Empire, Christian festivals were inserted alongside or within existing traditions.^[22]

Roman deities

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 spheres, characters and functions of divine beings could expand, overlap, and be redefined as Roman. Change was carefully embedded within existing traditions. Rome offered no native creation myth, and little mythography to explain the character of its deities, their mutual relationships or their interactions with the human world.^[23]

Several versions of a semi-official, structured pantheon were developed during the political, social and religious instability of the Late Republican era: all provided divine analogies to Roman political life and institutions. 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.^[24] These so called triads may have had some equivalence in the distinctively agricultural or plebeian triad of Ceres, Liber and Libera, and in some of the threefold, complementary deity-groupings of Imperial cult.^[25] Other major and minor deities could be single, coupled or linked retrospectively through myths of divine marriage and sexual adventure; later Roman pantheistic hierarchies are part literary and mythographic, part philosophical creations, and distinctively Greek. The Olympians supplied models for self-conscious Hellenisation and the mutual esteem of a shared antiquity. None of this seems to have had any significant effect on cult practice.^[26]

Tellus, chthonic mother of the fruitful earth, flanked by Venus (left) and Ceres. From the Augustan Ara Pacis, consecrated in 9 BC.

On a daily basis, the impressive, costly and centralised rites to the deities of the Roman state were vastly outnumbered by commonplace cults to domestic and personal deities, the patron divinities of Rome's non-elite communities and the often idiosyncratic blends of official, unofficial, local and personal cults that characterised lawful Roman religion.^[27] Thus, a provincial Roman citizen made the long journey from Bordeaux to Italy to consult the Sibyl at Tibur, but devoted his vows and prayers to his own goddess:

I wander, never ceasing to pass through the whole world, but I am first and foremost a faithful worshiper of Onuava. I am at the ends of the earth, but the distance cannot tempt me to make my vows to another goddess. Love of the truth brought me to Tibur, but Onuava’s favorable powers came with me. Thus, divine mother, far from my home-land, exiled in Italy, I address my vows and prayers to you no less.^[28]

Cult and ritual

Vows, prayers and invocations

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 lawful oaths, and the breaking of sworn oaths repudiated the fundamental bonds between the human and divine; both carried much the same penalty.^[29] Family meals, rites of passage, crops and livestock were ritually purified by vows, prayers, and sacrifices to deities of household, fields and family. 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; due gratitude should 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 – processed from one temple to the next, to supplicate the gods for their help.^[30]

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.^[31] In the Latin wars, Publius Decius Mus (consul 340 BC) vowed himself and the opposing army to the earth goddess and the shades of the dead (dii Manes) as an act of devotio in exchange for Roman victory: Decius was killed and Rome was victorious.^[32]

Unless they were correctly addressed, the gods could not know whose favour was sought, what was being asked or who was supposed to receive the sought-after benefits.^[33] Public prayers were offered loudly and clearly by a priest on behalf of the community.^[34] A similar declamatory, persuasive style was recommended for actors, petitioners and lawyers in court; the difference in priestly address lies in its repetition and reiteration – as if to avoid any divine doubt as to its purpose and terms – and its use of archaic and obscure language and gestures. Public religious ritual was enacted by specialists and professionals, as a sacred drama whose true meaning might be apparent only to the gods.^[35] Private prayers might have been produced in a more intimate, informal atmosphere, but surviving private liturgies are just as cautious and formulaic. Sacrifice without prayer was "thought to be useless and not a proper consultation of the gods".^[36]

Sacrifice

Sacrifice reinforced the powers and attributes of divine beings, and inclined them to render benefits in return. Offerings were varied according to need and occasion. For example, Lares could be offered spelt wheat and grain-garlands, grapes and first fruits in due season, honey cakes and honeycombs, wine and incense,^[37] food that fell to the floor during any family meal,^[38] or at their Compitalia festival, honey-cakes and a pig on behalf of the community.^[39] Their supposed underworld relatives, the malicious and vagrant Lemures, might be placated with midnight offerings of black beans and spring water.^[40]

The most potent offering was animal sacrifice, typically of domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep and pigs. Each was the best possible 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.^[41]

Sacrifice to deities of the heavens (di superi) was performed in daylight, and were performed 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 consular oath-taking. 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 consumed their own portion of the sacrifice (the innards) through the sacrificial fire. Rome's officials and priests reclined in order of precedence alongside and ate the meat; lesser citizens probably had to provide their own.^[42]

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".^[43] Ceres and other underworld goddesses of fruitfulness were sometimes offered pregnant female animals; Tellus was given a pregnant cow at the Fordicidia festival. In general, connections of kind are apparent in sacrifice. Demigods and heroes, who belonged to the heavens and the underworld, were sometimes given black-and-white victims. Robigo and Robigus were given red dogs and libations of red wine at the Robigalia for their protection of crops from blight and red mildew.^[44]

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.^[45] 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.^[46] 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.^[47]

After the Roman defeat at Cannae two Gauls and two Greeks were buried under the Forum Boarium, in a stone chamber "which had on a previous occasion [228 BC] also been polluted by human victims, a practice most repulsive to Roman feelings".^[48] 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.^[49] 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.^[50] In pre-Christian Rome, the gladiator munus was never considered (or at least, never acknowledged) as a human sacrificial rite, probably because death was not its inevitable outcome or purpose. Even so, the gladiators swore their lives to the di infernales and the combat was dedicated as an offering to the di manes or other gods; the event was therefore sacrificium in the strict sense of the term. 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.^[51]

Human sacrifice was officially obnoxious "to the laws of gods and men", and those who practiced it – such as Rome's Carthaginian foes – were irredeemably Other. Rome banned it on several occasions, under extreme penalty; notably in 81 BC, under the aegis of the Lex Cornelia de sicariis et veneficiis.^[52] Its alleged practice helped justify the conquest of Gaul and both invasions of Britain as righteous acts of war in suppression of the Druids: 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.^[53]

See also: Sacrificium and Sacer, under Glossary of ancient Roman religion.

Augury and haruspicy

State cult took place within the sacred precinct of a templum (sacred space) determined by an augur.^[54][55] 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 pomerium (Rome's sacred boundary).^[56] 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.^[57] 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.^[58] 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.^[59]

Haruspicy was also used in public cult, under the supervision of the augur or presiding magistrate. The haruspices divined the will of the gods through examination of entrails after sacrifice, particularly the liver. They also interpreted omens, prodigies and portents, and formulated their expiation. Most Roman authors describe haruspicy as an ancient, ethnically Etruscan "outsider" religious profession, separate from Rome's internal and largely unpaid priestly hierarchy, essential but never quite respectable.^[60] 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.^[61] 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.^[62]

See also Superstition, magic and outsider cults and Women and Roman religion in this article.

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.^[63] Conversely, an apparently negative omen could be re-interpreted as positive, or deliberately blocked from sight.^[64]

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.^[65] 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.^[66]

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^[67] 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.^[68] Religious restitution is proved only by Rome's victory.^[69][70]

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.^[71] 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.^[72]

Funerals and the afterlife

Roman treatment of the dead perpetuated their life-status. 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.^[73] 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.^[74] Persons of low or negligible status might receive simple burial, with such grave goods as relatives could afford.

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, and divided the meal between the deceased, their family and Ceres. The dead consumed their portion in the flames of the pyre, Ceres 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; after eight days of mourning, the family offered further sacrifice. This time, the deceased consumed the entire offering on or through the ground; their shade was assumed to have passed entirely into the underworld. They were now one of the di Manes, who were collectively celebrated and appeased at the Parentalia.^[75]

The standard Roman funerary inscription is Dis Manibus (to the Manes-gods). Regional variations include its Greek equivalent, theoîs katachthoníois^[76] and Lugdunum's commonplace but mysterious "dedicated under the trowel" (sub ascia dedicare).^[77]

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.^[78] 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, Feralia and Caristia in sufficient numbers for the Council of Tours to forbid them in AD 567. Other funerary and commemorative practices were very different. Traditional Roman practice spurned the corpse as a ritual pollution; inscriptions noted the day of birth and duration of life. The Christian Church fostered the veneration of saintly relics, and inscriptions marked the day of death as a transition to "new life".^[79]

Religion in Roman life

Religion and politics

Approximately half Rome's population were slave or free non-citizen natives. 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.^[80] Rome's government, politics and religion were dominated by an educated, male, landowning military aristocracy. 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".^[81]

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.^[82] 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.^[83] 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.^[84] In reality, the patrician and to a lesser extent, plebeian nobility dominated religious and civil office throughout the Republican era and beyond.^[85]

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.^[86] 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; official consternation was expressed as moral outrage, followed by a somewhat ineffective programme of 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 identified with 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.^[87][88]

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.^[89] 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".^[90] 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.^[91] Under the principate, such opportunities were limited by law; priestly and political power were consolidated in the person of the princeps ("first citizen").

"Because of you we are living, because of you we can travel the seas, because of you we enjoy liberty and wealth." A thanksgiving prayer offered in Naples' harbour to the princeps Augustus, on his return from Alexandria in 14 AD, shortly before his death.^[92]

Priesthood, politics and religious law

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 (s. 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.^[93]

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.^[94]

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.^[95] 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.^[96] 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.^[97] 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.^[98]

Religion and the military

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.^[99]

Rome's citizen-soldiers were supposed to embody the values of the society they were sworn to defend; from at least the 4th century BC, "an aggressive and efficient military apparatus" was the core of Rome's expansion and success. At the same time, it was a potent agency in Rome's social, political and religious development.^[100]

Rome's expansion integrated the allied nobility and its clients into Rome's government, religious and military apparatus. 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.^[101][102]

The greatest virtus of all lay in the devotio of willing self-sacrifice to the divine novensiles and the gods of the underworld for the greater good, in which the consular Decii – father, son and (possibly) grandson – were considered exemplary.^[103] Livy offers a detailed account of the first in this remarkable series. 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. 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.^[104]

• For devotio as a link between military and Gladiator ethics, see Gladiators and the military.

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.^[105]

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.^[106] 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.^{[107][108][109]}

Women and Roman religion

Roman mos maiorum restricted the social, political and religious capacities of Roman women. The few Roman literary sources to address the subject of women in relation to religio represent some as paragons of Roman virtue but more often as constitutionally prone to self-indulgent religious enthusiasms, novelties and the seductions of superstitio.^[110] Bona Dea's festival rites excluded men entirely; this seems to have been cause for prurient male speculation, and a scandalous, impious intrusion by Publius Clodius Pulcher.^[111] Most cults and ludi did not forbid the presence of women. Some specifically required it, but their active participation was limited.^[112] In almost all public cult, priesthood was a male preserve; family cults were headed by the paterfamilias.

The most important exception was the public cult to Vesta, goddess of the hearth of the Roman state and its vital flame, served by six virgin priestesses. In one strand of Rome's foundation myth, Romulus and Remus were fathered by Mars or Hercules on a Vestal virgin of royal blood. Another tradition held that Rome's sixth king was fathered by a disembodied phallus on a virgin slave-girl who served at the royal hearth: the cult objects stored in Vesta's temple included a phallus and the Penates and Lares of the Roman state.^[113] A girl chosen to be a Vestal Virgin achieved unique religious distinction, public status and privileges, and could exercise considerable political influence but was constrained during her thirty-year office by ritual prohibitions and obligations not even a flamen of Jupiter Capitolinus could match: a Vestal polluted by the loss of her viginity while in office was buried alive.^[114][115]

The Vestals "represented a peculiarly extreme version of the connection between the religious life of the home and of the community". Besides their own festival of Vestalia they were directly involved in the rites of Parilia, Parentalia and Fordicidia; they prepared and supplied the sacred mola salsa for other cults and any householder could rekindle their own household fire from Vesta's flame. A Vestal's dress presented her simultaneously as virgin bride and daughter, Roman matron and wife. She held some of the legal privileges of a male head of household but was housed with her peers under the immediate supervision of the chief Vestal and ultimately of the pontifex maximus.^[116] Vesta's virgin priestesses "seem to have been an exception to most rules of Roman life".^[117]

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).^[118] They seem to have retained their religious and social distinctions at least until the Christian emperor Gratian refused the office of pontifex maximus and began the dissolution of their order: his successor Theodosius I extinguished Vesta's sacred fire and vacated her temple.

Domestic, genius and personal cults

Small bronze statues of gods which were worshipped in a lararium (1st to 3rd century A.D., Vindobona)

The mos maiorum established the dynastic authority and obligations of the citizen-paterfamilias ("the father of the family" or the "owner of the family estate"). He had priestly duties to his lares, domestic penates, ancestral genius and any other deities with whom he or his family held an interdependent relationship. His own dependents, who included his slaves and freedmen, owed cult to his genius.^[119][120]

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.^[121]

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.^[122] His wife (mater familias) was responsible for the household's cult to Vesta. In rural estates, bailiffs seem to 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.^[123]

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.^[124]

Temples 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.^[125]

Superstitio

Excessive devotion and enthusiasm in religious observance were superstitio, in the sense of "doing or believing more than was necessary";^[126] to which women and foreigners were considered particularly prone.^[127] The boundaries between religio and superstitio were negotiable. 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.^[128] Judaism itself was superstitio to Cicero, yet was legally exempt from official sacrifice (under certain conditions) and a later Roman author described it as religio licita (an officially permitted religion).^[129]

"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.^[130]

Superstitio was often "seen to be motivated by an inappropriate desire for knowledge"; in effect, an abuse of religio.^[131] Secretive consultations between private diviners and their clients were suspect, as 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; an astrologer had predicted his death in a context of conspiracy. "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.^[132] The Twelve Tables apparently 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".^{[133][134][135]}

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.^[136] 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.^[137] 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".^[138]

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,^[139] but Ovid gives an 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.^[140]

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. 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.^[141][142]

Diaspora Jews had much in common with the overwhelmingly Hellenic or Hellenised communities that surrounded them.

Outline of Religious developments

Early Republic

By the end of the regal period Rome had developed into a city-state, with a large plebeian, artisan class excluded from the old patrician gentes and from the state priesthoods. The city had commercial and political treaties with its neighbours; according to tradition, Rome's Etruscan connections established a temple to Minerva on the predominantly plebeian Aventine; she became part of a new Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, installed in a Capitoline temple, built in an Etruscan style and dedicated in a new September festival, Epulum Jovis.^[143] 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.^[144] and established on the Aventine in the "commune Latinorum Dianae templum":^[145] 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:^[146] and the cult to Hercules at the ara maxima in the Forum Boarium was established through commercial connections with Tibur.^[147] and the Tusculan cult of Castor as the patron of cavalry found a home close to the Forum Romanum:^[148] 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.^[149]

Later Republic to Principate

The disasters of the early part of Rome's second Punic War were attributed, in Livy's account, to a growth of superstitious cults, errors in augury and the neglect of Rome's traditional gods, whose anger was expressed directly in Rome's defeat at Cannae (216 BC). The Sibilline books were consulted. They recommended a general vowing of the ver sacrum^[150] 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.^[151] Greek deities were brought within the sacred pomerium: temples were dedicated to Juventas (Hebe) in 191 BC,^[152] 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.^[153]

In the late Republic, the Marian reforms lowered an existing property bar on conscription and increased the efficiency of Rome's armies but made them available as instruments of political ambition and factional conflict.^[154] The consequent civil wars led to changes at every level of Roman society. Augustus' principate established peace and subtly transformed Rome's religious life – or, in the new ideology of Empire, restored it (see below).

Towards the end of the Republic, religious and political offices became more closely intertwined; the office of pontifex maximus became a de facto consular prerogative.^[155] 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.^[156] Augustus obtained the pax deorum, maintained it for the rest of his reign and adopted a successor to ensure its continuation. This remained a primary religious and social duty of emperors.

Roman Empire

Absorption of cults

The Roman Empire expanded to include different peoples and cultures; in principle, Rome followed the same inclusionist policies that had recognised Latin, Etruscan and other Italian peoples, cults and deities as Roman. Those who acknowledged Rome's hegemony retained their own cult and religious calendars, independent of Roman religious law.^[157] Newly municipal Sabratha built a Capitolium near its existing temple to Liber Pater and Serapis. Autonomy and concord were official policy, but new foundations by Roman citizens or their Romanised allies were likely to follow Roman cultic models.^[158] Romanisation offered distinct political and practical advantages, especially to local elites. All the known effigies from the 2nd cent. AD forum at Cuicul are of emperors or Concordia. By the middle of the first 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.^[159] Colonial and later Imperial provincial dedications to Rome's Capitoline Triad were a logical choice, not a centralised legal requirement.^[160] 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.^[161]

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.^[162]

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.^[163] 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.^[164]

Traders, legions and other travellers brought home cults originating from Egypt, Greece, Iberia, India and Persia. The cults of Cybele, Isis, Mithras, and Sol Invictus were particularly important. Some of those were initiatory religions of intense personal significance, similar to Christianity in those respects.

Imperial cult

In the early Imperial era, a ruling princeps (lit. "first head of the Senate) was offered genius-cult as the symbolic paterfamilias of Rome. His cult had further precedents: popular, unofficial cult offered to powerful benefactors in Rome: the kingly, god-like honours granted a Roman general on the day of his triumph; and in the divine honours paid to Roman magnates in the Greek East from at least 195 BC.^[165][166]

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.^[167] 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.^[168] 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.^[169]

The emperor Marcus Aurelius, attended by his family, offers sacrifice outside the Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus after his victories in Germany. Late 2nd century AD. Capitoline Museum, Rome.

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".^[170]

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.^[171] 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.^[172]

Christian apologists identified cult to Emperors as a particularly impious instrument of persecution. It therefore became a focus of theological and political debate during the ascendancy of Christianity under Constantine I. The emperor Julian failed to reverse the declining support for Rome's traditional cults: Theodosius I adopted Christianity as the Imperial State religion. Officially, the "Imperial cult" was abandoned, along with all cults other than Imperially sanctioned forms of Christianity.^[173]

Empire and 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 Third 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.^[174] 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.^[175] 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.^[176] 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,^[177] but apostasy was sought, rather than capital punishment.^[178] A year after its due deadline, the edict expired.^[179]

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.^[180][181] 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.^[182] 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.^[183] 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.^[184]

In 295, a certain Maximilian refused military service; in 298 Marcellus renounced his military oath. Both were executed for treason; both were Christians.^[185] 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.^[186] 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.^[187] The second edict threatened Christian priests with imprisonment and the third offered them freedom if they performed sacrifice.^[188] 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."^[189]

With the abatement of persecution, St. Jerome acknowledged Empire as a bulwark against evil but insisted that "imperial honours" were contrary to Christian teaching.^[190] His was an authoritative but minority voice: most Christians showed no qualms in the veneration of even "pagan" emperors. The peace of the emperors was the peace of God; as far as the Church was concerned, internal dissent and doctrinal schism were a far greater problem. The solution came from a hitherto unlikely source: as pontifex maximus Constantine I favoured the "Catholic Church of the Christians" against the Donatists because:

it is contrary to the divine law... that we should overlook such quarrels and contentions, whereby the Highest Divinity may perhaps be roused not only against the human race but also against myself, to whose care he has by his celestial will committed the government of all earthly things. Official letter from Constantine, dated 314 CE.^[191]

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.^[192] 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.^[193][194]

Constantine's unique form of Imperial orthodoxy did not outlast him. His sons re-divided their Imperial inheritance – Constantius II was an Arian and his brothers were Nicene – and his nephew Julian rejected the "Galilean madness" of his upbringing for an idiosyncratic synthesis of neo-Platonism, Stoic asceticism and universal solar cult. Julian became Augustus in 361 and actively but vainly fostered a traditionally based religious and cultural pluralism.^[195] He proposed the rebuilding of Jerusalem's temple as an Imperial project and argued fulsomely against the "irrational impieties" of Christian doctrine.^[196] His attempt to restore an Augustan form of principate, with himself as primus inter pares ended with his death in 363, after which his reforms were reversed or abandoned.^[197] 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, influential Bishop of Milan, refused on their behalf.^[198] Yet Theodosius accepted comparison with Hercules and Jupiter as a living divinity in Pacatus' panegyric, 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.^[199][200] When the Western Roman Empire ended with the abdication of Emperor Romulus Augustus in 476, Christianity survived it.

• See also: Pentarchy.
• See also: History of Christianity
• See also: Persecution of religion in ancient Rome

Decline of Greco-Roman polytheism

When Constantine became the sole Roman Emperor in 324, Christianity became the leading religion of the empire. After the death of Constantine in 337, two of his sons, Constantius II and Constans took over the leadership of the empire. Constans, ruler of the western provinces, was, like his father, a Christian. In 341, he decreed that all pre-Christian Graeco Roman worship and sacrifice should cease; warning those who still persisted in practising ancient Graeco-Roman polytheism with the threat of the death penalty.

Lay Christians took advantage of new anti-Graeco-Roman polytheism laws by destroying and plundering the temples. Temples that survived were converted into Christian churches: the Pantheon is the most notable example, having once been a temple to all the gods and later, removing the statues of the so-called 'pagan' gods and replacing them with Christian saints, becoming a church in honor of their own one god. Many of the buildings in the Roman Forum were similarly converted, preserving the structures if not their original intent.

Later on, the emperor Julian the Apostate attempted to reverse the process of Christianization and bring back the native forms of polytheism, but his death in Persia caused the empire to once again fall under the power of Christian control, this time permanently.

Scholarly interpretations

Roman historians presumed the Roman religion as indigenous and conservative in its essentials; this was generally accepted by medieval and renascence scholars. Later historians received, collated and filtered Roman scholarship through their preferred theories of social and religious development.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, magic, fetishism, animism, and totemism were often assumed to be the first and most primitive forms of any religion. Rome's historically reported practice was supposed to contain "many survivals from a very early form of religious thought prior to the development of the characteristic Roman attitude of mind", such as the numen.^[201] Broadly speaking, these theories held that as any society developed and extended, so did its concepts and attendant deities. Isolated agricultural societies produced divinities of huts, ploughs, first furrow and harvest; their prosperity led to the trading of commodities and ideas with similar communities. Further development involved status and labour divisions, producing warrior castes, peasantry and more deities, with priests and festivals to serve them - and so on. A mature society achieved urban nationhood, complete with bureaucracy, conservatism and a capacity for abstract thought. This same higher faculty also produced skepticism, which sat uneasily alongside the fossilised rites whose original nature, purpose and meaning might be entirely forgotten. This scenario takes Rome's traditional Religions as progressively drained of "real meaning", as in the Punic crises when Rome's "failing native divinities" could only be refreshed by foreign gods. These deities inspire passionate cult, and some have mysteries attached - usually Greek but later, during the crises of the Later Republic, "even Egyptian... and Persian". Some are too passionate and are subsequently ejected. What is and what is not a "Roman religion" seems clear enough to Romans. Modern scholarship is less certain what the religions of ancient Rome meant to them.

See also

• Religion in ancient Greece
• Hellenistic religion
• Roman festivals
• Roman mythology
• Sibylline Oracles
• Dii Consentes
• Nova Roma

Notes

References and further reading

• Beard, M., North, J., Price, S., Religions of Rome, Volume I, illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-521-31682-0
• Beard, M., North, J., Price, S., Religions of Rome, Volume II, illustrated, reprint, Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-521-45646-0
• Beard, M., The Roman Triumph, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, England, 2007. ISBN 978-0-674-02613-1
• Clarke, John R., The Houses of Roman Italy, 100 BC-AD 250. Ritual, Space and Decoration, illustrated, University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton, 1992. ISBN 978-0-520-08429-2
• Cornell, T., The beginnings of Rome: Italy and Rome from the Bronze Age to the Punic Wars (c.1000–264 BC), Routledge, 1995. ISBN 978-0-415-01596-7
• Fishwick , Duncan. The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire, volume 1, Brill Publishers, 1991. ISBN 90-04-07179-2
• Fishwick , Duncan. The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire, volume 3, Brill Publishers, 2002. ISBN 90-04-12536-1
• Flint, Valerie I. J., et al.., Athlone History of Witchcraft and Magic in Europe: Ancient Greece and Rome, Vol. 2, Continuum International Publishing Group Ltd., 1998. ISBN 978-0-485-89002-0
• Fox, R. L., Pagans and Christians
• Lott, John. B., The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-82827-9
• MacMullen, R., Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, Yale University Press, 1997. ISBN 0-300-08077-8
• MacMullen, R., Paganism in the Roman Empire, Yale University Press, 1984.
• Momigliano, Arnaldo, On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, reprint, Wesleyan University Press, 1987. ISBN 0-8195-6218-1
• Orr, D. G., Roman domestic religion: the evidence of the household shrines, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II, 16, 2, Berlin, 1978, 1557‑91.
• Rees, R., Diocletian and the Tetrarchy, Edinburgh University Press, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7486-1661-9
• Revell, L., "Religion and Ritual in the Western Provinces", Greece and Rome, volume 54, number 2, October 2007.
• Rüpke, Jörg (Editor), A Companion to Roman Religion, Wiley-Blackwell, 2007. ISBN 978-1-4051-2943-5

Roman mythology and religion Deities Apollo · Bona Dea · Castor and Pollux · Ceres · Cupid · Diana · Dis Pater · Faunus · Genius · Hercules · Janus · Juno · Jupiter · Lares · Liber · Mars · Mercury · Minerva · Orcus · Neptune · Penates · Pluto · Priapus · Proserpina · Quirinus · Saturn · Silvanus · Sol · Venus · Vesta · Vulcan See also List of Roman deities Abstract deities Concordia · Fides · Fortuna · Pietas · Spes · Roma · Terra Legendary founders Aeneas · Romulus and Remus · Numa Pompilius · Servius Tullius · Ancus Marcius Texts Vergil, Aeneid · Ovid, Metamorphoses and Fasti · Propertius, Elegies Book 4 · Apuleius, Metamorphoses (The Golden Ass) Concepts and practices Religion in ancient Rome · Festivals · interpretatio graeca · Imperial cult · Temples See also Glossary of ancient Roman religion · Greek mythology · myth and ritual