Religion in Ancient Rome includes the ancestral
ethnic religion of the city of Rome that the
Romans used to define themselves as a people,
as well as the religious practices of peoples
brought under Roman rule, in so far as they
became widely followed in Rome and Italy.
The Romans thought of themselves as highly
religious, and attributed their success as
a world power to their collective piety (pietas)
in maintaining good relations with the gods.
The Romans are known for the great number
of deities they honored, a capacity that earned
the mockery of early Christian polemicists.The
presence of Greeks on the Italian peninsula
from the beginning of the historical period
influenced Roman culture, introducing some
religious practices that became as fundamental
as the cult of Apollo. The Romans looked for
common ground between their major gods and
those of the Greeks (interpretatio graeca),
adapting Greek myths and iconography for Latin
literature and Roman art, as the Etruscans
had. Etruscan religion was also a major influence,
particularly on the practice of augury. According
to legends, most of Rome's religious institutions
could be traced to its founders, particularly
Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of
Rome, who negotiated directly with the gods.
This archaic religion was the foundation of
the mos maiorum, "the way of the ancestors"
or simply "tradition", viewed as central to
Roman identity.
Roman religion was practical and contractual,
based on the principle of do ut des, "I give
that you might give". Religion depended on
knowledge and the correct practice of prayer,
ritual, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma,
although Latin literature preserves learned
speculation on the nature of the divine and
its relation to human affairs. Even the most
skeptical among Rome's intellectual elite
such as Cicero, who was an augur, saw religion
as a source of social order. As the Roman
Empire expanded, migrants to the capital brought
their local cults, many of which became popular
among Italians. Christianity was in the end
the most successful of these, and in 380 became
the official state religion.
For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of
daily life. Each home had a household shrine
at which prayers and libations to the family's
domestic deities were offered. Neighborhood
shrines and sacred places such as springs
and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar
was structured around religious observances.
Women, slaves, and children all participated
in a range of religious activities. Some public
rituals could be conducted only by women,
and women formed what is perhaps Rome's most
famous priesthood, the state-supported Vestals,
who tended Rome's sacred hearth for centuries,
until disbanded under Christian domination.
== Overview ==
The priesthoods of public religion were held
by members of the elite classes. There was
no principle analogous to separation of church
and state in ancient Rome. During the Roman
Republic (509–27 BC), the same men who were
elected public officials might also serve
as augurs and pontiffs. Priests married, raised
families, and led politically active lives.
Julius Caesar became pontifex maximus before
he was elected consul.
The augurs read the will of the gods and supervised
the marking of boundaries as a reflection
of universal order, thus sanctioning Roman
expansionism as a matter of divine destiny.
The Roman triumph was at its core a religious
procession in which the victorious general
displayed his piety and his willingness to
serve the public good by dedicating a portion
of his spoils to the gods, especially Jupiter,
who embodied just rule. As a result of the
Punic Wars (264–146 BC), when Rome struggled
to establish itself as a dominant power, many
new temples were built by magistrates in fulfillment
of a vow to a deity for assuring their military
success.
As the Romans extended their dominance throughout
the Mediterranean world, their policy in general
was to absorb the deities and cults of other
peoples rather than try to eradicate them,
since they believed that preserving tradition
promoted social stability. One way that Rome
incorporated diverse peoples was by supporting
their religious heritage, building temples
to local deities that framed their theology
within the hierarchy of Roman religion. Inscriptions
throughout the Empire record the side-by-side
worship of local and Roman deities, including
dedications made by Romans to local gods.By
the height of the Empire, numerous international
deities were cultivated at Rome and had been
carried to even the most remote provinces,
among them Cybele, Isis, Epona, and gods of
solar monism such as Mithras and Sol Invictus,
found as far north as Roman Britain. Foreign
religions increasingly attracted devotees
among Romans, who increasingly had ancestry
from elsewhere in the Empire. Imported mystery
religions, which offered initiates salvation
in the afterlife, were a matter of personal
choice for an individual, practiced in addition
to carrying on one's family rites and participating
in public religion. The mysteries, however,
involved exclusive oaths and secrecy, conditions
that conservative Romans viewed with suspicion
as characteristic of "magic", conspiratorial
(coniuratio), or subversive activity. Sporadic
and sometimes brutal attempts were made to
suppress religionists who seemed to threaten
traditional morality and unity, as with the
senate's efforts to restrict the Bacchanals
in 186 BC. Because Romans had never been obligated
to cultivate one god or one cult only, religious
tolerance was not an issue in the sense that
it is for competing monotheistic systems.
The monotheistic rigor of Judaism posed difficulties
for Roman policy that led at times to compromise
and the granting of special exemptions, but
sometimes to intractable conflict. For example,
religious disputes helped cause the First
Jewish–Roman War and the Bar Kokhba revolt.
In the wake of the Republic's collapse, state
religion had adapted to support the new regime
of the emperors. Augustus, the first Roman
emperor, justified the novelty of one-man
rule with a vast program of religious revivalism
and reform. Public vows formerly made for
the security of the republic now were directed
at the well-being of the emperor. So-called
"emperor worship" expanded on a grand scale
the traditional Roman veneration of the ancestral
dead and of the Genius, the divine tutelary
of every individual. The Imperial cult became
one of the major ways in which Rome advertised
its presence in the provinces and cultivated
shared cultural identity and loyalty throughout
the Empire. Rejection of the state religion
was tantamount to treason. This was the context
for Rome's conflict with Christianity, which
Romans variously regarded as a form of atheism
and novel superstitio. Ultimately, Roman polytheism
was brought to an end with the adoption of
Christianity as the official religion of the
empire.
== Founding myths and divine destiny ==
The Roman mythological tradition is particularly
rich in historical myths, or legends, concerning
the foundation and rise of the city. These
narratives focus on human actors, with only
occasional intervention from deities but a
pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny.
For Rome's earliest period, history and myth
are difficult to distinguish.According to
mythology, 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, according to classical
authors, 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, so the legend went, 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
(the Latin kings of Alba Longa) with the well-known
legend of Rome's founding by Romulus and Remus.
The most common version of the twins' story
displays several aspects of hero myth. Their
mother, Rhea Silvia, had been ordered by her
uncle the king to remain a virgin, in order
to preserve the throne he had usurped from
her father. Through divine intervention, the
rightful line was restored when Rhea Silvia
was impregnated by the god Mars. She gave
birth to twins, who were duly exposed by order
of the king but saved through a series of
miraculous events.
Romulus and Remus regained their grandfather's
throne and set out to build a new city, consulting
with the gods through augury, a characteristic
religious institution of Rome that is portrayed
as existing from earliest times. The brothers
quarrel while building the city walls, and
Romulus kills Remus, an act that is sometimes
seen as sacrificial. Fratricide thus became
an integral part of Rome's founding myth.Romulus
was credited with several religious institutions.
He founded the Consualia festival, inviting
the neighbouring Sabines to participate; the
ensuing rape of the Sabine women by Romulus's
men further embedded both violence and cultural
assimilation in Rome's myth of origins. As
a successful general, Romulus is also supposed
to have founded Rome's first temple to Jupiter
Feretrius and offered the spolia opima, the
prime spoils taken in war, in the celebration
of the first Roman triumph. Spared a mortal's
death, Romulus was mysteriously spirited away
and deified.
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, flamines, and
Vestals; the cults of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus;
and the Temple of Janus, whose doors stayed
open in times of war but in Numa's time remained
closed. After Numa's death, the doors to the
Temple of Janus were supposed to have remained
open until the reign of Augustus.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.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 oral and ritual traditions. According
to Cicero, the Romans considered themselves
the most religious of all peoples, and their
rise to dominance was proof they received
divine favor in return.
== Roman deities ==
Rome offers no native creation myth, and little
mythography to explain the character of its
deities, their mutual relationships or their
interactions with the human world, but Roman
theology acknowledged that di immortales (immortal
gods) ruled all realms of the heavens and
earth. There were gods of the upper heavens,
gods of the underworld and a myriad of lesser
deities between. Some evidently favoured Rome
because Rome honoured them, but none were
intrinsically, irredeemably foreign or alien.
The political, cultural and religious coherence
of an emergent Roman super-state required
a broad, inclusive and flexible network of
lawful cults. At different times and in different
places, the sphere of influence, character
and functions of a divine being could expand,
overlap with those of others, and be redefined
as Roman. Change was embedded within existing
traditions.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:
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.
== Holidays and festivals ==
Roman calendars show roughly forty annual
religious festivals. Some lasted several days,
others a single day or less: sacred days (dies
fasti) outnumbered "non-sacred" days (dies
nefasti). 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.
== Temples and shrines ==
Public religious ceremonies of the official
Roman religion took place outdoors, and not
within the temple building. Some ceremonies
were processions that started at, visited,
or ended with a temple or shrine, where a
ritual object might be stored and brought
out for use, or where an offering would be
deposited. Sacrifices, chiefly of animals,
would take place at an open-air altar within
the templum or precinct, often to the side
of the steps leading up to the raised portico.
The main room (cella) inside a temple housed
the cult image of the deity to whom the temple
was dedicated, and often a small altar for
incense or libations. It might also display
art works looted in war and rededicated to
the gods. It is not clear how accessible the
interiors of temples were to the general public.
The Latin word templum originally referred
not to the temple building itself, but to
a sacred space surveyed and plotted ritually
through augury: "The architecture of the ancient
Romans was, from first to last, an art of
shaping space around ritual." The Roman architect
Vitruvius always uses the word templum to
refer to this sacred precinct, and the more
common Latin words aedes, delubrum, or fanum
for a temple or shrine as a building. The
ruins of temples are among the most visible
monuments of ancient Roman culture.
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. Many temples
in the Republican era were built as the fulfillment
of a vow made by a general in exchange for
a victory.
== Religious practice ==
=== Prayers, vows, and oaths ===
All sacrifices and offerings required an accompanying
prayer to be effective. Pliny the Elder declared
that "a sacrifice without prayer is thought
to be useless and not a proper consultation
of the gods." 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 (prex) 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—sworn for the
purposes of business, clientage and service,
patronage and protection, state office, treaty
and loyalty—appealed to the witness and
sanction of deities. Refusal to swear a lawful
oath (sacramentum) and breaking a sworn oath
carried much the same penalty: both repudiated
the fundamental bonds between the human and
divine. A votum or vow was a promise made
to a deity, usually an offer of sacrifices
or a votive offering in exchange for benefits
received.
=== Sacrifice ===
In Latin, the word sacrificium means the performance
of an act that renders something sacer, sacred.
Sacrifice reinforced the powers and attributes
of divine beings, and inclined them to render
benefits in return (the principle of do ut
des).
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.
==== Animal sacrifice ====
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 dispatched.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.
Chthonic gods such as Dis pater, the di inferi
("gods below"), and the collective shades
of the departed (di Manes) were given dark,
fertile victims in nighttime rituals. Animal
sacrifice usually took the form of a holocaust
or burnt offering, and there was no shared
banquet, as "the living cannot share a meal
with the dead". Ceres and other underworld
goddesses of fruitfulness were sometimes offered
pregnant female animals; Tellus was given
a pregnant cow at the Fordicidia festival.
Color had a general symbolic value for sacrifices.
Demigods and heroes, who belonged to the heavens
and the underworld, were sometimes given black-and-white
victims. Robigo (or Robigus) was given red
dogs and libations of red wine at the Robigalia
for the protection of crops from blight and
red mildew.
A sacrifice might be made in thanksgiving
or as an expiation of a sacrilege or potential
sacrilege (piaculum);
a piaculum might also be offered as a sort
of advance payment; the Arval Brethren, for
instance, offered a piaculum before entering
their sacred grove with an iron implement,
which was forbidden, as well as after.
The pig was a common victim for a piaculum.The
same divine agencies who caused disease or
harm also had the power to avert it, and so
might be placated in advance. Divine consideration
might be sought to avoid the inconvenient
delays of a journey, or encounters with banditry,
piracy and shipwreck, with due gratitude to
be rendered on safe arrival or return. In
times of great crisis, the Senate could decree
collective public rites, in which Rome's citizens,
including women and children, moved in procession
from one temple to the next, supplicating
the gods.Extraordinary circumstances called
for extraordinary sacrifice: in one of the
many crises of the Second Punic War, Jupiter
Capitolinus was promised every animal born
that spring (see ver sacrum), to be rendered
after five more years of protection from Hannibal
and his allies. The "contract" with Jupiter
is exceptionally detailed. All due care would
be taken of the animals. If any died or were
stolen before the scheduled sacrifice, they
would count as already sacrificed, since they
had already been consecrated. Normally, if
the gods failed to keep their side of the
bargain, the offered sacrifice would be withheld.
In the imperial period, sacrifice was withheld
following Trajan's death because the gods
had not kept the Emperor safe for the stipulated
period. 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.
The exta were the entrails of a sacrificed
animal, comprising in Cicero's enumeration
the gall bladder (fel), liver (iecur), heart
(cor), and lungs (pulmones). The exta were
exposed for litatio (divine approval) as part
of Roman liturgy, but were "read" in the context
of the disciplina Etrusca. As a product of
Roman sacrifice, the exta and blood are reserved
for the gods, while the meat (viscera) is
shared among human beings in a communal meal.
The exta of bovine victims were usually stewed
in a pot (olla or aula), while those of sheep
or pigs were grilled on skewers. When the
deity's portion was cooked, it was sprinkled
with mola salsa (ritually prepared salted
flour) and wine, then placed in the fire on
the altar for the offering; the technical
verb for this action was porricere.
==== Human sacrifice ====
Human sacrifice in ancient Rome was rare but
documented. After the Roman defeat at Cannae
two Gauls and two Greeks were buried under
the Forum Boarium, in a stone chamber "which
had on a previous occasion [228 BC] also been
polluted by human victims, a practice most
repulsive to Roman feelings". 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 woollen 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; Marcus
Marius Gratidianus was a gruesome example.
Officially, human sacrifice was obnoxious
"to the laws of gods and men". The practice
was a mark of the barbarians, attributed to
Rome's traditional enemies such as the Carthaginians
and Gauls. Rome banned it on several occasions
under extreme penalty. A law passed in 81
BC characterised human sacrifice as murder
committed for magical purposes. Pliny saw
the ending of human sacrifice conducted by
the druids as a positive consequence of the
conquest of Gaul and Britain. Despite an empire-wide
ban under Hadrian, human sacrifice may have
continued covertly in North Africa and elsewhere.
=== Domestic and private cult ===
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.
== Religio and the state ==
Roman religio (religion) was an everyday and
vital affair, a cornerstone of the mos maiorum,
Roman tradition or ancestral custom.
Care for the gods, the very meaning of religio,
had therefore to go through life, and one
might thus understand why Cicero wrote that
religion was "necessary". Religious behavior
– pietas in Latin, eusebeia in Greek – belonged
to action and not to contemplation. Consequently
religious acts took place wherever the faithful
were: in houses, boroughs, associations, cities,
military camps, cemeteries, in the country,
on boats. 'When pious travelers happen to
pass by a sacred grove or a cult place on
their way, they are used to make a vow, or
a fruit offering, or to sit down for a while'
(Apuleius, Florides 1.1).
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.
=== Public priesthoods 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 (the
singular is flamen), attributed to king Numa:
the major flamines, dedicated to Jupiter,
Mars and Quirinus, were traditionally drawn
from patrician families. Twelve lesser flamines
were each dedicated to a single deity, whose
archaic nature is indicated by the relative
obscurity of some. Flamines were constrained
by the requirements of ritual purity; Jupiter's
flamen in particular had virtually no simultaneous
capacity for a political or military career.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 3
January 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 ====
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.
=== Augury ===
Public religion took place within a sacred
precinct that had been marked out ritually
by an augur. The original meaning of the Latin
word templum was this sacred space, and only
later referred to a building. 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.
==== Haruspicy ====
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. 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.
==== 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 discernible 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.
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 Constitutio
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 relics, 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 promised Veii's goddess
Juno a temple in Rome as incentive for her
desertion (evocatio), conquered the city in
her name, brought her cult statue to Rome
"with miraculous ease" and dedicated a temple
to her on the Aventine Hill.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.
== Women and religion ==
See also Women in ancient Rome: Religious
lifeRoman 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.
== Superstitio and magic ==
Excessive devotion and enthusiasm in religious
observance were 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 are perhaps indefinite.
The famous tirade of Lucretius, the Epicurean
rationalist, against what is usually translated
as "superstition" was in fact aimed at excessive
religio. Roman religion was based on knowledge
rather than faith, but superstitio was viewed
as an "inappropriate desire for knowledge";
in effect, an abuse of religio.In the everyday
world, many individuals sought to divine the
future, influence it through magic, or seek
vengeance with help from "private" diviners.
The state-sanctioned taking of auspices was
a form of public divination with the intent
of ascertaining the will of the gods, not
foretelling the future. Secretive consultations
between private diviners and their clients
were thus suspect. So were divinatory techniques
such as astrology when used for illicit, subversive
or magical purposes. Astrologers and magicians
were officially expelled from Rome at various
times, notably in 139 BC and 33 BC. In 16
BC Tiberius expelled them under extreme penalty
because an astrologer had predicted his death.
"Egyptian rites" were particularly suspect:
Augustus banned them within the pomerium to
doubtful effect; Tiberius repeated and extended
the ban with extreme force in AD 19. Despite
several Imperial bans, magic and astrology
persisted among all social classes. In the
late 1st century AD, Tacitus observed that
astrologers "would always be banned and always
retained at Rome".In the Graeco-Roman world,
practitioners of magic were known as magi
(singular magus), a "foreign" title of Persian
priests. Apuleius, defending himself against
accusations of casting magic spells, defined
the magician as "in popular tradition (more
vulgari)... someone who, because of his community
of speech with the immortal gods, has an incredible
power of spells (vi cantaminum) for everything
he wishes to." Pliny the Elder offers a thoroughly
skeptical "History of magical arts" from their
supposed Persian origins to Nero's vast and
futile expenditure on research into magical
practices in an attempt to control the gods.
Philostratus takes pains to point out that
the celebrated Apollonius of Tyana was definitely
not a magus, "despite his special knowledge
of the future, his miraculous cures, and his
ability to vanish into thin air".Lucan depicts
Sextus Pompeius, the doomed son of Pompey
the Great, as convinced "the gods of heaven
knew too little" and awaiting the Battle of
Pharsalus by consulting with the Thessalian
witch Erichtho, who practices necromancy and
inhabits deserted graves, feeding on rotting
corpses. Erichtho, it is said, can arrest
"the rotation of the heavens and the flow
of rivers" and make "austere old men blaze
with illicit passions". She and her clients
are portrayed as undermining the natural order
of gods, mankind and destiny. A female foreigner
from Thessaly, notorious for witchcraft, Erichtho
is the stereotypical witch of Latin literature,
along with Horace's Canidia.
The Twelve Tables forbade any harmful incantation
(malum carmen, or 'noisome metrical charm');
this included the "charming of crops from
one field to another" (excantatio frugum)
and any rite that sought harm or death to
others. Chthonic deities functioned at the
margins of Rome's divine and human communities;
although sometimes the recipients of public
rites, these were conducted outside the sacred
boundary of the pomerium. Individuals seeking
their aid did so away from the public gaze,
during the hours of darkness. Burial grounds
and isolated crossroads were among the likely
portals. The barrier between private religious
practices and "magic" is permeable, and Ovid
gives a vivid account of rites at the fringes
of the public Feralia festival that are indistinguishable
from magic: an old woman squats among a circle
of younger women, sews up a fish-head, smears
it with pitch, then pierces and roasts it
to "bind hostile tongues to silence". By this
she invokes Tacita, the "Silent One" of the
underworld.
Archaeology confirms the widespread use of
binding spells (defixiones), magical papyri
and so-called "voodoo dolls" from a very early
era. Around 250 defixiones have been recovered
just from Roman Britain, in both urban and
rural settings. Some seek straightforward,
usually gruesome revenge, often for a lover's
offense or rejection. Others appeal for divine
redress of wrongs, in terms familiar to any
Roman magistrate, and promise a portion of
the value (usually small) of lost or stolen
property in return for its restoration. None
of these defixiones seem produced by, or on
behalf of the elite, who had more immediate
recourse to human law and justice. Similar
traditions existed throughout the empire,
persisting until around the 7th century AD,
well into the Christian era.
== History of Roman religion ==
=== 
Religion and politics ===
Rome's government, politics and religion were
dominated by an educated, male, landowning
military aristocracy. Approximately half Rome's
population were slave or free non-citizens.
Most others were plebeians, the lowest class
of Roman citizens. Less than a quarter of
adult males had voting rights; far fewer could
actually exercise them. Women had no vote.
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 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 plebeians. 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; he claimed her as his ancestress,
and thus an intimate source of divine inspiration
for his personal character and policies. In
63 BC, his 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").
"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 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. 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 its 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 Sospita and Juno Regina were
brought from Italy, and Fortuna Primigenia
from Praeneste. In 217, Venus was brought
from Sicily and installed in a temple on the
Capitoline hill.
=== 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 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 pontifex 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.
=== 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. 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. 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 imply their neglect;
votive inscriptions are inconsistently scattered
throughout Rome's geography and history. Inscribed
dedications were an expensive public declaration,
one to be expected within the Graeco-Roman
cultural ambit but by no means universal.
Innumerable smaller, personal or more secretive
cults would have persisted and left no trace.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.
==== Imperial cult ====
In the early Imperial era, the princeps (lit.
"first" or "foremost" among citizens) 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.
==== Jews and Roman religion ====
For at least a century before the establishment
of the Augustan principate, Jews and Judaism
were tolerated in Rome by diplomatic treaty
with Judaea's Hellenised elite. Diaspora Jews
had much in common with the overwhelmingly
Hellenic or Hellenised communities that surrounded
them. Early Italian synagogues have left few
traces; but one was dedicated in Ostia around
the mid-1st century BC and several more are
attested during the Imperial period. Judaea's
enrollment as a client kingdom in 63 BC increased
the Jewish diaspora; in Rome, this led to
closer official scrutiny of their religion.
Their synagogues were recognised as legitimate
collegia by Julius Caesar. By the Augustan
era, the city of Rome was home to several
thousand Jews. 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.
==== Christianity in the Roman Empire ====
Roman investigations into early Christianity
found it an irreligious, novel, disobedient,
even atheistic sub-sect of Judaism: it appeared
to deny all forms of religion and was therefore
superstitio. By the end of the Imperial era,
Nicene Christianity was the one permitted
Roman religio; all other cults were heretical
or pagan superstitiones.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 practices as ungodly, and 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. Apostasy
was sought, rather than capital punishment.
A year after its due deadline, the edict expired.Valerian
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. In
another edict, he described Christianity as
a threat to Empire – not yet at its heart
but close to it, among Rome's equites and
Senators. Christian apologists interpreted
his eventual fate – a 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 both for his doctrines,
and for his unworthy, indulgent, elite lifestyle.
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,
Maximilian of Tebessa 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,
notably the Caesar in Gaul, Constantius Chlorus,
the father of Constantine I. 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."
===== Emperor Constantine and Christianity
=====
The conversion of Constantine I ended the
Christian persecutions. 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 passed laws to protect Christians from
persecution; he also funded the building of
churches, including Saint Peter's basilica.
He may have officially ended – or attempted
to end – blood sacrifices to the genius
of living emperors, though his Imperial iconography
and court ceremonial outstripped Diocletian's
in their supra-human elevation of the Imperial
hierarch.Constantine promoted orthodoxy in
Christian doctrine, so that Christianity might
become a unitary force, rather than divisive.
He summoned Christian bishops to a meeting,
later known as the First Council of Nicaea,
at which some 318 bishops (mostly easterners)
debated and decided what was orthodox, and
what was heresy. The meeting reached consensus
on the Nicene Creed. At Constantine's death,
he was honored as a Christian and as an Imperial
"divus". Later, Philostorgius would criticize
those Christians who offered sacrifice at
statues of the divus Constantine.
==== Transition to Christian hegemony ====
Christianity and traditional Roman religion
proved incompatible. From the 2nd century
onward, the Church Fathers had condemned the
diverse non-Christian religions practiced
throughout the Empire as "pagan". Constantine's
actions have been regarded by some scholars
as causing the rapid growth of Christianity,
though revisionist scholars disagree. Constantine's
unique form of Imperial orthodoxy did not
outlast him. After his death in 337, two of
his sons, Constantius II and Constans, took
over the leadership of the empire and re-divided
their Imperial inheritance. Constantius was
an Arian and his brothers were Nicene Christians.
Constantine's nephew Julian rejected the "Galilean
madness" of his upbringing for an idiosyncratic
synthesis of neo-Platonism, Stoic asceticism
and universal solar cult. Julian became Augustus
in 361 and actively but vainly fostered a
religious and cultural pluralism, attempting
a restitution of non-Christian practices and
rights. He proposed the rebuilding of Jerusalem's
temple as an Imperial project and argued 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.
In 380, under Theodosius I, Nicene Christianity
became the official state religion of the
Roman Empire. Christian heretics as well as
non-Christians were subject to exclusion from
public life or persecution, though Rome's
original religious hierarchy and many aspects
of its ritual influenced Christian forms,
and many pre-Christian beliefs and practices
survived in Christian festivals and local
traditions.
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 urging the rejection of 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.
== See also ==
Religion in ancient Greece
Hellenistic religion
Italo-Roman neopaganism
Sibylline Oracles
== 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, Roger (2004). Diocletian and the Tetrarchy.
Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press.
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
