The Religion of Numa And Other Essays on the Religion of Ancient Rome

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 BC and 33 BC. In 16 BC Tiberius expelled them under extreme penalty because an astrologer had predicted his death. Augustus banned them within the pomerium to doubtful effect; Tiberius repeated and extended the ban with extreme force in AD 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 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. 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 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. 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. 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: 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.

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. 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. 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.

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. 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".

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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.

Rome's diplomatic agreement with its neighbours of Latium confirmed the Latin league and brought the cult of Diana from Aricia to the Aventine.

Rome's affinity to the Latins allowed two Latin cults within the pomoerium: In , Venus was brought from Sicily and installed in a temple on the Capitoline hill. 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 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. The mystery cult to Bacchus followed; it was suppressed as subversive and unruly by decree of the Senate in BC. Further Greek influences on cult images and types represented the Roman Penates as forms of the Greek Dioscuri. 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. 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.

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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. This remained a primary religious and social duty of emperors.

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. Autonomy and concord were official policy, but new foundations by Roman citizens or their Romanised allies were likely to follow Roman cultic models. 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: 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. Traders, legions and other travellers brought home cults originating from Egypt, Greece, Iberia, India and Persia.

The Religion of Numa

Some of those were initiatory religions of intense personal significance, similar to Christianity in those respects. In the early Imperial era, the princeps lit. His cult had further precedents: 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.

Towards the end of his life, he cautiously allowed cult to his numen.

Religion in ancient Rome - Wikipedia

By then the Imperial cult apparatus was fully developed, first in the Eastern Provinces, then in the West. 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 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 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. 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. Judaism was a superstitio to Cicero, but the Church Father Tertullian described it as religio licita an officially permitted religion in contrast to Christianity. Roman investigations into early Christianity found it an irreligious, novel, disobedient, even atheistic sub-sect of Judaism: By the end of the Imperial era, Nicene Christianity was the one permitted Roman religio ; all other cults were heretical or pagan superstitiones.

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. 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: The fulfillment of sacrificial obligation by loyal subjects would define them and their gods as Roman.

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. 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. In , Maximilian of Tebessa refused military service; in Marcellus renounced his military oath.

Both were executed for treason; both were Christians. In some cases and in some places the edicts were strictly enforced: 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 , when he asked Christians to pray for him. 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 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 bishops mostly easterners debated and decided what was orthodox, and what was heresy. The meeting reached consensus on the Nicene Creed. 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". After his death in , 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 and actively but vainly fostered a religious and cultural pluralism, attempting a restitution of non-Christian practices and rights. The empire once again fell under Christian control, this time permanently. 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.

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Theodosius I briefly re-united the Empire: He not only refused to restore Victory to the senate-house, but extinguished the Sacred fire of the Vestals and vacated their temple: Ambrose , the influential Bishop of Milan and future saint, wrote urging the rejection of Symmachus's request for tolerance. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Marcus Aurelius head covered sacrificing at the Temple of Jupiter. Roman mythology and Founding of Rome. List of Roman deities.

Roman festivals , Fasti , Roman calendar , Ludi , and Roman triumph. October Horse , Tauromachy , Taurobolium , and Haruspicy. Roman funerals and burial. Magic in the Greco-Roman world. Imperial cult of ancient Rome. Decline of Greco-Roman polytheism. Persecution of pagans by the Christian Roman Empire. Koch, "lay at the core of the genius of cultural assimilation which made the Roman Empire possible"; entry on "Interpretatio romana" in Celtic Culture: Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: See, for instance, the altar dedicated by a Roman citizen and depicting a sacrifice conducted in the Roman manner for the Germanic goddess Vagdavercustis in the 2nd-century CE.

Myth and History Cornell University Press, , pp. See also Vergil, Aeneid. See Beard et al. Festus connects Numa to the triumphal spolia opima and Jupiter Feretrius. His near contemporary Dionysius of Halicarnassus appear to share some common sources, including an earlier history by Quintus Fabius Pictor , of which only a terse summary survives. Fragments of an important earlier work now lost of Quintus Ennius are cited by various later Roman authors. On the chronological problems of the kings' list, see Cornell, pp. For a summary of Jupiter's complex development from the Regal to Republican eras, see Beard et al.

Jupiter's image in the Republican and Imperial Capitol bore regalia associated with Rome's ancient kings and the highest consular and Imperial honours. Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus were collectively and individually associated with Rome's agricultural economy, social organisation and success in war.

Their attribution to Numa or Romulus is doubtful. The oldest surviving religious calendars date to the late Republic; the most detailed are Augustan and later. XIII — Fasti et elogia, fasc. See also Scullard, Newlands, Playing with Time: See also early and later Christian festivals in Beard et al. Brown, Roman Architecture , New York , 9. The Roman belief in the power of the word may be reflected also in the importance of persuasive speech, formally oratory, in political life and the law courts.

Dionysius of Halicarnassus claims the Compitalia contribution of honey-cakes as a Servian institution. See also Thaniel, G. Beans were considered seeds of life. Lemures may have been the restless dead who had not passed into the underworld, and still craved the life they had lost.

Beans were a ritual pollution for Jupiter's priesthood, possibly because his offerings must be emasculated and thus devoid of generative power. Preview this item Preview this item. The religion of Numa, and other essays on the religion of ancient Rome, Author: Jesse Benedict Carter Publisher: London, Macmillan and Co. English View all editions and formats Rating: Subjects Rome -- Religion. Numa Pompilius, -- King of Rome, -- active B. Augustus, -- Emperor of Rome, -- 63 B. View all subjects More like this Similar Items.

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