Religion at Rome

9 rsr Religion at Rome Andreas Bendlin A lead curse tablet, or defixio, from Raraunum in Roman Gaul (near modern Poitiers) was found near a spring. It was rolled up and, as was a common feature of ritual manipulation of curse tablets, pierced by a nail. It asks otherwise unknown deities or persons to “bind” a group of mimes with whom the tablet’s commissioner or commissioners appear to have been in competition. Particularly remarkable is the request that one rival be unable to sacrifice, that is, be rejected by the gods, should he ever try to approach them in this way again: Apecius, he shall bind Trinemetos and Caticnos. He shall strip bare Seneciolus, Asedis, Tritios, Neocarinos, Dido. Sosio shall become delirious. Sosio shall burn with fever. Sosio shall suffer pain every day. Sosio shall be unable to speak. Sosio shall not triumph (?) over Maturus and Eridunna. Sosio shall be unable to sacrifice. Aqanno shall torment you. Nana shall torture you. Sosio shall be unable to outshine the mime Eumolpus. He shall be unable to play . . . He shall be unable to sacrifice. Sosio shall be unable to snatch the victory from the mime Fotios.1 Other curses from the Roman world were clearly formulated with the purpose of retaliation, even though the texts adopt quasi-juridical language. The following is from the temple of the goddess Mater Magna (“Great Mother”) in Mogontiacum (modern Mainz) in the Roman province of Upper Germany: I request from you, mistress Mater Magna, that you vindicate me (or: take revenge on my behalf) regarding the goods belonging to Florus, my husband. He who has defrauded me, Ulattius Severus, just as I write this unfavourably, so may everything for him, whatever he does, whatever he attempts to do, Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 190 Themes in Roman Society and Culture may everything for him turn out unfavourably. As salt (disperses in) water, so may it turn out for him. Whatever he has taken away from me from the goods belonging to Florus, my husband, I request from you, mistress Mater Magna, that you vindicate me regarding this matter. (AE 2005, 1122) Vengeful curses such as this one, sometimes called prayers for justice and directed towards the gods (who served as the final arbiters of justice and righteous behaviour), seem particularly appropriate in a society whose legal system was inadequately equipped to deal comprehensively with the enforcement of justice or Compare Chapter 11, pp. 249, 251 may have been disinterested in doing so. In the Roman period, and 255–8, on the accessibility of it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear distinction between the justice system. purely competitive defixiones to bend the future (one’s own or that of others) and prayers for justice to mend past wrongs. However, each demonstrates the critical role that the gods played for ancient individuals, even in aspects of life that we now tend to think of as secular, such as competition and justice. As this chapter will demonstrate, the gods and the rituals through which humans communicated with them were ubiquitous presences in Roman society, in both public and domestic settings. Timeline c. 111 CE The emperor Trajan and his governor, Pliny the Younger (Ep. 10.96–97), exchange letters on how to deal with Christians in the province of Pontus-Bithynia 12 BCE Augustus is elected pontifex maximus; from this point on, the office is routinely held by the emperor 104/103 BCE The Lex Domitia decrees that all members of the major Roman priesthoods are elected by 17 of the 35 voting tribes of the comitia tributa 212 CE The emperor Caracalla issues an edict (the so-called Constitutio Antoniniana) that grants Roman citizenship to the majority of people living in the Roman empire, ostensibly to increase worship of “the immortal gods” 186 BCE The so-called Bacchanalian affair 313 CE The right of Christians and pagans to practise their respective forms of worship (religio) is acknowledged in the eastern empire; similar privileges for Christians already exist in the western parts 204 BCE Introduction of the cult of the goddess Mater Magna to Rome, with a sanctuary on the Palatine Hill 292 BCE Introduction of the cult of the god Aesculapius to Rome, with a sanctuary on the Tiber Island Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 600 CE 500 CE 300 CE 200 CE 100 CE BCE/CE 100 BCE 200 BCE 300 BCE 400 BCE 500 BCE 600 BCE 700 BCE late sixth century BCE Construction of the sanctuary of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno Regina, and Minerva on the Capitoline Hill 400 CE fifth century CE Legislation by various Christian emperors, compiled and edited in the Theodosian Code (9.16, 16.10) in 429–437 CE, outlaws illicit ritual practices such as astrology, divination, “magic,” sacrifices, visits to temples, or worship of images 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome Introduction Religion is a vast and varied subject whose tendrils reached into every part of Roman life. This chapter introduces the shape and contexts of religion at Rome and gives some sense of its significance and function for a polytheistic society. To these ends, focus falls upon deities, religious ritual (sacrifice, prayer, vows, and dedications), location (temples, shrines), and specialists (priesthoods, religious functionaries, and “ritual experts”). State-approved religious activity (called civic religion in this chapter) supported traditional concepts of authority and public order; it is for this reason that public disorder and suspected political subversion could sometimes be described in religious terms. However, polytheistic Rome was also a place of religious options, and our discussion includes the individual religious choices made by worshippers. Although this chapter concentrates on religion in the city of Rome, it also addresses the religious traditions of Rome’s trans-Mediterranean empire in so far as these traditions, deities, and cults migrated to (and thus shaped the religious life in) Rome as an inadvertent result of Roman imperialism and expansion. rsr Practice, Belief, and Divinity: Some Salient Features of Religion at Rome At the beginning of the political year (1 January in the late Republic), the newly elected consuls, accompanied by members of the major priestly colleges, the senators, and the people, ascended to the sanctuary of Jupiter Optimus Maximus (“Best and Greatest”), Juno Regina (“Queen”), and Minerva on the Capitoline Hill (for the location of sacred sites of deities discussed in this chapter, see Figure 9.1). The purpose of their procession was to fulfill the vows (vota) that the consuls of the previous year had undertaken on behalf of the well-being of the state (the res publica of the Roman people) and to pronounce new ones for the following year. Under the Empire, the ritual’s date was moved to 3 January and, more importantly, the imperial vows focused on the well-being of the ruling emperor and his family as representatives of the people. This is a telling reminder that neither rituals (sacra) nor their meanings were fixed in time or resistant to change. On the contrary, both action and meaning were highly adaptable to social or (as in this case) political transformations. The celebration of these vows is attested among civilian and military populations in Rome, Italy, and the provinces.2 Vows dating to 3 January 87 CE are preserved in the annual protocols of the Arval Brothers, a priestly college in the vicinity of Rome known for its cult of the goddess Dea Dia. The college’s painstaking documentation of all its ritual activities proffers a highly detailed glimpse of religious practices and beliefs at Rome in the imperial Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 191 192 Themes in Roman Society and Culture er Riv er Ti b Figure 9.1 Map of Sacred Topography 1 Aesculapius, on the Tiber Island 2 Ceres (with Liber and Libera), on the Aventine Hill 3 Apollo, on the Palatine Hill 4 Mater Magna, on the Palatine Hill 5 Vesta, on the margins of the Forum 12 Quirinalis Viminalis Campus Martius 8 10 9 6 Capitolinus 11 7 5 4 1 3 Trans Tiberim Palatinus 2 Caelius Aventinus ib er R iv er 13 Esquilinus T 6 The Capitoline Triad (Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva) 7 Jupiter Tonans, on the Capitoline Hill 8 Diana Planciana, on the Quirinal 9 Theatre of Pompey, in the Field of Mars 10 Isis (with Serapis), in the Field of Mars 11 Divus Vespasian (and Divus Titus), in the Forum Romanum 12 Salus Publica, on the Quirinal Hill 13 Tellus, on the Esquiline Hill period. In this example (see Box 9.1), the Arval Brothers acknowledge that the emperor Domitian, his spouse, his niece, and the imperial house are alive and safe. Through sacrifice, they fulfill the vows made on 3 January of the previous year on behalf of the imperial family’s well-being. They also pronounce the vows for the next year: if the gods continue to preserve Primary Source Box 9.1: CFA no. 55, col. I. When the Emperor Caesar Domitian Augustus Germanicus was consul for the thirteenth time and Lucius Volusius Saturninus was his fellow consul (87 CE), three days before the Nones of January (3 January), the Arval Brother Caius Salvius Liberalis, officiating in lieu of the magister Caius Julius Silanus, reported to the college of Arval Brothers on the Capitoline Hill in the porch of (the Temple of) Jupiter Optimus Maximus: since the immortal gods, their power made propitious, have lent their ears to the vows of the entire world which were eagerly undertaken for the well-being of the Emperor Caesar Domitian Augustus Germanicus, son of god Vespasian, pontifex maximus, for Domitia Augusta his spouse, for Julia Augusta, and for their entire house, that it was fitting for the college to fulfill the previous vows and pronounce new ones. The college decreed: that this should be favourable, propitious, happy and salutary! Concerning the vows, that the previous ones Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome 193 should be fulfilled and new ones pronounced for the well-being and safety of the Emperor Caesar Domitian Augustus Germanicus, son of god Vespasian, for Domitia Augusta his spouse, for Julia Augusta, and for their entire house: to Jupiter Optimus Maximus a bull, to Juno Regina a cow, to Minerva a cow, to Salus Publica of the Roman People the Citizens a cow. On the same day, there on the hill, Caius Salvius Liberalis, officiating in lieu of the magister Caius Julius Silanus, sprinkled incense and poured wine into the fire on the portable altar and sacrificed with wine, ground spelt, and the knife: to Jupiter Optimus Maximus a bull, to Juno Regina a cow, to Minerva a cow, to Salus Publica of the Roman People the Citizens a cow. The entrails were cooked in a pot, after which he returned them (to the deities). On the same day, there in the porch of (the temple of) Jupiter Optimus Maximus the Arval Brother Caius Salvius Liberalis, officiating in lieu of the magister Caius Julius Silanus, in the presence of the college of the Arval Brothers undertook the vows for the well-being and safety of the Emperor Caesar Domitian Augustus Germanicus, son of god Vespasian, pontifex maximus, holder of the tribunician power, censor for life, father of the fatherland, for Domitia Augusta his spouse, for Julia Augusta, and for their entire house in the name of the college of Arval Brothers, using the following words: Jupiter Optimus Maximus, if the Emperor Caesar Domitian Augustus Germanicus, son of god Vespasian, pontifex maximus, holder of the tribunician power, censor for life, father of the fatherland, and Domitia Augusta his spouse, and Julia Augusta, whom I intend to name, are alive and their house is safe on the third day before the Nones of January that will be next for the Roman People the citizens, and the res publica of the Roman People the citizens, and if you have preserved that day and them safe from any dangers occurring now or in the future before that day, and if you have given as favourable an outcome as I intend to name, and if you have preserved them in the same or better condition in which they are now, if you have done this in this way then I vow that in the name of the college of Arval Brothers there will be an offering to you consisting of an ox with gilded horns. Juno Regina, with the words I have employed to vow that there will be an offering to Jupiter Optimus Maximus consisting of an ox with gilded horns, which vow I have made today, if you have done this in this way then using the same words I vow in the name of the college of the Arval Brothers that there will be an offering to you consisting of an ox with gilded horns. . . .1 In the college were present Caius Salvius Liberalis, Nonius Bassus, Aulus Julius Quadratus, Lucius Maecius Postumus, Lucius Veratius Quadratus, Publius Sallustius Blaesus, and Lucius Venuleius Apronianus. Note 1. The words used for the vow to Juno are also used for the vows to Minerva and Salus Publica. the lives of the emperor and his family, sacrifices will be offered on 3 January 88 CE. The Arval Brothers’ account details the documentary practices and administrative routines of a Roman priestly college and thus provides an excellent example of the issues Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 194 Themes in Roman Society and Culture under discussion in this section. It is often stated that Roman religion, like most other religious traditions in the ancient world, operated without sacred books or theological truths revealed through authoritative writings, which contrasts markedly with some of today’s world religions. To a certain extent, this statement is undoubtedly correct. But there existed extensive priestly archives at Rome, most of them lost. Some, like the protocols of the Arval Brothers, contained detailed prayer formulas and elaborate depictions of ritual procedure; others, like the books kept by the college of pontiffs (pontifices), laid down rules and regulations to serve as a blueprint for ritual action and as a reference in cases of ignorance or disputes over correct procedure.3 But in 213 BCE, at the height of the Second Punic War, the urban praetor confiscated unsanctioned books containing prophecies, prayers, or sacrificial instructions and banned illegitimately conducted sacrifices (Livy 25.1.6–12). The emperor Augustus also ordered the collection and destruction of more than 2,000 compilations of prophetic writings in Greek and Latin that were privately owned and hence deemed to be without sufficient authority (Suet. Aug. 31; Tac. Ann. 6.12). Arguably, religion at Rome was not characterized by a lack of texts that claimed to possess some religious authority but by an abundance of them. It was also marked by competition over who possessed sufficient authority and power to interpret the will of the gods. The peculiarly repetitive structure of the Arval Brothers’ protocol underlines another critical feature of Roman ritual practice: the practitioners of religion at Rome, like those in most other religious traditions in the ancient world and in many current traditions, regarded the scrupulous and correct performance of ritual utterances, gestures, movements, and actions as vital. Some scholars have therefore argued that the Romans were more concerned with observing an orthopraxy (“correct action”) than with following an orthodoxy (“correct opinion”) of faith; that is, practices mattered more to the Romans than beliefs did. It is furthermore sometimes held that the primary aim of all Roman ritual practice, at least in the public domain, was to maintain a correct if somewhat legalistic relationship between the Roman people (or, under the Empire, the emperor and the Roman people) and their gods, thus assuring an equilibrium sometimes called the pax deorum (“peace of the gods,” or “peace with the gods”).4 As long as the Romans scrupulously kept their side of the “contract,” the gods would stick to theirs and support Rome. The following objections to these two claims may be raised. First, so that we do not see religion at Rome merely as a punctilious, “ritualistic” system mired in its own religious tradition, we must understand that ritual is exceedingly flexible and adaptable to the most variable circumstances. The practitioners of ritual decide how fastidiously or how casually they follow the rules to achieve their desired goal, namely to communicate their aims and wishes to the gods successfully. Both strict and casual attitudes to religious performance are amply documented in the ancient Roman world. Second, it is true that, for example, the vow of the Arval Brothers given in Box 9.1 is framed in quasi-legal terms, spelling out conditions and obligations in precise detail like the Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome fine print of a contract. Yet their vow is less suggestive of a contractually binding arrangement than of a more dynamic and complex relationship: the gods need to be obliged, reassured, and even cajoled before they “(make) their power propitious” and deign to listen to human requests. Similarly, in the curse text from Roman Mogontiacum (introduced in the chapter’s opener) the defenceless woman can only request an act of vindication from the goddess. The Arval Brothers’ statement that “the immortal gods . . . have lent their ears to the vows of the entire world” implicitly acknowledges that the gods may take the liberty of doing the exact opposite of their past propitious behaviour. In other words, the gods, all powerful as is their nature, can be expected to assist those deserving of such benefaction, but they may equally frustrate human expectations or fail to reward faithful observance of religious ritual. They may make individuals suffer for no apparent reason and punish those who do not deserve such chastisement. In this context, communication (a dialogue between two or more parties in which the responses are not predetermined) is an appropriate term to describe the ritual interaction between humans and gods of the kind named in the Arval Brothers’ protocol. But as some scholars in the field of cognitive studies have suggested more recently, it is often the counterintuitive nature of what the gods do or fail to do—a communication where they set the rules—that establishes the powerful beliefs that people hold in them. It would therefore be wrong to think that these beliefs lie merely in the efficacy of ritual practice, as scholars reluctant to apply a more comprehensive notion of “belief” to religion at Rome would hold. Ancient Roman beliefs in the value and efficacy of ritual communication with the divine were formed on the basis of, and therefore cannot be separated from, people’s beliefs about the existence, power, and justice of the gods independent of their communication with worshippers.5 There was another crucial form of communication with the gods, one which (unlike the vow) was not primarily verbal: sacrifice. Again, the Arval Brothers’ protocol provides an excellent example. Before committing himself and the college to new vows for the following year, Caius Salvius Liberalis fulfills the previous year’s ritual obligation by offering an animal sacrifice. He would have performed this sacrifice with part of his toga drawn over his head, a ritual gesture known as capite velato (“with his head veiled”) and commonly seen on sacrificial representations from Rome and Italy. He begins by sprinkling incense and pouring wine over a small, portable altar. The name of this phase of the ritual was praefari (“to speak beforehand”), suggesting that it combined verbal and non-verbal actions to make the deity inclined to listen to the purpose and intention of the sacrifice. Caius Salvius Liberalis then sprinkles the animal’s head, the sacrificial knife, and the altar with salted ground spelt (mola salsa; hence the Latin for “to sacrifice,” immolare), pours wine over the animal’s forehead, and uses the knife to draw an imaginary line from the animal’s head to its back. The protocol outlines this complex ritual sequence with only a few words because everybody would be able to fill in the missing activities. Similarly, everybody would understand that the protocol omits several other crucial stages of the Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 195 196 Themes in Roman Society and Culture sacrifice: the actual killing of the animal, which was the responsibility of sacrificial assistants, and the inspection of the animal’s entrails (the heart, liver, lungs, and peritoneum) by the haruspex. This divinatory expert inspected these innards to ensure that their shapes and appearances were regular, as regularity indicated that the sacrifice was accepted by the deity. In this way, the gods communicated their response to the sacrificer non-verbally.6 Finally, we come to the gods themselves. The protocol of the Arval Brothers demonstrates the diverse character of the Roman pantheon (that is, all the divinities worshipped in the city of Rome). The Arval Brothers made sacrifices and vows to the traditional anthropomorphic deities of the Capitoline Triad, namely Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. But sacrifices and vows were also made to the goddess Salus Publica, or “Civic Well-Being of the Roman People, the Citizens,” whose very name is a potent reminder of the rituals’ original purpose: the plea for the well-being of Rome’s political community of citizens. The creation of a deity to represent a quality that is being sought from the gods through ritual means (a prominent device of constructing divinity at Rome)7 is witness to the creativity of the Roman religious system. Such innovation might bother us more than it did the Romans, who worshipped the goddess with statues, prayer, and sacrifice. As early as 302 BCE, a sanctuary was dedicated to Salus on the Quirinal Hill as the protectress of the well-being of the Roman people (Livy 10.1.9). In the first century CE her cult became even more diversified, as the worship of the Well-Being of the Roman Body Politic (Salus Publica) and the Well-Being of the Emperor (Salus Augusti or Augusta) and his family mirrored the ideological foundation of the imperial age. It is significant that the ritual of the Arval Brothers recognizes no difference between the traditional gods and the deified quality—Salus Publica is accorded the same female sacrificial victim that Juno and Minerva receive. But there is yet another kind of deity mentioned in the Arval Brothers’ protocol: divus (“god”) Vespasian, a once-human emperor consecrated as a god by decision of the Roman senate after his death in 79 CE.8 Vespasian’s alleged last words—“Woe, I believe I become a god” (Suet. Vesp. 23.4)—have sometimes been interpreted as a criticism of the practice of divinization and of the notion that any human (especially the emperor, whom many regarded as the most powerful person on earth) might become divine and receive cult like all the other gods. Yet such a notion was widely established among the ancients. Vespasian’s words may have been little more than a witty reflection on his unlikely rise to supreme power. By common understanding, such power and immortality distinguished the gods from mere mortals. But the divide was neither as insurmountable nor as categorical as it is held to be in some of today’s world religions. In the eyes of many of his contemporaries, the Roman emperor’s superior achievements, spectacular military successes, and benefactions would have rendered him divine during his lifetime (see, for example, Suet. Aug. 98; AE 2007, 1505). Even the purported working of some “miracle” could lead to spontaneous acclamations of divine status in the Graeco-Roman world (see, for instance, Acts 14:8–18). Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome The worship of Roman emperors, either alive or deceased, occurred in many different guises in cities and provinces across the empire. For all intents and purposes, it was a local religious phenomenon like all the other cults existing in the Roman Mediterranean. Yet the Arval Brother’s protocol shows that the imperial cult, as it is sometimes called, neither emerged as a “religion” of its own nor replaced the traditional cults in Rome and elsewhere. Instead, it was integrated into the fabric of, and coexisted with, traditional religious practices and beliefs.9 The cases of Salus Publica and divus Vespasian bring into sharp focus our preconceptions and prejudices about the nature of divinity, which were not shared by the Romans. Civic Religion Along with the practices and beliefs discussed in the previous section, the Romans also believed that their res publica was constantly being “augmented by the resources and councils of the immortal gods,” as a Roman statute of 58 BCE bluntly states.10 Indeed, Romans thought that their well-being was at least partly determined by the gods as a divine response to their piety, which the people showed through their meticulous attention to worship. The Romans, incidentally, were not alone in making this claim. Yet the political and military successes that they enjoyed throughout their history could legitimately be taken as proof of divine favouritism, just as domestic crises and military disasters were sometimes explained as the consequences of divine anger. The vows of 87 CE point to this attitude when they link the emperor’s and the political community’s well-being to the power of the gods made favourable. The belief that the affairs of the city-state were dependent on the divine world may explain the enormous effort, financial and otherwise, that the civic community at Rome (like other ancient city-states) undertook to maintain a sophisticated religious infrastructure. This endeavour comprised the financing and maintenance of the city’s civic temples, festivals, games, and rituals.11 The last category included the sacrifices, dedications, and vows made by magistrates and sacerdotes publici (“civic priests”) on behalf of the city-state and its citizenry and, as was the case with the vows of 87 CE, on behalf of the emperor and his family. Taken together, these religious activities were referred to as sacra publica populi Romani, the “civic rituals of the Roman people” (Festus Gloss. Lat. 4.350). Late republican and imperial authors record the tradition that all matters of civic religion were established when the res publica was young. They state that Romulus (augur and first king of Rome) inaugurated the site of Rome (Lutatius frg. 11 HRRel; Cic. Div. 1.30–1) and that Numa, the second king, organized the sacra publica, thereby putting Roman ritual practices on a permanent footing (Livy 1.20.5). In historical actuality, however, religion at Rome was a dynamic organism that underwent constant transformation over the centuries.12 The administrative and ritual structure of civic religion persisted until the later Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 197 198 Themes in Roman Society and Culture fourth and early fifth centuries CE, when those responsible for overseeing the rituals of organized religion—the emperors and the political elites—came to prefer Christianity over traditional religious practices and beliefs, which were outlawed as “superstitious” and illicit. This change brought about the gradual disappearance of the rituals and underlying beliefs of what we now call paganism, at least as it was publicly practised in the civic domain.13 The details regarding civic religion in all sources of information—literature, epigraphy, numismatics, and archaeology alike—are so vast that some scholars have argued that civic religion was religion at Rome, that all religious practices and beliefs were undertaken in the context of public “state religion.” While this theory is debatable (see pp. 203–13), civic religion unquestionably provided a powerful and pervasive frame of reference for all religious activity in the city and beyond. It is therefore necessary to sketch its most important elements. A striking feature of Roman civic religion is its massive cost, as well as the implications that cost had on the relationship between religion and political success (and, as we shall see, political authority) for the Roman elite. The civic maintenance of temples, the personnel required to take care of cult images and the paraphernalia of daily ritual routine, and the huge number of animals needed for public sacrifice added up to colossal expense. The four animals that the Arval Brothers sacrificed in 87 CE are but the tip of the iceberg: 300 oxen, for instance, were offered to Jupiter in 217 BCE (Livy 22.10.7). Civic religious observances might also extend over many days and could be repeated many times. An extreme example is offered by the 55 rituals of thanksgiving (supplicationes) decreed by the senate during Augustus’s lifetime on account of his successes. These rituals amounted to 890 days altogether, averaging 16 days of celebration for each (RG 4.1). Annual public games in honour of the gods were also extremely costly. Evidence cited on an early imperial calendar from the Italian town of Antium (Inscr. Ital. 13.2, pp. 208–10) suggests that the Roman celebration of the games in honour of Apollo in July might cost the state close to 400,000 sesterces, an equestrian fortune; 600,000 sesterces were expended on the Plebeian Games in November and a staggering 760,000 sesterces on the Roman Games in September. Yet public funds were regularly supplemented by the magistrate organizing the event during the Republic. Such sponsorship served to augment the magistrate’s renown among the populace and to increase his chances when running for higher magistracies. In the imperial period, the emperor’s role as sole patron of the city of Rome meant that he subsidized the public games.14 The joint Compare Chapter 10, pp. 228–9, contribution of civic funds and individual elite benefaction not and Chapter 12 in general on only served to diffuse financial responsibilities (although some games and political figures. magistrates of the first century BCE managed to bankrupt themselves in the event) but also to underline the symbiotic relationship between the religious affairs of the res publica and the interests of its political elites. Costs for temples, shrines, and altars were similarly shared between state coffers and individual benefactors, a further illustration of the political elite’s personal interest Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome 199 in civic religion. Public funds were generally used for the construction of religious buildings. Civic responsibility applied even if, as happened on several occasions throughout the second and first centuries BCE, it was a Roman magistrate on military campaign who vowed a shrine to a deity.15 During the Republic, the state often determined what was a necessary repair and paid for it. Consider, for example, the restoration of a decrepit altar rebuilt in Rome to a deity whose name and identity the Romans no longer remembered: Sacred to the god or goddess. Caius Sextius Calvinus, the son of Caius, praetor, restored (this altar) on a vote of the senate. (CIL 12.801) This practice does not imply, however, that individuals did not construct or at least repair civic temples in Rome. For instance, Marcus Tullius Cicero (Har. Resp. 31), one of the two consuls of 63 BCE, was commissioned to rebuild the Temple of Tellus in 55/54 BCE. The Temple of Diana Planciana on the Quirinal Hill (see the inscriptions in Box 9.2) was either restored or, more likely, built by a member of the elite family of the Planci (or Plancii). With the rise of imperial rule in Rome, the construction and restoration of sacred buildings, like public building in the city in general, became the prerogative of the emperors. But such activities undertaken by the state and individuals during the late Republic Primary Source Box 9.2: AE 1971, 31. A dedication of a temple warden’s wife to the god Silvanus: Sacred to Silvanus. Julia Sporis, spouse of Hymetus, warden of the temple of Diana Planciana, (set up this dedication). Both Julia Sporis and her husband reappear in the dedicatory inscription of a funerary monument by another woman. CIL 6.2210. To the propitious gods. Claudia Quinta, daughter of Tiberius, built this tomb for Caius Julius Hymetus, warden of (the temple of) Diana Planciana, her pedagogue and instructor, also her legal guardian since the time she became an orphan, because he rendered to her his services as her guardian most faithfully, and for Caius Julius Epitynchanus, his brother, and for Julia Sporis her mommy (or foster mother?), and for their freedmen and freedwomen, and for their descendants. Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 200 Themes in Roman Society and Culture should cast doubt on the long-accepted view that this period was a time of religious decline and that only the Augustan settlement restored the religious institutions, rituals, and temples in the city of Rome.16 Scholars have only recently come to terms with the fact that the writers of the Augustan period deliberately minimized the religious commitment of the late Republic so as to present the sacred building projects of Augustus as a favourable contrast. His aggrandizing projects—such as the new Temple of Apollo on the Palatine and the new Temple of Jupiter Tonans on the Capitoline Hill (RG 19; Suet. Aug. 29)—served the purpose of legitimizing the new imperial power. But here, too, the actions of Augustus (and similar actions of later emperors) were continuations of precedents, as his republican predecessors also used religious building projects as attempts to further their own political position at the expense of their peers. The Theatre of Pompey, which included a temple to Venus Victrix (“Victress”),17 is one striking example of that tendency: the monumental complex, which occupied a vast amount of space in the Field of Mars, commemorated Pompey’s military achievements and served as an investment in his struggle for recognition as the foremost Roman of his day. Given the correlation between religious responsibility and political power, it is unsurprising that Rome’s religious officials were primarily drawn from the political elite and were male. There were, however, a few female religious functionaries from elite families, such as the Vestal Virgins, whose duties included Compare Chapter 10 p. 236, on the maintenance of the cult of the goddess Vesta; the wife of the social identity of Roman priests. Flamen Dialis, or “priest of Jupiter,” with whom she shared certain ritual obligations and responsibilities; the Roman priestesses of Ceres; and the priestesses in the imperial cult. In a speech delivered in 57 BCE, Cicero emphasizes the desirability of having the same people, the members of Rome’s economic and political elite, administer the city’s affairs in their dual roles as magistrates and priests (sacerdotes). It is interesting to note, however, that his rhetorical attempt to erase the division between the responsibilities of these positions implicitly confirms their conceptual differentiation: While our ancestors . . . have invented and established many things under divine guidance, there is certainly nothing more distinguished among these than their decision to put the same men in charge both of the religiones (i.e. rituals) owed to the immortal gods and of the most pertinent affairs of their polity—so that the most excellent and most illustrious citizens through proper administration of their polity might safeguard the rituals and through wise interpretation of these rituals might safeguard the polity. (Cic. Dom. 1) During the late Republic, the members of Rome’s political elite were eager to occupy any vacant spaces in the major priestly offices, filled by election since the Lex Domitia of 104/103 BCE. Cicero was proud of securing his own membership in the college of augurs Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome 201 by election in the late 50s BCE. Under the Empire, membership in a priestly college was also sought fervently, particularly when the candidate could secure nomination through the emperor or become his colleague in the college. The Arval Brothers’ vows of 87 CE remind us of the colleges’ ideological proximity to the emperor. Yet the case of the major Roman priesthoods provides another area where a republican tradition was rewritten under the exigencies of imperial realpolitik. The accumulation of different priesthoods by a single individual was shunned by the political establishment in the second and first centuries BCE, but the increasing tendency of individuals to monopolize political power was inevitably mirrored by a tendency to monopolize priesthoods. Julius Caesar was elected pontifex maximus (“chief pontiff”) in 63 BCE and both augur and quindecimvir during his second dictatorship in 47 BCE (on these priesthoods, see the following paragraphs). Augustus added to his portfolio membership in a fourth priestly college, the college of epulones (seven men who were in charge of the epulum Iovis, a feast for Jupiter held at the Roman Games and the Plebeian Games), thereby single-handedly establishing the tradition of the emperor’s membership in all of the “four most renowned colleges” (quattuor amplissima collegia; see, for example, RG 9.1 and compare 7.3). As a matter of fact, he established the very tradition of counting four such colleges. Until then, the most prestigious priesthoods had been only three in number. As will have already become clear, there were many different Roman priesthoods. It is beyond the scope of this chapter to discuss all of them in any detail; therefore, we will focus on only the major types. Roman authors identify three (Cic. Nat. D. 3.5) and sometimes four (Val. Max. 1.1) domains of priestly duty, overseen respectively by the colleges of the pontiffs, augurs, (quin)decimviri sacris faciundis (“Ten [later Fifteen] Men for the Performance of Rituals”), and haruspices.18 The supervision and guidance concerning all matters of ritual was the responsibility of the pontiffs (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 2.73.1–2). This area included such matters as sacred places, the Roman calendar, the correct performance of rituals, and the care of tombs. The pontiffs’ central role concerning the sacra publica also explains the importance that the Romans attached to the office of pontifex maximus. The augurs’ controlled the auspicia (the means by which divine will was determined) and the “inauguration” (for the procedure, compare Cic. Leg. 2.21) of places, priests, and rituals. The Roman antiquarian writer Festus (Gloss. Lat. 4.367) distinguished five categories of auspicia: the observation of signs “from the sky” (ex caelo; celestial signs such as thunder and lightning), from the sound and flight of birds (ex avibus), from the feeding behaviour of the sacred chickens (ex tripudiis), from four-hoofed animals (ex quadrupedibus), and unfavourable signs of other natures (ex diris). The taking of the auspices was not the sole prerogative of the augurs, however. Curule magistrates (magistrates who had imperium, such as praetors and consuls) also held the auspicia: they sacrificed before certain public events and took the auspices before assemblies and at specific political See Chapter 10, pp. 227–8, for magistracies with imperium. ceremonials. During the auspicium ex tripudiis, which on military Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 202 Themes in Roman Society and Culture campaigns was a more expedient form of auspication than the observation of birds in the sky, the assistant reported the chickens’ feeding habits to the magistrate, who interpreted the results and informed the army. Famous examples exist of republican magistrates neglecting the chickens’ refusal to eat (an unfavourable sign) immediately before a military conflict. In these examples, the Romans invariably lost the battle (see, for example, Cic. Nat. D. 2.7–8). A distinction was made between auspicia that the observer had actively looked out for (auspicia impetrativa) and those that had been received but not sought (auspicia oblativa). The former category established a direct link between the auspiciant and the gods; the latter, by contrast, needed to be examined to determine what and whom they might concern. But there existed yet another category of unsolicited divine signs in need of interpretation. This function was the task of the other two major priesthoods. The (quin)decimviri sacris faciundis were in charge of the Sibylline Books, state-approved Greek oracular texts. Unusual natural occurrences might be deemed to be prodigia (“prodigies”; signs of divine displeasure), and the prophetic texts encapsulated in the Sibylline Books were thought to hold instructions to remedy such situations. The Etruscan haruspices were also sometimes consulted in the case of such occurrences and suggested viable ritual solutions to mitigate the divine displeasure that the political community had incurred. These could include sacrifices, festivals, or the introduction of new deities into the city’s civic pantheon (see pp. 204–7). It must be noted, however, that discretionary power concerning religious affairs, including extraordinary events, new cults, and the restoration of altars, rested with the senate. Two further observations about priests are important. First, civic priests were not religious experts nor was ritual expertise a prerequisite for nomination to one of the major priesthoods. The cases of Appius Claudius Pulcher and Marcus Valerius Messalla, Cicero’s fellow augurs and writers of treatises on augury and the interpretation of the auspices, are the proverbial exceptions that prove the rule (Cic. Fam. 3.4.1, 3.9.3; Gell. NA 13.15.3–4). Ritual authority did not rest with individual priests but with the college as a body drawing upon a wealth of accumulated knowledge. Second, Roman civic priests were not fulltime priests. Although Cicero appears to have made a regular effort to attend the augurs’ meetings to participate in the duties required of the college, the case of Crassus, who died in battle away from Rome (leaving vacant his position as augur, which Cicero then filled), illuminates the sometimes insurmountable conflict between the See Chapter 2, p. 31, and different roles of magistrate and priest. Under the Republic, there Chapter 14, pp. 316–17, on were several telling instances of conflicts between magisterial and Crassus’s eastern campaign. priestly roles, normally centring on the issue of which role should take precedence. For instance, in 189 BCE a praetor’s departure to his assigned province of Sardinia was vetoed by the pontifex maximus on behalf of the pontifical college because the praetor also held the flaminate (“priesthood”) of the god Quirinus. In this case, the senate decided in favour of the pontifical argument that the priest had to stay in Rome to honour his sacrificial responsibilities towards the deity (Livy 37.51.1–6). No such conflict Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome of interest is ever reported for the pontifex maximus, either during the Republic or under the Empire (when the emperor held this office). This example addresses the more fundamental question of who held supreme religious authority at Rome. The view that the civic priests in general or the pontifex maximus in particular was invested with such authority or with some religious charisma presupposes a model of priesthood developed in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which scholars have unwittingly imposed on the ancient evidence. Contradicting such a model, the emperor Vespasian received authorization from the senate to handle the Roman state’s religious affairs the very moment that body conferred upon him a whole range of other constitutional powers and privileges in 69 CE, before he was elected pontifex maximus and thus became entitled to exert “priestly” influence (CIL 6.31207). Similarly, Augustus’s election to the office of pontifex maximus took place in 12 BCE, rather late in his political career. Moreover, as we have just seen, ancient pagan “priests” would not claim superior theological knowledge—they were neither the privileged mediators of religious truths nor the arbiters on questions of faith. In historical actuality, technical or theological expertise was rather widely dispersed. There existed a wide range of divinatory and ritual service providers, “magical” specialists, common diviners or seers (vates), fortune tellers, necromancers, dream interpreters, augurs, haruspices, and astrologers, all of whom operated outside the bounds of the state-controlled sacra publica (see, for instance, Cic. Div. 1.132). In the non-civic cults of the goddess Isis (see, for example, Apul. Met. 11.21) and the god Mithras, as well as other “mystery” cults in which initiation was practised and independent religious hierarchies and offices existed, a significant amount of ritual and theological expertise was also required. Ritual and theological competency characterized the officials of the Judean communities in Rome and the nascent Christian collectives. In fact, the generic words priest and priesthood are used in this chapter for the sake of expediency, not to suggest that this modern terminology aptly characterizes religious authority in the ancient Roman world. There was no single term for our word priest; the title sacerdos, which is often translated as such, is only one of several names used to designate religious officials. Furthermore, applying our notion of priest or priesthood may invite the belief that priestly authority in the Roman world is roughly comparable to the authority that today’s priests hold. However, ritual agency was more diversified in the ancient world and religious authority more widely dispersed.19 Our notion of what “religion” entails may not be entirely relevant to the variety of practices and beliefs or the diffusion of religious authority that characterized religion at Rome. From Roman Religion to Religion at Rome To this point, this chapter has focused more or less on religion in the public realm. Arguably, this focus is too narrow to capture the full spectrum of religious activity in the Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 203 204 Themes in Roman Society and Culture city of Rome and beyond. What about, for instance, the religious practices and beliefs of those inhabitants of Rome that civic life largely left on the sidelines—freedpersons, slaves, and women? Or the many foreigners living at Rome and practising religion? And what about Roman citizens such as St. Paul of Tarsus, who did not (as far as we can tell) worship any “Roman” gods? These questions are not to suggest that civic religion at Rome was fundamentally different from what “ordinary” people did or believed. Most people held the same beliefs in the power of the gods over their lives, regardless of their respective political or social status. In the same way that the Arval Brother’s vows addressed the well-being of the emperor and the political community, concerns for well-being (be it personal physical health or economic success or that of family and friends) underpinned the countless prayers, sacrifices, vows, and dedications that the freeborn, freedpersons, slaves, and foreigners—both men and women—would perform every day. Historians’ focus on the civic aspects of religion in the city of Rome has sometimes obscured the real, and often independent, religious responsibilities and contributions of, for example, women sacrificing or making dedications to the gods (such as those in Box 9.2).20 Furthermore, we should not assume that the religious institutions of the civic community were of no interest to its individual members. Epigraphic evidence suggests, for example, that people in Rome enquired with the pontifical college in cases regarding the transfer of corpses to a new tomb (CIL 6.2120).21 The authority of the quindecimviri extended to those cults that had been introduced to Rome on the recommendation of the Sibylline Books, and the college was consulted, for instance, in matters pertaining to the cult Compare Chapter 7, pp. 146–7, of Mater Magna (“Great Mother”), which had been adopted by on the adoption of the cult of Rome in 204 BCE (CIL 10.3698, 3699; compare CIL 13.1751). Mater Magna. We do not know whether such evidence indicates a common practice or whether only a few people in Rome, Italy, or Roman provincial communities took the effort to consult the authorities. In fact, the latter is much more likely, since religion in the Roman Mediterranean was a predominantly local and regional phenomenon: deities had different names, cities patronized different cults, and different ritual norms and expectations existed from one place to another. When Pliny the Younger (Ep. 10.49–50; compare Gai. Inst. 2.1–11), as governor of PontusBithynia, found that the local procedure of temple dedication in the town of Nicomedia was different from that in Rome, the emperor and pontifex maximus Trajan assured him that, in this particular instance, Roman custom was inapplicable to “foreign soil.” Elsewhere, Trajan confirms that it would be hard on provincials if they were obliged to consult the pontiffs in Rome about tomb transfers (Ep. 10. 68–9). Compatible underlying beliefs and ritual patterns are discernible and similar religious practices can be identified across the Roman empire: witness the curses from two of the empire’s western provinces with which this chapter began or the vows and sacrifices that people undertook across the Roman Mediterranean. Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome Yet it is advisable to conceive, as this chapter does, of religion at Rome as the local religious practices and beliefs of Rome’s inhabitants and their diffusion across the empire rather than as the totality of the religious cults and beliefs of the empire as a whole. It is important to understand that ancient polytheism did not recognize conceptual and spatial separation of secular and sacred realms, as we tend to do. The divine world densely populated the world of the living: the gods inhabited temples and shrines, crossroad altars and cult niches along the streets, and domestic spaces, shops, basilicas, and crowded piazzas. Divinities were carried along in processions, gazed out at passersby from wall paintings, appeared on reliefs and altars, and literally accompanied people wherever they went since everyone carried coins or wore rings, brooches, fibulae, and amulets with images of the deities of their choice. An examination of Figure 9.2 can perhaps give us a glimpse into this world. This piece, painted on one side of the entrance to a shop on Pompeii’s Via dell’Abbondanza, shows a procession of 18 wreathed figures. In front of the procession, four male litterbearers clad in white tunics with purple mantles carry an enthroned statue of Mater Magna with turreted crown and lion cubs at her feet. The group appears to have momentarily paused to pay homage to the god Bacchus, whose bust is on display in a small shrine on the far left. (It was common for processions to follow the major features of a town’s or city’s sacred topography, such as the temples of other deities.) Note how both Mater Magna, whose lifelike appearance denies the lifelessness we tend to ascribe to statues, and the three worshippers behind her litter reverently turn towards Bacchus. They are clad in white and carry ritual objects, which may give away their identity as officials in the Mater Magna’s cult. Are these three figures male? Behind them follows a group of what seem to be female adult worshippers and children in coloured attire: the painting carefully reproduces the gender differentiation and hierarchy that must have been conspicuous elements of cult life in the ancient world. What emotions and concerns do these worshippers have as they follow the throne of Mater Magna? Were the shopowner commissioning these paintings and his family particularly attached to the goddess? Were they hoping for divine protection of their commercial and domestic fortunes? Are they perhaps portrayed in this painting? And why is Bacchus included? The god had a sanctuary outside Pompeii, which the procession in this painting is seen passing by. On the other side of the shop’s doorway is a painting of Venus Pompeiana (“Pompeian Venus”), Cupid, and a group of Amorini; above the doorway the painter has also depicted Jupiter, Apollo, Diana, and Mercury. We happen to know that a statue of Mater Magna was set up in the porch of the Pompeian Temple of Venus Pompeiana. In nearby Herculaneum in 76 CE, Vespasian restored the local Temple of Mater Magna, which had been damaged by the earthquake of 62 CE (CIL 10.1406). The painting thus invites a multitude of associations as the painter encourages viewers to link the scenes to their own experiences both in the local sacred landscape of Pompeii and with a view to the wider imperial world. Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 205 206 Themes in Roman Society and Culture Figure 9.2 Procession scene painted on one side of the entrance to shop IX.7.1, Via dell’Abbondanza, Pompeii, before 79 CE. Photo courtesy of Drew Baker, www.pompeiiinpictures.com. But the parallels and points of contact between civic and non-civic religious activities in the city of Rome may hide a deeper-seated difference. People’s concerns often pertained to their own affairs, not necessarily to those of the state. There existed a rather unregulated religious field in which shared practices and common beliefs concerning the gods did not necessarily translate into a homogenous field of civic religion. It is only quite recently that scholars have begun to consider the history of Roman religion, at least in part, as a result of imperial expansion and the consequent creation of a culturally heterogeneous empire, the latter being reflected in the diversity of religious cults and activities at Rome. As the Mediterranean metropolis par excellence and home to perhaps close to a million inhabitants, the urban space of imperial Rome provided a backdrop to the most variable forms of cultural and religious exchange and communication. Only continuous migration sustained Rome’s grandeur, but this constant also accelerated the problems of accommodation and cohabitation of different human populations, deities, and cults in the city. By the early imperial period, there was already a perception of the capital as the preferred destination of all the deities contained by Rome’s empire (Ov. Fast. 4.270). Supplementary evidence supports this sentiment: dedications and sanctuaries in the city of Rome to deities from as far away as Gaul, Germany, and Britain; Northern Africa and Egypt; Syria and Palestine; and Thrace and the Danube region populated a diversified urban landscape. Consideration of civic religion is too narrow to account for the rich and varied religious life of the city. It is for this reason that the phrase “religion at Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome 207 Rome” is preferred to “Roman religion” in this chapter; the latter suggests a unified system of Roman religious practices and beliefs that misrepresents the reality. To be sure, the arrival of new deities and cults was always a prominent feature of Rome’s urban landscape.22 For instance, in 292 BCE the cult of the Greek healing god Aesculapius was imported from his healing sanctuary at Epidaurus after the Sibylline Books recommended him as a suitable remedy to the plague affecting the city (Livy 10.47.6–7; Per. 11). In 204 BCE, on the brink of victory in the Second Punic War, the cult of the Mater Magna (which we have already encountered at Pompeii and Herculaneum) was fetched from the East when a prodigy in the form of frequent showers of stone resulted in another consultation of the Sibylline Books (Livy 29.14.10–14). The ancient gods, together with their worshippers, travelled widely and freely across the Mediterranean. These imports were quickly accommodated to the populace’s diverse ritual needs. Dedications since the third century BCE document the gratitude that worshippers felt for Aesculapius after the restoration of their health, and individual cases of temple incubation in his sanctuary on the Tiber Island are attested. The pull of his sanctuary was such that construction work could occasionally be financed entirely from donations and fees received from ordinary worshippers (CIL 12.800). The case of the Mater Magna poses a similar scenario: second-century BCE statuettes of her divine consort, Attis, in her sanctuary on the Palatine Hill anticipate his official invitation into civic cult in the first century CE. Clearly, the institution of an official cult invited people to pursue their own variations on the established theme, resulting in the further diversification of religion. Civic religion would therefore create the infrastructure in which a differentiated religious life evolved. Roman epitaphs, which generally include the name (and sometimes the age) of the deceased and the names of those who set up the funerary monument, also illustrate the variability of religious beliefs in the metropolis. Epitaphs are usually dedicated to the Di Manes, who were understood to be the spirits of the dead but were also seen as the gods of the underworld—as the word di (“gods”) suggests (see, for example, CIL 6.13388). In Roman antiquity there circulated several learned and often incompatible opinions on what the word manes actually signified. One view was that the dead were euphemistically Primary Source Box 9.3: CISem. 2.159. To the Di Manes. Abgarus, son of Eutyches, from Petra (has set up this monument) for Abdaretas, son of Esteches, his blood relative. He lived for 30 years. For him, who deserved this. This is the nefesh of Abdaretas. Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 208 Themes in Roman Society and Culture called “the good gods,” probably because the dead were known to have the ability, and sometimes the intention, to harm the living (Festus Gloss. Lat. 4.266). Additional sentiments expressed in epitaphs provide fascinating information about the urban population’s adoption of the new and retention of the old religious attitudes. Consider the epitaph in Box 9.3, from the late first or early second century CE. Neither the deceased nor his relative bears a Roman name; they hail from Nabataean Petra and can be identified as eastern migrants to Rome without Roman citizen status. Yet the epitaph adopts the local Roman convention of funerary commemoration, including the adaptation of the local belief in the Di Manes. Even so, the bilingual inscription ends in Aramaic, with the identification of the tomb as the nefesh (literally, “life,” or “soul”) of the deceased, thereby importing beliefs concerning death and the afterlife that were prevalent in their homeland. Or consider the sarcophagus of Marcus Aurelius Prosenes, a freedman of the imperial household. This tomb features traditional urban Roman iconography and an inscription documenting the deceased’s impressive career, which culminated in the position of chamberlain under the Antonine emperors. On the top rim of the sarcophagus’s right small side, Prosenes’s ex-slave Ampelius carved a second inscription that gives the date of death as 217 CE and states that his former master was “received unto God”—a clear if rather surreptitiously placed indication of the Christian belief in the afterlife that Prosenes and his ex-slave, both apparently members of Rome’s growing Christian community, expected to experience.23 Epitaphs also constitute a dialogue concerning contemporary views on death and the status of the dead, ranging from assertions of the existence of the Di Manes to denials.24 For example, in an epitaph from late first-century CE Rome, a couple professes their belief in the Di Manes after their two daughters, deceased at the respective ages of 9 and 15, had appeared to them in a dream and reassured their parents of their post-mortal existence among the Di Manes. As a result, the parents erected a tombstone with busts of their children and the inscription “You who read this and doubt that the Manes exist . . . call upon us and you will understand” (CIL 6.27365). One may compare a similar sentiment expressed Primary Source Box 9.4: CIL 6.14672. There exists in Hades no dinghy, no ferryman Charon, no Aikaos holding the keys, no dog Cerberus. No, all of us who are dead below have become bones and ashes but nothing else whatsoever . . . Do not grace this stele with myrrh and garlands; it is a stone. Do not feed the fire; the expenditure is in vain. If you have something, let me partake in it while I am still alive. Making ashes drunk you turn them to mud, and the dead does not drink. Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome by the Roman poet Propertius (4.7.1) towards the end of the first century BCE: “The Manes are something; death does not put an end to everything.” In contrast, on another funerary monument (see Box 9.4) a freedman named Marcus Antonius Encolpus commemorates his deceased spouse of 40 years and stipulates who else may have her or his ashes placed in the tomb. The inscription then switches from Latin to Greek to divulge philosophical sentiments that deny the existence of the underworld or a life in the beyond and question the necessity of funerary ritual such as libation and sacrifice to the deceased at the tomb. Given the bewildering range of deities at Rome, how did people actually choose deities to worship? Scholars have often assumed that there was an expectation to worship a fairly well-established pantheon of particularly “Roman” gods. It is true that the Roman senatorial elite generally displayed rather conservative religious tastes in public dedications. Moreover, there are no overtly foreign deities in sight in the Arval Brothers’ protocols. But are the religious tastes of the Roman political elites truly indicative of wider trends? To answer this question, we might consider the evidence available from the Roman communities of Pompeii and Herculaneum. Thanks to their entombment and consequent preservation by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE, these towns provide a glimpse at the domestic religious practices of their inhabitants.25 In several houses, domestic shrines and small cult niches have been preserved, the former usually in the living areas of the house and the latter in the kitchen and work Figure 9.3 Domestic sacrificial scene, wall painting beside a cult niche for domestic worship, so-called House of Sutoria Primigenia (I.13.4), Pompeii, before 79 CE. Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 209 210 Themes in Roman Society and Culture areas. In some cases, entire ensembles of statuettes of the deities worshipped in these domestic contexts have survived; more rarely, scenes of actual domestic worship are portrayed, as in Figure 9.3. In this painting, two oversized lares Compare Chapter 5, p. 97, on the familiares, the protective deities of the household’s familia (of familia. whom only one is shown here), flank the other participants and are in all likelihood the prime addressees of the ritual depicted. At the centre of the sacrificial scene, the master of the household, the toga partly drawn over his head (capite velato), sprinkles incense from a flat bowl over a burning altar; one may compare the Arval Brothers’ sacrifice. On the left stands his wife, wearing the stola typical of Roman matrons. A double-flute player accompanies the sacrifice, and 12 males clad in white tunics, probably representing the household’s familia of slaves and freedmen, make identical gestures of reverence. Individuals of different ages are shown: there is a thirteenth male figure, a boy standing immediately to the right of and intently observing the sacrifice. This detail points to the reality that the religious socialization of the young was achieved through participation in the ritual, either through active involvement—for instance, as double-flute player or sacrificial assistant—or through observation and close adherence to the ritual behaviour of others in the group.26 This painting has sometimes been interpreted as the depiction of a religious festival, when the entire household would sacrifice together. Yet there may be more to this painting than meets the eye. A freeborn Roman had his or her own divine guardian—males had their Genius and females their Juno. These guardian deities were often depicted worshipping at the altar in domestic contexts. Therefore, are the two central figures (the sacrificers) perhaps also the implied recipients of worship, representing the Genius and Juno of the master and his wife? The household’s slaves and freedpersons frequently made dedications to these two deities (for instance, CIL 10.860, 861). This suggests that the religious scene, painted on the wall of a kitchen where the house’s slaves worked and worshipped, must also be read as further reflection and reinforcement of the social hierarchies of the household rather than as a mere “realistic” depiction of household cult. This is not to say that domestic worship was thoroughly regulated. Rather, it mirrored the decentralized religious landscape outside. Dedications by slaves and ex-slaves in the houses’ working quarters exist to suggest some autonomy of religious choice (for instance, CIL 10.882, 930; AE 1980, 247). In addition, two issues deserve closer consideration. First, the deities chosen by the inhabitants of these houses, while encompassing a wide range of divine choices, resemble those worshipped in the local pantheons of Pompeii and Herculaneum. But the ensembles of deities in these domestic shrines and niches are almost never identical, and the inhabitants mix and match more traditional deities with relative newcomers. For instance, the Egyptian goddess Isis, who had an old temple in Pompeii, is represented fairly prominently, but Venus, Cupid, Jupiter, Apollo, Diana, Mercury (all of whom the painter of Figure 9.2 depicts), and many more are equally present. No conspicuous guiding principle Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome can be identified: whoever assembled his or her domestic pantheon (and there is often more than one shrine in a house, with different ensembles of deities) appears to have picked and chosen the deities rather freely from a range of locally acceptable divine commodities. Second, the number of statuettes found in houses is relatively limited, averaging three to six deities per place of worship. This does not necessarily imply that worshippers would turn to only a few divinities. After all, public temples, shrines, and altars provided countless additional avenues for worship. However, these figures do suggest that people selected their religious portfolio carefully and according to very particular needs, predilections, family or other traditions, personal tastes, and political or cultural trends. Religious activity was therefore often a matter of personal preference, although the nature of individual observance might be guided by the infrastructure of civic religion. This system encouraged a remarkable diversity of cult at Rome and in Roman communities. However, the civic authorities sometimes attempted to impose their political will on the increasingly differentiated landscape of religion at Rome: witness only the senatorial suppression of certain rituals in the cult of Bacchus (the so-called Bacchanalian affair) in Rome and Italy in 186 BCE; the expulsion of the worshippers of the “foreign” god Sabazius, Jews, and Chaldeans (“astrologers”) from Rome in 139 BCE by official edict; the repeated destruction of altars and small shrines dedicated to the Egyptian deity Isis on the Capitoline Hill in the 50s BCE; or the empire-wide persecution of Christians in the third century CE. Ampelius’s inscription on Prosenes’s sarcophagus is placed almost as if to hide this confession of Christian allegiance from unobservant passersby, who would rather notice Prosenes’s career. In a political climate where people were persecuted for belonging to Christ-groups, which were notorious for their alleged disloyalty to the authorities and for the various crimes they were reputed to commit—charges the Christians would deny—people like Prosenes and Ampelius had to be on their guard.27 Roman polytheism was not tolerant, but bouts of suppressing cults and practices were normally short-lived. The urban sacred space could not be policed adequately, and Prosenes at least managed not only to survive but also to enjoy a respectable career at the imperial court. While the persecution of the members of Christ-groups was as much owed to their beliefs as to their disobedience to political authority, the general disapproval of foreign cults and practices is easily located in the Roman elite sources, which distinguish between religio, an acceptable, traditional form of religious behaviour, and superstitio, the deviant religious behaviour of the ethnographic “other.” The foreign religious practices and deities migrating to Rome were thus denounced as “superstition.”28 Of course, deciding what belonged to each category was always at the discretion of the beholder (compare Box 9.5). Although the term superstitio was generally indicative of a dismissive attitude towards a set of actions, there were practices that were seen as harmful and threatening to the existing socio-political order. The cursing of others provides an example of religious behaviour that was considered antisocial. As we saw at the outset of this chapter, Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 211 212 Themes in Roman Society and Culture Political History Box 9.5: Domitian, Divine Protection in the Year of the Four Emperors, and Religious Pluralism in Imperial Rome On 19 December 69 CE on the Capitoline Hill, the future emperor Domitian narrowly escaped a siege by soldiers of then emperor Vitellius. Disguised in the linen tunic characteristic of religious officials and initiates in the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis, Domitian joined a procession of the deity’s followers, who were collecting alms in the streets (Suet. Dom. 1.2). His rebuilding of the sanctuary of Isis in the Campus Martius following a fire in 80 CE has been seen as an indirect testament to the emperor’s indebtedness to the goddess. Yet Isis was not the only deity to protect Domitian from the soldiers. The warden of the temple of the Capitoline Triad proffered shelter to Domitian after the Vitellians had taken control of the hill. Domitian’s later allegiance to the Roman god Jupiter materialized not only in the reconstruction of the Capitoline Temple but also in the addition of a shrine to Jupiter Conservator (“Preserver”) on the spot where Domitian had received shelter (it was later replaced by a shrine to Jupiter Custos [“Guardian”]). The Arval Brothers’ vows to Jupiter Optimus Maximus highlight the Capitoline god’s role in lending divine legitimacy to an emperor’s rule. But the Capitoline cults of Jupiter Conservator and Jupiter Custos, distinct from that of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, also emphasize the almost symbiotic relationship between the emperor and his guardian god (Tac. Hist. 2.74). Domitian and the many divinities dwelling on the Capitoline Hill serve to recapitulate some of this chapter’s salient topics. First, different religious traditions coexisted in the city of Rome, an occurrence epitomized by the Roman god Jupiter on the one hand and the migrant cult of Isis on the other. In the early second century CE, the biographer Suetonius (Dom. 1.2) still reflects elite sentiments when he characterizes the followers of Isis, the Isiaci, as worshippers of a superstition. Second, a bewildering array of differentiated cults existed. Worshippers such as Domitian did not choose one deity over another but incorporated the worship of both, and many more, into their religious portfolios. Third, Jupiter Optimus Maximus exemplifies the civic face of religion at Rome. But Domitian’s example also proves that a more personal, even privileged, relationship between an individual and his or her deity could be envisaged, collapsing the division between civic and individual or between public and private. Therefore, we would be wise not to look for one Roman religion but to appreciate the plurality of religion at Rome. employing the help of the divine world was a common device to attack one’s enemies, further one’s own aims, or retaliate against injustice. Curses aimed to “bind” the victim or parts of the victim’s body—the Latin word defigo (“to transfix, affix”) gives us the technical term defixio(nes), “binding spells” or “curses.” A leaden tablet with the person’s name would be attached to tombs, buried in graves, or deposited in springs, wells, or caverns Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome to deliver the object to the gods of the underworld, the dead, or demons. Curse tablets could also be hidden in the house of the target (see the famous example of the mysterious death of Germanicus, the adopted son of the emperor Tiberius; Tac. Ann. 2.69) or left in sanctuaries to make the local deity carry out the practitioner’s wishes. The targets of such curses could be various. Litigants might aim to bind their opponents so that they might fall silent in court and be incapable of rendering their case; athletes, gladiators, and charioteers might target their competitors (and their horses); tradesmen might bind the trades and skills of others to make their businesses fail; and women could be rendered unable to love or have sexual intercourse with anyone but the one who commissioned the curse.29 Modern scholars sometimes classify such curses as examples of “magic.” The definition of magic in contrast to religion proves elusive, however, and the identification of an action as one or the other, as in the case of religio and superstitio, usually depends on the perspective of the speaker. In spite of these difficulties, magia nonetheless became legally actionable in the course of the Empire.30 For all that the religious history of Rome appeared to be one of adoption, adaptation, innovation, and diversification, it was also at times marked by suspicion and disdain of the relationships others claimed to have with the gods. Summary Religion at Rome is sometimes understood as “civic religion,” the state-approved ritual activities (vows, sacrifices, games, temple building and repair) undertaken for the welfare of the broader Roman community and overseen by members of official priesthoods, magistrates, and the senate. Concern for precision of ritual action (a concern which is not always attested) should not obscure the adaptability and significance of civic religion; the Romans were not mired down in a cycle of ritual for ritual’s sake. Instead, the relationship with the divine was vital and uncertain, and the welfare and success of the Roman community depended upon it. Civic responsibility for nurturing this relationship was therefore often placed in the hands of the same people who occupied positions of political power. Indeed, the effort and expense poured into civic religion not only demonstrated its importance to the political community of Rome, but it also created a situation that further strengthened the relationship between political and religious authority. For example, religious activities and buildings depended upon both state funds and the private benefactions of the Roman elite. However, to consider only civic religion at Rome is to miss much of the diversity of the city’s religious activity. The rituals of “ordinary” people, many of whom were immigrants or descendants of immigrants with their own religious traditions, were varied and creative. Even the worship of civic deities by ordinary people diversified the nature of those deities’ cults. Religion at Rome was therefore innovative and composed of innumerable cults and rituals, decentralized and largely unregulated, and the matter of personal choice. This is not to say that non-civic religious activity rivalled civic religion or that religion at Rome was an either–or situation. However, non-civic religious activity Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 213 214 Themes in Roman Society and Culture sometimes came under the negative scrutiny of civic religious and political authorities when it appeared that non-state cults might undermine the political and social hierarchies that civic religious activity mirrored, supported, and justified. Questions for Review and Discussion 1. The Latin term religio is not exactly synonymous with the English term religion. What does each term suggest, and how do the terms differ from each other? 2. To what extent would the ancient notion of sacerdos comply with modern ideas of priesthood, and what are the differences between the two concepts? 3. Religion at Rome is sometimes defined as the system of civic religion. What are the advantages of such an approach, and what are its pitfalls? 4. Discuss the connection between religious and political authority at Rome. Why did members of the political elite, eventually including the emperor, tend to occupy the most important priesthoods of civic religion? 5. What active role could women, children, or foreigners take during religious rituals? Suggested Reading Beard, M., J. North, and S. Price, eds. 1998. Religions of Rome. Vol. 1: A History. Vol. 2: A Sourcebook. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. The first volume is a comprehensive history of Roman religion from its archaic origins to late antiquity. The second volume offers a generous selection of pertinent literary texts and inscriptions, as well as illustrations of coins, reliefs, frescoes, and architectural remains. Bendlin, A. 2000. “Looking beyond the Civic Compromise: Religious Pluralism in Late Republican Rome.” In Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome: Evidence and Experience, edited by E. Bispham and C.J. Smith, 115–35, 167–71. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. This article proffers a critique of the scholarly focus on civic religion. Feeney, D. 1998. Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Feeney considers religious practice and belief in the context of the literature of the late Republic and the Augustan period. North, J.A. 2000. Roman Religion (Greece and Rome New Surveys in the Classics 30). Oxford: Oxford University Press for the Classical Association. North provides a comprehensive introduction to Roman civic religion (the Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 9 Bendlin | Religion at Rome sacra publica), its functionaries, and its cults. Scheid introduces the major elements of Roman civic religion. Rives, J.B. 2007. Religion in the Roman Empire. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Rives provides an excellent introduction to religion in the Roman Empire, focusing on the most salient elements of religious practice and belief. Scott Ryberg, I. 1955. Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art (Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 22). Rome: American Academy in Rome. This study embodies invaluable insights derived from the consideration of religious practice as depicted on Roman monuments. Rüpke, J. 2007. Religion of the Romans. Cambridge: Polity Press. This book is a comprehensive consideration of religion at Rome and modern ideas about Roman religion. , ed. 2007. A Companion to Roman Religion. Oxford: Blackwell. This volume comprises specialized treatments of aspects of Roman religion and modern interpretations. Scheid, J. 2003. An Introduction to Roman Religion. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Turcan, R. 1988. Religion Romaine. 1: Les Dieux. 2: Le Culte (Iconography of Religions 17: Greece and Rome 1). Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill. Like Scott Ryberg’s work, Turcan demonstrates the value of studying iconographic material for understanding Roman ritual. Warrior, V.M. 2006. Roman Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Warrior provides a basic introduction to Roman civic religion. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 All translations in this chapter are mine. This defixio is found in Gager (1992: 74–5). See, for example, Plin. Ep. 10.35, 10.100. See North (1998) and, more generally, Beard (1998). In fact, the phrase pax deorum occurs infrequently in the sources. For a critical reassessment of the phrase’s significance in the study of Roman religion, see Santangelo (2011). There is a lively scholarly debate as to whether a more comprehensive notion of “belief” is applicable to religion at Rome. For a recent assessment, see Versnel (2011: 6 7 539–59), which, although addressing Greek religion, is closer to the view held here than Feeney (1998: 12–46) or King (2003) is. For Roman popular beliefs about the gods as arbiters of justice and moral behaviour, see Morgan (2007). On Roman sacrifice, see Beard, North, and Price (1998: vol. 2, 148–65); Scheid (2003: 79–110); and Bendlin (2012). For sacrificial imagery, see also Scott Ryberg (1955) and Turcan (1988: vol. 2). For other instances of such “divine qualities” from the republican period, see Clark (2007). Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press 215 216 Themes in Roman Society and Culture 8 The translation of divus with the adjective deified, though widespread, is incorrect. 9 The deification of the emperor and the status of the so-called imperial cult in the Roman empire are still controversial. For an introduction, see Beard, North, and Price (1998: vol. 1, 140–9, 348–62); Bosworth (1999); Rives (2007: 148–56); and Galinsky (2011). On the local character of the imperial cult, see Mellor (1992). 10 Crawford (1996: no. 22, lines 5–6). 11 On the Roman festivals and games in particular, see Scullard (1981). 12 Compare North (1976) and Bendlin (2013). 13 On the Christianization of the urban Roman elites since the mid-fourth century CE and its consequences, see Cameron (2011). Sandwell (2005) contextualizes the imperial legislative measures of the fourth century that outlawed various “illicit” religious practices—from astrology, divination, and “magic” to sacrifices, visiting temples, or worshipping images. 14 Crawford (1996: no. 25, chs. 70–1) provides an example of the expectation that magistrates would personally finance games or theatrical shows in the Roman colony of Urso in Spain: the minimum contribution expected of them was 2,000 sesterces, more than what the colonial administration was obliged to contribute. Magistrates in Roman Pompeii were expected to pay for games or building projects during their year of office (CIL 10.829, 854-7, 1064). 15 On such temple dedications, see Orlin (1997). 16 Against that long-held view, see Beard, North, and Price (1998: vol. 1, 117–34). 17 See Packer (2010). 18 For a detailed overview of the different civic priesthoods and their duties, see Beard and North (1990: esp. 20–1); Beard, North, and Price (1998: vol. 1, 18–30, 99–108); North 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 (2000: esp. 23–4); and Scheid (2003: 111– 46, esp. 134–5). Rüpke (2008) lists and discusses all known religious officials in the city of Rome. There is controversy among scholars as to whether one should use the modern term priest in discussions of Graeco-Roman religion. Compare the views of Beard and North (1990: 1–14) with those of Henrichs (2008: esp. 1–9). But see Schultz (2006) and Flemming (2008). For the religious role of the Roman matron during the festival of the Matronalia, see Dolansky (2011). See Beard, North, and Price (1998: vol. 2, no. 8.3) for a translation of this inscription. Compare Orlin (2010). CIL (6.8498). See Beard, North, and Price (1998: vol. 2, no. 12.7c[i]) for a translation and Markschies (1999: Plate 1) for an illustration of the sarcophagus. For discussion, see Lampe (2003: 330–4). For the wide range of funerary practices and beliefs, see the collections and discussion in Lattimore (1962); Toynbee (1971); and Hope (2007). On domestic worship, see also Bodel (2008). On senators’ religion, see Várhelyi (2010). On this aspect, compare Mantle (2002) and Prescendi (2010). For the charge of belonging to the nomen Christianum and court proceedings against Christiani, see Plin. Ep. 10.96–7. For a discussion of the legal foundation of these persecutions and the charges raised against Christians, see Ste. Croix (2006: 105–45). Compare Gordon (2008). For a wide range of texts and discussion, see, for example, Tomlin (1988); Gager (1992); and Versnel (2010). The curse tablets from Roman Britain are available at http://curses. csad.ox.ac.uk/index.shtml. Compare Rives (2011, esp. 102–03). Final Proof Pages - For Personal Use Only. © Oxford University Press