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Roman Religion

• Message 1.Μύ

  Posted by SafricanAndy (U7173046) on Monday, 1st December 2008

  There's something that I just haven't been able to get my head around, the fact that the Romans had several "religions" or cults, but that they were all accepted. They had their native pantheon, they had household deities which could include ancestors, they had some cults from the east, they had the cult of the emperors etc and sometimes an individual could be a follower of more than one (excluding the latter obviously, when it was compulsory)... Is this something that was intrinsic to the Roman mind? The polytheistic mind? How could a Roman literally believe in Jupiter, for example, but also worship Cybele or Demeter? I understand that the Roman concept of religions was one of duty and that morality had little to do with it, that was the domain of philosophy in those days, but certainly it must have entered their minds that there couldn't possibly be as many gods that human culture has developed and that gods from other regions were most likely the same deities that they worshipped, under different names...What was the driving force behind their religious practices, the underlying psychological need, if they, or some of them at least, did NOT actually believe in the mumbo jumbo of all the rituals they performed?

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• Message 2

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  Posted by TonyG (U1830405) on Monday, 1st December 2008

  This is a question which keeps academics busy writing endless papers. The main thing to try to keep in mind is that our modern view of religion is very different indeed from the ancient concept. Roman religion was not so much about belief, but about ritual. Life in ancient Rome was very public and being seen to conform in every way was important - hence the problems with Jews and Christians who professed an entirely different sort of religion which was centred on belief. For Romans, participatiopn in a public religiou sceremont was part of thier cultre. Observing the rites proper;y was important - belief in was less so.
  
  Whether individual Roman actually believed all the stories is open to debate, but seems to me to be unlikely. Myths and legfends played a big part in the Graeco-Roman culture, but it could be that the educated citizens saw them as just that - myths and legends. Yet that would not stop them participating in ritual observance of what we would call religious ceremonies.
  
  The Romans certainly recognised that local gods of other people were similar to their own and often adopted them, or renamed them to identify with their own pantheon. It is also certainly true that priests coul dbe devotees of more than one cult with no apparent contradiction.
  
  It is a very difficult concept to get one's head round. The imperial cult is a case in point. The Romans knew th eemperor was human, so could not be worshipped as divine, but he was emperor because the gods had looked favourably on him and he was close to them and often descended from, or had been adopted by, a former emperor who had been deified after death. So he was nearly divine, but he was human. To get round this, offerings would be made to the gods on behalf of the emperor, or to the emperor and the spirit of Roma, or to the spirit or "genius" of the emperor, but not to the man himself. Confused? Me too.
  
  I think it was Cicero who once demanded that a court case or other public meeting where he expected things to go against him should be delayed because the gods had told him that it would be wrong to proceed (I paraphrase here and am going from memory, so the details may be wrong). Yet the point was that Cicero believed that it was not in his interests for the meeting to proceed. Citing divine displeasure might have been cynicism, but it might equally have been Cicero's view that he knew that (a) what he wanted was in his best interests, (b) he was working for the good of Rome, so what was in his interests was in Rome's interest, (c) if it was in Rome's interest, the gods must approve of it.
  Roman religion at work.
  

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  Posted by colinclout (U1717776) on Monday, 1st December 2008

  Keep in mind that the Roman of 300 BC was not the same Roman as one from 50 BC. You are grouping together all the changes in religion that took place over quite a few centuries .... People from a thousand years in the future may mistakenly look back at PM Blair and say that he hid his Catholic beliefs because it was illegal for a Catholic to hold public office in the UK.
  
  I am not claiming any great knowledge, but I believe that your feelings were shared by some Romans too. By the first century BC, many people did not like some of the new gods, traditions, and mores. It wasn't universally accepted. Especially in the rural areas. Cicero laments the loss of old ways.
  
  But the Emperor cults commenced only after Julius Caesar (and then Octavius) were deified in the first century ... the Lares and Penates didn't have official temples and weren't worshiped in public. You can't group it all together.
  
  The Romans believed in Jupiter ... they had quite a few names for him, such as Diespater (another actual name for Jupiter that also means Day-father), and many beliefs about him. This allowed great flexibility when they met another culture. For example, I recall reading that the native Italians/Romans had folk stories of a strong-man who was the son of one of the gods. The Greek name Herakles became one of the most popular names for this strong-man in Italy, so he became known as Heracles. He was not a native god/hero, but he had an equivalent in Italy, so the Italians were not bothered by the semantics of a name. Actually, in Ancient Rome there were two gods named Heracles, each with different attributes ... in addition to the Heracles strongman, there was also Heracles the god/protector of Travellers (possibly traders too?). Roman religion changed over time. They were a small-time people who slowly grew to rule over an immense swath of territory.
  
  A Roman going on a trip would pray to Heracles. It's not so much the name or even the ritual that was important, but the belief and engaging themselves in some ritual that is important. Plus the Italians and even the Romans were open to trying anything. To win a football game, to get rich, to get married (or to have a safe journey), they would pray to the big toe on their left foot. Even today, in Italy, there are some people in the South of Italy called Assisti - they are not Roma fortunetellers, but they are traditional spirit-guides who communicate with spirits ... spirits who reveal the numbers for the Italian Lottery (google Assisti Lottery and see for yourself). I don't think the Church likes them, but neither does the Church approve of Carnivale ... but big parties like Carnivale, winning the Lottery; these are big things in the life of everyone. Romans prayed to their gods to be in harmony with them, with life - to have a good life. If Demeter helped them or Jupiter or Heracles, the important thing was to have some sweet moments, some moments of participation in life. Some Romans found that with foreign gods.
  
  I don't believe most Romans worshipped all their gods. Most probably believed in the Lares and Penates (the household gods), but belief didn't require them to do anything - no temples or priests or rituals except for one or two vague traditions that I recall. As for all the newer gods like Mithras and Demeter ... and that God whom that chap Jesus or Emmanuel or whatever he called himself was always talking about, not everyone believed in all those gods. I don't know much about Mithras, but he was popular in the Military - he wasn't for everyone. Same with the other new gods. Different Gods fit into different situations. Different Saints today fit into different situations.

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  Posted by SafricanAndy (U7173046) on Monday, 1st December 2008

  It's quite fascinating, this seemingly apparent dichotomy...outward vs inward belief/convictions. I mean, the pious emperor Marcus Aurelius, who was a Saline priest at one stage, could be so devout but also a follower of Stoicism at the same time, which had it's own "cosmology"...He could offer sacrifices to Mars, but also view the universe as an indivisable Whole etc...And then when he pitches up in Greece, he is initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, which promised some form of afterlife to the devotee...and yet also believe, from his writings, that the soul might not survive physical death (he toys with this idea in his Meditations)...Or maybe there is no dichotomy here...
  
  I can't imagine performing the ritual of, say, Christianity, and then Islam the next day, and then on fridays i'll meditate Zen-style....etc etc

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  Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Monday, 1st December 2008

  Mon, 01 Dec 2008 23:21 GMT, in reply to SafricanAndy in message 4
  
  It's interesting that many surviving altars suggest that a lot of Roman religion was not so much worshipping the gods as making deals with them. Many surviving altars were erected in return for gods performing favours; one for Hadrian's Wall has a soldier setting up his monument in thanks for an obscure British god ensuring his promotion!
  
  There's a quote from one of Terry Pratchett's novels, 'Pyramids', which may be relevant here. Although a parody of Ancient Egypt, I think it may reflect something of the Roman attitude to religion:
  
  The crumbling scrolls of Knot said that the great orange sun
  was eaten every evening by the sky goddess, What, who saved one
  pip in time to grow a fresh sun for next morning. And Dios knew
  that this was so.
  The Book of Staying in The Pit said that the sun was the Eye
  of Yay, toiling across the sky each day in His endless search for
  his toenails. And Dios knew that this was so.
  The secret rituals of the Smoking Mirror held that the sun
  was in fact a round hole in the spinning blue soap bubble of the
  goddess Nesh, opening into the fiery real world beyond, and the
  stars were the holes that the rain comes through. And Dios knew
  that this, also, was so.
  Folk myth said the sun was a ball of fire which circled the
  world every day, and that the world itself was carried through the
  everlasting void on the back of an enormous turtle. And Dios also
  knew that this was so, although it gave him a bit of trouble.
  And Dios knew that Net was the Supreme God, and that Fon was
  the Supreme God, and so were Hast, Set, Bin, Sot, Ic, Dhek, and
  Ptooie; that Herpetine Triskeles alone ruled the world of the
  dead, and so did Syncope, and Silur the Catfish-Headed God, and
  Orexis-Nupt.
  Dios was maximum high priest to a national religion that had
  fermented and accreted and bubbled for more than seven thousand
  years and never threw a god away in case it turned out to be
  useful. He knew that a great many mutually-contradictory things
  were all true. If they were not, then ritual and belief were as
  nothing, and if they were nothing, then the world did not exist.
  Μύ

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  Posted by SafricanAndy (U7173046) on Tuesday, 2nd December 2008

  Anglo-Norman,
  
  Would those be the so-called "votive offerings"? Like an inscription that reads something like "So-and-so deservedly fulfilled his vow etc"... I have seen them in books...One of my family members who visited Britain a few years ago brought back a book about Roman Bath...there were quite a few of them there...in other words, the individual would make a pact with a certain god and then see whether his wish/desire actually materialised? He would express his/her gratitude...The offerings themselves could be a range of things, not so?
  
  I can see them trying out a couple of gods to see which one "worked" the best

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  Posted by Anglo-Norman (U1965016) on Tuesday, 2nd December 2008

  Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:47 GMT, in reply to SafricanAndy in message 6
  
  Yes, those are the ones. Altars are popular, though they do turn up in other forms - lead tablets and whatnot.

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• Message 8

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  Posted by PlatosAtlantis (U13723894) on Tuesday, 2nd December 2008

  Julius Caesar was the FIRST new RomanGod appointed so by his nephew Octavian in order to gain " Precedence" above the designated successor of Caesar as Roman Dictaror" Marc - Antony
  
  MARC ANTONY was " PETER" in the Gospekls and also THOMAS the Unbeliever,in a PASTICHE about Julius Caesar's Life called the Evangely-Gospels"
  
  Because in reality " PETER" Marc- Anthony did NOT want Caesar to be deiified with Octavian automatically beiing" Elevated" above his current political States as SON of CAESAR
  
  But subsequently now as" SON of GOD- Julius"
  EVIDENCE on Contemporary COINAGE: Fillio DIVO- Julio".
  
  F.Carotta wrote the Book" Was Christ Caesar"(1999)Mel Gibson did not know when he concepted this Film the" Redemption" of- christ'.(in: 2004.) Or otherwise he committed a forgery.
  
  Ignorance is bliss !As the saying goes.
  
  Sincerely " Plato's Atlantis" dd dec.2008 ( TU- Delft, Holland.)

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  Posted by SafricanAndy (U7173046) on Tuesday, 2nd December 2008

  PlatosAtlantis,
  
  What on earth are you going on about? "Peter" in the Gospels was "Marc Antony"????

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