Pennsylvania (2016) h/b 200pp £36 (ISBN 9780812247664)
The theme of this book is that Roman religion was the product of institution-building on the part of the civic community. It was an institution of the Roman state, whose empire was built upon a web of cities, all enjoying a high level of self-government, each with its own gods and its own ‘civic religion’.
The rules governing religion were part of public law. For example, no-one could sacrifice on the Capitol without official authorisation. Only Roman citizens could attend the Secular Games. These were an occasional and major religious festival, which Augustus revived in 17 BC as part of his policy of strengthening religious practice.
Religious ceremonies were public affairs, often with high attendance. Sacrifices played a central role. They usually included banquets, so that people could eat up what the gods hadn’t consumed. Myths featured in many ceremonies and they were sometimes the subject of hymns. But no-one believed in the myths as literal truth. They were a form of entertainment. The gods, piety and religious activity were all oriented towards this world, rather than some metaphysical realm.
Acts of impiety by individuals were a problem for the state, because the community would bear the consequences of divine wrath. Religious offences required expiation. Severely punishing the offender was usually the answer. When Quintus Pleminius pillaged the sanctuary of Persephone during the Second Punic War, the Roman authorities had him arrested and imprisoned.
Even the cults which the Romans imported from eastern provinces were public affairs. These included the cult of Mater Magna (Great Mother) and Mithra. It was mainly the army which practised Mithraism.
S. contrasts Roman religion with the three great Abrahamic faiths. The Romans believed that their gods were immortal, that they lived in the heights of heaven and that they intervened in human affairs. But there the similarity ends. The Romans were not concerned with theology. They did not have any sacred text or dogma. They did not brand as heretics those who held different views about the precise nature of the gods or the connections between them. They were concerned solely with the relations between gods and humans on the terrestrial plane.
S., who is a specialist in the field, takes issue with numerous historians who have dared to take a different view about Roman religion. Indeed, he devotes as much space to attacking his opponents as to arguing his own cause. The style is at time polemical, which makes it all the more readable.
The so-called ‘polis’ theories, which have incurred the professor’s displeasure, treat all religions as the personal relationship between the human and the divine without any need for social institutions. These (incorrect) theories present ancient religions as part of a continuum leading up to the beliefs and practices of the modern world.
S. roundly attacks the proponents of such theories. He maintains that they are projecting Western religious concepts into the past. They overstate the importance of Romanization and understate the effect of foreign influences on the Empire. In short, this is all clever stuff. It will open the eyes of anyone who (like this reviewer) was unaware that any such debate was raging on the Olympian heights of academe. The book is a fascinating read for anyone who is interested in the interplay between religion and politics.
Rupert Jackson