Ancient Roman religion was always eclectic. As the Republic expanded and became an empire, contact with the far ends of Roman provinces introduced various new gods and goddesses. This was particularly facilitated through extensive trade patterns as can be seen by the many different ethnicities present in the great port city of Ostia. Even as Rome exported her own gods, including the memories of divine emperors like Augustus, so too did Rome import the deities of the East.
Early Roman Religion and Greek Influences
Ancient religion was frequently tied to nature. Sacrifices were offered for good harvests or to ensure military victory. Roman household religion was associated with the family unit, the traditional institution ruled over by the paterfamilias. Little wonder when, during the reign of Augustus, religious reform turned back to the Republican virtues that identified Roman gods in a relationship that one ancient historian described as “noble and free.”
The period of Augustus represented a time of transition. The Bacchic cult as well as the worship of Isis had been devalued and even persecuted, evidence that foreign cults threatened traditional worship and sought to introduce rituals and secrecy incompatible with Roman beliefs. This would change after Augustus as subsequent emperors embraced the cults and deities of the East.
Greek influence was, however, dominant. The gods were superhuman. They were anthropomorphic and possessed both strengths and weaknesses. And the gods did not always agree with each other. As with the Trojan War, they took sides, assisting their favorites. Romans accepted the Greek pantheon of gods, albeit changing their names. For Romans, these gods were a type of superhuman (divine) patrons. This idea fit well with Rome’s system of clientage.
The Appeal of Gods and Intellectual Faith
While educated Romans embraced religious intellectualism like Stoicism and Epicureanism, everyday Romans sought out favorite gods and goddesses to provide happiness or overcome sorrow. Ancient historian Paul Veyne refers to this as a “magic tranquilizer for the dangers and sorrows of real life…” and equates it with the cult of the saints during the Middle Ages.
Whether a devotion to one god or many, the goal was similar to those that followed the intellectual philosophies: happiness and order in this life. Some scholars hold this to be evidence that Roman religion was ethical. Unlike later Christianity, with its preoccupation with death and the afterlife, pagan religion was concerned with the present. Romans, despite funeral rituals and annual celebrations of the dead, left no detailed literature of an afterlife and may have paid scant attention to such beliefs.
Changes in Religious Belief from the East
Although many “mystery cults” found adherents among the Romans, it fell to Mithraism and Christianity to introduce new dualities of good and evil, heaven and hell, and virtue and sloth. Christianity prevailed and as it transformed itself from a nominal Jewish sect into a powerful institution, it took from Rome as much as it gave.
Much of Christianity’s ceremonial and sacramental ritual had precedence in Roman religious practices, from festivals and feast days to the gallery of saints who, like the gods of old, received sacrifices and prayers for the performance of “miraculous” interventions. The fact that paganism meshed so easily with Christianity after the latter became the official religion is a testament to the incorporation of old Roman beliefs within the new faith tradition.
Sources:
- Lionel Casson, Everyday Life in Ancient Rome (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998)
- James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966)
- Robert Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997)
- Paul Veyne, “The Roman Empire,” A History of Private Life: From Pagan Rome to Byzantium (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1987)
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