Roman Religion

4 Roman Religion 1. “By pietas and fides the Romans Reached TheiR PResent eminence” the strength of Rome rested on a number of foundations. Among these were its extraordinarily vital political culture and its capacity to sustain warfare for extended periods of time. Previous chapters have emphasized these features, but in this chapter and the next, focus shifts to less obvious sources of Rome’s strength, namely the special character of its society whose dual foundations were the household and the civic religion of the city. Roman Religiosity during the period of the Republic, outsiders were struck by the religiosity of the Romans. In the second century b.c., Polybius, a Greek statesman and historian who lived much of his adult life in Rome, claimed that it was “scrupulous fear of the gods that kept the Roman commonwealth together” (6.56). A century or so later another expatriate Greek, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, was also impressed by the concern of Romans for religion. Writing about the second king of Rome, dionysius noted that as a result of Numa’s activities, Rome possessed more religious observances than any other city “Greek or non-Greek, even among those who thought of themselves as most god- fearing” (2.63). Needless to say, Romans themselves promoted the belief that fidelity to their oaths and treaties and their general reverence for the gods explained their imperial success. “the gods look kindly on these qualities, for it was by pietas and fides that Romans reached their present eminence” declared the consul Q. Marcius Philippus in 169 b.c. (Livy 44.1). Cicero summed up this viewpoint succinctly: i am convinced that Romulus [the first king of Rome] by establishing the auspices (auspicia—the arts of divination) and Numa [the second king] by establishing the rituals (sacra) laid the founda- 86 chapter 4. roman religion • 87 tions of our state which surely could never have become so great unless we had taken such care to placate the immortal gods. (cicero, de natura deorum 3.5–6) We should not, however, assume that when Romans referred to religion they had the same thing in mind that we might have. 2. ReLiGion: Ancient and modeRn AssumPtions “True” Religion: Modern and Ancient Assumptions popular assumptions: sincerity expectations about the nature of religious belief and behavior are deeply ingrained in the cultures of all societies. Even among modern Western non-religious people, assumptions about the supposedly “true” nature of religion are often simply projections of impressions left over from two thousand years of culturally embedded Judaeo-christian religious practice. Among such assumptions, especially in the United States, is the belief that “true” religion is characterized above all by sincerity of belief. Rituals, being merely external acts, degrade true religion. Prayer should not be just words recited by rote. “hypocrisy” is the charge most often directed at religious people who are judged to have failed to live up to the moral dictates of their religion or are perceived to be “insincere” or inconsistent in their beliefs. “true” religion is held to be well-attuned to the ever-changing needs of the individual, and unlike “organized” religion, pro- motes unconditional love; it is neither dogmatic nor judgmental. separation of church and state another characteristic feature of contemporary Western religious practice that is popularly assumed to be true of all religions is the existence of a professional clergy and the separation of the affairs of religion and the state. From this perspective, politicians and clergy are assumed to pursue distinct professions in segregated, autonomous institutions. The church is the realm of the sacred, the state of the secular, the two being fundamentally distinct are- nas of human activity. It causes no surprise, therefore, to Westerners if groups of men and women band together to form voluntary communities—such as monasteries, convents and communes—that follow their own, self-devised sets of rules, independent and often in rejection of society at large. believers think otherwise: the master code of reality modern believers, of course, would amplify, qualify or reject many of these presuppositions, beginning with the individualistic assumptions of popular belief noted above. The great monotheistic faiths are all, by definition, ritualistic, communal and, in their own self-understanding, based on truth, not myth. Believers are ritually initiated into and sustained by their membership in the people of Israel, the Christian Church, or the muslim Umma. Their primary identities derive from their association with their fellow believers. divine revelation, seen as the master code of reality, is mediated through each of the faith communities and interpreted according to sophisticated modes of analysis developed by them over millennia. in none of the monotheistic faiths is there a belief that the individual meets the divine in a purely one-on-one relationship independent of the believing community. truth claims adherents of the Abrahamic religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam—assert that their beliefs are true. These truths, they claim, are not the projections of human longings to make sense of the universe or the products of some form or other of self-deception. Rather, they faithfully reflect the direct revelations of God in history through historical acts such as the Exodus from Egypt or through the words of the prophets or other inspired writers. Monotheism, its followers believe, 88 • part i: the rise of rome was not the cultural product or discovery of humans but the result of God’s own self-revelation. abraham, Moses and the other prophets did not find God as a result of their own religious quests; instead, it was God who initiated the action of self-revelation in personal encounters in historically verifiable times and places. at the core of the three faiths’ belief systems is the conviction that God’s revelations produce universal and eternally valid truths about God’s nature, the nature of humanity, of human society and of the natural order. The truthfulness of God’s revelation alone is what validates the authority of the faiths. The words of Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed, enshrined in sacred writings and traditions, transcend locale, time, and human culture. The intervention of God in human affairs as recorded in sacred scriptures is understood to produce a true understanding of how the events of history have, and are, unfolding and how eventually history will end. In varying degrees the three faiths empha- size orthodoxy (correct belief) and orthopraxy (correct behavior). Of the three, Christianity has, for theological reasons, greater concern with orthodoxy than do Judaism or Islam. Though animal sacrifice has a peripheral role in Judaism and Islam and animal sacrifice was practiced by Jews until the destruction of the Temple in a.d. 70, none of the monotheistic faiths consider animal sacrifice central to their worship traditions. True Religion for the Romans: What it Was Not Romans and most other ancient peoples would have regarded all or almost all of the presuppositions and assertions about the nature of religion set out above as bizarre, irrational, and potentially danger- ous. The truth claims of the Abrahamic religions, the singularity of the divine, the infallible ability of sacred writings to provide moral guidance, the absence of animal sacrifice, the autonomy of the faith community and much else were, in fact, taken as challenges to the established order as soon as monotheistic christianity emerged as a major force in the empire. no all-powerful god the gods of the Romans were neither omnipotent nor omnipresent. many of them were extremely powerful, and Jupiter at the head of the pantheon of gods was the most powerful, but none equaled the omnipotence or singularity of the god of the later monotheistic faiths. Except in the teaching of some schools of philosophy, there was no universal, all-powerful divinity. The idea of a god who existed outside the universe and was its creator was abhorrent to the philosophers for whom matter was eternal and could not have been created. That Christians came at some point to argue that the cosmos was created out of nothingness (ex nihilo) was seen as (yet another) proof of their irrationality. no creeds unlike the monotheistic faiths, Roman religion had no developed creeds and closely related ethical codes. Beliefs were not formalized and expressed in philosophical language or in language borrowed from sacred texts, nor was moral behavior expressly connected with divine revelation. Roman religion was not a matter of truth but of social cohesion. It was authentic if it affirmed and sustained the community. The efficacy of prayer and sacrifice was not related to the inner attitude or moral character of those praying or offering sacrifice, but to the exact enactment of rituals and the precise wording of prayers. Religious belief and practice did not focus on the after- life, but resolutely on the here and now. The cultivation of the gods was expected to lead to happi- ness and material success in this present world, not in a world to come. pietas may have resulted in moral rectitude, but that was not its principal aim. Rome had no sacred books containing truths held to be normative and valid for all aspects of life and worship. There were neither independent religious hierarchies nor autonomous religious institu- chapter 4. roman religion • 89 tions. Despite the reputation of ancient paganism for toleration, Rome did not allow the existence of privately organized and publicly unapproved religious associations. There was a single, all encom- passing state or civic religion. Communication with the gods was too important to be left in private or amateur hands or for the gods to be cultivated by untraditional rituals conducted by unsupervised groups of citizens.

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