ROM Lecture 5The Roman state religion was a crucial component of the beloved Mos Maiorum from the beginning of the Monarchy. Romulus was said to have vanished from the earth in a cloud; his successor Numa was said to have hung out in the woods talking public affairs with a nymph named Egeria.
Roman religion during the Monarchy is very scantily attested, but is believed to have been focused upon the home (Lares, [Penates]) and upon agricultural fertility (Sterculinus, [Mars]). The father of the house, as [paterfamilias], was also the family's chief priest. The king, as paterfamilias of the Roman people, served as the state's chief priest, and Jupiter ruled the universe as the divine paterfamilias.
At a very early point in their history, the Romans came to associate their animistic and semi-animistic deities (Jupiter, for instance, was once regarded literally as a bolt of lightning) with the anthropomorphic gods and goddesses of the Etruscans and Greeks. As was the case with the Greeks, this pantheon of anthropomorphic deities compelled comparatively little personal devotion among the Romans. The relationship between gods and humans in Roman society could be best described as Do Ut Des: "I give (to you) in order that you might give (to me)."
The relationship between gods and humans was much more important to Romans on the state level. There, the king (and later the priests who assumed the king's religious functions at the beginning of the Republic), were tasked with maintaining the Pax Deorum, or "peace with the gods." Again, this relationship was not based on personal devotion or upon any set program of beliefs and/or worship. It had more to do with the proper performance of certain rituals designed to placate the gods. The Hymn Of The Arval Brethren provides an excellent example: long after even the most scholarly Roman had forgotten the precise importance of this hymn, well-bred Romans dressed in silly outfits and doing silly dances were belting this silly little number out in public. Other examples of Roman religious frivolity include the Saturnalia, in which masters and slaves switched roles, and the Lupercalia, in which young men clad in loincloths ran around whipping nubile young women to render them more fertile.
For all its inherent silliness, the Romans took their state religion dead seriously. Any rite of any type believed to have been performed improperly had to be repeated, a process known as instauratio. Several groups of priests ([haruspices], [augurs]) were charged with divining the will of the gods by various means; unfavorable omens could stop even the most important state business dead in its tracks. The most famous example here is the consulship of Caesar and Bibulus in 59 BC; despairing of any chance to control Caesar, Bibulus retired to his house and "watched the heavens" for the rest of the year, hoping to nullify Caesar's actions and causing the "consulship of Julius and Caesar."
Sometimes, when the gods' displeasure seemed eminently clear, the Senate would investigate just which deity had been displeased. The search was not restricted to Roman deities, either. During the darkest days of the Second Punic War, the Sibylline Books (the Roman version of Nostradamus) foretold that Hannibal would leave Italy when a humongous black rock sacred to the Phrygian goddess Cybele was brought to Rome. The sacred rock arrived in 203 BC, Rome won the Second Punic War, and all was well with the world - at least until Romans discovered the comparatively seedy underside of Cybele's funky mystery religion.
Not unnaturally, Romans of all classes felt drawn to religions offering more spiritual content than their state religion afforded. The mythology of Cybele included the great goddess's failed pursuit of her grandson of sorts, a studly young shepherd named Attis, who castrated himself to fend off her advances and died from loss of blood. This myth fed into the old Near Eastern pattern of "dying gods" whose worship instilled in their humble practitioners a sense of self-worth and hopes of a happier afterlife. Public worship of Cybele included a festival called the Megalensia, at which comedies and tragedies were performed. But individual Romans were forbidden to practice the religion privately, as a breach against the mos maiorum.
While willing to tolerate some exotic religious groups (the Jews provide another example here), the Senate was also willing to strike hard at totally unauthorized forms of worship. Toward the end of the Second Punic War, the Bacchic Religion began to gain popularity in Rome. Its rites were conducted in secret and at first restricted to women. As the religion became more popular, men were also allowed to participate. Displeased by what it perceived as a religion devoted to orgiastic worship of the wine god, the Senate passed a [Senatus Consultum] in 186 BC forbidding Bacchic worship on pain of death. Many Bacchic believers preferred death to giving up their new religion. Yet the religion lingered on in southern Italy for years afterward.
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