Romans and Their Gods in the Age of Augustus, The
R. M. Ogilvie
Number of quotes: 29
Book ID: 390 Page: 2
Section: 2A
But there was no dogma in Roman religion, no Thirty-Nine Articles or Westminster Confession to which a believer had to subscribe. A Roman was free to think what he liked about the gods; what mattered was what religious action he performed. For a Roman, there was no contradiction when Julius Caesar, as pontifex maximus, head of the Roman state religion, and so responsible for several official festivals concerned with the dead, publicly expressed his opinion that ‘death was the end of everything human and that there was no place for joy or sorrow hereafter’(Sallust, Catiline 51).
Quote ID: 8358
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 390 Page: 3
Section: 4A
Ancient religion was tolerant and non-sectarian.….
Since Roman religion offered no dogmas about the universe, there was nothing for people to contradict or to argue about. Philosophers, on the other hand, had elaborate systems which they defended to the last detail with grotesque ingenuity.
There was, however, one religion in the ancient world which was stubbornly exclusive—Judaism (and, later, Christianity). The Jews believed that there was only one God and only one acceptable form of worshipping that God.
Quote ID: 8359
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 390 Page: 3/4
Section: 4A
It was only when Christianity, the successor to Judaism, became, about A.D. 250, a powerful force in the Roman world and absorbed a Greek philosophical system that bigotry and persecution began in earnest.
Quote ID: 8360
Time Periods: 3
Book ID: 390 Page: 4
Section: 1A
Under the Roman Empire all the different peoples continued to speak their own languages, as the events at Pentecost show so clearly (Acts II), and to worship their own gods in their own way. Yet, at the same time, Rome managed to impose on them certain common features. Latin was the common official language. The Roman form of government was the same everywhere and the Romans tended to perpetuate their own religious beliefs and customs throughout the Empire.*John’s note: the genius of Rome*
Quote ID: 8361
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 390 Page: 5
Section: 4B
One should not think of the Romans as a single, pure race.
Quote ID: 8362
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 390 Page: 7/8
Section: 3B
A Roman citizen aged fifty in 30 B.C. would have lived through a generation of unexampled atrocities and civil wars.….
There was no security of life or property. While ruthless and ambitious generals competed for power, lesser men were crushed in the process. Read the pathetic account, preserved by Livy, of how the elderly Cicero, the greatest ornament of his age, was dragged out of hiding and butchered, or read in Plutarch’s Life of Antony how the Triumvirs cheerfully proscribed their relations.…
….
And then, when all hope was almost gone, Octavian, later to be called Augustus, succeeded in restoring peace and prosperity to Italy. The relief was enormous and took the form of gratitude to the gods, because to men of that generation, peace was a miracle….
Quote ID: 8363
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 390 Page: 8
Section: 3B
The civil wars, then, and their end, more than anything else, made men’s minds receptive once more to the call of the old religion.
Quote ID: 8364
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 390 Page: 8
Section: 1A
‘To understand the success of the Romans.’ Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the Greek historian who came to Rome in 30 B.C., wrote, ‘you must understand their piety.’
Quote ID: 8365
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 390 Page: 9
Section: 1A,4B
Nevertheless, it will help to understand how the Romans thought if we try to recapture these feelings of anxiety, ‘alone and afraid, in a world we never made.’ For although they had made great strides in a number of practical and administrative fields, they were rarely creative thinkers. They produced no native philosophers or scientists. They were content not to ask fundamental questions about the process of nature, not to seek scientific explanations, as the Greeks had done, for natural phenomena.*John’s note: genius of Rome*
Quote ID: 8366
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 390 Page: 10
Section: 2E5
The chief feature, then, of Roman religion was the belief that all important processes in the world were divinely activated and, conversely, that different gods had charge of particular functions and spheres of activity.
Quote ID: 8367
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 390 Page: 11
Section: 1A
Rome clung on to the old forms of worship because they had worked but also introduced new ones as new needs, new functions and new activities began to appear in society. An economic slump in the early fifth century, associated with a corn-shortage and serious epidemics (or, possibly, the arrival of malaria) called for the institution of the cult of Mercury for the success of business transactions (495 B.C.), Ceres for the process of growth (496 B.C.) and Apollo for the power of healing (before 450 B.C.).*John’s note: genius of Rome*
Quote ID: 8368
Time Periods: 1
Book ID: 390 Page: 11
Section: 2E5
A house is only as secure as its door: the opening and closing of the door, and the passage of man from the privacy of his home into the racket of the outside world, and vice versa, can be critical events, and, in consequence, they were held to be in the power of a god, Janus. Janus Patulcius opened the door , Janus Clusivius closed it.*John’s note: Wow*
….
…the Christian writer Arnobius, drawing probably on Varro, assures us that Limentinus presided over the threshold, Cardea over the hinges and Forculus over the leaf of the door (Against the pagans II, 15, 5).
Quote ID: 8369
Time Periods: 0134
Book ID: 390 Page: 15
Section: 2E5
Beyond the small groups stood the community as a whole with its common needs and its common interests. Each town had a patron deity who reflected its aspirations activities.
Quote ID: 8370
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 390 Page: 17
Section: 4B
Roman religion was concerned with success not with sin. ‘Jupiter is called Best and Greatest,’ Cicero comments (On the nature of the gods III,87), because he does not make us just or sober or wise but healthy and rich and prosperous.’….
…the object of religion was to discover the correct procedure for securing the goodwill of the gods in making these activities successful. In this it has much in common with Christianity before it was modified by scientific discovery and Protestantism, with its preoccupation with individual conscience and salvation.
Quote ID: 8371
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 390 Page: 21
Section: 2C
So there was never at Rome any division between a priestly class and a governing class: indeed by the first century B.C., as we can judge from Cicero’s pleasure on being elected an augur, the great priesthoods were regarded as social distinctions more than religious offices, although they entailed religious duties and required religious knowledge.
Quote ID: 8372
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 390 Page: 25
Section: 2C
Normally Jupiter Optimus Maximus was the patron god of Rome, but the city itself was also thought of as a deity, however, so valuable that it had a secret name, known only to the pontifices, for which ‘Rome’ was a cover-name. We do not know what that secret name was. As Servius says, ‘The Romans wanted to conceal the identity of the god who looked after Rome and therefore their priestly discipline laid down that the gods of Rome should not be invoked by their proper names, for fear they should be enticed away.’
Quote ID: 8373
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 390 Page: 26
Section: 2C
The Romans employed two techniques to safeguard themselves against this danger. The first was to list, as fully as possible, all the known alternatives which a god might use.….
The second technique to prevent the god from evading a summons was to add at the end of the invocation a blanket-expression such as ‘or whatever name you care to be called’.
Quote ID: 8374
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 390 Page: 27
Section: 2C
…Aulus Gellius tells us that in the event of an earthquake the Romans held a festival of purification without naming the god in whose honour it was given, for fear that they might make matters worse by naming the wrong god (II, 28, 2). They addressed simply ‘the responsible deity’, as a letter might be addressed ‘to whom it may concern’.
Quote ID: 8375
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 390 Page: 27
Section: 2C
If a goddess in fact resided there, she might not merely ignore a prayer couched in the masculine gender but be positively insulted by the mistake. To avoid such a danger the Romans refined the idea of ‘the unknown god’ still further by a stereotyped formula ‘if it be a god or a goddess who (lives here)’….
Quote ID: 8376
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 390 Page: 28
Section: 2C
It was, therefore, as well to be on the safe side, leaving nothing to chance. A further reason may have been a sense that the gods formed a collective group and, if so disposed, could help each other in their operations. So the pontifices had a rule always to invoke all the gods as a whole after individual invocations (Servius, On the Georgics I, 21).….
…formula used when war was declared (Livy I, 32, 10): ‘Hearken, Jupiter, and you, Janus Quirinus, and all the gods of heaven, of earth and of the underworld: I call you to witness that such-and-such a people is in the wrong.’
Quote ID: 8377
Time Periods: 012
Book ID: 390 Page: 29
Section: 2C
Great care had to be taken to invoke not merely Apollo but Apollo with the requisite functional cult-title. Otherwise he might not listen. Macrobius, a pagan scholar of the middle fifth century A.D. who preserves much valuable learning of older times, explains that the successful combination of titles used by the Vestal Virgins for invoking Apollo to cure disease was ‘Apollo Medice, Apollo Paean’ (Apollo Doctor, Apollo Healer).*John’s note: All this indicates how confusing polytheism became, and how burdensome and fear-ridden.*
Quote ID: 8378
Time Periods: 012345
Book ID: 390 Page: 35
Section: 4B
Roman prayers were phrased like legal documents, with repetitions, accumulated synonyms and detailed particularisations (‘the Roman people, the Quirites’; ‘me, my house and my household’) to make sure that no loop-hole should be left.….
A single slip…or a single omission would be enough to wreck the whole exercise.
….
Livy records (XL, 16, 2) that because a magistrate from the Latin town of Lanuvium accidentally omitted the words ‘the Roman people, the Quirites’ in one of the sacrifices at the great festival of all the Latins, in 176 B.C., the whole festival had to be repeated—at the expense of Lanuvium—and Cicero hoped to persuade his audience that the attempt by his enemies to consecrate his house (and so deprive him of it for ever) was null and void because the youth who performed the ritual stammered (On his house 139).
….
This concern for absolute accuracy was not confined to the Latins.
Quote ID: 8380
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 390 Page: 38
Section: 4B
Over and over again we meet inscriptions which contain simply the name of a god, the name of a person and the letters v.s.l.m. (votum solvit libens merito)—‘so-and-so willingly paid his vow as was due to such-and-such a god’. Like the little thank-offering plaques set up to saints by his Catholic descendants, these dedications show the strength of the Roman’s faith in the gods.
Quote ID: 8381
Time Periods: 1234
Book ID: 390 Page: 51
Section: 4B
A slip, a mistake, a blunder at any stage entailed the repetition of the whole procedure (instauratio), together with an additional offering by way of apology for the previous error (piaculum).….
It was even possible to make a preliminary sacrifice (praecidanea) to atone in anticipation for some unintended slip.
….
A deliberate error was irremediable, as the learned lawyer Scaevola stated. No atonement, Horace writes (Odes I, 28, 34), will absolve a man from the sin of wittingly neglecting the rites which are due to the dead.
Quote ID: 8382
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 390 Page: 75/78
Section: 2A4
But it was a great event in the life of the city and survived as late as A.D. 494 when Pope Gelasius I abolished it and replaced it with the festival of the Purification of the Virgin Mary, a Christian purification taking over from a pagan one.*John’s note: (Add page 75 note.)*
….
February was—and is—a dreary month. It takes its name from februum, which means an instrument of purification, and the two chief festivals of the month, the Parentalia, and the Lupercalia, are in a wide sense concerned with purification.
Quote ID: 8383
Time Periods: 25
Book ID: 390 Page: 106
Section: 2C
…the Romans are almost unique in not having a separate priestly profession. …the major offices of religion were usually held by prominent figures of political life.
Quote ID: 8384
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 390 Page: 121
Section: 3B,3A4
In one of his most religious works, Dream of Scipio, Cicero puts this idea quite clearly: ‘To all who have saved, helped, or advanced their country, a fixed place is assigned in heaven in which they shall enjoy everlasting bliss.’
Quote ID: 8385
Time Periods: 01
Book ID: 390 Page: 121/122
Section: 3B
It is clear that Caesar, before his assassination, had determined to claim divine status for himself.….
In May 45 his statue was set up in the temple of Quirinus with the inscription ‘To the Unconquered God’.
Quote ID: 8386
Time Periods: 0
Book ID: 390 Page: 124
Section: 3B,4B
The ultimate test of a religion is that it works; and the Romans truly believed that their religion worked. Otherwise Roman civilisation would have collapsed with Augustus.….
Romans could, therefore, and did, claim that their religion was verified by history. True religion for them, as opposed to superstition, was ‘to honour the gods fitly in accordance with ancestral custom’ (Cornutus).
Quote ID: 8387
Time Periods: 01
End of quotes