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In this study, the cults of Zeus and its interaction between the regions was investigated in the Aegean Thrace by using the epigraphic evidences. These inscriptions were found in Abdera, Stryme, Maroneia and Ainos which were important coastal settlements and in Agiasma and Pesoule-Maksimianoupolis which were land settlements of the region. Zeus was worshiped alone or combined with another deity -Athena, Dionysos, King Philippos, Maron and goddess Rome- between the 2nd half of the 5th century BC. and the 4th century AD. Orios, Eleutherios, Zbelthiourdos, Pesoulenos and Hypsistos are epithets of Zeus used in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni is the property of Editrice Morcelliana S.p.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni is the property of Editrice Morcelliana S.p.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni is the property of Editrice Morcelliana S.p.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses the relation of curse tablets (defixiones) found at the sanctuary of Magna Mater and Isis in Mainz, Germany to the notion of place. Topics include the use of an open systems model in studying Roman religion, the relation of the curses to local customs and laws, and the connection of the curses to religious ritual at the sanctuary site.

Starting from Cicero's famous panegyric on Varro's Antiquitates and attempting to look past the image of the book provided by Augustine, this article proposes a new reading of that work and its place in late Republican intellectual culture. Cicero's specific claim that Varro opened up 'the laws of the rites and of the priests' for his readers allows us to contextualize the Antiquitates within a contemporary jurisprudence. The rise of Roman legal studies in general in the first century bc extended to the laws of the priestly colleges: there are signs of lively debate over their nature and the production of texts on the details of these iura. By re-reading the fragments from the Antiquitates alongside the evidence for this sacral-legal turn, we can gain both a new appreciation for the place of law ( ius) in Varro's textualization of Roman religion and a fuller understanding of Republican legal thinking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that St Augustine's presentation of Varro's Antiquitates rerum divinarum in City of God was pivotal to the latter text's disappearance. It shows how Augustine used the Antiquitates' tripartite theology (poetic, civil, and natural) to destroy Varro's authority on traditional Roman religion. In Augustine's reading, Varro's open criticism of the gods of myth and poetry implied an equal rejection of the civil cult. This left the natural gods of the philosophers, but Augustine derided Varro's attempts at philosophical theology. The result was that, to readers of the City of God, the Antiquitates rerum divinarum appeared as a failure: Varro had been incapable of justifying traditional Roman religion, while lacking the courage to attack it openly. Readers could then turn to the City of God itself as a better guide to the Roman gods, and there was no further need to read or copy the Antiquitates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While various scholars of late have been proffering the theory that the Captivity Epistles were written while Paul was in prison in Ephesus, there are numerous reasons why this explanation of the situation does not work, not least because Paul was a Roman citizen and there are no texts inside or outside the NT which say Paul was ever imprisoned in Ephesus. The traditional locale for Paul's house arrest and his writing of the Captivity Epistles (Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians), namely Rome, is reaffirmed, as is the date sometime in the early AD 60s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the period in which the ancient Roman empire grew to its greatest extent, religion in the provinces underwent change. In this article, the author argues that glocalization as an explicit modern conceptual framework has added value to the analysis of religious material culture. First, the glocalization model is discussed in the context of a wider debate on the biased concept of Romanization. Second, a rationale is presented for interpreting Roman religious change with a glocalization perspective. Third, two concrete bodies of archaeological source material are re-interpreted within the glocalization framework: first the little studied rural sanctuary of Dhronecken near ancient Trier and second a particular form of religious gifts that appeared on an empire-wide scale as a ritual with respect to the salus, the well-being of the emperor. Based on the application of the glocalization framework to these sources, the author concludes that religious material culture in these cases can be seen as a process in which new forms of religious communication were created out of an interrelated and ongoing process of local and global cultural expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A partire dal sacco di Roma da parte di Brenno, la coscienza nazionale romana si è costituita attorno al metus Gallicus, che ha avuto un ruolo importante anche per determinare l'identità romana e plasmare il concetto stesso di Italia. S'indaga come, partendo da questa paura, anche rituali religiosi e perfino istituzioni quali l'esercito abbiano conosciuto mutazioni e cambiamenti.

Recently, an important Mithraic relief was rediscovered and republished by the author of these lines in collaboration with George Bounegru and Victor Sava. The relief, known in the literature as CIMRM 1938 was for a long time considered a „disappeared” monument, the only laconic description being that of Marteen J. Vermaseren from his monumental corpus. Due to the recently rediscovered photographs of the relief and the detailed analysis of the correspondence between Béla Cserni and Franz Cumont, the CIMRM 1938 is now became available for further research. In this article, I will add some further historiographic and iconographic notes on one of the biggest Mithraic reliefs found in Dacia, solving also another mysterious piece in Vermaseren’s catalogue, the CIMRM 1986. The article is also the first publication of Béla Cserni’s photograph about the relief.

This article first discusses the term “Roman religion" and the different views and meanings that it possesses, favoring an analysis of the sacra publica. It then considers the model of the polis-religion, both its common usage and its relevance or adequacy in the study of Roman religion. These discussions are followed by an analysis of the articulation of the idea of the mos maiorum within Augustan religious reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the first materials exhumed by the Archaeological Society of Athens in the sanctuary of Amphiaraos (Oropos, Boeotia) is a marble stele with the text of an official letter of Roman consuls (73 b. C.) to the Oropians (IOropos 308). It is a dispute in which the divine condition of the owner of a famous Greek cult place is questioned. The extension, complexity and richness of the inscription allows to trace the precise historical conditions of the moment, the identity and disposition of the parties in the lawsuit and the concrete circumstances that surrounded it. The document reveals, in short, the details of a legal dispute around which orbited motives, forces and interests whose investigation opens a door to the intricate territory of ancient polytheisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Liber Pater's worship is especially conspicuous in the Danubian provinces of the Roman Empire. This paper tries to specify the implantation and function of this cult in these provinces, emphasizing the importance of the military component in those. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Spal: Revista de Prehistoria y Arqueologia de la Universidad de Sevilla is the property of Spal. Revista de Prehistoria y Arqueologia de la Universidad de Sevilla and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Arenal.Revista de Historia de las Mujeres is the property of Arenal. Revista de Historia de las Mujeres and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Espacio, Tiempo y Forma: Serie II, Historia Antigua is the property of Editorial UNED and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

La mirada de la religión romana que los cristianos fuera de Roma dejarán plasmada en sus escritos, muestra, por un lado, una clara percepción de las diferentes prácticas religiosas en diferentes ciudades del imperio, proporcionando un rico material para investigar esta religión como fenómeno local, regional y provincial. Por otro lado, sin embargo, también está presente e íntimamente ligado a esto la cuestión de la recepción cristiana de la literatura romana, del rol que tuvieron los textos literarios que contienen información sobre religión para la expansión, el conocimiento y la difusión de la religión romana en cualquier lugar del imperio. Dos obras de Tertuliano, Ad nationes y Apologeticum, constituyen textos privilegiados para observar este procedimiento, pues las referencias a la religión romana que encontramos en ellas provienen sustancialmente de la tradición literaria, de allí que estas obras se ofrecen, además, como un espacio de reflexión sobre la literatura como medio de difusión, reflexión y crítica de las religiones.The vision of Roman religion that Christians outside Rome bequeath in their writings has two features. On one hand, it shows a clear perception of the different religious practices in different cities of the empire, as well as local selection in the reception of Roman practices, providing rich material to investigate this religion as a local, regional and provincial phenomenon. On the other hand, however, what is also present and intimately the role played by the literary texts containing information on religion for the expansion, knowledge and diffusion of Roman religion anywhere in the empire. The apologies of Tertulian, the two books of Ad nationes and Apologeticum, constitute privileged texts to observe this procedure, because the references to Roman religion found in them stem substantially from the literary tradition, hence these works also offer a space for reflection on literature as a means of religious diffusion, reflection and criticism.

Copyright of Studi e Materiali di Storia delle Religioni is the property of Editrice Morcelliana S.p.A. and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The Ara Pacis Augustae (Altar of Augustan Peace) is examined as a shrine of light consistent with the astroorientation principles of Roman architect Vitruvius (c.25 BC). Italian archaeologists excavated (1937-38) and relocated the altar along Rome's Tiber River - rotating it 75° counter-clockwise from the original orientation. While its magnificent marble sculpture may be viewed at the Museo dell'Ara Pacis, a key astronomical component of the altar's architectural design has until now remained encoded on a paper site map. The author calculated the horizon declination (+11.3° decl.) of the altar's original northeast opening with Program STONEHENGE (Hawkins 1983, 328-330), Guglielmo Gatti's 1938 site map, and Google Earth satellite imagery: True Azimuth ≈75°; Latitude/Longitude = 41° 54' 10.47" N/12° 28' 44.60" E; Elevation ≈10 meters ASL; and Horizon Altitude ≈+1.1°. The Ara Pacis was dedicated in 9 BC (Moretti 1947,7). Analysis shows that the axis of the Ara Pacis enclosure's northeast opening originally was oriented to the rising Sun (+11.0° decl.) on both April 21st and August 27th. However, the iconography of the Ara Pacis supports an interpretation that only the April 21st sunrise orientation was intended, because each sculptural element of the Tellus frieze (young woman, flowing amphora, pair of fishes, ram, bull, infant twins) uniquely mirrors the astronomy: Venus (Morning Star phase) and the Zodiac constellations Aquarius-Pisces-Aries-Taurus-Gemini at dawn on the festival of Par ilia (Pales, goddess of shepherds), 21 April 9 BC. This month and day coincide with the founding of Rome on 21 April 1 ab urbe condita (a.u.c) as recorded by Roman historian Marcus Terentius Varro. The dedication year of 9 BC coincides with the 93rd iteration of the eight-year Earth-Venus Synodic Period when Venus also appeared as Morning Star on the first Dies Natalis Romae, 21 April 753 BC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essential difference between the western and eastern provinces of the Roman Empire is the fact that sophisticated urban cultures had developed in Asia Minor and the Levant centuries before the Romans arrived. Underlying the Hellenized, and later Roman, veneer was a myriad of older local traditions and languages, which had an immense impact upon Roman religious tradition through elements such as the introduction of new religious practices. Following the path of previous studies, in this article we try to discern how Roman culture was inherited and adapted to the heterogeneous Eastern traditions and how it could be reflected in the architecture and urban layout, mainly in what concerns to the orientation of the urban structures. Considering ancient writings, such as those of Higynius Gromaticus (Constitutio, I), the orientation of these features could follow the position of certain celestial bodies, mainly the sun, which would imply a careful observation of the sky. Developing the lines of previous studies on the orientation of Roman settlements in the western part of the Empire (González-García et al., 2014 & Rodríguez-Antón et al., 2016), a number of Roman cities and military settlements in modern-day Jordan, Syria and Palestine are analysed here. Through this approach, we try to obtain a first insight into whether their orientations looked towards astronomical positions and wether there existed common patterns comparing with those sites previously measured in Hispania or Britannia. This would help us to obtain a wider vision of Roman ritual practices, cosmovisions and how Roman culture could have evolved, spread and became assimilated through lands and time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Domus Aurea, Nero's last “palace" constructed in the very heart of ancient Rome, is a true masterpiece of Roman architecture. We explore here symbolic aspects of the emperor's project, analyzing the archaeoastronomy of the best preserved part of the Domus, the Esquiline Wing. In particular, we study the so-called Octagonal Room, the huge vaulted room which is in many respects a predecessor of the Pantheon. The project of the room turns out to be connected with astronomy, as is Hadrian's Pantheon sixty years later. Indeed, the divinization and “solarization" of the emperor — placed at the equinoxes as a point of balance in the heavens — are shown to be explicitly referred to in the rigorous orientation of the plan and in the peculiar geometry of the design of the dome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the religious doctrines by Saint Paul in the Epistle to the Romans, a book in the New Testament of the Bible and mentions the author's views on how Paul's gospel provides the true teachings of god. Topics discussed include Saint Paul preaching the gospel in Rome and the conditions of Christians in Rome. It also mentions doctrines in the book on topics including righteousness of God, judgment of God, and God's creation.

The present contribution, concerning the ancient Roman cult of Bona Dea, explores the interplay between intuitive healing beliefs, morality, disgust, and coercive control of sexual behaviours. In order to preliminarily investigate cultural variations concerning sex and gender issues in past societies (a somewhat neglected topic in current cognitive studies), this article engages the socio-sexual organization of Roman culture which underpinned the cult devotion, explaining the evolutionary rationale of the underlying mythography as a mate-guarding strategy and the cult itself as a relief valve and a temporary compensation for subordinate women. The essential components of the cult (i.e., wine and snakes) are further analysed via evolutionary psychology and the cognitive science of religion. The final paragraph tackles the problematic scholarly reconstruction of the cult's promise of an afterlife for its worshippers, arguing that a phylogenetic analysis of Graeco-Roman mythographies might help contextualizing this issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although Roman persecution of Christians was sporadic and localised for much of the first three centuries of the church's existence, it is argued here that such persecution was nevertheless crucial in the creation and shaping of a distinct Christian identity. The primary deviance of the radical Jewish sect that had surrounded Jesus himself created a 'sticky reputation' that endured even when the church had become largely politically and socially conservative. Periodic outbreaks of violence towards those labelled Christians by the authorities created a transactional relationship, in which the victims and their co-religionists responded by the explicit adoption of a deviant identity and experienced the corollary reconstruction of the self in terms of attitudes, mores and affiliations (secondary deviance). This transaction halted a drift towards religious syncretism that might otherwise have seen Jesus take his place within the henotheistic Roman Pantheon, and thus ensured the survival of the Christian faith as monotheistic and oppositional to Roman religio. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Studia Universitatis Babes-Bolyai, Historia is the property of Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Parmi les nombreux noms antiques que conserve la documentation viaire de l’Hispania, quelques-uns Illustrent clairement le role que la route a joué dans la diffusion des idées, en particulier dans les domaines religieux et politique. Ainsi la statia ad Palem des Gobelets de Vicarello, qui était située assurément a coté d’un temple de Palés sur le Cerro de los Santos, atteste un cas de syncrétisme religieux précoce sur le Camino de Anibal. Quant au lanas Augustas des millaires de Bétique, qui était un arc a la frontiére de cette province, il constitue vraisemblablement une des premiéres manifestations monumentales du culte d’Auguste vivant en Hispanie.

Las cincuenta inscripciones de Sta. Lucía de Alcuéscar (Cáceres) recientemente publicadas, de las que quince están dedicadas a Ataecina, nos permiten proponer la identificación del lugar como el lucus Feroniae citado en los textos como perteneciente al territorio emeritense, sin duda una interpretatio Romana del témenos de la divinidad local. Junto a esos altares dedicados a Ataecina existen otros muchos con la advocación a una divinidad innominada, dea domina sancta e, incluso, otros varios anepígrafos, todos ellos deben ser testimonios de otras formulaciones diferentes del culto del lucus. El santuario, en la frontera de cinco pueblos diferentes y junto al iter ab Emerita Asturicam, debió jugar un importante papel como santuario extraurbano. Su captación por los romanos en la deductio de Emerita implicó posiblemente la introducción en la capital de esa divinidad como dea adoptiva, cuya representación puede verse en las monedas emeritenses y en una escultura del museo de la ciudad.