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This paper sheds new light on a mode of late antique Vergilian interpretation, according to which Aeneas, Dido, and other characters in the Aeneid observe the regulations of Roman ritual norms, even standing in for priests including the famous flamen and flaminica Dialis. I argue that this mode of interpretation, which I refer to as sacro-legal exegesis, was a productive endeavor in Late Antiquity, offering members of the pagan aristocracy a means for locating and formulating the practice of traditional Roman cult within the pages of the Aeneid. I close by offering some parallels to a mode of rabbinic midrash according to which the biblical patriarchs followed the commandments prior to the revelation at Sinai. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ancient associations had very few extant regulations, but those that have survived indicate a variety of functions, such as outlining the structure of the association; delineating the rights, responsibilities, and privileges of members; and establishing norms of behaviour and consequences for non-compliance. Moreover, by-laws codified procedures for decision-making, dispute resolution, and the amendment of governing regulations. The by-laws of these ancient occupational and religious groups can be compared to modern academic societies and in so doing shed light on one another's practices. In particular, the concern with purpose, membership, finance, meetings, and especially behaviour cross the temporal and cultural divide in ways that allow the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and other academic societies to think more carefully about how they are constituted and, more importantly, how they might respond to broader societal situations that are not directly in their purview. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article examines the relationship between the Roman cult of Mithras and members of the publicum portorium Illyrici, the Roman customs office active in the Danubian provinces, who have been discussed in previous research as potentially important carriers of this cult. To investigate this relationship and its extent, spatial proximity analysis is performed with respect to documented portorium stations and confirmed Mithraic finds. For comparative purposes, the spatial proximity between portorium stations and finds relating to other selected Graeco-Roman deities was also examined. On the basis of the results of this analysis, it is possible to conclude that Mithraic finds are located significantly closer to customs stations than those of other Graeco-Roman deities (with the exception of Jupiter, the main Graeco-Roman god) and that the presence of a portorium station strongly predicts the presence of a Mithraic cult at a given site or in its immediate vicinity, especially in the Western cluster of portorium provinces. Thus, in a nuanced form and using a quantitative method of geographical analysis, the study supports previous conclusions about the importance of portorium officials as a social group significantly involved in the spread of the Roman cult of Mithras in the Danubian provinces.

The role of women in Roman religious communication is a growing research field, with several significant focus points and case studies. Understanding the role of women in religious communication within provincial contexts is one of the most fertile areas of research, yet it has not been thoroughly examined within the Danubian provinces. This study marks the first instance in historiography of Dacia where the focus is placed on exploring the role of women in Roman religious communication within the province, employing the comprehensive analysis of all available epigraphic evidence (112 inscriptions). The study provides methodological insights and underscores key research points for future systematic work that needs to be undertaken in the Danubian provinces.

The material evidence of the Roman cult of Mithras is one of the most visible and best-preserved heritage of Roman religion from the period of the 2nd- 4th century AD. There are several in situ and reconstructed mithraea in European archaeological parks and museums, where the memory of the cult and its worshippers are evoked. The paper examines some of the most well-known case studies of the Mithraic sanctuaries, focusing on in situ archaeological sites, reconstructed mithraea and museal spaces from Romania, where new, sensorial methods can be used.

The study is devoted to the origins of the cult of Venus of Eryx, whose temple was erected on the Capitol during the Hannibal War. After analyzing the sources, the author studied both the specific historical context of the establishment of a new cult, and the connection of the new deity with various hypostases of Venus, which became widespread in the territory of ancient Italy. The author associated the creation of the cult of Venus Erucina, firstly, with victories during the struggle between Rome and Carthage and, secondly, with an attempt to integrate Rome into the cultural space of the Greek world, since Venus was identified with Aphrodite. The scientific novelty of the undertaken study lies in the fact that the author, taking into account the famous senatusconsultum on bacchanalia, put forward a hypothesis about the conduct in 186-184 BC by the Porcii clan and their allies, a kind of religious reform, which made it possible, on the one hand, to preserve the Greek traditions of the veneration of Venus of Eryx, and on the other hand, to “cleanse” the cult of Venus Capitoline from foreign influences.

The most important symbols of the Roman state were undoubtedly the Vestal Virgins. They embodied the continuity of the res publica for centuries. As the guardians of the eternal flame throughout Roman history, they managed to secure a very high social position. Their social and sacred role was recognised and exploited by Roman political life. The best example of this was Augustus, who regarded the ancient priestly order as an important pillar of his own system. Through them, the princeps sought to demonstrate that the Imperium Romanum could recover from a bloody civil war and uphold the ideal that had already endured for 700 years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The cult of God Attis was documented in several locations in the inland of the province of Dalmatia, more specifically in present-day Bosnia and Herzegovina. The monument addressed in this paper is one of the so far unknown examples. This find was discovered in the territory of the Nevesinje municipality. The circumstances of its discovery are unfortunately unknown but the preserved relief and iconography analysis suggest that it was the cult of Attis. The monument is damaged to a large degree and contains very few elements that can be considered determinant. The primary determinant refers to the position of the body, more specifically the legs, and leaning on a cane. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Cuestiones Teológicas is the property of Cuestiones Teologicas 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 Romanitas: Revista de Estudos Greco-Latinas is the property of Universidade Federal do Espirito Santo 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.)

Tributes to the enigmatic dea Dard (...) show a typically Roman political and religious intention to show respect for a local deity, within the framework of the control of isolated but strategic areas in the heart of the Illyrian region and the province of Moesia Superior. These acts of piety reflect the desire on the part of the Roman authorities to carry out diplomatic action with the local population, particularly in the vicinity of the stationes , often away from the legions and officia of which they were a detachment. In any case, these dedications cannot be considered irrefutable proof of the resistance of a Dardanian identity to the Roman order. They do, of course, suggest that the cult of these local and enigmatic deities had survived in the heart of the province of Moesia Superior. The paradox lies in the fact that we know more about the existence of these local deities thanks to the tributes of Roman soldiers, even if their names remain unknown. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discussions of mithraea tend to emphasize their uniformity. While it is true that many earlier mithraea do adhere to an established plan, there are a notable number of mithraea dating from the late 3rd c. onward that do not. This article discusses these various atypical mithraea, how such alterations to the standard mithraeum plan might have impacted on Mithraic rituals, and how this might have affected the experiences of the participants. It also explores why such changes occurred, observing that while in some instances this may have been to accommodate alterations to ritual practices, in others it was likely due to more mundane issues, such as limitations on space and environmental factors. The article concludes by reflecting on the implications this has for the identification of mithraea in the archaeological record. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Auster is the property of Universidad Nacional de La Plata 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 aim of this paper is to present a new perspective on the religious function of the Latin adjectives cretatus (whitened with chalk) and calidus (having a white spot on the forehead). The researchers of Roman religion have attributed to the former a specific role. Whitening chalk was used to cover any imperfections in the appearance of the sacrificial animal. According to them, cretatus could also have a pejorative meaning. The author of the article, however, disagrees with this view and suggests to examine more closely the context in which the adjective was used and references to the white colour of the victims. He argues for a different, positive interpretation, namely that the adjective cretatus was used to indicate the effect of a ceremonial act intended to emphasise Roman piety. In the case of the other adjective, calidus, the examination of the context in which the word appeared proves that it most likely did not serve as a technical religious term and animals with a white spot on their foreheads were not considered pars pro toto as white victims in Rome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Harioli and other private diviners are briefly discussed in the theological dialogue De divinatione, both by Quintus, defending the truth of divination, and Marcus, disputing against divination. Quintus produces a pejorative image of the harioli. At the same time, Marcus denies the veracity of prophetic divination in his speech, in which theology and religious authority are relevant points in his argument. If they disagree in their theological positions on divination, both characters converge in attacking individuals who offered their divinatory skills and advice to anyone who could pay them. Considering the De divinatione as a centrepiece of evidence from the late Republic, this paper discusses some aspects of the dichotomy between public and private divination and the issues of knowledge and religious authority in Cicero. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Unlike Islam, Judaism and Christianity, religions in antiquity were non-confessional and lacked moral instructions for worshippers. Patron–client associations seemed to depict gods-worshipper relations in Paul's time. In this paper, I argue that Paul in 1 Cor 10:1–4 uses both his former religious traditions and those of the first audience, Jews and non-Jews, to convince them about his novel God–Christ patron–covenant theology. Paul abruptly introduced Moses (10:2), spiritual food/drink (10:3–4a) and Christ (10:4b) into the classic Jewish wandering story in the wilderness to delineate his anti-idol rhetoric throughout 1 Cor 10. Paul paradoxically warned the first audience against their idol-worshipping lifestyles by utilising and transforming Jewish Shema worship into a binitarian God–Christ covenantal relation, and idol-worship traditions to the only patron family god of the Christ-follower community. Paul's rhetorical purpose of (re)introducing the concept of God as Moses' God and Christ as an anti-idol polemic is a coherent theme throughout 1 Cor 10 and probably throughout 1 Cor 11–14. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I reevaluate the relationship between the figures of the felix and the fortunatus at the end of Georgics Book 2. Rather than representing an opposition between Epicurean natural philosophy and traditional religion, the figures are complementary, embodying the physical and ethical teachings of Epicureanism respectively. I first discuss the implications of Vergil's praise of the felix for his views on traditional religion and analyze allusions to Lucretius in his description of the fortunatus. Then I show that Vergil's treatment of the divine both has parallels to Epicurean cult practice and follows Lucretius' poetic model of divine symbolism, the divinities named at 2.494 being symbols for Epicurean ethical ideals. As a whole, my argument indicates a positive attitude towards Epicureanism in the Georgics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

EN: One of the most turbulent periods in Roman history is certainly the period of the Second Punic War. The years 218 – 215 BC were especially turbulent for the Roman religion. Two traditions stand out among the information offered by ancient authors. The first, from the time of the war with Hannibal, explains the foundation of the celebration of ludi Apollinares in Rome according to the prophecies of the prophet Marcius, and the second, from the period after the war, speaks of the discovery of the books attributed to Numa Pompilius that were found in two stone chests. Both involve the discovery of foreign texts, put under the control of the Roman state which entrusted the decemvirs with the task of examining and making decisions on them. Although they are not the only example of Roman intervention in the unofficial cult, these two traditions are a good example of how ritual texts were treated differently in Rome. The Roman state, hesitating between tradition and innovation, accepted them in one case (carmina Marciana) and destroyed them in the other (Numa’s books). Based on existing sources, the paper will analyse and interpret both traditions noted by Livy. In addition, other antique and late antique historians and lexicographers will be mentioned. HR:

The article analyzes the original concept of the development of ancient religions and the emergence of Christianity set out in the six-volume work of F.F. Zelinski History of Ancient Religions. Zelnski refutes the well-established idea of the origin of Christianity from Judaism and proves that it was based on the Hellenistic-Roman religion of the early Roman Empire. In this religion, a idea of monotheistic and pantheistic God was formed, which is the basis of all world processes and human actions, at the same time the idea arose of the possibility of a "particle" of God entering a separate human personality (the personality of the emperor). According to Zelinski, it was these ideas that became the basis of Christianity, which radically rethought them, but nevertheless left them close to the beliefs of the majority of the citizens of the Roman Empire; that is why early Christianity quickly spread throughout the empire. The article suggests that Zelinski's flight from Bolshevik Russia in the 1920s and his life in the Polish Catholic environment led to the fact that he refused to develop his ideas to their natural outcome, which could conflict with Catholic teaching. The article reconstructs the result that Zelnski should have come to with the consistent implementation of his ideas: he would have to admit that the teachings of Jesus Christ and early Christianity which arose from the Roman religion and not from Judaism coincides with that religious tradition which the Catholic Church has persecuted in a story called the Gnostic heresy.

This article proposes a new reading of a late first-century c.e. inscribed dedication from Todi (Umbria) as an accusation of witchcraft, a rhetorical text aimed at propagating a particular story among the local community. Historical and anthropological studies of witchcraft accusations in other societies have emphasised how they can reveal tensions and anxieties that are normally not visible to the observer. By drawing on these studies and close examination of the language and content of the inscription, this article analyses an historical agent's experience of the social structure of early imperial Italy. The accusation is read as a freedman's response to his ambiguous position in a slave society, the ambivalent power of writing in Roman culture and the religious claims of Flavian imperial discourse.

Poets like Horace, Tibullus, Propertius, and Ovid spoke about emotional and explicitly sexual relationships with Venus in a language mobilising towards radical ways to live. Criminal actions from prayer attacks to the use of poisons were considered and imagined as being performed in this literature. Whereas the phenomenon of militia amoris – sexual relationships of men to women framed as military service – has been studied extensively, it has never been analysed in a framework of the History of Religion. Given the widespread reception of such texts and the rise of concepts of militia Christiana in the later Empire, a closer look at these texts is necessary. Focusing on Horace, Odes 4.1, this article inquires into his construction of the interplay of total devotion and emotions, which lies at the basis of performances of this text, and into the coherency of the religious framework developed in the poetry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Serbian Archaeological Society is the property of Serbian Archaeological Society / Srpsko Arheolosko Drustvo 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 Matralia, an event attended only by women to worship Mater Matuta or Mother Matuta, was annually held in Italy on 11th of June. The celebration was bound to start in the morning at the first sight of prima lux--probably this is why Mother Matuta is often identified with several goddesses whose origins and mythology are tied to the celestial sphere. One of these figures known to the Romans was Aurora, the goddess of dawn. In various scriptures, these two female figures are mentioned together with their identities intertwined. This paper aims to further explore these points of connection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of the Archaeological Museum in Zagreb / Vjesnik Arheološkog Muzeja u Zagrebu is the property of Archaeological Museum in Zagreb 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.)

There are abundant examples of negative assessments of cultic honors to Roman emperors by nineteenth- and twentieth-century researchers. In the minds of historians raised in modern societies, in which monotheistic Abrahamic religions usually reign supreme, this is a completely understandable a priori approach; nevertheless, it hinders a correct understanding of Roman society in antiquity. This paper examines the need to provide a complex answer to the question of whether the inhabitants of the Roman world really believed in the divinity of their rulers. A complex answer to the question can only emerge from a historical contextualization of the phenomenon under analysis, an examination of the imperial cult within the wider changes that were taking place in Roman religion at the time, and application of the necessary empathetic approach. [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.)

Eight epigraphic documents show the presence of Bona Dea’s cult in the provinces of Roman Africa. The analysis of this corpus shows the identity of the worshippers and allows a contextualization of their religious behaviour. Some peculiarities observed in the African dedications encourage comparison with the Italic documentation.

The object of this paper is to establish the meaning and relevance of recovering the contents of pagan religion practiced by ancient Roman Republic, as the basis of the civil lifestyle conceived by Machiavelli in his idea of a mixed republic, through Discourses on Livy, one of his most mature political works. Here we can determine that Machiavelli, while searching to establish a civil religion model, found that not all Roman tradition was equally useful to him. Thus, ruminations on Roman religious tradition by authors such as Cicero or Lucretius, enable him, on the one hand, to sharpen his critical thinking regarding to the role played by religious beliefs and practices as forms of domination achieved through manipulation of fear and superstition. On the other hand, through Roman history and tradition while following Titus Livy, he finds that such critical stances are the expression of the crisis of the Republic, lead towards a dead-end, weaken legitimate authority, cause turmoil, and culminate in tyranny. Consequently, within the narrative of the Paduan historian, Machiavelli finds the model he was seeking for, an instrumentum regni that brings together all levels of society, helps to recognize authority, legitimizes hierarchies, and educates both dominated people and dominators, civitas becoming the beginning and end of all things. By following the search undertaken by Machiavelli it is possible to understand his purpose, that is to say, to refine his criticism of the period's dominant religion: Christianity. Therefore, far from seeking a reestablishment of paganism (something that would have been absurd at the time), his goal was not to destroy or replace Christianity, but to reform and adapt it to the conditions and needs of the new concept of a mixed republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The galli were the self-castrated devotees of Magna Mater, a Phrygian goddess introduced to Rome in 204BCE during Hannibal’s invasion of Italy (Roller, 1999, p.263),1 ostensibly due to a prophecy claiming that her arrival in Rome would expel the invaders.2 Magna Mater’s arrival in Rome was consequently not the result of a long-term development, but a direct response to political crisis, leading Roller (1999, p.263) to assert that her impact was “real, vivid and public from the very beginning.” As her devotees, the galli were subsequently introduced to Roman life in a similarly vivid way, perhaps becoming the most recognisable symbol of the cult (Beard, 2012, p.341). Their status as eunuchs and publicly active religious figures often put them in conflict with traditionally gendered norms and spaces of Rome. This article argues that the interaction between the galli and the gendered spaces they occupied in literature is central to the galli and their representation. Their presence in these spaces is not simply a conflict of cultural values, but an interaction constructed to enforce these values by using the galli as a negative paradigm. By investigating this we can interpret how gendered space and the galli were constructed and understood by contemporary writers and audiences. As Fitzgerald and Spentzou (2018, p.10) summarise, “the meaning of a space changes as people interact with and react to that space.” This essay will view this concept through the spatial interaction and reaction of the galli.

This article examines the ritual contexts of two recent discoveries of materia magica in complex and carefully excavated archaeological sites, and situates the prayers found there within the wider range of prayer in traditional Roman religion. Both the texts found in the so-called 'magician's cellar' in Chartres and those on the lead tablets found behind the temple of Magna Mater in Mainz date to the first century ce and are thus among the earliest surviving magical texts in the West. Despite the usual assumption that many magical rituals migrated from east to west across the Mediterranean and then up into western Europe, it shows how these two early caches of magical text reflect, in fact, the pattern and style of early Latin votive formulae, as well as traditional Roman prayers, like those of the Arval Brethren, and traditional Roman rituals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The festivals in honor of Jupiter, celebrated in the Roman province of Lower Moesia, have not been studied extensively. Fourteen precisely dated Latin inscriptions have been analyzed for this purpose. The 13th of June is defined as a fixed feast in the calendar of vicus Quintionis, and probably to one more village in Northern Dobruja. Most of the monuments were dedicated on different days and it is impossible to determine whether they were consecrated on a holiday in honor of the god. Some villages in Dobruja, such as vicus Secundini, vicus Clementiani and vicus classicorum performed regular, perhaps even annual dedications to Jupiter, but the day of the consecration of the altars is not specified in the inscriptions. The cyclic recurrence of this act presupposes observance of a certain holiday calendar with a fixed festival of Jupiter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on a certain wedding custom presented by the ancient Roman scholar, Marcus Terentius Varro in his work De vita populi Romani. According to him Roman bride on her way to her new home used to carry three coins, and to dedicate them to her husband, to Household Lares and to Compital Lares.

This paper reviews the inscriptions left in Rome by some Eastern hostages during the Julio-Claudian period. It is a very small but very interesting corpus of inscriptions, which has been extensively studied from a historical point of view. In this paper we will try to see what religious information can be deduced from this corpus, understanding the inscriptions as presentations that individuals make of themselves and their social image, using a methodology derived from Pragmatics and the presentation of individuals in social networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeological materials show the existence of the god Sarapis throughout the Mediterranean, where a considerable number of epigraphic, artistic and numismatic objects remain. The presence of Sarapis in the Mare Nostrum is the result of the spread of Egyptian cults. This paper looks at Sarapis and his relationship with different Roman emperors, by way of the coins these latter had minted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the transformative impact of constructivist positions in religion studies since the 1990s, challenging naturalized perceptions and examining social, cultural, and political construction. Topics include the incorporation of diverse critical theories like postmodernism, poststructuralism, and postcolonialism in constructivist approaches, as well as the ironic return to Human Sciences methodologies by cognitive and evolutionary theorists.

This contribution presents the first survey of the full range of sources for the dedication of paintings to the gods of the Greek-speaking world, including Egypt. This phenomenon has been largely overlooked due to the rarity of such dedications, in contrast to the countless dedicatory objects fashioned from stone and other durable materials, which have survived in relative abundance. Although some types of dedicatory painting, particularly the well-known Archaic and Classical terracotta pinakes from Attika and the painted wooden panels from Pitsa, have been studied by numerous scholars, other examples have been neglected, along with many written sources. Seeking to fill this gap in the scholarship, this article collects the full range of sources demonstrating the importance of paintings as a type of dedication – not only the paintings that still survive on terracotta, stone, and stucco, but also a varied and intriguing body of literary and epigraphical testimonia. The result is a study that for the first time provides scholars of Greek religion and Greek art a detailed overview of this aspect of Greek cult, and delves into various issues – methodological and otherwise – crucial to understanding its nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Emperor Augustus promised the revival of the Republic and its values, the revival of Rome's reputation as a great city and most importantly, he promised and ensured the revival of ancestral rituals. Augustus brought more attention to specific rituals, particularly when he performed them and thus set himself apart from earlier politicians. He also brought attention to rituals that, evidently, had not held a significant position within Roman religious traditions. By placing greater focus on the rituals, Augustus was able to paint himself as the savior of these rituals, thereby setting himself apart from his rivals and gaining the support of the people. This paper intends to look at a handful of examples that describe or depict Augustus actively participating in rituals. It will also explore whether Augustus performed the rituals as they were, or if he 're-invented' them for his own personal gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]