Religio: A Mural of Religion in Ancient Rome

Preface

Before any explanations or explorations of the titular “Roman religion,” I feel the need to set the correct precedent. Religion, religious philosophy and culture in Rome is incredibly vast, and elusive by nature. What remains, especially of early antiquity, is limited and latter sources can portray a different or influenced understanding of religion from how it actually was for ordinary individuals. Furthermore, modern sources can take on religiously influenced (intentionally or unintentionally) or even political stances towards religion in Rome. Even while accounting for this, modern scholars’ definitions, explanations and views on this very broad topic is ever-changing and oftentimes in debate.

There exist numerous perspectives towards “Roman religion”, like that of Georg Wissowa’s extreme separation of Roman and foreign / imported gods, Jörg Rüpke’s notion of “Mediterranean Religion” explaining a fluid religious culture unified (in a sense) through hyper-individualist “lived religion”, and more. So, any form of study pertaining to the past, especially one of such short length and introductory detail as this one, should be written and read with caution. I have taken great care to provide reliable and verifiable information, but as I explained, even such information can be (and is often) debated. To make clear the perspective I have utilised in introducing these concepts; I have mostly stuck to the sociological approach which explains a mostly decentralised religious culture of community cults, an approach greatly explored and detailed in John Schneid’s book “An Introduction to Roman Religion”. However, it should be kept in mind that in such limited space, I am limited in the details and different views I am able to give. Thus, for those interested (which I assume one is, if reading this) I highly encourage further reading of the sources listed in the bibliography, as well as further research of conflicting understandings of religion in Rome.

Religio: A Mural of Religion in Ancient Rome

Throughout history, religion has been one of, if not the most important elements in almost all societies and their movements. Wars have been fought, men have been killed, whole civilizations have been almost wiped out in the names of different religions. But on the other hand, religious belief has been the single most powerful cooperative force in human history. The oldest recorded evidence of many humans from presumably different tribes working together towards a single unified goal, Göbekli Tepe, happened not because of agriculture or hunting or what else, but religion. Religion unified tribes into state in ancient Mesopotamia, first into the Sumer state and subsequently into the Akkadian empire. It unified all Christians, Germanic or Frank, towards one single goal with the Crusades. It unified the Muslims, regardless of race, under the flag of the Umayyad Caliphate.

Figure 1: On the left, an overlook of the Göbekli Tepe excavation site, the oldest found evidence of Homo Sapiens working collectively towards a unified religious goal. On the right, a reconstruction of Aedes Iovis Optimi Maximi Capitolini, the Temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus on Capitoline hill, the single most important religious structure in pre-Christianity Rome.

However, when we turn our scopes to the backbone of western civilisation, Rome, we are met with a much different mural of religion. Not unifying under a single god or goal, but rather an open unification of all the Roman subjects’ beliefs. Not too strict in its beliefs unlike the Catholics, but adaptable. Not solely dependent on the gods, but cooperative, transactive even. This much different approach to religion, one not solely of fear and obedience but also of mutual respect and understanding, was reflected in Roman society as well as in ours. Most western languages use a similar word for belief systems: religion, religión, religion / kultus, religião, etc. All of these descend from the ancient Roman notion of religio, meaning “religion” or “religious practice”. Yet this notion was much different than our understanding of religion, and much more nuanced. In this article, we will examine how religion was in Rome, dive into what the notion of religio exactly meant for the Romans and look at the dichotomy of religio and superstitio, to hopefully better understand what religion was like for the Romans.

Religion in Rome

As was previously mentioned, the Roman understanding of religion was much different than what we associate with religion today. Even amongst ancient religions, like that of the Greeks’ or the Hittites’, Roman religion was distinct especially in one aspect: it lacked a creation myth, a cosmogony. In many religions both contemporary and ancient, humans have believed in a holistic myth of creation. The Greeks believed that before all was Chaos, and then came Gaia (Earth), and in succession, Tartarus, Eros, Uranus, and the Titans. The Eridu Genesis explains that the universe was created in the primordial sea Abzu. Christianity explains a Genesis of 6 days (not necessarily denominating a 24-hour period but a longer one, though that is a topic for another essay) during which God (Yahweh) creates the universe. All different accounts of cosmogony, but the one crucial point they have in common is that they are cosmogonies. When we look at Rome however, we are not met with such a clear account of how the realms were created. In fact, some scholars have deemed the Roman peoples “lacking in imagination” simply because of this missing cosmogony. Maurizio Bettini explains in his essay of a similar name, “Missing Cosmogonies: the Roman Case?”, how the Romans approached this incredibly important issue of first creation.

For the Romans, the creation of all things was not as important as their own beginning. While other religions were greatly concerned with how everything began to justify their universality, in Rome this was not an issue, as they never really claimed universality. Their account of creation lacked not only a holistic cosmogony, but also a theogony, anthropogony and gynaikogony (the name Bettini gives to the creation of women). For them the creation of Rome, their civilization, was much more important and constituted their “cosmogony.” The transition from a mere settlement into a proper urbs, a city civilization, was what started both Rome as a civilization and the Roman cosmos. Approaching the Roman understanding of creation from an Abrahamic standpoint which has been greatly engrained in our minds would be wrong, because while we think that the issue of a beginning is vital to understanding the world, the Romans didn’t. Rome began with Romulus wielding a plough and digging a circular furrow, the sulcus primigenius, which represented the foundations of Rome herself. Then, in the account of Plutarch, Romulus dug a circular pit (where the comitium would eventually stand), put in the pit the initial offerings of beauty (in accord with custom) and natural necessity. Then everyone there threw in a piece of the land from whence they came. At the end, the pit was named after the heavens, mundus. With the mundus as the centre, they drew the outline of the city where the early walls would stand.

This whole account of Rome’s creation acts as a testimony as to how they approached both their society and religion. The circular nature of both the pit and the furrows demonstrates harmony and symmetry. The offering of both culture and nature is the creation of a new civilization: Rome. The earth from different lands being mixed into the foundations shows the basic stance of Rome, one of openness as an asylum for newcomers and fugitives. But what is most curious is the name given to the pit, mundus, which designates the heavens in Latin (as explained by Plutarch himself.) And according to Cato, the mundus sits above in the “shape of the heavens”, the lower part being dedicated to the dead (manes) and the higher part being the heavens. From this it can be deduced that the mundus Romulus dug put Rome, and therefore Earth as a whole (since the entirety of the Earth was seen as either part of Rome or waiting to be conquered), in communion with both the heavens and the underworld. So, what does this mean? This means that for the Romans, Earth was only part of the cosmic reality, and therefore really “began” when Rome, the mundus, was dug, therefore when Rome was founded. For Rome, what happened before is of little importance, only this point of beginning and what comes after is. Thus, it’s safe to say that for the Romans, the creation myth or “cosmogony” is just this: the founding of Rome. An Urbigony, as Bettini puts it.

This really demonstrates how the Romans approached the world. It was not a story of beginning and end, but a story of progress and development. And religion served exactly this outlook on life. The well-being of Rome and the triumphs she gains were tied to the pietas of her citizens, that is their devotion to the religio, and more broadly the mos maiorum. Mos maiorum can be defined in simple terms as the honoured unwritten principles that governed all aspects of life, from social responsibilities to private endeavours. We can translate this directly as ancestral custom, comprised of many different values such as religio and cultus, pietas, fides, virtus, etc. It’s obviously an incredibly broad and detailed topic, but in the restriction of space we have, we can sum up this ancestral custom’s dictates as needing the Roman citizen to be truthful, virtuous, accepting, disciplined, persevering, controlled, honourable but most importantly for us, religious and “pious” (not exactly what the word “pious” denotes today, which will be discussed when we’re exploring religio and pietas). Above all these virtues, it was of utmost importance for the Romans to properly and adequately worship their gods.

Take notice how we said, “their gods”. This is because the Romans thought that every aspect of life was governed by different gods (and therefore religion), and all these different gods were worshipped differently at different times. This is quite similar to the Greek approach to the Pantheon, and many of the Roman gods had Greek counterparts (the most famous being the likeness of Iuppiter and Zeus). Furthermore, in the Aeneid, Virgil writes that Aeneas’ mission would be “[…] to introduce the gods to the Latium”, from which we understand that even the Romans thought that the gods came along with Aeneas for the first time to Latium. Because of this, the Roman pantheon has many similarities to the Greek pantheon and the overall approach to religion, but with key differences. We’ve already explored the difference in importance of cosmogony, but another vital difference is that for the Romans, human things came before the gods. Augustine tells how Varro approaches the humans and gods in Antiquitates rerum divinarum, saying that he tells of human things before divine ones because civitates (cities) were founded, which in turn instituted the divine beings. For us, with an Abrahamic understanding, this seems completely absurd; that a society could believe in divine beings and attribute their well-being to these gods, but also believe that it was the society, themselves, that instituted these higher beings. But for the Romans, this was simply the nature of existence. It’s simply the watchmaker analogy turned on its head: the complex and beautiful watch cannot come to be without the skilful hard work of its designer; the gods are simply nothing without the institutions of the civitas (this mutual relationship between the gods and men will be discussed further under the notion of religio). This is one more reason why a holistic cosmogony is not explored by the Romans, since a cosmogony or theogony independent and creative of the humans cannot exist if the gods’ existence / importance begins with and after civitas.

One last aspect of Roman religion to explore is how cults branched in Rome. As was seen, gods were believed to be instituted by humans, and therefore the deification of many different things (including humans) was possible. And these different deities were worshipped by different institutions, named cults, throughout Rome and later the entire empire. This does not mean that everyone had different religions however, because all cults were part of the entire religion. As we have explored, religion and society in Rome was one of openness and adaptability. Therefore, instead of one centralized and regulated religion like Catholicism, religion in Rome was quite decentralised and adaptive. One of the clearest examples of this was how religion was handled after the conquest of Egypt by Augustus. Instead of forced mass conversion into “Roman religion”, Egyptian deities were accepted and adapted into the Roman religious culture, and vice-versa. This can be seen below on a fresco from the Temple of Dendur, which depicts Augustus as the pharaoh, communing with different Egyptian deities like Isis, Horus and Osiris. This further demonstrates that for the Romans, relationship with the gods was not one of dogmatic fear and obedience[1] but one of adaptive cooperation and transaction. In the next chapter, we will further explore this seemingly peculiar outlook towards the gods.

 

Figure 2: On the left, a vignette of Pharaoh Augustus burning incense in front of the deified brothers Pedesi and Pihor. On the right, a vignette of the king offering to Osiris and Isis.

Religio: what it meant for the Romans

We have discussed briefly what religio means and saw it to be the precursor to the modern denominations of “religion” in various romantic languages, meaning something in the lines of “religious practice”. However, religio for Romans meant almost nothing like what “religion” in today’s sense means. While etymologically ancestral, religio bears near to no semantic resemblance to religion. To get a better understanding as to what religio meant to Romans and how it relates to the mos maiorum through pietas, we must look at Cicero’s De natura deorum (On the Nature of the Gods). In book three chapter five, he writes: “The religion of the Roman people [Cumque omnis populi Romani religio] comprises ritual, auspices, and the third additional division consisting of all such prophetic warnings as the interpreters of the Sybil or the soothsayers have derived from portents and prodigies.” Here, Cicero’s character Cotta defines religio as the collection of rituals, auspices and prophetic warnings. This is somewhat similar to the modern understanding of Religion and shows that what we think of Religion today was in fact a constituent of religio in Rome.

However, in book two chapter eight, Cicero writes: “Moreover if we care to compare our national characteristics with those of foreign peoples, we shall find that, while in all other respects we are only the equals or even the inferior of others, yet in the sense of religion, that is, in reverence for the gods, [religione id est cultu deorum] we are far superior.” The important part here for us is “religione id est cultu deorum” meaning “religion, that is, cultu deorum”. Cicero also gives the same definition in 1.117: “religionem, quae deorum cultu pio continetur” meaning “religion, which consists in piously worshipping them.” According to St. Augustine in book twenty of his Contra Faustum Manichaeum, cultus can be defined as “a sort of servitude owed exclusively to divinity.” Therefore, we understand that according to Cicero, one of if not the most important definitions and constituents of the broad notion of religio was worship. For the Romans, religion was by definition the rites, rituals and worship it necessitated, unlike the modern understanding in which worship is merely a required means of revering God and the way towards Heaven. Although for us the roman understanding of religio might seem circular or flawed, since worship is required BY religion, for the Romans worship was what constituted religion itself.

Cicero approaches religion as not an overhead institution that governs all life but a situation of cooperation and transaction between men and the Gods. This can again be seen in De natura deorum, 1.115-16[2]. Men worship, revere, respect and fear the Gods appropriately, and in turn the Gods reward them with well-being and triumph. If not, Cicero argues (through Cotta) that men have no responsibility of pietas to the gods, and therefore religio. Both parties have a responsibility to uphold their ends. From this, we can understand that for the Romans, religio was not belief based, or dogmatic and orthodoxic, but rather orthopraxic (the appropriate performance of rituals in accord with tradition). This emphasis on orthopraxis and relative unimportance of voiced belief can be seen even more prevalently in the Roman understanding of “afterlife”, or the lack thereof.

The afterlife is such a topic in Roman religious studies that it’s particularly difficult to pin down a prevalent, let alone singular culture surrounding it. There appears to be two major priorities for the “belief” in life after death. The first one was the more general, slightly animistic belief of a so-called afterlife. As we have discussed previously, according to Plutarch’s account of the founding of Rome, there exists a pit named “mundus” which is a kind of gateway, or means of communing, between different realms. The different realm, also named mundus, is one where both the gods and the dead manes reside. The lower part of this mundus was dedicated to the souls of the dead, from where they could interact with the living world after death. Furthermore, the line between this “realm of the dead” and that of the living seems greatly blurred, as the pit of mundus is described as the very heart of Rome herself. Because of this, many also believed that the dead didn’t dwell solely on a plane distinctly separated from them but amongst them, communing and interacting with the world, living on in the memories of their families and subjects.

Even further, many believed in the both the specific and general deification of the dead. Specific deification was cases such as the deified Roman emperors, like Augustus, Marcus Aurelius, Hadrianus, and more. Deification extended to the general population too, where people deified and dedicated terminology of godhood (like di, dei) to their deceased loved ones. So, general deification was an understanding of death very different than ours. For the Romans, the gods were not solely divine entities that dwelled above but they were also contributing parts of the communities, so in that sense kind of living amongst and contributing to the believers’ societies. For the dead, a similar belief existed, where manes were believed to actively live amongst, help and interact with the living, with “supernatural” powers and attributes of godhood. St. Augustine criticised this in his Contra Faustum Manichaeum while describing how cultus deorum could not carry over to Christian worship since in Christianity no cultus was given to manes, who became deos. In this sense, the deification of the manes was just as transactional as that of the preexisting gods. Cults of this culture were formed, and these “chthonic” deities were named the Di Manes.[3] 

The second, “less pronounced” priority was one of relative similitude to modern and Hellenistic understandings of an afterlife. In this understanding, there existed an underworld and a “heaven”, namely Hades and Elysium. This belief was obviously imported from the Greeks, although the exact timeline is not known, for depictions of the Greek underworld were found in Etruscan tombs dated to the early Roman Republic, long before the most important depiction of Hades in Vergilius’ 6^th Book of Aeneid. Furthermore, Wiseman (1992), who gathered passages of Roman vates (prophets) predicting judgement after death, notes that posthumous judgement existed in later Roman tradition. Although the decision of one’s fate between Hades and Elysium seems to have been morally neutral, there existed moral and non-moral zones of separation in Hades as is described in the Aeneid. Plus, Lucretius (3.41-54) notes that even those who claimed not to believe were found to be afraid of Hades in the face of crises, so we can assume that there were certain things one could do to end up in Hades.

The peculiar part of what Lucretius tells us is that there were non-believers. While we have explored different beliefs and practices pertaining to an afterlife, these might’ve been representing but a minority amongst Romans. Until a later point in Roman culture, the belief in Hades and Elysium did not appear to be prevalent, but even more radically than this there appeared to be a disbelief in a “soul” continuing on living with the same consciousness as the living person, after death. Pliny the Elder’s comment on such a thought in Book 7 Chapter 55 of his Naturalis Historia supports this idea: “What downright madness is it to suppose that life is to recommence after death!” Although this passage contains ridicule of those who hold such beliefs, hold on to the bodies after death and practice immediate deification, it shows us that even important figures like Pliny the Elder felt free to speak in such a manner against supposed “immortality” of the soul. We might be inclined to think of his ridicule of belief in immortality as a one-off, this is most definitely not the case. There have been found numerous gravestones engraved with abbreviations such as “NF, F, NS, NC” which meant respectively non fui, fui, non sum, and non curo (I did not exist, I existed, I do not exist, I do not care). This epitaph containing proclamations of non-belief was so common that they were granted standard abbreviations.

Overall, we can say that for the Romans, religio meant nothing like what religion means today. For them, it was more communal, not dogmatic, and not based on any top-down prophetic scripture or belief. Rather, religio meant more of orthopraxis, with a heavy emphasis on pietas, the appropriate worship of the gods. With pietas and religio came the well-being of the community and in a broader scope, of Rome. However, what if one took piety a little too far, to the point where proper religious practice turns into a zealous fervour? That’s the thin line separating religio, and superstitio, which we will discuss in the next chapter.

Figure 3: Aeneas and the Sibyl in the Underworld, Jan Brueghel the Younger, 1630s.

Dichotomy of religio and superstitio

Superstitio, once more, morphologically looks very similar to the modern word superstition, and is the etymological ancestor. And again, the meaning for the Romans differed strongly as to what superstition means for us today, simply because of the orthopraxical approach that we have discussed previously. For us it means believing in the wrong god(s), or even things (since a Muslim would definitely consider idolatry or even pantheism very superstitious). To understand what superstitio meant for the Romans however, we can turn once again to Cicero’s De Natura Deorum, in which he explains superstition as “implying a groundless fear of the gods” (1.117). This is a very simple and clear explanation of what superstitio meant, but to better understand what it constituted of and why it was such a direct opposite of religio we must turn back to an older Greek term: “δεισιδαιμονίας” (deisidaimonia).

Theophrastus in his Characters (16) explains deisidaimonia as a “crouching fear of unseen powers”. He further details this fear with many examples of a man whose fears and beliefs interfere with his life so much that he’d go as far as to build a whole shrine in his home if he saw what he interpreted to be a holy serpent. In Rome, Plutarch treats this Greek notion in his essay De superstitione and suggests that deisidaimonia and atheism are exact opposites, with one being the absolute disregard for the gods whereas the other is way too concerned with them. However, he names deisidaimonia as the worse of the two, as fear like that would be prone to turn into revulsion or hate against the gods who incite such fear and obsession. And of course, he concludes that pietas is the correct mindset, the true balance between these two wrong extremes.

Therefore, we can say with certainty that by at least the 1^st century BC when Plutarch lived, the Romans were using superstitio with the same bad connotation that the Greeks like Theophrastus were using deisidaimonia with during the 4^th century BC. For Seneca though, this bad connotation goes further and superstitio appears to mean something much worse than what we have discussed so far. In book two, chapter 5.1 of his De Clementia, he writes: “Ergo quemadmodum religio deos colit, superstitio violat, […]” meaning “Just as the gods are worshipped by religion, but are dishonoured by superstition, […]” (tr. Aubrey Stewart, 1889). So, in the mind of Seneca, superstitio is not only a bad way to live, but a direct dishonour to the gods. In this sense, this dishonour was attributed to classes lower than the elite Roman male, because it was used as a way of distinguishing themselves from “lower” humans (as we have seen previously in Cicero’s De nat. deo.). Therefore, superstitio was often associated with women, slaves and even barbarians.

As a modern analysis of the term, Scheid explains that superstitious Romans regarded the gods to be evil, jealous, tyrannical and vengeful if not treated with the utmost care and near-obsessive respect. This non-natural fear of supernatural beings waiting to bring calamity on a wrong step made them excessively zealous in their orthopraxy. We have previously discussed what the correct form of worship looked like for the Romans, but to sum it up again (according to Scheid) it was to believe that the gods were good, and that they approached humanity with respect as long as the basic civic code of the community was upheld and the gods were worshipped with good pietas. A transaction of mutual benefits. Superstitio violated this, in opposition to atheism, by fearing the gods too much.

Figure 4: The Brothers, Disputing Over the Founding of Rome, Consult the Augurs, pl.7 from the series The Story of Romulus and Remus by Giambattista Fontana, 1575. Augury, which is the consultation of omens, would definitely seem like superstition to us, but was integral to Roman religion as a way of communication between god and men.

Conclusion and Last Thoughts

In this essay, we have discussed and explored how religion would have looked like in Rome and what it would have meant for the Romans living before and during the early empire. Keeping in mind the shortcomings that I have discussed in the preface, we have seen that religion looked very different in Rome than it appears to us today, being much more open in terms of belief but very strict in its importance of proper practice and worship. For the beginning, unlike many religions we have come to know today, a cosmogony was mostly missing, partially replaced with an Urbigony. Possibly because of this general disregard for a cosmogony, the belief-based system we’ve come to know today was mostly non-existent, replaced with a heavy focus on orthopraxy of civic and personal duties which constituted the transactional relationship between the gods and men. If religio was upheld properly, then communities (and in turn society) would prosper. But religio itself was not a dogmatic set of beliefs relayed through prophetic revelations, but cultus deorum, proper worship of the gods. Despite this, non-belief was much more common than it would seem, with epitaphs of atheistic declaration gaining such popularity that they were given standard abbreviations. On the other hand, people sometimes took this religious devotion too far and ventured into what was known as superstitio, a fear and worship so zealous that it was deemed a dishonour to the gods by Seneca.

Overall, I have strived to paint a mural of religion in Rome comprehensive enough to give a baseline understanding of how the individuals and communities of a society that can be deemed the foundation of western civilisation approached the holy. From what we saw, and what I have understood, there were many, many different approaches, but one thing was central for all of them: appropriateness. Throughout the evolution of religion and philosophy in Rome, proper adherence to the civic codes were always the most important part. Even when these civic codes inevitably evolved, sometimes heavily influenced by the religion and philosophy in flux, the important thing for the Romans was the fact that these codes were holy. The proper way was not to disregard the gods or to fear them to the point of obsession, but to treat them with respect and exalt them appropriately so that the gods would respect and reward you in return. If the gods failed you despite your respect, then they didn’t deserve that no longer. It seems transactional, but it was more cooperative.

What does this mean for us today? For me, and you reading this? In our age where constant change is more prevalent than it has ever been thanks to the internet, our approach towards the world and the forces possibly behind it is in ever-evolving flux. In a mere year one can go from Catholic to Buddhist to Muslim to pagan and go on to end up as a new-age spiritualist. With these changes of how we approach the holy, the way we approach each other and the societies we live in changes too. We access and accept information at an ever-growing pace, and unconsciously incorporate these into our daily lives. This puts the civic codes of today in a situation of ever-accelerating flux as well, but this change has now become so drastic that no one can know what to expect from one another. When talking about religions we tend to think of Christianity and Islam, but Capitalism and Individualism are quasi-religions too. And we tend to get lost in this amalgamation of religions.

Perhaps we ought to take a little pointer from the founders of the west. Despite their ever-changing and open approach, they regarded whatever god they worshipped as a part of their community that had a bigger power of affecting what happens to it. Because of this approach, mutual respect and proper treatment between the gods and men was always the most important rule of religio. Whether one is a Pantheist or a Buddhist, if we adopt religio into our lives and view each individual of our community, our society, as someone with the power of affecting what happens to us, then maybe we can learn to start expecting good from each other; simply because proper treatment- orthopraxy- religio is the most appropriate way of living, even if the ancient gods Iuppiter, Iuno and Minerva aren’t around to look over Rome anymore.

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[1] Fear and obedience definitely mattered, since pietas included fearing the gods in an appropriate amount and way, but differs greatly from contemporary religions, as will be explained.

[2] “Why, what reason have you for maintaining that men owe worship to the gods, if the gods not only pay no respect to men, but care for nothing and do nothing at all?’ But deity possesses an excellence and pre-eminence which must of its own nature attract the worship of the wise.’ Now how can there be any excellence in a being so engrossed in the delights of his own pleasure that he always has been, is, and will continue to be entirely idle and inactive? Furthermore how can you owe piety (pietas) to a person who has bestowed nothing upon you? or how can you owe anything at all to one who has done you no service? Piety is justice towards the gods; but how can any claims of justice exist be- tween us and them, if god and man have nothing in common?”

[3] For further reading on the Roman Cult of the Dead, look at Charles W. King’s “The Ancient Roman Afterlife: Di Manes, Belief, and the Cult of the Dead” (2020)