scholarly journals NUMA AND JUPITER: WHOSE SMILE IS IT, ANYWAY?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-17
Author(s):  
Lindsay G. Driediger-Murphy
Keyword(s):  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
The Way

Abstract This article examines the Roman tradition that Numa once negotiated with Jupiter about human sacrifice. Complete versions of the myth survive in Ovid, Plutarch and Arnobius (citing Valerius Antias). Previous studies of this tradition have proposed four main interpretations of it, which have done important service in modern reconstructions of the character of Roman religion. These scholarly treatments raise several questions. First, are they actually supported by, or the most convincing way of reading, the surviving ancient sources? If so, have they been correctly attributed? Why might a specific ancient author present the myth of Numa and Jupiter in a manner which suggests one interpretation rather than another? What ideological and theological work does the story do for Ovid, for Plutarch and for Arnobius? Finally, can this myth, in whatever version, support the weight of the implications put on it for the character of Roman religion? This article seeks to enhance our understanding of this myth in its surviving versions, not just by analysing the evidence for each of the modern interpretations, but also by considering why ancient authors tell the myth of Numa and Jupiter the way they do. It is argued that their choices illustrate best not one meaning of the myth nor one Roman way of piety but the richness and diversity of religious reflection in antiquity.

Devotio and human sacrifice in archaic Italy and Rome

2021 ◽  
Vol 60 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 363-398
Keyword(s):  
Crucial Role ◽  
The Other ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Mona Island ◽  
Narrow Definition ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Father And Son ◽  
Very High

Abstract The Roman father and son of the same name, P. Decius Mus, became paragon heroes by deliberately giving their lives in battle that Rome might win over a fierce enemy. Both engaged in a special ritual called devotio (from which our word “devotion” derives) to offer themselves to the gods of the Underworld, with whom regular people have very little interaction and to whom they rarely sacrifice. While the Mus family is the most famous for this act, it turns out the willingness to sacrifice oneself for Rome frequently occurs within stories of great patriots, including the story of Horatius Cocles, Mettius Curtius, Atilius Regulus, and even the traitors Coriolanus and Tarpeia. Romans regarded self-sacrifice as a very high, noble endeavor, whereas they loathed and persecuted practitioners of human sacrifice. It is therefore quite amazing to read that the Romans thrice engaged in state-sponsored human sacrifice, a fact they rarely mention and generally forget. The most famous enemy practitioners of human sacrifice were the Druids, whom the Romans massacred on Mona Island on Midsummer Night's Eve, but the Carthaginians, the Germans, the Celts, and the Thracians all infamously practiced human sacrifice. To Romans, the act of human sacrifice falls just short of cannibalism in the spectrum of forbidden practices, and was an accusation occasionally thrown against an enemy to claim they are totally barbaric. On the other hand, Romans recognized their own who committed acts of self-sacrifice for the good of the society, as heroes. There can be no better patriot than he who gives his life to save his country. Often the stories of their heroism have been exaggerated or sanitized. These acts of heroism often turn out to be acts of human sacrifice, supposedly a crime. It turns out that Romans have a strong legacy of practicing human sacrifice that lasts into the historic era, despite their alleged opposition to it. Numerous sources relate one story each. Collecting them all makes it impossible to deny the longevity of human sacrifice in Rome, although most Romans under the emperors were probably unaware of it. The paradox of condemning but still practicing human sacrifice demonstrates the nature of Roman religion, where do ut des plays a crucial role in standard sacrifice as well as in unpleasant acts like human sacrifice. Devotio was an inverted form of sacrifice, precisely because it was an offering to the gods of the Underworld, rather than to Jupiter or the Parcae. Romans may have forsaken devotio, but they continued to practice human sacrifice far longer than most of us have suspected, if one widens the current narrow definition of human sacrifice to include events where a life is taken in order to bring about a better future for the commonwealth, appease the gods, or ensure a Roman victory in battle.

Doctrinal Ritual, Identification, and Social Complexity

2021 ◽  
pp. 106-126
Author(s):  
Harvey Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Social Complexity ◽  
World History ◽  
Peer To Peer ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Political Association ◽  
The Way

The doctrinal mode appears to have first emerged in world history with the advent of farming, helping to establish the first truly large-scale societies, in which identification with group categories became increasingly important, paving the way for new forms of political association. Many of the first states dominated by new doctrinal religions appear to have fostered extreme forms of inequality, epitomized by the deification of rulers and cruel practices, such as human sacrifice. But once societies exceeded a certain threshold in scale and complexity, the empires that seemed best able to flourish were those that adopted more ethical forms of doctrinal religion, mobilizing strong norms enforced as much by peer-to-peer policing as by top-down coercion.

Varro, Platonists, and Demons

2020 ◽  
pp. 124-163
Author(s):  
Gerard O'Daly
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Roman Religion

The chapter analyses Books 6–10, which engage in polemic against philosophically influenced interpretations of pagan religious beliefs. The principal themes are: criticism of pagan critics of traditional Roman religion, and of the attempt to develop a natural theology, focusing on Varro; continuation of polemic against polytheism in Roman religion; the value of some Platonist doctrines (on God and the soul) and the flaws of others (demons as intermediaries, reincarnation, lax monotheism); criticism of philosophical views (especially those found in the Neoplatonist Porphyry) on purification, mediation between the divine and the human, sacrifice, and the afterlife; Christians and permissible passions; pagan and Jewish-Christian views contrasted; the meaning of Christian sacrifice; Christ as the true mediator.

Cornelius Nepos, ‘Atticus’ and the Roman Revolution

1988 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fergus Millar
Keyword(s):  
Review Article ◽  
Religious Change ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Political Biography ◽  
Roman Society ◽  
Major Study ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Precise Moment ◽  
The Way

The biography of Atticus by Cornelius Nepos, covering the last eight decades of the Republic and written at the precise moment of the establishment of monarchy by Octavian, ought always to have been treated both as one of the best introductions to the period, and as an exposition, from a unique angle, of some of the values expressed in Roman society. But now, more than ever, there may be a place for a brief essay which attempts to bring out both some values exhibited in this particular text and the way in which these were taken up, distorted, and deployed in the propaganda of the Augustan regime. For, first, the larger background of late-Republican scholarship, antiquarianism, historiography, and biography has been fully explored by Elizabeth Rawson; second, Joseph Geiger has argued for the originality of Nepos as a writer of political biography; third, we have a major study of the ethical models which it is the purpose of the biography to hold up for emulation. Finally, John North, in an important review-article on recent works on Roman religion, has identified three significant characteristics of late-Republican religiosity: a scholarly or antiquarian perception of religious change, often seen as decline; the identification of religion as the subject of a particular form of discourse; and a shift in focus within the sphere of religion, from the community as a whole to great men within it. All three come together, as we will see below, in the passage of Nepos' biography in which he records how, some time in the 30s B.C., Atticus suggested to Octavian that the now roofless temple of Juppiter Feretrius on the Capitol should be repaired.

Latinus' Genealogy and the Palace of Picus (Aeneid 7, 45–9, 170–91)

1980 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 140-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
V.J. Rosivach
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Royal Palace ◽  
The Way

In Aeneid 7. 1–285 Vergil colours his picture of early Latium with a religious atmosphere which can be fully appreciated only if these verses are read with an attentive awareness of Roman religious beliefs and practices. A detailed exegesis of all 285 verses would hardly be possible here, and I will limit myself to two major points, the account of Latinus' ancestry (45–9) and the description of the royal palace (170–91), both because these passages are interesting in themselves for the way they apparently contradict each other, and because they are good illustrations of how Vergil draws on the data of Roman religion, both its folklore and its cult, to fix in his reader's mind certain definite impressions about Latinus and the Latins.

scholarly journals Keiserkult: fremmed kult i det romerske samfunn?

1993 ◽  
Author(s):  
Evy Johanne Håland
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Southern Italy ◽  
The Other ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Ancestor Cult ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Religious Festivals ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Way

It has been claimed that, originally, the divinity of the living emperor was alien to traditional Greek and Roman religion. This article tries to show that elements which are introduced with a foreign cult - the cult of the living emperor - may be latent in the traditional cult - the cult of the dead, the ancestor-cult, the need for a present benefactor and subsequently a cult to him - which then become relevant. The socalled foreign cult of the emperor, in this way, filled a gap. Even if this new god was foreign in relation to the traditional gods, i.e. his name, the essence in the cult might on the other hand be something which was aalready present. The way of approaching the problem is from a comparative analysis of ancient Graeco-Roman soiety and present-day society in southern Italy and Greece. The comparison is based on certain religious festivals.

Domi et Militiae: Elite Religion at Rome in Response to External Triumphs and Crises

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craige B. Champion
Keyword(s):  
Roman Republic ◽  
Religious Practices ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Ruling Elite ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
To Come

This chapter examines questions of traditional, ancestral gods as well as religious practices and the acceptance or rejection of new foreign deities and rituals in the Middle Roman Republic. In particular, it shows how disparate behaviors domi militiaeque reveal the religious intentions and motivations of the Roman ruling elite. The chapter begins with a discussion of accumulative civic polytheism in the context of elite-instrumentalism, focusing on the cases of Bacchanalia and Magna Mater. It then explores how Roman religion became increasingly chaotic and ever more intractable as Mediterranean-wide hegemony came into existence. It also describes military evocationes as a means for an immigrant deity to come to Rome, along with the concept of human sacrifice in the Roman Republic. It argues that there was an inconsistency in the reception of new state cults and that governing elites tried their best to maintain the pax deorum.

The Organization of Roman Religious Beliefs

2003 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 275-312 ◽  
Author(s):  
CHARLES KING
Keyword(s):  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Multiple Identities ◽  
Religious Organization ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Personal Commitment ◽  
The Way

Abstract: This study will focus on the differences in the way that Roman Paganism and Christianity organize systems of beliefs. It rejects the theory that ““beliefs”” have no place in the Roman religion, but stresses the differences between Christian orthodoxy, in which mandatory dogmas define group identity, and the essentially polythetic nature of Roman religious organization, in which incompatible beliefs could exist simultaneously in the community without conflict. In explaining how such beliefs could coexist in Rome, the study emphasizes three main conceptual mechanisms: (1) polymorphism, the idea that gods could have multiple identities with incompatible attributes, (2) orthopraxy, the focus upon standardized ritual rather than standardized belief, and (3) pietas, the Roman ideal of reciprocal obligation, which was flexible enough to allow Romans to maintain relationships simultaneously with multiple gods at varying levels of personal commitment.

scholarly journals Human Sacrifices at Rome and other notes on Roman Religion

1912 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 34-52
Author(s):  
J. S. Reid
Keyword(s):  
Historical Period ◽  
Human Sacrifice ◽  
Roman Religion ◽  
Father And Son

There is in Pliny, xxviii, 12, seq. a famous statement to the effect that his own age had seen human sacrifice carried out in the Forum Boarium: “nostra aetas vidit.” The whole subject of the ritual offering of men's lives to the gods at Rome in the historical period is full of interest and has been, of course, much discussed, but statements about it continue to be made by writers of authority, which appear to be very dubious when the ancient evidence is rigorously scrutinised. Pliny introduces the theme in a curious manner, not directly, but in order to illustrate the practical efficacy of the precatio when a venerable religious formula is uttered with all the due accompaniments. He instances the devotio of Decius, father and son, and the story of the vestal Tuccia, who, when accused of impurity, addressed a deprecatio to her goddess, and successfully carried a sieve full of water from the Tiber to the forum. (Unfortunately Livy seems to have recorded her condemnation.) Pliny then proceeds: “boario vero in foro Graecum Graecamque defossos aut aliarum gentium cum quibus tum res erat etiam nostra aetas vidit. Cuius sacri precationem qua solet praeire quindecimvirum conlegi magister si quis legat, profecto vim carminum fateatur, omnia ea adprobantibus octingentorum triginta annorum eventibus.”

Self-sacrifice for in-group's history: A diachronic perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Babińska ◽  
Michal Bilewicz
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Emotional Events ◽  
Reciprocal Process ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe problem of extended fusion and identification can be approached from a diachronic perspective. Based on our own research, as well as findings from the fields of social, political, and clinical psychology, we argue that the way contemporary emotional events shape local fusion is similar to the way in which historical experiences shape extended fusion. We propose a reciprocal process in which historical events shape contemporary identities, whereas contemporary identities shape interpretations of past traumas.

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