Ancient Roman Religion

A religion of duty and state that absorbed the gods of every people it met.

c. 750 BCE – 400 CE · Roman world · Indo-European Pagan

Roman religion bound the wellbeing of the state to correct ritual and augury — maintaining the pax deorum, peace with the gods. Pragmatic and absorptive, Rome adopted Greek deities and welcomed Egyptian, Anatolian, and Iranian cults, later adding the worship of deified emperors. This vast syncretic space became the arena in which Mithraism, Christianity, and other movements competed and spread.

Key figures

• Jupiter, Juno, Mars
• The deified emperors
• Vestal Virgins & pontiffs

Texts

• Ritual law and calendars
• Sibylline Books

Beliefs

• The pax deorum — peace with the gods
• Piety as civic duty
• Absorbing foreign gods into the state

Rituals

• State sacrifice and augury
• Household lares worship
• Imperial cult

Grew from

• Ancient Greek Religion
• Proto-Indo-European Religion

Connections in the atlas

• Lemures and larvae
• Treasurer's House, York
• Elagabal, the sun god as a black stone
• Eleusis
• Vulcan
• The animal bride or groom
• Apuleius’s The Golden Ass
• Gorgon head (gorgoneion)
• ? Where did the Etruscans come from?
• The word pagan
• James George Frazer
• Parallel texts: The descent to the underworld