Introduction to Volume II

Summary

The nineteen chapters in this volume treat the religions of the ancient Mediterranean world from Iran and the Roman Near East to Gaul and the Iberian Peninsula. The bibliography accompanying each essay consists mainly of works cited. Under the heading “Suggestions for Further Reading,” readers will find supplemental source material.

The temporal limits of each chapter vary according to region, available evidence, and subject matter. The profound transformation of the cultural and political landscape brought about by Alexander the Great and his Macedonian successors forms the natural backdrop for some of the chapters on the religions of Egypt, the Levant, Greece, and Asia Minor. For Iran and the western Mediterranean, other chronological limits are more suitable. The chapter on Iranian religion begins with the Parthian kingdom and extends to the fall of the Sasanian empire in 654. While archaeological evidence and the witness of Roman antiquarians and historians offer a glimpse, however faint, into an earlier age, the basic structures and practices of Roman and Italian religion become visible only in the last century of the Roman Republic. Similarly, the cult practices in pre-Punic and pre-Roman North Africa can only be known through inference from a scattering of later sources. The advent of Rome represents an obvious point of departure for the chapters dealing with the gods and cults of Gaul and Spain. Absent the epigraphic and material remains of Roman civilization in these regions, our knowledge of their religious traditions would be extremely limited.