1 - The Gods and their Worship

Summary

We Romans are far superior in religio, by which I mean the worship of the gods (cultus deorum).

(Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods 2.8)

There is no place in our city that is not filled with a sense of religion (religiones) and the gods. There are as many days fixed for annual sacrifices as there are places in which they can be performed.

(Livy 5.52)

Ruins of ancient temples, interspersed among the excavated remains of the ancient city, still bear witness that Rome was indeed a city filled with gods and a sense of religion. Prominent among the remains in the Roman Forum are the temples of Castor, Saturn, Vesta, and the deified emperor Antoninus Pius and his wife Faustina. Overlooking the Roman Forum is the Capitoline Hill, the site of the temple of Jupiter the Best and Greatest. In the area of the Forum Holitorium near the river Tiber, the modern tourist can see ancient columns incorporated into a side wall of the church of San Nicola in Carcere. In the Campus Martius area, the emperor Hadrian's reconstruction of the Pantheon stands in all its grandeur amid the hustle and bustle of contemporary Rome, still bearing the inscription commemorating its original builder, Marcus Agrippa, who was a close associate of the emperor Augustus. The building was consecrated as a Christian church in the seventh century CE, another example of continuity and change within religious traditions.