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I. The Stories of Early Rome

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2016

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Extract

In many ways Roman religion emerges from the standard modern accounts of it as a dry and highly ritualized religion with few if any concessions either to religious self-expression or imagination about the role of gods in the life of men. Historians have tended to associate this character with the success of the Romans in practical aspects of life – warfare, engineering, town-planning – and to suggest that they organized their religious lives with the same kind of brutal efficiency, striking crude bargains with the narrow-minded gods and goddesses that they had themselves created. It will be clear later on that there are some reasons for taking this view, but there are also reasons to think it only a part of the truth, and profoundly misleading if it is mistaken for the whole truth.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Surveys in the Classics , Volume 30: Roman Religion , 2000 , pp. 4 - 12
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2000

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References

1 See for instance Warde Fowler (1911).

2 Latte (1960); Dumézü (1970), 32–59.

3 For Roman myths in general, Dumézü (1941-5); (1970), 1–78; Grant (1973); Bremmer and Horsfall (1987); Wiseman (1995).

4 Livy 1.36.2-6 = RoR ii.7.1a. See Beard (1989).

5 For the story and its sources, Wiseman (1995), ch. 1.

6 Plutarch, Life of Romulus 2.3-5.

7 Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 4.2; Pliny, Nat. Hist. 26.204.

8 See RoR i.53-4. For the Vestals, below pp. 19, 24, and Table 1

9 Liou-Gille (1980), 176–7.

10 For the flamines, see RoR i.28-9; ii.1.3.

11 Pater Indiges: Liou-Gille (1980), 85–134.

12 Livy 1.20.5-7 = RoR ii. 1.2.

13 For the story: Ovid, Fasti 285–392; Arnobius, Against the Gentiles 5.1 (taking the story from a first-century BC historian).

14 Livy 1.31.5-8; Pliny, Nat.Hist. 2.140; 28.14. On the significance of the lightning: Capdeville (1995), 84–95.

15 See below pp. 59–62.

16 On whom see: Miles (1995).

17 On whom see: Gabba (1991).

18 Rawson (1976).

19 North (1990).

20 On the haruspices: MacBain (1982); RoR i. 19–20; 101–2; ii.7.4; on the Sibylline Books: Parke (1988); RoR i.27; 62–3; ii.7.5.

21 See below, p. 78.

22 e.g. during the Hannibalic War, see: RoR ii.7.5c.

23 in 213 BC, MRR i.263.

24 Cato, On Agriculture 5.4.

25 The discussion in Pliny, Nat. Hist. 30.1-18.

26 For the early code, Crawford (1996), ii.682-4; the ban on human sacrifice is mentioned by Pliny, Nat. Hist. 20.12; for Marsie magicians: Cicero, On Divination 1.132.

27 For discussion, Graf (1997).

28 See below, ch. VII.