History Part II Special Subject New Option A
Roman Religion: Identity and Empire
Course Organiser: Rebecca Flemming
Course Outline: Roman religion was intimately bound up with both Roman identity and
Roman power, right from the foundation of the city itself. These relations become more
complex as Rome established domination, first over Italy, and then across the whole
Mediterranean world. This imperial expansion brought Rome into increasing contact with other
peoples’ gods and cult; just as it brought those same people into increasing contact with Rome’s
gods and cult. These encounters were unequal and uneven, within an empire building project,
but impact and influences flowed both ways, as the religious landscape of the Roman Empire
took shape, and continued to develop over the next centuries.
This course will explore some of the most important of these religious interactions, following
a roughly chronological trajectory from the Republican period through to the early decades of
the third century AD. The fundamental connections of religion, power and identity at Rome
will be examined, Rome’s ‘openness’ to new gods and rituals scrutinised, and issues of the
export or imposition of distinctly Roman forms of religious organisation and practice, not to
mention the institution of imperial cult, will be explored; as well as the resilience and
adaptability of local religious traditions, from Syria to Britain, North Africa to the Rhine
frontier. It was not just emperors, and their families, who were worshipped across the Roman
domains, part of the pattern of imperial rule, but unofficial, elective cults like those of Isis and
Mithras also spread throughout the empire, and religion might play a role in resistance to
Roman rule, as it did in the revolts in Judea, as well as in imperial integration.
All these themes will be investigated, using a diverse set of textual and material evidence, with
questions about the rise of Christianity, as a Roman imperial phenomenon, and about the ways
that this development impacted on notions of identity, began to drive a wedge between religious
and other facets of cultural identity in the Mediterranean world, also addressed.
Course structure: There will be a mixture of lectures and classes on key themes and topics.
In the Michaelmas Term, there will be an hour-long lecture and a two-hour class each week.
The classes will expand on and develop the topics of the lectures in more detail, examining the
key sources concerned—a range of ancient literary texts, inscriptions, papyri, and
archaeological evidence—and the ongoing debates in modern scholarship. These lectures and
classes will be held in the Classics Faculty and will be shared with Classics Students. In the
Lent Term, four more two-hour classes, organised fortnightly, will be dedicated to History
Students taking the Paper, ensuring that all the set texts have been discussed, methodological
and generic issues discussed, and allowing space for student presentations on chosen topics. In
the Easter Term there will be two more two-hour hour classes focusing on gobbets training and
other aspects of preparation for the exam. All set texts will be studied in English translation.
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Schedule
Michaelmas Term 2017
1. Lecture: Founding Roman religion: Identity and power.
Class: Key concepts and institutions in Roman religion
2. Lecture: Republican expansion: Religious expansion
Class: Expropriating, incorporating, and assimilating others’ gods.
3. Lecture: Republican expansion: Increasing power and control
Class: Colonisation and control in the Imperial Republic
4. Lecture: The Augustan settlement: Religion, identity and empire
Class: Augustus, religion, identity and power
5. Lecture: Imperial cult and imperial religions
Class: Cults, communities and individuals across imperial space
6. Lecture: Local religions in an imperial frame
Class: Sanctuaries, festivals and offerings across the Empire
7. Lecture: Religion and the imperial order: Tolerance, rebellion, and persecution
Class: Jews, Christians and imperial rule
8. Lecture: Conclusions: Local and global perspectives
Class: Religious identities in an imperial world
Lent Term 2018
1. Literary Texts
2. Inscriptions, images, and artefacts
3. Student presentations
4. Student presentations
Easter Term 2018
1. Revision and gobbet practice
2. Revision and gobbet practice
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Primary Sources (all texts—in English translation—and images of all the objects will be
provided on moodle)
Literary Texts
The Acts of the Apostles 2, 6, 10-28
Aelius Aristides, Address to Asclepius (Oration 42)
Apuleius, Metamorphosis, Book 11
Athenagoras, Embassy 1-5
Caesar, Gallic Wars 6.11-23
Cicero, Laws 2.18-23; On Divination 1.3-4; On the Nature of the Gods 3.5
Cassius Dio, Histories 51.20; 52.35-6; 57.18, 60.6, and 67.14
Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities 2.18-22; 4.62
Festus, Lexicon: ‘sacra’
Horace, Carmen Saeculare
Josephus, Jewish War 1.1-18; Jewish Antiquities 14.185-267,
16.160-178
Juvenal, Satire 6 511-547; Satire 14.96-106
Livy, Histories 1.4-21, 24, 31-38, 44-45, 55-56; 5.21-23; 29.10-11 and 14;
39.8-14.
Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess
Martyrdom of Polycarp; The Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs
Minucius Felix, Octavius, 6-10, 25-34
Ovid, Fasti 4.247-372 and 721-862; 5.129-152
Pausanius, Travels in Greece 2.1.1-5 and 26-28; 9.37-40.
Philo, Embassy 119-161
Pliny the Younger, Letters 10.49-50, 68-69 and 96-97
Suetonius, Life of Augustus 31; Life of Tiberius 36; Life of Nero 56
Tacitus, Annals 4.36-8 and 15.41-7; Histories 5.1-13;
Germania 3, 9-10, 39-40, 43 and 45
Tertullian, Apology 24-5, 30-37 and 42-46
Epigraphy (includes inscribed objects as far as possible)
AE 1977 816 (evocatio)
Law of Urso (CIL 2.5439) 64-72; 125-128;
Sacred Law from Miletus (Sokolowski, LSAM no.49);
Senatus consultum on the Bacchanalia (CIL I2 581)
Inscription for the Secular Games under Augustus (CIL VI 32,323) lines, 50-63, 90-168;
Extracts from the Severan inscription for the games (CIL VI 32,327); and from the Annals of
the Arval Brethren (CIL VI 2,041 and 2,065)
Inscriptions from Gytheion on the imperial cult (SEG XI 922-3 = Sherk 31-32);
Altar from Narbo (CIL XII 4333 = Sherk 7C);
Law on priesthoods from Narbo (CIL XII 6038);
Neighbourhood altars from Rome (3 examples from Lott: reliefs and inscriptions)
Sacred Law from Pergamum (Wörrle); Inscriptions from Aikraiphia (Graf)
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Altars from Maryport (RIB 828; 831; 837; 841 and 842).
Selected honorific inscriptions for priests and priestesses of the imperial cult as well as local
cults from across the empire, and for synagogue leaders (15 total)
Selection of curse tablets from Mainz; Carthage and Uley (6 total)
Papyri
Military calendar from Dura Europos (P.Dura. 54);
Letter of Claudius to Alexandrians (P.Lond. 1912)
Other Images
Augustus’Ara Pacis: Reliefs
Reliefs from the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias
Selected Anatomical Votives from Gaul
Selection of Coins including religious imagery (8 total)
Sample Essay Questions:
1.
Were Roman colonies ‘mini-Romes’ in terms of religion?
2.
How foreign were Rome’s peregrina sacra?
3.
Why was the cult of Isis so successful across the Roman Empire?
4.
To what extent did hostility to Jews and Judaism increase in the Roman world over the
second century AD?
5.
How far was imperial cult a ‘tool’ of Roman rule?
6.
‘Christianity was an imperial religion par excellence’. Discuss.
7.
In what ways did the culture of religious festivals in the Greek East change under
Roman rule?
8.
Is ‘syncretism’ a useful term in discussing religious developments in the Roman
Empire?
9.
To what extent is it possible to talk about ‘religious identity’ in the Roman world?
10.
Is there anything distinctly ‘British’ about the ‘curse tablets’ found in Roman Britain?
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Bibliography
General: Concepts and Institutions
C.Ando, The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire (Berkeley, 2008)
C. Ando (ed.), Roman Religion (Edinburgh, 2003).
M. Beard, ‘Cicero and divination: The formation of a Latin discourse’, JRS 76 (1986), 33-46
M. Beard, J. North, and S. Price, Religions of Rome, 2 vols (Cambridge, 1998)
M. Beard and J. North (eds.), Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World
(London, 1990)
D. Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts, and Beliefs (Cambridge,
1998)
R. Gordon, ‘Religion in the Roman Empire: The civic compromise and its limits’, in M.
Beard and J. North (eds), Pagan Priests (London, 1990), 235–55.
R. Gordon, ‘The veil of power: Emperors, sacrificers and benefactors’, in M. Beard and J.
North (eds), Pagan Priests (London, 1990), 256-75.
R. Gordon, ‘Superstitio, superstition and religious repression in the late Roman Republic and
Principate (100 BCE–300 CE)’, in S.A. Smith and A. Knight (eds.), The Religion of
Fools: Superstition Past and Present, Past & Present Supp. 3 (2008), 72-94.
F. Graf, Roman Festivals in the Greek East: From the Early Empire to the Middle
Byzantine Era (Cambridge, 2015)
E. Gruen, Rethinking the Other in Antiquity (Princeton, 2011)
K. Hopkins, A World Full of Gods (London, 1999).
J. Hughes, Votive Body Parts in Greek and Roman Religion (Cambridge, 2017)
R. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians (London, 1986)
J. H. W. G. Liebeschuetz, Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford, 1979)
J. North and S. Price (eds), The Religious History of the Roman Empire. Pagans, Jews, and
Christians (Oxford, 2011)
S. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman imperial cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1986)
J. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2007)
J. Rüpke, Religion of the Romans, trans. R. Gordon (Cambridge, 2007)
J. Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change (Philadelphia,
2012)
J. Rüpke, From Jupiter to Christ: On the History of Religion in the Roman Imperial Period,
Trans. D. Richardson (Oxford, 2014)
J. Rüpke (ed), A Companion to Roman Religion (Oxford, 2007)
I.S.Ryberg, Rites of the State Religion in Roman Art (1955)
J. Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion, trans. J. Lloyd (Edinburgh, 2003)
C. Schultz, Women’s Religious Activity in the Roman Republic (Chapel Hill, 2006)
Capitoline Temple(s)
Josephine Crawly-Quinn and Andrew Wilson, ‘Capitolia’, JRS 103 (2013), 117-173
John North Hopkins, The Genesis of Roman Architecture (New Haven, 2016), 97-122.
John W. Stamper, The Architecture of Roman Temples: The Republic to the Middle Empire
(Cambridge, 2005), 25-38.
Alexander Thein, ‘Capitoline Jupiter and the historiography of Roman world rule’, Histos 8
(2014), 284-319
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Summoning and introducing new gods
P. Burton, ‘The summoning of the Magna Mater to Rome (205 BC)’, Historia 45 (1996),
36-63
Erich Gruen, ‘The advent of the Magna Mater’, in his Studies in Greek Culture and Roman
Policy (Berkeley, 1990), 5-33
Gabriella Gustafsson, Evocatio deorum (Uppsala, 2000)
E. Orlin, Foreign Cults in Rome (Oxford, 2012)
Lynn Roller, In Search of God the Mother: The Cult of Anatolian Cybele (Berkeley, 1999)
Bacchanalia
E. Gruen, ‘The Bacchanalian affair’, in his Studies in Greek Culture and Roman
Policy (Berkeley, 1990), 34-78
H. Flower, ‘Rereading the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186 BC,’ in V. B.
Gorman and E. W. Robinson (eds.), Oikistes: Studies in Constitutions, Colonies, and
Military Power in the Ancient World offered in honor of A. J. Graham (Leiden, 2002),
79-98
J.A. North, ‘Religious toleration in Republican Rome’, Proceedings of the Cambridge
Philological Society 25 (1979), 85-103
A. Scafuro, ‘Livy’s comic narrative of the Bacchanalia’, Helios 16 (1989), 119-142
S.A. Takács, ‘Politics and religion in the Bacchanalian affair of 186 B.C.E.’, Harvard Studies
in Classical Philology 100 (2000), 301–10
P.G. Walsh, ‘Making a drama out of a crisis’, Greece & Rome 43 (1996), 188–203
Religious Changes in Republican Rome and Italy
O. de Cazanove, ‘Some thoughts on the ‘Religious Romanisation’ of Italy before the Social
War’, in E. Bispham and C. Smith (ed), Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome
(Edinburgh, 2000), 71-76
F. Glinister, ‘Reconsidering “religious Romanisation”’, in C. Schultz and P.B. Harvey (eds.),
Religion in Republican Italy (Cambridge, 2006), 10-33
E. Orlin, Temples, Religion, and Politics in the Roman Republic (Leiden, 2002)
J. Rüpke, Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change (Philadelphia,
2012)
F. Santangelo, Divination, Prediction and the End of the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2013)
T. Stek, Cult places and Cultural change in Republican Italy: A Contextual Approach to
Religious Aspects of Rural Society after the Roman Conquest (Amsterdam, 2009)
Religious engagements with Roman power in the Republican period
R. Mellor, ΘΕΑ PΩΜΗ. The Worship of the Goddess Roma in the Greek World
(Göttingen, 1975)
R. Mellor, The Goddess Roma (ANRW II.17.2), (Berlin, 1981), 950-1038
I. Salvo, ‘Romulus and Remus at Chios Revisited: A Re-examination of SEG XXX 1073’, in
P. Martzavou and N. Papazarkadas (eds), Epigraphical Approaches to the
Post-classical Polis: Fourth Century BC to Second Century AD (Oxford, 2012),
H. Whittaker, ‘Some Reflections on the Temple to the Goddess Roma and Augustus on the
Acropolis at Athens’, in E. N. Ostenfeld (ed.), Greek Romans and Roman Greeks.
Studies in Cultural Interaction (Åarhus, 2002), 25–39.
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Interpretatio Romana/Syncretism
C. Ando, ‘Interpretatio Romana’, Classical Philology 101 (2005), 41-51
J. Webster, ‘Interpretatio: Roman word power and the Celtic Gods’, Britannia 26 (1995),
153-161
J. Rives, ‘Roman translation: Tacitus and ethnographic imperialism’, in P. Harland (ed),
Travel and Religion in Antiquity (Waterloo, ON, 2011), 165-183.
W. Van Andringa, ‘New Combinations and new statuses: The indigenous gods in the
pantheons of the cities of Roman Gaul,’ in J. North and S. Price (eds), The Religious
History of the Roman Empire (2011)
G. Woolf, ‘Ethnography and the Gods in Tacitus' Germania,’ in E. Almagor and J. Skinner
(eds.), Ancient Ethnography. New Approaches. (London, 2013), 133-152
A. Zoll, ‘Names of gods’ in M.Millett, L. Revell and A. Moore (eds), The Oxford Handbook
of Roman Britain (Oxford, 2016),
Augustus
G. Bowersock, ‘The pontificate of Augustus’, in K. Raaflaub and M. Toher (eds), Between
Republic and Empire (Berkeley, 1990), 380-94.
R. Billows, ‘The religious procession on the Ara Pacis Augustae: Augustus’ supplicatio in
13 B.C.’, JRA 6 (1993) 80-92.
A. Cooley, ‘Beyond Rome and Latium: Roman Religion in the Age of Augustus’, in C.
Schultz and P.B. Harvey (eds), Religion in Republican Italy (Cambridge, 2006),
228-52
J. Elsner, ‘Cult and sculpture: Sacrifice in the Ara Pacis Augustae’, JRS 81 (1991) 50-61.
K. Galinsky, Augustan Culture: AN Interpretative Introduction (Princeton, 1998).
J. Bert Lott, The Neighbourhoods of Augustan Rome (Cambridge, 2004)
P. Zanker, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus, trans. A. Shapiro (Ann Arbor, 1988).
Imperial Cult
J. Brodd and J. Reed (eds), Rome and Religion: A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on the
Imperial Cult (Atlanta,
B. Burrell, Neokoroi: Greek cities and Roman Emperors (Leiden, 2004)
D. Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the West, 3 vols (Leiden, 1993-2005)
S. Friesen, Twice Neokoros: Ephesus, Asia and the Cult of the Flavian Imperial Family
(Leiden, 1993)
I. Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford, 2002)
K. Hopkins, ‘Divine emperors or the symbolic unity of the Roman empire’, in his
Conquerors and Slaves (Cambridge, 1978), 196-242
G. McIntyre, A Family of Gods: The Worship of the Imperial Family in the Latin West (Ann
Arbor, 2016)
S. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (1984).
S. Price, ‘Between god and man: sacrifice in the Roman imperial cult’, JRS 70 (1980).
28-43.
S. Price, ‘Gods and emperors: the Greek language of the Roman imperial cult’, JHS 104
(1984) 79-95.
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Religion and the Army
A. Birley, ‘The Religion of the Roman Army,’ ANRW II.16.2 (Berlin, 1978), 1506-1541.
I. Haynes, ‘The Romanisation of religion in the auxilia of the Roman imperial army from
Augustus to Septimius Severus’, Britannia 24 (1993), 141-57
I. Haynes, Blood of the Provinces: The Auxilia and the Making of Roman Society from
Augustus to the Severans (Oxford, 2013)
J. Helgeland, ‘Roman army religion’, ANRW II 16.2 (Berlin, 1978), 1470-1505
G. Irby-Massie, Military Religion in Roman Britain (Leiden, 1999)
O. Stoll, ‘The religion of the armies’, in P. Erdkamp (ed.), A Companion to the Roman Army
(Oxford, 2007), 451-476.
Local Studies East and West
T. Derks, Gods, Temples and Ritual Practice: The Transformation of Religious Ideas in
Roman Gaul (Amsterdam, 1998)
T. Derks, ‘Seeking divine protection against untimely death: infant votives from Roman Gaul
and Germany’, in M. Carroll and E.-J. Graham, Infant Health and Death in Roman
Italy and Beyond (Portsmouth, RI, 2014), 47-68
L. Dirven, The Palmyrenes at Dura Europos: A Study in Religious Interaction in Roman Syria
(Leiden, 1999)
F. Graf, ‘Ritual restoration and innovation in the Greek cities of the Roman Imperium’, in:
Angelos Chaniotis (ed.), Ritual Dynamics in the Ancient Mediterranean: Agency,
Emotion, Gender, Representation (Stuttgart, 2011), 105–117
T. Kaizer, The Religious Life of Palmyra: A Study of the Social Patterns of Worship in the
Roman Period (Stuttgart, 2002)
S. Mitchell, ‘Festivals, games and civic life in Roman Asia Minor’, JRS 80 (1990), 183-193
A. Petsalis-Diomidis, Truly Beyond Wonders: Aelius Aristides and the Cult of Asclepius
(Oxford, 2010)
A. Petsalis-Diomidis, ‘The body in space: visual dynamics in Graeco-Roman healing
pilgrimage’, in I. Rutherford and J. Elsner (eds.), Seeing the Gods: Patterns of
Pilgrimage in Antiquity, (Oxford, 2005), 183-218.
L. Revell, Roman Imperialism and Local Identities (Cambridge, 2009)
J. Rives, Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine (Oxford,
1995).
G. Rogers, The Mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos: Cult, Polis, and Change in the GraecoRoman World (New Haven, 2013)
G. Woolf, Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilisation in Gaul (Cambridge,
2000)
Mithras, Isis and Other Imperial Trends
J. Alvar, Romanising Oriental Gods: Myth, Salvation and Ethics in the Cults of Cybele, Isis,
and Mithras, trans. R. Gordon (Leiden, 2008)
N. Belayche, ‘Hypsistos: A way of exalting the gods in Graeco-Roman polytheism,’ in
J. North and S. Price (eds), The Religious History of the Roman Empire (2011)
M. Beard, ‘The Roman and the foreign: The cult of the “Great Mother” in Imperial Rome’,
in N. Thomas and C. Humphrey (eds.), Shamanism, History, and the State (Ann Arbor,
1994),164–189.
R. Beck, ‘The Mysteries of Mithras: A new account of their genesis,’ Journal of Roman
Studies, 88 (1998), 115-128.
R. Beck, The Religion of the Mithras Cult in the Roman Empire: Mysteries of the
Unconquered Sun (Oxford, 2006)
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M. Clauss, The Roman Cult of Mithras: The God and his Mysteries. Trans. R. Gordon
(London, 2000)
A. Collar, Religious Networks in the Roman Empire: The Spread of New Ideas
(Cambridge, 2013)
R. Gordon, Image and Value in the Graeco-Roman World: Studies in Mithraism and
Religious Art (Aldershot, 1996)
Jews and Christians
B. Brooten, Women Leaders in the Ancient Synagogue (Atlanta, 1982)
G. Clark, Christianity and Roman Society (Cambridge, 2004)
S. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley,
1999)
M. Goodman (ed.), Jews in a Graeco-Roman World (Oxford, 1998)
M. Goodman (ed.), Mission and Conversion: Proselytizing in the Religious History of the
Roman Empire (Oxford, 1994)
M. Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem (London, 2007)
M. Humphries, Early Christianity ()
J. Lieu, Image and Reality. The Jews in the World of the Christians in the Second Century
(Edinburgh, 1996)
J. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford, 2004)
J. North, ‘The development of religious pluralism’, in J. Lieu, J. North, and T. Rajak (eds.),
The Jews among Pagans and Christians in the Roman Empire (London, 1992), 17493
E. Rebillard, ‘Popular Hatred Against Christians: The Case of North Africa in the
Second and Third Centuries’, Archiv für Religiongeschichte 16 (2015), 283–310.
Sen, Amartya 2006. Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny. Issues of Our
E. Rebillard, ‘Expressing Christianness in Carthage in the second and third centuries’,
Religion in the Roman Empire 3 (2017), 119-134
L. Rutgers, ‘Roman policy towards the Jews: Expulsions from the city of Rome during the
First Century C.E.’, Classical Antiquity 13 (1994), 56-74.
G.E.M. De Ste Croix, ‘Why were the early Christians persecuted?’, Past & Present 26
(1963), 6-38; repr. in M.I. Finley (ed.), Studies in Ancient Society (London, 1974),
210-49
Curses and magic
J. Blänsdorf, ‘The defixiones from the sanctuary in Isis and Magna Mater in Mainz’, in R.
Gordon and F. Marco Simon (eds), Magical Practices in the Latin West (Leiden, 2010),
141-189.
J. Gager (ed.), Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (Oxford, 1992)
R. Gordon, ‘Queering their pitch: the curse-tablets from Mainz, with some thoughts on
practising “magic”’, JRA 27 (2014), 774-784.
J, Rives, ‘Magic in Roman Law: The reconstruction of a crime’, Classical Antiquity 22
(2003), 313-339
R. Tomlin, ‘The curse tablets: Roman inscribed tablets of tin and lead from the Sacred Spring
at Bath’, in B. Cunliffe (ed.). The Temple of Sulis Minerva at Bath 2 (Oxford, 1988),
56-265.
R. Tomlin, ‘The inscribed lead tablets an interim report’, in A. Woodward and P. Leach (eds),
The Uley Shrines (London, 1993), 113-130
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