Roman Gods and Religion in the Empire

Religion was a fundamental part of people's lives in the ancient world, politically, socially, personally. Here is the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus, king of the gods, in the form of Ostiantica, Rome's port city. This was a key state deity, a colossal figure that protected the state, along with so many gods and goddesses that were local and later frequently imported. And so there were many other temples in urban settings, nestled in the urban fabric, typically with an altar placed in front of the temple steps for an outdoor animal sacrifice. Here is the temple of Roma and Augustus, which also figures heavily in Roman religion for the subjects of empire. Local deities specific to a town, modest shrines, colossal temples like the Pantheon, with gods imported from all over the Mediterranean. Such was the diversity of Roman religion. What's really Roman about Roman religion? How did the actual system work for veneration of the gods? It was a very pragmatic religion where the people had to make sure that they offered, that they gave exactly what was prescribed in order to obtain what they expected. The principle ruling and summarizing this behavior is that I give so that you give, you give me back. You follow the rites of your ancestors, replicating exact motions and prayers and wearing specific dress, often with a toga pulled over one's head as a sign of respect of the gods, to ensure a successful request for support from the gods. The state would offer specific animal sacrifice. You would also burn incense, offer barley cakes, and pour libations out of respect as offerings to specific deities, depending on the occasion, celebration of an annual festival, a temple inauguration, to end a plague, celebrate the victory in war, and so on. The Roman religion experience was in a certain sense very free because in a polytheistic religion where, you know, to start with, there are many gods, there is always space for more. It's very different from the concept of monotheism. Nevertheless, there were certain rules you had to comply with. You definitely had to show up and participate in the rituals for the official Roman gods, the gods that were associated with the well-being of the state. Already in the Republican period, there was an explosion of new cults and temples. Largo Argentina is a magnificent archaeological site with four Republican temples dating between the 3rd and the 1st centuries BCE. Now, each temple was originally vowed by a general, successful in war, and was allowed to then take some of the spoils of war to construct an individual temple. And they are dedicated to local deities, Fortuna, Ytortna, Peronia, and the Lares. We can turn to the forum to look at some of the state-administered cults, such as the Temple of the Castors, who appeared in the forum to announce a victory in the 5th century BCE, and the Temple of Saturn, whose temple served as the city treasury and the office of the fiscal officers, the Quaestors. Temples were busy places, indeed, also living museums, with precious offerings on display. Roman religion also allowed for innovation, as in the case of the worship of the Roman emperor. The Pantheon is the world's best-preserved Roman temple, and the version that we see here is by Hadrian, and it's constructed by 125 CE. But what's going on with the temple dedicated to all the gods? That's unusual. That's impossible, because you normally have one temple, one god. So to have this concept of all the deities inside one temple is an anomaly. What's going on here? What you have is a promotion of the deification of the emperor. So at the time of the original Pantheon by Agrippa, we know that there was inside Julius Caesar, newly deified, Venus, Mars, and other gods. Where was Augustus, the emperor at the time? Well, he was still alive, and his statue was placed in the porch, but eventually he too would be deified. So what you have here is a unique structure, the Pantheon, that's promoting the deification of the emperor, and there are going to be many emperors that are deified in Roman history. Temple sanctuaries were delineated by monumental entrances and colonnades to distinguish sacred spaces from the profane. At the same time, those areas accommodated libraries and halls next to the temples. Temples which were constructed to fill a need. A temple to Apollo to ward off a plague. A temple of Portunus to protect the river harbor. A temple of Hercules in the cattle market, where he once passed by, to keep the merchants from harm. This was a city filled with deities that watched over its citizens in multiple aspects of life, and there was always room for more gods. Let's consider your average neighborhood. Let's think about Trastevere, Trans-Tiberium, the other side of the Tiber River. And what you had is an international community. People came with their traditions, their beliefs, and their local deities. And in Trastevere, you had Jewish synagogues, you had Syrian shrines, mixed in with artisans, craftsmen, merchants, millers. It was a great way to maintain your traditional values and gods along with the people of Rome that were already there. Along with Jews and Syrians, there were many others. Celts, Germans, and Egyptians. Isis was an Egyptian deity, a protective deity, fertility goddess, and she came to Rome through merchants and shippers that were Egyptian, but ultimately Romans themselves fell in love with this deity. And by the imperial period, she's going to receive a colossal temple in the Campus Martius area, which is going to be paired with Serapis, another deity, who's a combination of Osiris and Apis. And we look at the city of Rome today, and you see so many obelisks. A lot of those obelisks were decorating the temple complex in the Campus Martius. So who is this woman behind me? She's colossal, so she's probably a cult statue. She's Isis, so probably she's the cult statue of the lost temple of Isis in the Campus Martius. Here are two preserved scenes of worship of Isis from Herculaneum. We can see the distinct priest of Isis, as well as the initiates that built the sanctuary on a festive day. The sanctuary is decorated by sphinx statues, garlands, and palm trees. The focal point is the altar where offerings are made. There are many different gods that are going to be arriving on the shores of Italy. The Romans are going to be adapting and adopting several deities from places that they conquer, but also just from people that are merchants, people that are trading. And Ostia was a port city, so you had a lot of people coming from all over the Mediterranean. And one deity that becomes quite popular in Rome and in Ostia is Mithras. And here he is in one of his temples. And he is a particular god, and his temples are quite strange and abnormal. So let's unpack this. Mithras was a Persian deity, but the cult that we recognize today, that was very popular in the second and third centuries CE, was something that apparently was created with its own mythology in the time of the Romans, probably in Rome itself. So someone that's familiar with some of the aspects of the Persian deity from ancient Iran, that also then has its own kind of mythology that's popularized with the Roman military. And so you have the temples, indoor spaces, unusual, because usually temples have outdoor spaces for sacrifices. Instead, the Mithras would meet in underground spaces like this, or actually in the basement of a bath complex, sometimes in back rooms of warehouses, sometimes in hidden rooms in private houses. So the Mithras cult is very particular. You had to be initiated, something extra beyond the state gods, but something that was very appealing to a lot of people. It was something that had community. It was something in which you could gather to worship this god, who is oftentimes shown depicted killing a bull. And it's going to have all kinds of astrological and cosmological symbolism in the mythology of this particular deity. He still is quite a mystery. The people of the ancient world had many deities to venerate on various occasions, both publicly and privately. There were communal settings for the public and smaller gatherings for cults that required initiation. Rome and Ostia exemplify the multicultural urban settings tied to other civilizations and their deities along the Mediterranean.