RELIGION AND ROMANIZATION

Obviously, there were many differences between the original small hamlet by the Tiber and the highly multi-cultural metropolis of late republican and imperial Rome. World power was one difference.

One of these institutions was worship of the emperor, who was integrated into the religious life of Rome and the Roman Empire in a variety of different ways. A range of rituals developed which associated the emperor with the gods or incorporated him into religious ceremonies. For instance, the emperor’s birthday and his major military victories were marked by sacrifices and celebrations such as the festival days of deities. Moreover, a formal procedure for deification of deceased emperors evolved. The Senate decided whether an emperor should be recognized as a god or not, and a deified emperor was given the title “divus” and received temples, priests and annual public offerings. Inscriptions, coins and other sources testify to the fact that in different forms, in cities all over the empire, the imperial cult was incorporated into public worship with shrines, priests and ceremonies. Sometimes it seems that the emperor was treated unambiguously as a god, while at other times sacrifices were offered not to the emperor directly, but to his numen (divine power), his lares (households gods) or his genius (spirit of life). In certain official contexts a distinction thus seemed to be maintained between the cult of deceased and deified emperors, who were worshipped as gods, and the living emperor, whose position and well-being, symbolizing the power and unity of the empire, was honoured with sacrifices and celebrations.

The question of Romanization and the role of religion in this process has, however, been a subject of much debate. Did Romanization consist of relatively smooth processes of acculturation or did it, on the contrary, involve many conflicts between Roman authorities and local elites? It seems almost impossible to make generalizations about this complex and varied process of Romanization, because it took different forms, depending on the period and the concrete cultural context. From the early second century CE, however, there seems to be an increased use of the aforementioned term superstitio, denoting the religious practice of foreign peoples. Since the term is used to define and reject different kinds of improper religious behaviour, the intensified focus on superstitio in the imperial period might reflect a concrete change of the authorities’ attitudes towards foreign religions. In this perspective, the religio-political use of superstitio reflects the dynamics and changes of the process of Romanization. Dealing with the attitudes of Roman authorities towards non-Roman religion, it is often claimed that only if foreign cults disturbed the public peace and order were the authorities ready to take action against them. But what about the controversial question of the persecutions of the Christians? Did they simply disturb public order? From a sociological point of view, it is more obvious to regard the conflicts between the authorities and the Christians in another perspective. An increased use of the concept of superstitio could very well be symptomatic of a growing interest in constructing Roman identity and coherence in a large and multi-cultural empire.

SUGGESTED READING

Beard, M., J. North & S. Price 1998. Religions of Rome, 2 vols. Cambridge.

North, J. & S. Price (eds) 2011. The Religious History of the Roman Empire. Oxford.

Rives, J. B. 2007. Religion in the Roman Empire. Oxford.

Riipke, J. 2007. A Companion to Roman Religion. Oxford.

Scheid, J. 2003. Introduction to Roman Religion, Janet Lloyd (trans). Bloomington, IN.