Pompeii - Religious Life

The history of Roman religion is said to begin with Varro's Human and Divine Antiquities (47 bc), of which the second half, 16 books on Divine Antiquities, codified for the first time Roman religious institutions: priests, temples, festivals, rites, and gods.

The emphasis of scholars has generally been on the public festivals and institutions. For the regal period archaeology casts some light, for example on the extent of Greek influence in the area; namely the principal festivals.

For the republic, archaeological evidence of temples, remains important especially from the mid-4th or 3rd down to the 1st cent. bc. It becomes possible to produce a diachronic history of the changes to the public cults of the city of Rome, e.g. the introduction of the cult of Magna Mater (204 bc; see Cybele; philhellenism), the suppression of the Bacchanalia (186 bc), the creation in Italy and the provinces of Roman citizen-colonies whose religious institutions were modelled on those of Rome, and the increasing divine aura assumed by dynasts of the late republic.

The Augustan ‘restoration’ of religion there was a move to incorporate the Emperor himslef into the narrative. Augustus built major new temples in the city (Apollo; Mars Ultor), which expressed his relationship to the divine. This Augustan system remained fundamental to the public religious life of Rome to the end of antiquity. The religious life of the city also became increasingly cosmopolitan under the empire, with a flourishing of associations focused on gods both Roman and foreign. Outside Rome, civic cults of the Greek east continued to offer a sense of identity to Greeks under Roman rule