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This collection of 24 essays, written by a group of international scholars who specialise in the religious, political and social history of ancient Rome, explores the relationship between priests and State in the Roman world. Attention is devoted to a number of interconnected problems: the nature and scope of priesthoods in the Roman world, the rules governing access to them, the role that priests played in the various levels of government, from the imperial court to the cities on the fringes of the empire, the different development of priesthoods across the empire, and more generally the relationship between religion and power. The outcome is a diverse and comprehensive collection that seeks to do justice to the complexity of the interaction between priests and State by presenting the reader with a wide set of problems and sources, ranging from early Rome to the late Empire.
Written by one of our most respected legal historians, this book analyzes the interaction of law and religion in ancient Rome. As such, it offers a major new perspective on the nature and development of Roman law in the early republic and empire before Christianity was recognized and encouraged by Constantine. At the heart of the book is the apparent paradox that Roman private law is remarkably secular even though, until the late second century B.C., the Romans were regarded (and regarded themselves) as the most religious people in the world. Adding to the paradox was the fact that the interpretation of private law, which dealt with relations between private citizens, lay in the hands of the College of Pontiffs, an advisory body of priests. Alan Watson traces the roots of the paradox--and the way in which Roman law ultimately developed--to the conflict between patricians and plebeians that occurred in the mid-fifth century B.C. When the plebeians demanded equality of all citizens before the law, the patricians prepared in response the Twelve Tables, a law code that included only matters considered appropriate for plebeians. Public law, which dealt with public officials and the governance of the state, was totally excluded form the code, thus preserving gross inequalities between the classes of Roman citizens. Religious law, deemed to be the preserve of patrician priests, was also excluded. As Watson notes, giving a monopoly of legal interpretation to the College of Pontiffs was a shrewd move to maintain patrician advantages; however, a fundamental consequence was that modes of legal reasoning appropriate for judgments in sacred law were carried over to private law, where they were often less appropriate. Such reasoning, Watson contends, persists even in modern legal systems. After sketching the tenets of Roman religion and the content of the Twelve Tables, Watson proceeds to such matters as formalism in religion and law, religion and property, and state religion versus alien religion. In his concluding chapter, he compares the law that emerged after the adoption of the Twelve Tables with the law that reportedly existed under the early Roman kings.
This book offers an engrossing portrayal of the early years of the Christian movement from the perspective of the Romans.
The Roman Empire was home to a fascinating variety of different cults and religions. Its enormous extent, the absence of a precisely definable state religion and constant exchanges with the religions and cults of conquered peoples and of neighbouring cultures resulted in a multifaceted diversity of religious convictions and practices. This volume provides a compelling view of central aspects of cult and religion in the Roman Empire, among them the distinction between public and private cult, the complex interrelations between different religious traditions, their mutually entangled developments and expansions, and the diversity of regional differences, rituals, religious texts and artefacts.
Drawing on epigraphic, legal, literary, and numismatic sources, this book reveals how, in the Roman Republic, law and religion interacted to serve the same purpose, the continued growth and consolidation of Rome’s power.
An insightful and original exploration of Roman Republic politics In A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic, editors Valentina Arena and Jonathan Prag deliver an incisive and original collection of forty contributions from leading academics representing various intellectual and academic traditions. The collected works represent some of the best scholarship in recent decades and adopt a variety of approaches, each of which confronts major problems in the field and contributes to ongoing research. The book represents a new, updated, and comprehensive view of the political world of Republican Rome and some of the included essays are available in English for the first time. Divided into six parts, the discussions consider the institutionalized loci, political actors, and values, rituals, and discourse that characterized Republican Rome. The Companion also offers several case studies and sections on the history of the interpretation of political life in the Roman Republic. Key features include: A thorough introduction to the Roman political world as seen through the wider lenses of Roman political culture Comprehensive explorations of the fundamental components of Roman political culture, including ideas and values, civic and religious rituals, myths, and communicative strategies Practical discussions of Roman Republic institutions, both with reference to their formal rules and prescriptions, and as patterns of social organization In depth examinations of the 'afterlife' of the Roman Republic, both in ancient authors and in early modern and modern times Perfect for students of all levels of the ancient world, A Companion to the Political Culture of the Roman Republic will also earn a place in the libraries of scholars and students of politics, political history, and the history of ideas.
By opposing sectarian discourses with the universal weapons of history, philology and anthropology, in short, the entire arsenal of science and reason, the history of religions of the past enables us to deflate modern myths, and not only those of others but also our own. It allows us to identify the projection, in the imaginary past, of the “origins” of nationalist, religious or racist fantasies, and to disarm exaggerated interpretations of the sacred texts. Within nations inherited from the 19th century, ancient history can help to deconstruct the representation that nation states sometimes create of their past, by showing that despite their apparent proximity, their “ancestors”, often simply assumed to be so, were as distant from the current society as the inhabitants of the antipodes, and hardly resembled the image assigned to them. It enables us to challenge the “Greek miracle”, the “Roman genius”, the “Germanic superiority”, or the Hegelian dialectic professing that religions and history tend towards Christian monotheism.
A History of the Roman World from 753 to 146 B.C. (1969) examines the rise of Rome from a small city-state among many to its conquest and unification of Italy and the founding of its overseas Empire. It covers in detail Rome’s struggle with Carthage for supremacy, as well as Rome’s political, economic and social life during the period.
In his sixth satire, Juvenal speculates about how Roman wives busy themselves while their husbands are away, namely, by entertaining a revolving door of exotic visitors who include a eunuch of the eastern goddess Bellona, an impersonator of Egyptian Anubis, a Judean priestess, and Chaldean astrologers. From these self-proclaimed religious specialists women solicit services ranging from dream interpretation to the coercion of lovers. Juvenal's catalogue suggests the popularity of such "freelance" experts at the turn of the second century and their familiarity to his audience, whom he could expect to get the joke. Heidi Wendt investigates the backdrop of this enthusiasm for the religion of freelance experts by examining their rise during the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. Unlike civic priests and temple personnel, freelance experts had to generate their own authority and legitimacy, often through demonstrations of skill and learning in the streets, in marketplaces, and at the temple gates, among other locations in the Roman world. Wendt argues that these professionals participated in a highly competitive form of religious activity that intersected with multiple areas of specialty, particularly philosophy and medicine. Over the course of the imperial period freelance experts grew increasingly influential, more diverse with respect to their skills and methods, and more assorted in the ethnic coding of their practices. Wendt argues that this context engendered many of the innovative forms of religion that flourished in the second and third centuries, including phenomena linked with Persian Mithras, the Egyptian gods, and the Judean Christ. The evidence for freelance experts in religion is abundant, but scholars of ancient Mediterranean religion have only recently begun to appreciate their impact on the empire's changing religious landscape. At the Temple Gates integrates studies of Judaism, Christianity, mystery cults, astrology, magic, and philosophy to paint a colorful portrait of religious expertise in early Rome.