Real Roman History14 Jun

Episode 56. The Gods of Rome: Religion, Ritual, and the World Augustus Inherited

Works CitedPrimary Sources

Augustus. Res Gestae Divi Augusti (“The Deeds of the Divine Augustus”). Augustus's own first-person summary of his career and achievements, inscribed on bronze tablets and posted throughout the empire. The religious restoration is mostly in chapters 8, 10, 12, 13, 20, and 21—the temple restorations, the Janus closures, the Ara Pacis, the assumption of the Pontifex Maximus. Loeb Classical Library edition (with English translation).
Cicero. De Divinatione (45 BCE). The Roman intellectual position on augury and divination, written by a sitting augur. Book One defends divination; Book Two demolishes it. Loeb Classical Library edition.
Cicero. De Natura Deorum (45 BCE). The fullest ancient account of educated Roman thinking about the gods. Three speakers representing the Epicurean, Stoic, and Academic positions. Loeb Classical Library edition.
Livy. History of Rome. Numa and his religious institutions are in Book 1. The first lectisternium is in Book 5. The Cybele arrival in 204 BCE is in Book 29. The Bacchanalian crisis of 186 BCE is in Book 39—the longest single ancient narrative of a Roman religious panic. Penguin Classics translation by Aubrey de Sélincourt for the early books; Loeb editions cover the rest.
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura (mid-first century BCE). The major surviving Epicurean text, and one of the greatest works of Latin verse. Lucretius's systematic argument that the gods are real but irrelevant, that the soul dissolves at death, and that religion is the source of most human misery. Penguin Classics translation by Ronald Melville.
Ovid. Fasti (early first century CE). The Roman religious calendar in verse—six surviving books, one for each month from January to June. The single best ancient source for the festivals and rituals that punctuated the Roman year, including the Cybele/Claudia Quinta episode in Book 4. Penguin Classics translation by A.J. Boyle and R.D. Woodard.
Plutarch. Parallel Lives. The Life of Numa is the major ancient narrative of Rome's religious founder. The Lives of Caesar, Cicero, and Antony provide most of what we know about the religious dimensions of the late Republic—Caesar's election as Pontifex Maximus, Cicero's augural service, the propaganda war of the 30s. Penguin Classics translations available for all the relevant Lives.
Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus (186 BCE). The surviving bronze decree, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. One of the oldest surviving Latin prose documents and the contemporary record of the Bacchic suppression that Livy 39 narrates. The Latin text is in CIL I² 581 with translations widely available online.
Suetonius. Divus Augustus. Augustus's biography. Chapters 30 and 31 specifically address the religious restoration programme, including the eighty-two temples and the management of the priestly colleges. Penguin Classics translation by Robert Graves.
Virgil. Aeneid. The founding epic of Augustan Rome, and the most sophisticated single statement of the Augustan religious-political programme. Aeneas's pietas as the organizing virtue of the poem, the burning of Troy and the rescue of the household gods in Book 2, the descent and the parade of future Romans in Book 6. Robert Fagles translation (Penguin Classics) is the standard modern English version.

Secondary Sources

Beard, Mary, John North, and Simon Price. Religions of Rome. Cambridge University Press, 1998. Two volumes. The standard modern scholarly treatment, and the work this episode draws on most heavily.
Rüpke, Jörg. Religion of the Romans. Polity, 2007. A clear, sociologically-minded treatment of Roman religion as a system of social practice rather than belief. Particularly good on the institutional and political dimensions.
Scheid, John. An Introduction to Roman Religion. Indiana University Press, 2003. The best short modern treatment for the general reader.

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