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This chapter reprints Ste. Croix's 1963 Past and Present investigation of why Christians were persecuted in the first three centuries, together with a brief response in 1964 to criticisms by A.N. Sherwin-White. Ste. Croix's main objective was to counter Sherwin-White's theory that Christians fell foul of Roman provincial administration because of the obstinacy they displayed in adherence to their beliefs. Ste. Croix insisted that the main charge against Christians under Roman law was simply the name of Christian, which was sufficient to generate persecution unless the accused could clear themselves by a variety of relatively simple procedures. Careful scrutiny of the evidence for persecution, especially during the 2nd century, clarifies the mechanics of Roman administration and the application of imperial law.

This chapter focuses on the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, looking at it from the point of view of Flavian religious policies. Vespasian and Titus were fully aware of the ramifications of the destruction. In Roman religious terms, their actions would result in the elimination of the major cult centre of the Jews. The removal of the chief cult objects (the menorah, the table, and the sacred vessels) to Rome symbolized the end of the cult in Jerusalem, and emphasized the notion — found in Josephus — that the Jewish God had abandoned his people and gone over to the Roman side. In some senses this amounted to a sort of evocatio of a foreign deity, as so often occurred when Roman armies captured enemy cities. Vespasian was keen to close down cult centres that he considered potential focal points for further Jewish resistance against Rome.

A graffito discovered in the temple of Hercules Curinus at Sulmo allows us to explore the ritual logic of the Roman vow, undoubtedly one of the most characteristic rites in Roman religion, with its specific vocabulary and timing, unlike, for example, the Christian vow. In most cases, vows — whether they are modest such as the one from the temple at Sulmo, or grand such as those we find on offerings in metal or marble — recall one aspect or phase of the rite. The text from Sulmo is one of the rare votive texts that gives us the two principal phases of the vow, announcement and fulfilment.

Two-thirds of Hegel’s Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion are given over to ‘finite’ or pre-Christian religions, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to them. This is particularly surprising given the importance that he gives to the Greek ‘religion of beauty’ and Roman ‘religion of expediency’, for along with the Jewish ‘religion of sublimity’, they form the immediate historical precedents and preparation for Christianity, which Hegel’s teleological history accepts as the final, ‘true’, and ‘infinite’ religion. This chapter seeks to help to remedy the scholarly gap, not only by summarizing Hegel’s understanding of Greek and Roman religions in themselves, in relation to each other, to Christianity and previous ‘Oriental’ religions, and in relation to Hegel’s conception of religion as such. In addition, it seeks to juxtapose some of Hegel’s remarks with those of more recent scholars, to suggest that in general his approaches to Greek and Roman phenomena remain insightful. Although his strong judgments may offend many (for a variety of reasons), his comparative architectonic can be exhilarating: his juxtaposition of Greek anthropomorphism and the Christian Incarnation is challenging for Hellenists and Christian theologians; and his argument that Christianity is fundamentally a product of the Roman world, with Roman religion as its immediate predecessor, is a thought-provoking blend of Christian apologetics and proto-sociological historicism.

Chapter one sets up the cultural context for the study of early Christian texts by examining traditions in which the living helped the dead in Greek religion, Roman religion, and ancient Judaism. The archaeology of burial sites, epitaphs, other inscriptions, and textual sources are adduced as evidence for this purpose. The chapter concludes with a discussion of salvation after death in the Greek religious movement called Orphism, as well as in the Jewish texts 2 Maccabees and 4 Ezra.

This chapter discusses early Roman religion. Rome's religious history can serve as a useful model in suggesting how Rome's cultural development occurred within a larger Italian context. Some important Roman divinities are also presented. Rome's official religious calendar contains festivals of many other divinities, and a survey of the more important ones can further illustrate early Roman beliefs and concerns. The language of sacrifice and prayer provides interesting clues to the way the early Romans viewed the nature of the gods. It is suggested that the early Romans thought sacrifice was essential in order to provide the deities with or to compensate them for the energy necessary to accomplish a petitioner's request. Additional evidence demonstrates that in public rites Roman priests were accustomed to invoke specific attributes of deities.

This chapter examines the visit of Battakes, priest of the Mother of the Gods at Pessinous, to Rome in 102 bc. It argues that the cult of Magna Mater in Rome had originally been imported from Pergamon. Whatever the precise purpose of his embassy, Battakes will have used the shared cult of the Mother as a reason for closer ties to be established between Rome and Pessinous. The Roman tradition that the cult of Magna Mater was introduced from Pessinous developed in the wake of Battakes' visit. The whole episode suggests that Roman religion in the second century bc was not, as scholars have generally argued, becoming increasingly conservative, but remained open to eastern influence.

The book concentrates on one specific aspect of the field of inquiry, namely the epistemological basis of Roman religion. This basis by its very nature conditions the manner in which Roman religion can be studied. The book begins by reflecting on the translation of religio. “Religion” is but one possible rendering for religio, and in Valerius Maximus' lists, it is suggested that it might here be rendered more accurately by “the sum total of current cult practice.” It is not that “religion” does not capture the force of religio in one of its uses, but rather, this usage is not primary and its field proves harder to map onto “religion” than one might expect.

This chapter explains the mysteries of Artemis, whicxh include the formal, logical relationship between ancient votive religion and mystery cults, as well as some of the less widely appreciated implications of the so-called votive formula. The relationship between the fields of reference narrated and the celebrations of Artemis's mysteries within the city in turn is relevant to many questions and controversies, not only about Graeco-Roman religion, history, and historiography, but also about anthropological theory, evolutionary biology, and neuroscience. Artemis of Ephesos was one of the most popular deities of the Graeco-Roman world. The celebrations of the mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos were not always organized to address eschatological concerns of initiates. There also were in fact traits of identity in the celebration of the mysteries of Artemis, but these traits were maintained through rearrangement, reorganization, and revitalization, by Roman emperors and governors, the polis of Ephesos, and individual benefactors.

Just as the Galatians of Asia Minor clung to much of their cultural identity after the establishment of the Roman province of Galatia, the Celtic tribes of Gaul preserved many features of their native cultural heritage after the Roman conquest. From the blend of indigenous and foreign traditions, there emerged an independent Gallo-Roman culture which would endure for close to half a millennium, stretching from the Pyrenees to the Rhine and from the Atlantic to the Alps. This chapter discusses the history of the provinces of Gaul, Celtic texts from Roman Gaul, and aspects of Gallo-Roman religion.

This chapter discusses the origins of elite-instrumentalist interpretations of Roman religion by Greek and Roman writers, and how it persists in recent scholarship. It uses a particular “time map,” spanning the period from approximately the second quarter of the third century—leading to Rome's first titanic conflict with Carthage—to the aftermath of the Gracchan revolution. The chapter first provides an overview of the so-called “polis religion,” the focus of the modern study of Roman religion, describing it as a form of elite-instrumentalism. It then considers the elite-instrumentalist interpretation/model, its history, and its paradoxical longevity in order to understand how the Roman ruling elite used religion in the Middle Republic. It also examines some of the main features of elite religion in the Middle Roman Republic. Finally, it introduces definitions, parameters, and theoretical/methodological underpinnings for the chapters that follow.

This chapter is organized into nine interrelated sections. Since the evidence about the lares is so fragmented and disparate, each ancient text or image is examined in its own right. It clears the ground for the discussion by first addressing the debate in the antiquarian sources about the basic nature of lares. It argues against the interpretation of lares as spirits of the deceased and in favor of seeing them as benevolent deities of place and of travel. Moving on from the theoretical classification of these distinctly academic texts, it looks at both literary and epigraphic evidence from the archaic Arval hymn onward. The remainder of the chapter considers which Latin authors refer to twin lares as opposed to a single lar. It also draws together the evidence from painted iconography, written text, and ritual custom to suggest an overall interpretation of the lares and snakes as “gods of place,” who receive gifts and honor from a genius on the Bay of Naples.

Hegel notes that it has been traditional to treat Greek and Roman religion together since there seems to be a general correspondence among their divinities. But in fact, he claims, they represent two quite different general conceptions. Since the Romans and the Greeks had such different political developments, their cultures and religions are fundamentally distinct. The Roman gods are associated with numerous fixed goals or purposes. Hegel takes this to be an important point of contrast with the Greek religion. For the Greeks, the individual gods had a variety of individual powers and characteristics, but they were never fixed to their goals or ends in a dogged way. The Greek gods can be fickle, changing their minds just as humans tend to do. But the Roman gods are one-dimensional since they are fixed on a single end and are not anything more complex than this end.

James Rives addresses the monolithic theological role attributed to animal sacrifice in modern accounts of ancient Greek religion. Emphasizing the importance of a careful chronological perspective, he suggests that it was only in the philosophers of the imperial era that philosophers developed an actual pagan theology of sacrifice—likely in the Neopythagorean circles of the first century CE. It was likely the new importance of animal sacrifice in the imperial cult and in the rituals associated with euergetism that required those who did not wish to participate in civic worship to develop a more sophisticated reasoning for their rejection of sacrificial ritual: Rives especially points at the works of Porphyry of Tyre (3rd c. CE) as an example of such a critique. He also underscores that such developments confirm that the cultural meaning of ancient sacrifice did not remain stable throughout the ancient world.