The Gods of Ancient Rome Quotes

“They met perhaps every evening at dinner time, or at least every Sunday (day of the Sun), for the planetary week had been in operation since the first century. Certain days in the year were more specially celebrated: the solstices of summer and winter (our 'Christmas', natalis solis invicti), the equinoxes (especially spring, the season when the world was born and Mithras saved it). Besides the consecrated water and bread Oust., I Apol., 66, 4; Tert., Praescr., 40, 4), wine, as a substitute for blood, and various kinds of meat were consumed, often the flesh of victims sacrificed to the gods of the city, which was sold in the markets.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“The priestly hierarchy ran to seven grades or stages of initiation. One became successively Raven, Bridegroom or Newly-wed (Nymphus), Soldier, Lion, Persian, Heliodromus or 'Messenger of the Sun' and finally Father. Each of the mystae attaining these titles wore the costume appropriate to his office, and the frescoes of Sta Prisca give us some idea of them. They were respectively under the protection of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, the Moon, the Sun and Saturn. The Raven served the guests, the Nymphus gave them light. Marked on his forehead (perhaps branded), the Soldier who had been consecrated by the rite of a crown proffered on a sword-point (Tert., Cor., 15, 3), in his turn put candidates for initiation to the test. The Lion, who was purified by having honey instead of water poured on his hands, looked after the fire. The Persian was the 'guardian of the fruit' (Porph., Antr., 16). In the sacramental meal, the Heliodromus represented the Sun beside the Father representing Mithras. The Raven and the Lion wore masks suitable to their name.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Apuleius was never separated from his little Mercury (Apol., 63, 3).”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“This outburst of civic or family piety also benefited the cult of personal deities. In a Rome where so many religions were in competition and cohabited in anarchic confusion, with none debarred (except by Jews and Christians), polytheism did not prevent individuals favouring a certain god or goddess who could be said to prevail over the others - not necessarily in the hierarchy of the traditional pantheon - but in daily life, for the reasons and purposes of circumstance, maybe sometimes only temporarily”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Besides Tiberius, Nero, Otho and Vespasian all had their astrologer. Titus, Domitian and Hadrian were sufficiently expert themselves to draw up a horoscope, and Septimius Severus (who married Julia Domna after making enquiries about marriageable daughters of royal blood) dispensed justice in a hall of the palace where his own astral horoscope was painted on the ceiling (DC, 77, 11, 1).”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“This double phenomenon - the influence of occult sciences and devotion to a particular deity - affected many Romans during the imperial era.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“But the Christian emperor inherited a share of the devotion to the sovereign, and incense was burnt before his holy image (Philost., 2, 17), lamps were lit at the foot of his statues, and he was invoked on equal terms with a tutelary god to divert the ills that threatened people (C. Th., 15, 4, 1) just as in the heyday of official polytheism.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“It was again the Genius Publicus who appeared in a dream to Julian, on the eve of his proclamation as emperor in Paris in AD 360, and whom he saw passing sadly into his tent a few days before his death (Amm., 20, 5, 10; 25, 2, 3). This relationship of the Genius with the emperor's reign perhaps still inspired the pious loyalty of a few pagans.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“The Genius populi Romani holds the patera for libations (sometimes in front of a lit altar) and the horn of plenty; these were attributes of the piety and felicity that symbolised Rome's vocation embodied by the emperor Pius Felix, two titles that had been added to his description since the time of Commodus.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“It was the tradition to sacrifice to the Uenius publicus on 9 October, at the same time as to Fausta Felicitas and 'Victorious' Venus, two deities who had a vital and historic link with Rome.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“It is known that pontifical law forbade the dedication of the same sanctuary to two deities (Liv., 27, 25, 8); therefore at least a double cella was required.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Inevitably a mystique of the Empire interacted with the cult of the emperor, underlying or even sublimating it in the collective consciousness. It was not a religio in the old sense of the Latin word, but a piety that was necessary to the cohesion of that great 'city' which the Roman world had become, chiefly after the edict of Caracalla, whose motives purported to be religious: To render to the majesty of the most sacred gods the duties that are owed to them, with all the necessary magnificence and piety, I believe that I must unite all the foreigners who have become my subjects in the worship of these gods.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Aurelian consecrated the cult of the 'Invincible Sun' (Sol Invictus) in a gigantic temple, embellished with the spoils of Palmyra. He gave it a special college of pontiffs, and instituted fouryearly games. We know nothing of the special rituals applied to this Sol Invictus. The new sanctuary followed an eastern tradition, with its tholos, or dome, in the centre of a closed courtyard isolating the sacred area from the profane world.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“the Stoics, from which notably Cicero (Rep., 6, 17) and Pliny the Elder (NH, 2,13) drew their inspiration, made the sun the soul or spirit of the world, 'who governs not only the seasons and the lands, but the very stars and the sky' (ibid.). So the imperial cult appropriated some solar theology.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“In the lararia or in public life, as we have seen, deceased or living emperors entered the daily devotions of the Romans. The first, like the Indigetes or Novemsiles - such as Aeneas, Romulus or the mythical kings of Latium - were 'men become gods' (Serv., Aen., 12, 794) who 'merited' it (Am., 3, 39). The second were the incarnation of 'the breath, the life that so many thousands of beings breathe', as Seneca says (Clem., 1, 4, 1), quoting Virgil (G, 4, 212 f.), and comparing the empire to an immense beehive whose unity depends on the well-being of its queen. For the Latin philosopher, the emperor resembled the Stoics' pneuma which, born of the fire of Zeus or the divine Word, gave life to the universe: spiritus vitalis.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Even in the fourth century (in the heart of the Christian Empire), the natales of the eighteen deified emperors were celebrated;”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“There is epigraphic evidence of a temple of the divi on the Palatine in the second century ad. Even though the reigning emperors had no kinship with the Julio-Claudians or the Flavians, their deified predecessors formed a kind of great ancestral family protecting the imperial house, soon qualified as 'divine'. A sort of heaven-sent and cultic solidarity united the living and the dead, as in the ancient religion of hearth and home.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“From the cultic point of view, the consequences were not fundamentally alien to tradition. Oaths were sworn by the genius of the master, and just as that of the paterfamilias was honoured in domestic lararia, henceforward Augustus's 'Genius' had his place in private chapels. But the veiled genius, who exemplified piety with his patera for libations and promised happiness with his horn of plenty, was often replaced by the sovereign's picture.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“While Mark Antony paraded as Dionysus, and Sextus Pompey claimed Neptune as his father, Octavian officially called himself Divi filius, at the same time invoking the patronage of Apollo.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“the posthumous deification of Julius Caesar made his heir the son of a god, destined for the same apotheosis. The emperor belonged to a family of divi. But the Roman family, too, had its heroised ancestors.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“This was a religion of small groups, certain caverns being incapable of holding more than ten or twelve participants. Bound by an oath which repeated the handshake (dextrarum junctio) uniting the god of light with the Daystar, the Mithraists knew and helped one another like the brothers of a Masonic lodge. As soon as one community expanded, another was organised rather than exceed the right measure of intimacy.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“He associated Elagabal with two goddesses: Pallas-Allat and the 'Caelestis' of Carthage, whom the Romans identified with Juno but who was not unrelated to Venus-Astarte.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“We are slightly better informed, although very summarily, about the ritual for Jupiter Dolichenus, identified in numerous dedications (like Jupiter Heliopolitanus) with the 'Most Good Most Great' god of the Capitol. True, it is always a matter of a celestial sovereign, god of the storm and lightning. Originating in the country 'where iron is born' (CCJD, 427), this Dolichenian Baal brandishes a thunderbolt and an axe, standing on a bull, while one of the deer family bears his partner 'Juno', carrying a sceptre and a mirror. On certain religious reliefs, their images are shown paired with Isis and Serapis (CCID, 365, 386).”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Followers of Jupiter Heliopolitanus had to meet in a sanctuary in the Trastevere district where water had a role to play, as in the temples of Atargatis which were complemented by a pool containing sacred fish. This Syrian goddess was part of a triad worshipped in Baalbek, with a divine son likened to Mercury:”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“The worship of the Levantine gods chiefly involved their compatriots and was concentrated in the Trastevere area, which has provided the great majority of evidence.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Other deities from the African continent gained a foothold in Rome: Jupiter Ammon, a god from Cyrene, was there chiefly through iconography, in the forum of Augustus (in memory of Alexander, the haunting model of universal monarchy), but also on funerary altars where his head with ram's horns safeguarded the tomb. Septimius Severus consecrated a 'gigantic' temple (DC, 77, 16, 3) to the gods of his homeland, Leptis Magna 'the Great': Hercules and Liber who represented the Punic Melqart and Eschmoun. The Virgo Caelestis, 'evoked' in 146 bc by Scipio Aemilianus, also enjoyed the favour of Septimius Severus, whose coinage shows the goddess on a lion's back, like Cybele in the Circus Maximus.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Isis had the bewitching charm, beauty and goodness of a Madonna who would above all listen to women and the unfortunate. She had undergone the ordeals of widowhood before restoring Osiris to life, after he had been the victim of Seth, the spirit of evil. Anubis, the jackal- or dog-headed god, had helped her to discover the traces of her dismembered husband. In commemoration, the Isiac liturgy repeated the sufferings of god and goddess. As for Serapis, he was a Graeco-Alexandrian reinterpretation of Osiris in his role of sovereign and protector of the dead. In Hellenistic and Roman worship, he had acquired the attributes of a healer-god, helpful to anyone who invoked him. When they were delocalised, these gods tended to become universal, or at least available to all and sundry, anywhere people had need of them. For this universality did not conflict with their quality of very personal gods, constantly close to their faithful followers,”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Significantly, too, the triumvirs Octavian, Antony and Lepidus, promised to build a temple to Isis and Serapis to win favour with the populace (DC, 47, 15, 4). But the promise was not kept, and the war setting Octavian against Cleopatra's lover would become a war of the gods, between Apollo and 'barking Anubis”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“But the enthusiasm of the urban plebs for the gods of the Delta caused some disturbances. In 59 BC, when the Senate ordered the destruction of the altars of Serapis, Harpocrates and Anubis, they were very soon reinstated 'owing to the violence of the people's intervention”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

“Like Dionysus, the Egyptian gods reached Rome by way of Campania. In the second century BC, traders on Delos made the acquaintance of Isis and Serapis, whom a priest from Memphis had imported at the beginning of the preceding century. Many of these negotiatores were originally from southern Italy where, with Alexandrian sailors, they spread Nilotic representations. Very soon Pompeii had its Iseum and Pozzuoli its Serapeum.”
― Robert Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times