Imperial Rome AD 193 - 284 by Ando Clifford

Author:Ando, Clifford
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

In this formulation what is important is an attitude of piety and its realization in worship in some aggregate, not the absolute sameness of the acts performed everywhere, nor the identity of those “immortal gods” from whom favor is requested and to whom thanks is delivered.

We witness the gradual intrusion of an alternative conception, organized around the identity of particular gods (each potentially the object of its own religion), in a Christian text of the first half of the third century, in words attributed by the author to a fictive pagan:

Thus we see through all empires, provinces and cities that each people has its own sacred rites and worships its municipal gods: the Eleusinians worship Ceres, the Phrygians the Mother of the Gods, the Epidaurians Aesculapius, the Chaldaeans Belus, the Syrians Astarte, the Taurians Diana, the Gauls Mercury; the Romans, all gods. (Minucius Felix, Octavius 6.1)

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