REVIEWS

I. GENERAL
M. BEARD, J. NORTH and S. PRICE, RELIGIONS OF ROME. Vol. i: A HISTORY. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xxiv + 454, 5 maps, 43 figs, ISBN o—521-30401-6 (bound);
0—521—31682-0 (paper). £45.00 (bound); £ 1 5 9 5 (paper). Vol. 2. A SOURCE BOOK. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xiv + 416, 75 figs, ISBN 0—521—45015—2 (bound); 0—521—45646—0
(paper). £45.00 (bound); £15.95 (paper).
This work published by M. Beard, J. North and S. Price fills a gap. The need for a new history
of Roman religion has long been felt. The great syntheses from the beginning of the century,
whatever their enduring utility (for example Georg Wissowa's manual) give an outdated impression
of Roman religion, if only as a consequence of the large number of epigraphic and archaeological
sources which have come to light over the past hundred years. In addition, existing manuals have a
tendency to stop at Augustus and limit themselves to a cursory summary of the imperial age: over
half of this new text is devoted to the Empire. Previous works on the religion of the Roman Empire
have privileged either the study of individual forms of worship (e.g. Franz Cumont's works), or the
meticulous chronicling of all documents, province by province (e.g. lules Toutain's synthesis). The
causes of this imbalance are as follows: the vast expansion which the Roman Empire underwent
from the beginning of the first century A.D. and an approach to Roman ritualism which is based on
certain prejudices. Religions of Rome does not fall into this type of snare. Rather than becoming
entangled in the study of various worships documented under the Empire, the volume focuses
instead upon the larger questions raised by its expansion. What should fall under the heading
Roman religion? Which religions should be treated in a history of Roman religion from the archaic
period to Theodosius? Moreover, the work opposes current prejudices by setting all recorded types
of religion from the Roman world on an equal footing.
Religions of Rome thus fills a void. We have now at our disposal a synchronic and diachronic
historical account of all the religious facts concerning Rome and the Roman world from archaic
times to the Christian Empire. The text is distinguished firstly by the fact that it offers a complete
history of religions in Rome and in the Roman world. A depiction of religion in Rome under the
Empire is set alongside reflections on the larger questions concerning religious life elsewhere in Italy
and in the Empire's provinces. The text's second merit, as indicated by the title, is the scope of its
investigation. It offers a history of all religions practised in Rome and in the Roman world, Judaism
and Christianity included, and not merely of the traditional Roman forms of worship. All of this is
excellently illustrated by a choice of the most important documents, included in a second volume.
The material in the first volume is divided into eight chapters, organized around the section
devoted to the beginning of the Principate. After some preliminary thoughts on the problems posed
by material from archaic sources, the first three chapters give a basic structural outline of religious
institutions under the Republic. The authors show sound judgement in breaking with a traditional
methodology of reconstructing an assumed 'original' Roman religion from the archaic era and
deducing from this fallible model all that came after. Whilst mentioning the important facts yielded
by archaeology, they content themselves in the main with some general and methodological
observations on the period in question, in order to devote themselves primarily to the reconstruction
of religious life under the Republic. WTise, too, is their focus on the innovations and changes
documented between the fifth and first century B.C. It is this evolution, determined as much by
external events as by internal social conflicts, which sheds light on the gradual emergence of Roman
civil religion, characterized principally by its close ties with the political system and by a desire to
diffuse religious authority as much as possible. In addition to an account of the institutional and
historical facts, these chapters present excellent reflections on the status of available sources and on
the value of important historiographic themes, both ancient and modern; they will be of help to all
those who come into contact with Polybius, Varro, Cicero, and Livy. These pages demolish the old
commonplace of the decline of Roman religion under the Republic and expose instead an original
religious system which challenges our preconceptions. Thoughts on the scholarship of antiquarians
and the mythography of the Augustan age are developed brilliantly, notably in the central chapter
which lays bare the background to religious restoration at the start of the Principate. Numerous
critical reflections concerning the quality and range of sources, as well as the relationships between
religious practice and speculations on religion, pepper the opening chapters of the volume and
constitute the second distinguishing quality of this work.
From Augustus onwards, the scale of the treatment of religions in Rome necessarily changes.
Under the Empire, not only must the evolution of public worship in Rome be considered, but the
availability of sources means that other areas demand attention, in particular the relationships
2O8 REVIEWS
between religions of other cities in the Empire and those of Rome, and the religious consequences of
the intermingling of the populations of the Roman world. Questions must be asked, as indeed they
are, regarding the religious identity of a 'Roman' and the limits of tolerance in a polytheistic system:
the extent of repressive action taken against deviants must be gauged. In the wake of these questions,
and after having in particular adopted a balanced approach to the persecution of Christians, the
volume addresses matters generally forgotten by histories of the imperial period: the official cults of
Rome, which were anything but dead or dying. Another original feature of these chapters is their
treatment of those religions recently established in Rome and the different regions of the Empire.
Their survey omits neither the Christians nor the Jews, nor does it accord a disproportionate place
to the so-called oriental forms of worship. Intriguing questions are asked about Roman religion in
the context of the colonies outside Rome: the gradual integration of the Empire's cities into an
imperial 'Romanness' is traced, without forgetting the 'imperial cult', to which the authors devote a
few penetrating pages. The history of the religions of Rome concludes with a chapter on political
and social conversion to Christianity and on the difficult relationship between Christianity and the
old religions. The particular interest of these chapters lies in the attention they pay to the points of
contact between religious communities and the proof of relationships between religions — between
all religions — in the Roman world, which are revealed to be far more extensive than had previously
been imagined. The refusal to use (incorrectly in this context) the notion of 'syncretism' to explicate
what is in reality a simple consequence of polytheism and the inter-penetration of religious
communities accustomed to a certain degree of tolerance, is especially to be applauded.
The second volume provides a thematic classification of its material by uniting texts and images
(provided with useful, precise captions) concerning religious institutions, gods, death, new cults,
acts of repression, and reflections on religion.
As a whole, this manual, a synthesis of the research into Roman religions which has flourished
over the past twenty years, breaks on many levels with the traditional religious history of Rome.
From now on it will be indispensable. The argument's strong points lie in the proof of historical
evolution, the critique of traditions and the synchronic analysis of all religions present in Rome and
the Roman world, without forgetting the practically exhaustive bibliography of the best works on
Roman religion. It would be pedantic to dwell on any small questionable point in a book as rich as
this one undoubtedly is. On the whole, the reader will side with the authors. Their history of Roman
religions fulfils its promise as it succeeds in providing a general and complete panoramic view of
Roman religious life, without becoming tangled up in secondary detail. It brings to light numerous
problems posed by important documents. The work may, perhaps, appear more finished and
complete for the period of the Republic than for the Empire, but this is understandable. It is much
easier to describe the official cult of a particularly well-documented city than to do the same for the
often poorly-recorded cults of hundreds of cities. By the same token, facts about the first centuries
A.D. are still not as easily accessible or elaborate as those pertaining to the Republic in Rome, nor the
sources as complete. Given the mass of frequently barely comprehensible facts, the decision to focus
upon a small number of questions and trends, supported by a choice of significant examples, is self
explanatory. Far better to ask the larger questions and attempt to give an answer! Only when we
understand, with the help of unambiguous sources, precisely what constituted the religious identity
of a Roman citizen under the Empire, will we be able to set about analysing the thousands of
individual testimonies. We must question in particular whether this identity is in fact an integrated
whole, the synthesis of successive influences, or whether it is the juxtaposition of different
personalities. These chapters therefore represent a first step towards just such a history of the
religions of the Roman world; a history which everyone professes to desire but which cannot be
realized within this single volume or, in short, within a limited number of pages. Hence, we do not
charge the authors with this sort of 'imbalance'.
The single, general reproach which one might make would perhaps be that of not having dared
to explain Roman religion, even in outline. Religious institutions and their evolution are described,
questions of religious identity and the proximity of religions excellently brought to light. But what,
at the end of the day, was the essence of that religion, a religion which could not be reduced, as the
authors emphatically argue, to the pursuit of salvation? Why was religion so central to the
institutions and the lives of the Romans? What kind of world did these daily rituals construct? What
was the nature of a Roman divinity? To this type of question (the place of religion and the gods in
the representation of collective structures) the authors pay little attention. Moreover, they fail to
offer an interpretation of fundamental rituals. By way of an example, the development of the practice
of sacrifice is very well described in the second volume, but nowhere in either volume is there an
interpretation of this essential ritual in ancient piety. It is true that in a non-dogmatic ritualism, the
meaning of individual rituals evolves, a fact which the authors rightly underscore. Still, every ritual
has a meaning, whatever it might be. In the absence of any indication of what meaning(s) the
described rites were open to at any particular period or in any particular context, the manual tends
 I. GENERAL 2O9
to suggest that, at their core, they were meaningless, and thus that the religion as a whole lacked
'depth', which is precisely what is sensibly contested elsewhere. However, the reader, sensitized by
his/her discovery of the unforeseen complexity of Roman religions, is supplied with a rich
bibliography, and is thus able to pursue his/her interest further.
It only remains to say that these volumes represent a very important acquisition and one which,
it is to be hoped, will become the cornerstone of all future research into the religions of Rome.
Thanks to manuals like these, the religious practice of the Romans takes its place (once more) among
those religions worthy of study: occidental tradition has prided itself on disputing its right to this
place for nearly two thousand years.

Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes, Paris JOHN SCHEID

D. BAUDY, ROMISCHE UMGANGSRITEN, EINE ETHOLOGISCHE UNTERSUCHUNG DER

FUNKTION VON WIEDERHOLUNG FUR RELIGIOSES VERHALTEN (Religionsgeschichtliche
Versuche und Vorarbeiten 43). Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 1998. Pp. xi + 299.
ISBN 3-11-016077-3. DM 198.
Dorothea Baudy, the author of this very intelligent book, has made a detailed examination of
Roman ceremonies which involve the celebrants leading three sacrificial animals — a pig, a bull, and
a sheep — around a boundary of some kind, the activity described by the verb lustrare. The study
combines careful reading and interpretation of texts with the application of concepts of anthropo-
logy. Her results throw light not only on the texts and on the ceremonies, but also on the supposedly
over-ritualistic character of Roman paganism in general. She has done for lustration what Simon
Price has done for the imperial cult. She too points out that the long established practice of
condemning Roman paganism as empty ritual as opposed to true and above all sincere religion, goes
right back to Christian anti-pagan, and Protestant anti-Catholic propaganda, and is certainly no
substitute for trying to understand the internal logic of the ritual procedures, and their meaning for
the persons who took part in them.
What is important is to examine precisely and together the detail of the ritual, and the
circumstances in which it was carried out. Failure to do this has misled scholars into pseudo-
problems, for instance that of reconciling Cato's advice that the lustration of a farm was to be in
honour of Mars with the same god's supposedly specialized role as the god of war. Religious ritual is
a kind of language, a language which is used to communicate with a deity, but is always at the same
time also directed at a human audience. All lustration ceremonies address consequences of
discontinuities, whether topographical (as for instance the boundaries of a property, of a village, or
of a city), or organizational (such as the setting up of an exclusive group such as an army or a fleet or
a citizen body). The ceremony calls on the deity to prosper whatever is within the boundary, and to
protect it from damage from without. The human participants receive a related but more concrete
message. Lustration of a property for instance informs everybody where the boundary is, and as we
know: 'good fences make good neighbours'. As the deity will give no feed-back, the message must
be absolutely unambiguous. At the same it must show great respect. Each of these requirements
calls for meticulous correctness of performance. Even without words a particular ceremony has a
definite meaning. In fact every detail of the rite has distinct symbolic significance. Prayers and ritual
formulae only make that meaning more explicit and specific. By varying the detail of words and
action the same basic rite can be adapted to different circumstances. So a lustration can be carried
out for the benefit of a village, a city, a people, or even a herd of cattle, and the rite can be adapted to
serve either a private or a state occasion.
A ceremony like the lustration is, however, only one component in a complex symbolic system.
It is part of a calendar of festivals, which marks out the progress of the year, and of seasonal
activities. Furthermore, the celebrations of the calendar are given authority by mythical stories
which link their origins to memorable events in the history of the people whose calendar it is, or
even to the origin of the world.
The first part of B.'s book discusses theories of ritual. However it only really comes to life with
the first chapter of Part Two, a discussion of Cato's De agricultura 141. The next two chapters are
concerned with Tibullus 2.1 and the ambarvalia. Other lustrations examined by B. are the May
festival of the fratres arvales, the feriae sementivae and paganalia described by Ovid in Fasti
1.657-96, ceremonies of lustration for the fleet and for the army, and finally the censorial lustrum.
The discussions are sensitive and stimulating. B.'s suggestions are not all equally convincing, but
she has raised far more points than can be discussed in a short review. The book contributes to our
understanding of both Roman religion and literature.

Nottingham University W. LIEBESCHUETZ

Copyright © John Scheid 2000. Exclusive Licence to Publish:
The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies