home | 1000 BCE to 500 CE

The GODS of EARLY ROME (4 of 6)

While Rome was still a republic it fought numerous wars that won for it power over the Italian peninsula. Then it fought two wars against Cathage, a mercantile power in North Africa, where Tunisia is today.

Romans were mindful of the importance of morality in maintaining the good will of the gods, and during its first war against Carthage, Romans blamed a defeat in battle on anger by the gods over misconduct by the Vestal Virgins. Rome discovered that two of its Vestal Virgins had had sexual relations with a male temple official. Roman authorities had one of the accused Vestal Virgins buried alive, and the other killed herself. Authorities had the accused male official beaten to death. Then Rome sent a representative to the oracle in Delphi to inquire what prayers and supplications might atone for the failure among the Vestal Virgins.

In the wake of another military disaster in its wars against Carthage, Rome introduced a festival to lift the morale of its citizens, a festival for the god of agriculture, Saturn. It began on the 17th day of December. During the festival the courts and schools closed and military operations were suspended so that soldiers could celebrate. It was a time of goodwill and jollity that included visiting people, banquets and the exchanging of gifts. It would become an annual event, called Saturnalia, an official Roman holiday that was the precursor of Christmas.

At Cannae, in 216 BCE, the Romans lost five out of every six soldiers it sent into battle. It seemed that Rome was on the verge of defeat and was Rome's darkest hour. To counter the gloom, Roman authorities ordered all wailing women indoors and forbade the word peace to be spoken. In an attempt to appease the gods, Rome resorted again to the ancient custom of human sacrifice. They buried alive a Gallic man and woman, and a Greek man and woman. In 211, with Hannibal thirty miles from Rome, Roman women appealed to the gods by sweeping the floors of their temples with their hair.

Six more years of war passed by, and Rome's priesthood added to its concern about the role of the gods by giving attention to the Sibylline Books, a work of legend believed to have been written by a woman called Sibyl. It was believed that Apollo had given Sibyl the power of prophecy and that she had prophesied that Rome's enemy would be expelled. Rome's priesthood chose to interpret this as Rome expelling Hannibal if Rome acquired the help of the Great Mother of Gods, Cybele. Cybele was a goddess from Asia Minor who had been adopted by the Greeks and worshiped widely as Mother Nature. Rome's Senate invited the Great Mother goddess to Rome in the form of a stone reputed to have fallen from the heavens -- the Black Stone of Pessinus. In 205 BCE, with great solemnity and pomp, the stone was transported from Pessinus (a town in central Asia Minor) to Rome, and it was installed in a temple on Rome's Palatine hill. Worship of the Great Mother, Cybele, involved begging, self-mutilations, eunuch priests and colorful processions.

It was Rome's priesthood which governed treaties with foreigners, and after 40 years of war (23 years for the first war and 17 years for the second), a council of twenty priests went to Carthage to present Rome's demands. Carthage agreed to reduce its territory to an area that approximates what is now Tunisia, and Rome's priests called on Jupiter to witness that the demands were just.

Rome became the dominant power in the Mediterranean area. It extended its empire to North Africa, the Iberian peninsula, across Greece and beyond through Asia Minor to Judea. Rome's extended contacts increased religious diffusions. Romans imported more gods, new cults and new rituals. Among the imported religions was the Orphic mysteries from Greece, which claimed that the human soul was of divine origin, that human nature was divided between good and evil, and that one's soul could rise above humanity's inherited evil.

Those who had migrated from the countryside to the city of Rome found gods they had worshiped no longer significant -- gods that had guarded their woods and had made their grasses green. In Rome they came into contact with imported religions that had less to do with nature and more to do with bliss, excitement and salvation.

Some Romans worshiped Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Rites of this religion included frenzied, ecstatic trances and self-abandon similar to the worship of Dionysus, the god of wine among the Greeks. Some from Rome's elite families became involved in these gatherings, which were conducted in secrecy. Tolerance by those with political power had its limits. The Senate viewed secret meetings as conspiracies that might foster subversion, and when Rome's Senate finally became aware of the spread of Bacchus worship it became alarmed, outlawed the movement and put to death seven thousand Bacchus devotees.

The Senate also outlawed astrology, seeing this import from the east as subversive. But state officials saw the worship of most other imported gods as benign, but they thought it prudent to foster patriotism by promoting Rome's official gods: the gods that had looked after the welfare of Rome and had made Rome great.