MAGIC AND RITUAL IN THE ANCIENT WORLD

Mnemosyne, 2013

Journal of Early Christian History, 2020

According to the conventional construction of the religious history of the Roman Empire, the dense variety of Greek and Roman religions had ceased to exist sometime around the fourth to fifth centuries CE, during the so-called Constantinian Revolution. Certainly, at some point in Late Antiquity, there were no longer functioning cult centres for deities like Apollo, Dionysus, Isis, Cybele, and the like. However, far from indicating the triumphal supersession of Greek and Roman religions by Christianity, the evidence of religious history is more complex. Christianity/ies is, one can say, an epiphenomenon of processes of cultural shifts and demographic changes (helped along by the changes wrought by migrations and the emergence of diasporic religions as the main manifestation of cultic formations) that swept the circum-Mediterranean world. The "old religions," woven into the cultural fabric of inhabitants of the Mediterranean world as they were, did not suddenly cease to exist-the discourses, the practices, the iconographies, cultic performances continued to shape nascent Christian discourses and practices. This process was not an even one, it differed in pace and shape from one geographic locale to the other, and from one epoch to the other-therefore the plural, twilights. Hence one can say that Christianity was the big sponge that absorbed all the others (which does not exclude that from time to time there were indeed legislation and mob action aimed at destroying the vestiges of "pagan" cults). Thus, reading the evidence from outside the triumphalist framework characterising early Christian writers on the nature and fate of "paganism," one is left with the unavoidable impression, now strongly asserted in Late Antique scholarship, of the interpenetration of "paganism" and Christianity. Christianity was born as a syncretic phenomenon in a process of cultural bricolage. This has some implications, not only for how we conceived of the origins of Christianity, but also for how we conceive of religion as object of theoretical reflection. Twilights of Greek and Roman Religions: Afterlives and Transformations Gerhard van den Heever,

The sacrificial banquet : a space for noble sociability during Republican Rome and Early Principate The presentation examines the role of banquests as a means of sociablity between participants in public religion, especially between members of the Roman aristocracy. The aim is to show how sacrifice, as a moment of sharing between gods and humans, strengthened the cohesion of the different strata of Roman society around the baquet and commensality in Rome on distinct scales. By sacrificial banquets, we mean banquets organized or managed by the priestly structures of public worship in Rome in particular the great priestly colleges. The concept of sociability, as a heuristic tool, refers to practices and codes of any interpersonal relationship. It can therefore be used to consider a wide range of relationships and interactions, particularly at banquets, while bringing the question of commensality up to date. Eating the same food was undoubtedly a privileged moment of sociablity, all the more so in a ritual context. The sheer number of Roman banquets and the diversity of the groups taking part make them ideal subjects for studying the interweaving of religion and sociability. In Rome, the majority of ritual acts were performed by politicians, who represented the whole city. By virtue of their structure and the annuality of their offices, republican institutions encouraged an increasingly intense form of aristocratic competition, around which the great families of the Roman nobility evolved, and which invariably led them to form ties with one families another. Above all, certain sacrificial banquets invited the entire senate, and these moment of sharing a common meal 'forced' the political elite to unite around a greater objective: the service of public worship. Livy and Aulus Gellius report that during the Epulum Iovis banquet on the Capitol, the senators played an active role in reconciling Scipio the African and Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, a reconciliation sealed by a marriage between the former's daughter and the latter. We therefore propose to look at banquets on a group level, studying in particular their role in creating and strengthening ties within certain strata of society, in particular the aristocratic elite. This aristocratic elite was also at the head of the priestly colleges, and the aim is so understand, on the restrained scale of the colleges, how the priests interacted during the banquets that brought them together. This study also takes into consideration the question of women, as in the case of the cult of Bona Dea and its supervision by the Vestals, who were forbidden to allow men to participate. It is clear that while the principle of commensality remained the same, the sociability observed different depending on the group concerned, making these events special cases of female sociablity, as they were reserved for matrons. In this contribution, we therefore propose to show how sacrificial banquets appeared to be central social spaces, around which several groups and several individuals at the intersection of these groups were articulated, while taking into account the evolution of commensal practices during the Republican period and at beginning of the Principate.

2007

Rome matters. Roman religion is, basically, the religion of one of the hundreds of Mediterranean city states. Many features of this type of territorially bound religion, centred around a politically independent community, characterise Roman religion down to the end of antiquity. However, Roman cults, gods, iconography, rituals, texts, were exported to many places throughout the Roman Empire. A change of the point of view produces similarly ambivalent results. Many of the religious traditions or concepts that attracted people in Rome originated outside of Rome and were shared by many non-Romans. At the same time, even the major religious traditions of antiquity gained distinct features at Rome and these Roman varieties informed developments outside Rome. After all, Rome was a capital, politically for the Imperium Romanum, religiously not only for the cult of the Capitoline triad, but for Isis or Christianity as well. It is one of the many attractions of the theme of “Roman religion” that in dealing with the traditions of a metropolis (and its growing “hinterland”) we are able to look into transformations reaching far beyond. At the same time we are reminded of one of the truths of modern globalisation: place and local culture matters. Religion matters. Ancient religion is not longer the object of – at best – antiquarian research, interested in “Altertümer” and pre-rational behaviour, i. e. the European exotic. With the cultural and the following “turns,” religious institutions, signs and practices, religious mentalities and language, have come to the centre of mainstream historical and literary studies. Thus, analysis of religion itself can no longer be handled as an isolated sector of culture but has to be contextualized within its cultural, social, and economic setting and has to be analysed for its political function and its use in legitimating power or resistance. Aims The volume aims to help its readers - put the manifold religious symbols, discourses, practices, which they encounter in literally every field of ancient studies, into a larger framework; - offer a broad range of methodological approaches to seemingly intransigent phenomena; the presuppositions and limits of these approaches will be made explicit; - offer basic information about the most important religious symbols and institutions; and - attempt at coherent narratives, yet not to formulate new orthodoxies, but rather to suggest that narrative is an important form of historical explanation and a didactically useful tool.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 2002