The Romans usually treated their traditional narratives as historical, even when these have miraculous or supernatural elements. The stories are often concerned with politics and morality, and how an individual's personal integrity relates to his or her responsibility to the community or Roman state. Heroism is an important theme. When the stories illuminate Roman religious practices, they are more concerned with ritual,augury, and institutions than withtheology orcosmogony.[1]
Classical mythology is the amalgamated tradition of Greek and Roman mythologies, as disseminated especially byLatin literature in Europe throughout theMiddle Ages, into theRenaissance, and up to present-day uses of myths in fiction and movies. The interpretations of Greek myths by the Romans often had a greater influence on narrative and pictorial representations of myths than Greek sources. In particular, the versions of Greek myths inOvid'sMetamorphoses, written during the reign ofAugustus, came to be regarded ascanonical.
Becauseritual played the central role in Roman religion that myth did for the Greeks, it is sometimes doubted that the Romans had much of a native mythology. This perception is a product ofRomanticism and theclassical scholarship of the 19th century, which valued Greek civilization as more "authentically creative."[3] From theRenaissance to the 18th century, however, Roman myths were an inspiration particularly forEuropean painting.[4] The Roman tradition is rich in historical myths, orlegends, concerning the foundation and rise of the city. These narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities but a pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny. In Rome's earliest period, history and myth have a mutual and complementary relationship.[5] AsT. P. Wiseman notes:
Major sources for Roman myth include theAeneid ofVirgil and the first few books ofLivy's history as well as Dionysius'sRoman Antiquities. Other important sources are theFasti ofOvid, a six-book poem structured by theRoman religious calendar, and the fourth book of elegies byPropertius. Scenes from Roman myth also appear in Romanwall painting,coins, andsculpture, particularlyreliefs.
TheAeneid and Livy's early history are the best extant sources forRome's founding myths. Material from Greek heroic legend was grafted onto this native stock at an early date. The Trojan princeAeneas was cast as husband ofLavinia, daughter of KingLatinus, patronymical ancestor of theLatini, and therefore through aconvoluted revisionist genealogy as forebear ofRomulus and Remus. By extension, the Trojans were adopted as the mythical ancestors of the Roman people.[6]
The characteristic myths of Rome are often political or moral, that is, they deal with the development ofRoman government in accordance with divine law, as expressed byRoman religion, and with demonstrations of the individual's adherence to moral expectations(mos maiorum) or failures to do so.
Rape of the Sabine women, explaining the importance of theSabines in the formation of Roman culture, and the growth of Rome through conflict and alliance.
Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome, whose mysterious origins were freely mythologized and who was said to have been the lover of the goddessFortuna.
TheTarpeian Rock, and why it was used for the execution of traitors.
Lucretia, whose self-sacrifice prompted the overthrow of theearly Roman monarchy and led to the establishment of the Republic.
Cloelia, a Roman woman taken hostage byLars Porsena, who escaped but after negotiations returned voluntarily to save others and preserve the peace treaty.
Narratives of divine activity played a more important role in the system of Greek religious belief than among the Romans, for whom ritual andcultus were primary. Although Roman religion was not based onscriptures and theirexegesis, priestly literature was one of the earliest written forms ofLatin prose.[13] The books(libri) and commentaries(commentarii) of theCollege of Pontiffs and of theaugurs contained religious procedures, prayers, and rulings and opinions on points of religious law.[14] Although at least some of this archived material was available for consultation by theRoman senate, it was oftenoccultum genus litterarum,[15] an arcane form of literature to which by definition only priests had access.[16] Prophecies pertaining to world history and to Rome's destiny turn up fortuitously at critical junctures in history, discovered suddenly in the nebulousSibylline books, whichTarquin the Proud (according to legend) purchased in the late 6th century BC from theCumaean Sibyl. Some aspects of archaic Roman religion survived in the lost theological works of the 1st-century BC scholarVarro, known through other classical and Christian authors.
Although traditional Roman religion was conservative in ritual rather than dogmatic in doctrine, the meaning of the rituals they perpetuated could be adapted, expanded, and reinterpreted by accretions of myths,etiologies, commentary, and the influences of other cultures in response to social change.[17] The earliest pantheon included Janus,Vesta, and the so-calledArchaic Triad of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, whose three patricianflamens were of the highest order. According to tradition,Numa Pompilius, theSabine secondking of Rome, founded Roman religion; Numa was believed to have had as his consort and adviser a Roman goddess ornymph of fountains and of prophecy,Egeria. The Etruscan-influencedCapitoline Triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva later became central to official religion, replacing the Archaic Triad – an unusual example withinIndo-European religion of a supreme triad formed of two female deities and only one male. The cult ofDiana became established on theAventine Hill, but the most famous Roman manifestation of this goddess may beDiana Nemorensis, owing to the attention paid to her cult byJ.G. Frazer in themythographic classicThe Golden Bough. What modern scholars call theAventine Triad –Ceres,Liber, andLibera – developed in association with the rise ofplebeians to positions of wealth and influence.
Punishment ofIxion: in the center standsMercury holding thecaduceus, and on the rightJuno sits on her throne. Behind herIris stands and gestures. On the leftVulcan (theblond figure) stands behind the wheel, manning it, with Ixion already tied to it.Nephele sits at Mercury's feet. – Roman fresco from the eastern wall of thetriclinium in theHouse of the Vettii,Pompeii,Fourth Style (60–79 AD).
The gods represented distinctly the practical needs of daily life, and the Romans scrupulously accorded them the appropriate rites and offerings. Early Roman divinities included a host of "specialist gods" whose names were invoked in the carrying out of various specific activities. Fragments of old ritual accompanying such acts as plowing or sowing reveal that at every stage of the operation a separate deity was invoked, the name of each deity being regularly derived from the verb for the operation.Tutelary deities were particularly important in ancient Rome.
Thus,Janus andVesta guarded the door and hearth, theLares protected the field and house,Pales the pasture,Saturn the sowing,Ceres the growth of the grain,Pomona the fruit, andConsus andOps the harvest.Jupiter, the ruler of the gods, was honored for the aid his rains might give to the farms and vineyards. In his more encompassing character he was considered, through his weapon of lightning, the director of human activity. Owing to his widespread domain, the Romans regarded him as their protector in their military activities beyond the borders of their own community. Prominent in early times were the godsMars andQuirinus, who were often identified with each other. Mars was a god of both war and agriculture; he was honored in March and October. Quirinus was the patron of the armed community in time of peace.
The 19th-century scholarGeorg Wissowa[18] thought that the Romans distinguished two classes of gods, thedi indigetes and thedi novensides ornovensiles: theindigetes were the original gods of the Roman state, their names and nature indicated by the titles of the earliest priests and by the fixed festivals of the calendar, with 30 such gods honored by special festivals; thenovensides were later divinities whose cults were introduced to the city in the historical period, usually at a known date and in response to a specific crisis or felt need.Arnaldo Momigliano and others, however, have argued that this distinction cannot be maintained.[19] During thewar with Hannibal, any distinction between "indigenous" and "immigrant" gods begins to fade, and the Romans embraced diverse gods from various cultures as a sign of strength and universal divine favor.[20]
The absorption of neighboring local gods took place as the Roman state conquered neighboring territories. The Romans commonly granted the local gods of a conquered territory the same honors as the earlier gods of theRoman state religion. In addition toCastor and Pollux, the conquered settlements in Italy seem to have contributed to the Roman pantheonDiana,Minerva,Hercules,Venus, and deities of lesser rank, some of whom were Italic divinities, others originally derived from the Greek culture ofMagna Graecia. In 203 BC, Rome imported the cult object embodyingCybele fromPessinus inPhrygia and welcomed its arrival with dueceremony. BothLucretius andCatullus, poets contemporary in the mid-1st century BC, offer disapproving glimpses of Cybele's wildly ecstatic cult.
In some instances, deities of an enemy power were formally invited through the ritual ofevocatio to take up their abode in new sanctuaries at Rome.
Communities of foreigners(peregrini) and former slaves(libertini) continued their own religious practices within the city. In this wayMithras came to Rome and his popularity within theRoman army spread his cult as far afield asRoman Britain. The important Roman deities were eventually identified with the moreanthropomorphic Greek gods and goddesses, and assumed many of their attributes and myths.
In Roman and Greek mythology, Jupiter places his son born by a mortal woman, the infantHercules, onJuno's breast while she is asleep so the baby will drink her divine milk and thus become immortal, an act which would endow the baby with godlike qualities. When Juno woke and realized that she wasbreastfeeding an unknown infant, she pushed him away, some of her milk spills, and the spurting milk became theMilky Way. In another version of the myth, the abandoned Hercules is given byMinerva to Juno for feeding, but Hercules' forcefulness causes Minerva to rip him from her breast in pain. The milk that squirts out forms the Milky Way.[21][22][23]
^Molly Pasco-Pranger, "With the Veil Removed: Women’s Public Nudity in the Early Roman Empire,"Classical Antiquity 38:2 (2019), p. 218.
^Georg Wissowa,De dis Romanorum indigetibus et novensidibus disputatio (1892), full text (in Latin)online.
^Arnaldo Momigliano, "From Bachofen to Cumont", inA.D. Momigliano: Studies on Modern Scholarship (University of California Press, 1994), p. 319; Franz Altheim,A History of Roman Religion, as translated by Harold Mattingly (London, 1938), pp. 110–112;Mary Beard, J.A. North and S.R.F. Price.Religions of Rome: A History (Cambridge University Press, 1998), vol. 1, p. 158, note 7.
^William Warde Fowler,The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1922) pp. 157 and 319; J.S. Wacher,The Roman World (Routledge, 1987, 2002), p. 751.
Beard, Mary. 1993. "Looking (Harder) for Roman Myth: Dumézil, Declamation, and the Problems of Definition." InMythos in Mythenloser Gesellschaft: Das Paradigma Roms. Edited by Fritz Graf, 44–64. Stuttgart, Germany: Teubner.
Braund, David, and Christopher Gill, eds. 2003.Myth, History, and Culture in Republican Rome: Studies in Honour of T. P. Wiseman. Exeter, UK: Univ. of Exeter Press.
Cameron, Alan. 2004.Greek Mythography in the Roman World. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press.
Dumézil, Georges. 1996.Archaic Roman Religion. Rev. ed. Translated by Philip Krapp. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press.
Fox, Matthew. 2011. "The Myth of Rome" InA Companion to Greek Mythology. Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World. Literature and Culture.Edited by Ken Dowden and Niall Livingstone. Chichester; Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell.
Gardner, Jane F. 1993.Roman Myths: The Legendary Past. Austin: Univ. of Texas Press.
Grandazzi, Alexandre. 1997.The Foundation of Rome: Myth and History. Translated by Jane Marie Todd. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univ. Press.
Hall, Edith 2013. "Pantomime: Visualising Myth in the Roman Empire." InPerformance in Greek and Roman Theatre. Edited by George Harrison and George William Mallory, 451–743. Leiden; Boston: Brill.
Miller, Paul Allen. 2013. "Mythology and the Abject in Imperial Satire." InClassical Myth and Psychoanalysis: Ancient and Modern Stories of the Self. Edited by Vanda Zajko and Ellen O'Gorman, 213–230. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.
Newby, Zahra. 2012. "The Aesthetics of Violence: Myth and Danger in Roman Domestic Landscapes."Classical Antiquity 31.2: 349–389.
Wiseman, T. P. 2004.The Myths of Rome. Exeter: Univ. of Exeter Press.
Woodard, Roger D. 2013.Myth, Ritual, and the Warrior in Roman and Indo-European Antiquity. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press.
_01.jpg)
![[icon]](/mt/?noimg=&dark=on&url=http%3a%2f%2fen.wikipedia.org%2fwiki%2fFile%3aWiki_letter_w_cropped.svg)
