Hellenistic syncretism was not only found in the East, but also in the West: in Rome. Here, the Greeks, and also the Etruscans, were the “donors” and the Romans the “recipients”—this can also be observed outside the field of religion. In Rome, anthropomorphism seems to have been the result of acculturation, as was the interpretation of omens; the preferential treatment reserved for the god Jupiter within the Roman pantheon has an Etruscan background, and “typically Roman” phenomena, such as gladiatorial combats and triumphal processions, were likewise borrowed from the Etruscans. Already in the 5th century, temples were built in Rome for the Greek gods, such as Apollo. It is hard to say on what native trunk these Greek and Etruscan shoots were grafted: we know very little about the earliest stages of Roman religion. Written sources mainly date to the 1st century BC and later. With Roman conservatism in mind, we may, of course, try to reconstruct something of Rome’s earliest religious images and customs. But we should be aware that we then look through the eyes of authors from much later times who possibly, or even probably, also reconstructed their own past without sufficient knowledge of the facts. In that case, our reconstructions would be just as unreliable as the Roman reconstructions on which they are based. Archaeological finds cannot always provide a definite answer to specific questions, but they clearly demonstrate that a quest for the “genuine,” “pure” or “original” Roman religion is doomed to fail: even at the earliest stages, we find Greek and Etruscan elements. We may therefore cautiously conclude that from the beginning Roman religion was an amalgam of many ingredients, including Greek ones. This may be the reason it was such an excellent breeding ground for further Greek influence.
The way the early Romans looked at their gods is comparable to what has been said earlier about the Greeks: they feared their gods, especially their anger toward those whose piety fell short, because the gods could decide to strike at the wrongdoer’s environment. People tried to maintain a good relationship with the gods (the pax deorum) through ritual, mainly sacrifices and votive gifts. In Roman religion, ritual (the cultus deorum) was an even more important element than in Greek religion. This is apparent from the central position held by religious specialists: pontifices (priests) and augures (interpreters of omens). The Roman pantheon was very open, even more so than the Greek one: the inclusion of foreign gods was institutionalized in the form of the evocatio, a ritual in which the god of an adversary was invited, through prayer and votive gifts, to leave his own people and move to Rome. We find foreign influences at a very early stage, but from the early 3rd century such influences increased significantly, not only in number but also in power. The result was a profound Hellenization of Roman religion. “Indigenous gods,” such as Janus, Venus, or Vesta, did not, however, disappear from the pantheon: they received an anthropomorphic form and were in some cases identified with Greek gods; rituals such as lustratio (ritual purification) and augury, divination by observing the flight of birds, continued to be performed. From time to time, we even see revivals of “genuine Roman” elements; quite often, however, these were no more than newly invented “ancient customs of our fathers.”
The Hellenization process of the 3rd and 2nd centuries was much advanced by the great changes (and crises) Roman society underwent at that time. As the Athenians had done earlier, the Romans, too, imported savior gods and ecstatic cults from the East, especially Asclepius and Cybele. From the late 2nd century BC, the number of imported gods grew: Isis, Osiris, and Serapis arrived in Italy—more will be said about their history later on. And, just as had happened in Greece, there was opposition to the new developments from those who sought to protect the ancestral religion and prevent a supposed threat to the public order. In Rome, too, the opposition had little permanent success. Sometimes, however, it was possible to keep out certain elements of a new cult or make it illegal for Romans to take on its priesthood, even after the god had been officially accepted.
All of the foregoing maybe described as Hellenization, because even non-Greek deities came to Rome via the Greek world, in an adapted form that was recognizable to the already strongly Hellenized Romans. When cults were taken directly from an alien culture—those of Celtic gods, for instance—these were first adapted to the Greco-Roman system through anthropomorphism and identification with the gods one was familiar with. This specifically Roman variant of Hellenistic syncretism is known as the interpretatio Romana. This not only concerns deities who became part of the state cult in Rome, but also many of the gods from the provinces of the Roman Empire who were not, or not immediately, honored in this way. The latter, too, were usually accepted by the Romans who lived there.
Greek philosophy also gained a foothold in Rome, including its skepticism concerning the traditional religious order. This skepticism, however, was not inappropriate given the crisis the Roman Republic faced at the time. Part of this crisis was a politicizing of religion, in the sense that religion was increasingly manipulated to serve political aims; mortals even came to usurp divine power. Caesar may serve as an example: he was a member of the gens Julia, who claimed descent from Venus via Aeneas, and it was only a small step to contend that the great man himself was more than a mere mortal. Although influence from the Hellenistic East no doubt played a role in these developments, they were mostly indigenous: they were a reaction to social changes and found support in certain aspects of Roman religion, notably the ancestral cult.
World History
