
	Top News: Encyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France, and England The Times Illustrated History of Europe The Mediaeval Castles of Skye and Lochalsh The Apparatus of Death Fromelles Ragged War - The Story of Unconventional and Counter-Revolutionary Warfare How Paris Became Paris: The Invention of the Modern City The Routledge Atlas of the First World War, 3rd Edition Hall of Mirrors: The Great Depression, The Great Recession, and the Uses-and Misuses-of History The Oxford Illustrated History of the First World War

Contact

23-07-2015, 23:32

Conclusions

While scholars of Roman religion have paid considerable attention to festivals and ritual acts, they have for the most part neglected the study of prayer in its own right. This neglect belies the significance of prayer in the actual practice of religion. Although sacrifice was certainly the heart of Roman ritual, sacrifice without prayer, as Pliny the Elder commented, was useless. Without words of prayer to identify the purpose of rituals, neither the divine recipients nor the human audience could understand what was happening. As in those mute paintings and relief sculptures, there would be no clue whether the intent was petition, oath, or thanksgiving. The term “supplication” (supplicatio) illustrates this problem well. The Romans used the same word to identify public days of prayer and offering for propitiation, expiation, and thanksgiving (Halkin 1953: 9-13). The only distinguishing factor was the content of the prayers of magistrates and people.

Prayers merit close attention not just to identify the immediate objective of a ritual but to gain insight into the mentalite of Roman religion. The content of prayers points to a predominant interest in the physical world of the here and now, not in a personal afterlife or morality. Prayers seek health and safety, success and prosperity. Furthermore, no area of life was devoid of prayers, from politics to war to family life. While cynics may question the religious quality of the public prayers of magistrates, literary texts and votive inscriptions attest the many aspects of private life where individuals sought divine aid: birth, illness, journeys, business. All these prayers demonstrate concerns about the lack of control and predictability of daily life, as well as a fundamental belief or hope in the power of supernatural beings to affect that condition. In addition, there is a noticeable anxiety before the great power of divinities for good or ill, seen in the variety of cautionary statements in vows and oaths.

The study of public prayers also contributes to the understanding of Roman society. They demonstrate the intermingling of religion with the political concerns of the elite. Similarities between issues voiced in official prayers and senatorial debates underscore that junction. The personalization of prayers, which spotlights the elite mediators of divine favor - magistrates, commanders, emperors - served to construct and preserve elite domination. Prayer could also bolster public morale in times of crisis and support optimism in good times. Public prayer thus met needs of both upper and lower classes. While spontaneous prayer at public temples provided an outlet for fear and joy, the institutionalization of that practice protected public order and focused attention on the beneficent and necessary role of the state’s leaders.

Even more important than the need for more scholarly attention to the prayers themselves is that for a more integrated approach to the study of ritual, including both word and deed. For the most part, the tendency has been to divorce the study of prayer from the study of ritual actions, with prayer texts left behind for the dissection of philologists, while historians of Roman religion focus on the details of procession and sacrifice. Of course, this very chapter perpetuates the false dicho-tomization of speech and action. Such scholarly compartmentalization artificially separates elements originally fused. Thus an important direction for future research will be the reintegration of prayer into the study of Roman ritual.

It is good news that there has been in recent years a resurgence of scholarly interest in prayer. In 1997 there appeared under the auspices of the Society of Biblical Literature a critical anthology, including translations and commentaries of prayers from the Hellenistic world, directed primarily to students of classics and theology (Kiley 1997). In addition, a scholarly group in Strasburg formed to promote “Recherches sur les Rhetoriques Religieuses,” directed by Freyburger and Pernot, has already published an anthology of Greco-Roman prayers with commentary and an analytical bibliography (2000) and further volumes. These texts provide an excellent starting point for future research and promise new projects on the near horizon. To conclude these prefatory comments as did Livy: “If it were our custom also, as it is for poets, we would gladly commence with good omens and vows and prayers to the gods and goddesses that they grant a propitious outcome to this considerable undertaking” (Praefatio, 13).

Top News:

Conclusions