The evidence from Dura-Europos has often led to general conclusions about the nature of worship in the normal small towns of the Roman east. In contrast to monumental buildings in cities such as Ephesus, Antioch, or even Palmyra, proper
Greco-Roman religious architecture was absent in places such as Dura-Europos. The fact that here temples often grew out of houses has led some to suggest that the cults of the small town that was Dura-Europos were of a relatively private nature. However, an alternative religious architecture does not automatically exclude patterns of worship known from the Greco-Roman world. There is no reason to assume that the groups of worshipers who assembled in the temples of a small town were more exclusive or private than their counterparts in the grand cities of the Roman east. Instead we are faced with a recurrent situation: towns filled with, and dominated by, varieties of traditional, indigenous, and classical polytheistic cults.
Such was religious life in the eastern provinces of the Roman world. According to the model that I have sketched, it was characterized by a general tolerance not only on the part of Rome toward foreign, non-Roman religions, but above all on the part of the various cults and forms of religion toward each other. This should not surprise us. In a metropolis, a small and fanatical sect could have kept a low profile. In a hamlet, there cannot have been too much religious variation amongst the population anyway. In a middle-sized town, there was probably not that much alternative to a religious attitude of live and let live.
FURTHER READING
A comprehensive monograph on religion in the Roman east in general seems to be lacking. The best overview of the pagan cults in the eastern part of the Roman world is Lane Fox (1986: part one). On Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), see above all the second volume of Mitchell (1993), placing the pagan evidence in the context of a growing Christianity. Dignas (2002) is a detailed study of the financial affairs of temples in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, and of their relationship with cities, kings, and emperors. As regards Syria and the Near East, a very accessible introduction to the religious world is now Butcher (2003: ch. 9), and see also Sartre (2005: ch. 10) for a general overview. Millar (1993a) remains the starting point for an exploration of the religious identities of the different sub-regions. The classic work on how the cults from the east spread through the Roman world is still Cumont (1929), translated into many languages, and not surpassed by R. Turcan (1996). Teixidor (1977) argues from a study of inscriptions that popular religion in the Near East remained unaltered throughout the Roman period. Of great importance is a small book by Bowersock (1990), which convincingly shows the vitality of pagan cults in the Roman east, and which describes the impact of Greek culture on indigenous forms of worship. Palmyra, a city in Syria whose abundant sources make it one of our best test cases for understanding religious life in the Roman east, has received treatment of its patterns of worship by two recent books: Dirven (1999), whose model of religious interaction is built upon a study of the behavior of Palmyrene expatriates in Dura-Europos, and Kaizer (2002), a methodical re-evaluation of the evidence for the city’s cults, rituals, priests, and worshipers. Lichtenberger (2003) provides an overview of religious life in the cities of the Syrian Decapolis as a whole, based above all on the numismatic evidence. Last but not least, Lightfoot (2003) is not just a superb commentary on the enigmatic treatise On the Syrian Goddess, but simultaneously an in-depth study of Levantine religion.
World History
