Divyanshu67/squad_v2 huggingface dataset:
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

In the later Imperial era, the burial and commemorative practises of Christian and non-Christians overlapped. Tombs were shared by Christian and non-Christian family members, and the traditional funeral rites and feast of novemdialis found a part-match in the Christian Constitutio Apostolica. The customary offers of wine and food to the dead continued; St Augustine (following St Ambrose) feared that this invited the "drunken" practices of Parentalia but commended funeral feasts as a Christian opportunity to give alms of food to the poor. Christians attended Parentalia and its accompanying Feralia and Caristia in sufficient numbers for the Council of Tours to forbid them in AD 567. Other funerary and commemorative practices were very different. Traditional Roman practice spurned the corpse as a ritual pollution; inscriptions noted the day of birth and duration of life. The Christian Church fostered the veneration of saintly relics, and inscriptions marked the day of death as a transition to "new life".

Question: What group's burial practices over-lapped with the Roman's?
Answer: Christian

Question: What items were shared among Christian and non- Christians?
Answer: Tombs

Question: What did St Augustine believe that funeral feasts gave an opportunity for?
Answer: alms of food

Question: When was Christian attendance at Parentalia become forbidden by the Christians?
Answer: AD 567

Question: How did the Romans view the corpse of the dead?
Answer: ritual pollution
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Roman camps followed a standard pattern for defense and religious ritual; in effect they were Rome in miniature. The commander's headquarters stood at the centre; he took the auspices on a dais in front. A small building behind housed the legionary standards, the divine images used in religious rites and in the Imperial era, the image of the ruling emperor. In one camp, this shrine is even called Capitolium. The most important camp-offering appears to have been the suovetaurilia performed before a major, set battle. A ram, a boar and a bull were ritually garlanded, led around the outer perimeter of the camp (a lustratio exercitus) and in through a gate, then sacrificed: Trajan's column shows three such events from his Dacian wars. The perimeter procession and sacrifice suggest the entire camp as a divine templum; all within are purified and protected.

Question: How were Roman camps laid out?
Answer: standard pattern

Question: For what purpose were Roman camps arranged?
Answer: defense and religious ritual

Question: Of what were Roman camps diminutive versions?
Answer: Rome

Question: What was in the center of each Roman camp?
Answer: commander's headquarters

Question: What does the religious rites performed before battle suggest that the camp has become?
Answer: divine templum
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Each camp had its own religious personnel; standard bearers, priestly officers and their assistants, including a haruspex, and housekeepers of shrines and images. A senior magistrate-commander (sometimes even a consul) headed it, his chain of subordinates ran it and a ferocious system of training and discipline ensured that every citizen-soldier knew his duty. As in Rome, whatever gods he served in his own time seem to have been his own business; legionary forts and vici included shrines to household gods, personal deities and deities otherwise unknown. From the earliest Imperial era, citizen legionaries and provincial auxiliaries gave cult to the emperor and his familia on Imperial accessions, anniversaries and their renewal of annual vows. They celebrated Rome's official festivals in absentia, and had the official triads appropriate to their function – in the Empire, Jupiter, Victoria and Concordia were typical. By the early Severan era, the military also offered cult to the Imperial divi, the current emperor's numen, genius and domus (or familia), and special cult to the Empress as "mother of the camp." The near ubiquitous legionary shrines to Mithras of the later Imperial era were not part of official cult until Mithras was absorbed into Solar and Stoic Monism as a focus of military concordia and Imperial loyalty.

Question: What type of personnel did every camp have?
Answer: religious

Question: What officer headed the religious personnel of a Roman camp?
Answer: senior magistrate-commander

Question: In the Imperial era, what cult did legionnaires follow?
Answer: emperor

Question: Even in other places, of what did the legions keep observance?
Answer: Rome's official festivals

Question: What person was considered to be "Mother of the camp''?
Answer: Empress
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The devotio was the most extreme offering a Roman general could make, promising to offer his own life in battle along with the enemy as an offering to the underworld gods. Livy offers a detailed account of the devotio carried out by Decius Mus; family tradition maintained that his son and grandson, all bearing the same name, also devoted themselves. Before the battle, Decius is granted a prescient dream that reveals his fate. When he offers sacrifice, the victim's liver appears "damaged where it refers to his own fortunes". Otherwise, the haruspex tells him, the sacrifice is entirely acceptable to the gods. In a prayer recorded by Livy, Decius commits himself and the enemy to the dii Manes and Tellus, charges alone and headlong into the enemy ranks, and is killed; his action cleanses the sacrificial offering. Had he failed to die, his sacrificial offering would have been tainted and therefore void, with possibly disastrous consequences. The act of devotio is a link between military ethics and those of the Roman gladiator.

Question: What was a Roman general's most extreme offering?
Answer: devotio

Question: What Roman general had a dream of his fate in battle?
Answer: Decius Mus

Question: With what does the devotio link to military ethics?
Answer: Roman gladiator

Question: By dying what did Decius avoid for the battle?
Answer: disastrous consequences

Question: Who wrote a detailed account of the demise of Decius Mus?
Answer: Livy
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The efforts of military commanders to channel the divine will were on occasion less successful. In the early days of Rome's war against Carthage, the commander Publius Claudius Pulcher (consul 249 BC) launched a sea campaign "though the sacred chickens would not eat when he took the auspices." In defiance of the omen, he threw them into the sea, "saying that they might drink, since they would not eat. He was defeated, and on being bidden by the senate to appoint a dictator, he appointed his messenger Glycias, as if again making a jest of his country's peril." His impiety not only lost the battle but ruined his career.

Question: What general was consul in 249 BC?
Answer: Publius Claudius Pulcher

Question: What type of campaign did Publius fight?
Answer: sea

Question: What was Publius's critical mistake in his sea campaign?
Answer: defiance of the omen

Question: How did Publius fare in his battle?
Answer: defeated

Question: What was the cause of Publius's failures according to Roman feeling?
Answer: impiety
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Roman women were present at most festivals and cult observances. Some rituals specifically required the presence of women, but their active participation was limited. As a rule women did not perform animal sacrifice, the central rite of most major public ceremonies. In addition to the public priesthood of the Vestals, some cult practices were reserved for women only. The rites of the Bona Dea excluded men entirely. Because women enter the public record less frequently than men, their religious practices are less known, and even family cults were headed by the paterfamilias. A host of deities, however, are associated with motherhood. Juno, Diana, Lucina, and specialized divine attendants presided over the life-threatening act of giving birth and the perils of caring for a baby at a time when the infant mortality rate was as high as 40 percent.

Question: What was the amount of participation by women in religious observances?
Answer: limited

Question: What religious act did women not perform?
Answer: animal sacrifice

Question: What priesthood was reserved solely for women?
Answer: Vestals

Question: What Roman rites excluded men?
Answer: Bona Dea

Question: With what are many deities aligned for women in Rome's religions? 
Answer: motherhood
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Excessive devotion and enthusiasm in religious observance were superstitio, in the sense of "doing or believing more than was necessary", to which women and foreigners were considered particularly prone. The boundaries between religio and superstitio are perhaps indefinite. The famous tirade of Lucretius, the Epicurean rationalist, against what is usually translated as "superstition" was in fact aimed at excessive religio. Roman religion was based on knowledge rather than faith, but superstitio was viewed as an "inappropriate desire for knowledge"; in effect, an abuse of religio.

Question: What was excessive religious fervor in Rome's religions?
Answer: superstitio

Question: Doing what type of actions were considered to be wrong in Rome?
Answer: more than was necessary

Question: What was excessive religio equated with in Rome?
Answer: superstition

Question: What was the basis of Roman religion?
Answer: knowledge

Question: What type of knowledge seeking was superstitio considered to be?
Answer: inappropriate
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

In the everyday world, many individuals sought to divine the future, influence it through magic, or seek vengeance with help from "private" diviners. The state-sanctioned taking of auspices was a form of public divination with the intent of ascertaining the will of the gods, not foretelling the future. Secretive consultations between private diviners and their clients were thus suspect. So were divinatory techniques such as astrology when used for illicit, subversive or magical purposes. Astrologers and magicians were officially expelled from Rome at various times, notably in 139 BC and 33 BC. In 16 BC Tiberius expelled them under extreme penalty because an astrologer had predicted his death. "Egyptian rites" were particularly suspect: Augustus banned them within the pomerium to doubtful effect; Tiberius repeated and extended the ban with extreme force in AD 19. Despite several Imperial bans, magic and astrology persisted among all social classes. In the late 1st century AD, Tacitus observed that astrologers "would always be banned and always retained at Rome".

Question: What type of diviners were suspect in Rome?
Answer: private diviners

Question: What was the purpose to be discovered by state sanctioned diviners?
Answer: will of the gods

Question: What action was not to be sought by state diviners?
Answer: foretelling the future

Question: What group of people were several times expelled from Rome?
Answer: Astrologers and magicians

Question: What had an astrologer predicted to warrant from Rome by Tiberius?
Answer: death
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

In the Graeco-Roman world, practitioners of magic were known as magi (singular magus), a "foreign" title of Persian priests. Apuleius, defending himself against accusations of casting magic spells, defined the magician as "in popular tradition (more vulgari)... someone who, because of his community of speech with the immortal gods, has an incredible power of spells (vi cantaminum) for everything he wishes to." Pliny the Elder offers a thoroughly skeptical "History of magical arts" from their supposed Persian origins to Nero's vast and futile expenditure on research into magical practices in an attempt to control the gods. Philostratus takes pains to point out that the celebrated Apollonius of Tyana was definitely not a magus, "despite his special knowledge of the future, his miraculous cures, and his ability to vanish into thin air".

Question: What word was used by the Romans for practitioners of magic?
Answer: magi

Question: To what did the term magi originally refer?
Answer: Persian priests

Question: Who wrote a skeptical work outlining magic and its use?
Answer: Pliny the Elder

Question: What was the title of Pliny's work on magic?
Answer: "History of magical arts"

Question: Who was a noted magician who could vanish into thin air?
Answer: Apollonius of Tyana
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Lucan depicts Sextus Pompeius, the doomed son of Pompey the Great, as convinced "the gods of heaven knew too little" and awaiting the Battle of Pharsalus by consulting with the Thessalian witch Erichtho, who practices necromancy and inhabits deserted graves, feeding on rotting corpses. Erichtho, it is said, can arrest "the rotation of the heavens and the flow of rivers" and make "austere old men blaze with illicit passions". She and her clients are portrayed as undermining the natural order of gods, mankind and destiny. A female foreigner from Thessaly, notorious for witchcraft, Erichtho is the stereotypical witch of Latin literature, along with Horace's Canidia.

Question: Who consulted a witch before the battle of Pharsalus?
Answer: Sextus Pompeius

Question: What witch was reputed to be able to stop the rotation of the heavens?
Answer: Erichtho

Question: What natural order was Erichtho accused of undermining?
Answer: order of gods

Question: How was Erichtho portrayed?
Answer: stereotypical witch

Question: From what country did Erichtho come?
Answer: Thessaly
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The Twelve Tables forbade any harmful incantation (malum carmen, or 'noisome metrical charm'); this included the "charming of crops from one field to another" (excantatio frugum) and any rite that sought harm or death to others. Chthonic deities functioned at the margins of Rome's divine and human communities; although sometimes the recipients of public rites, these were conducted outside the sacred boundary of the pomerium. Individuals seeking their aid did so away from the public gaze, during the hours of darkness. Burial grounds and isolated crossroads were among the likely portals. The barrier between private religious practices and "magic" is permeable, and Ovid gives a vivid account of rites at the fringes of the public Feralia festival that are indistinguishable from magic: an old woman squats among a circle of younger women, sews up a fish-head, smears it with pitch, then pierces and roasts it to "bind hostile tongues to silence". By this she invokes Tacita, the "Silent One" of the underworld.

Question: What forbid harmful  incantations?
Answer: Twelve Tables

Question: What deities were on the edge of Roman religious community? 
Answer: Chthonic

Question: What did people seeking the aid of magicians avoid?
Answer: public gaze

Question: What could public rites and magic easily become in some circumstances?
Answer: indistinguishable

Question: Where was magic conducted in Rome?
Answer: outside the sacred boundary
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Archaeology confirms the widespread use of binding spells (defixiones), magical papyri and so-called "voodoo dolls" from a very early era. Around 250 defixiones have been recovered just from Roman Britain, in both urban and rural settings. Some seek straightforward, usually gruesome revenge, often for a lover's offense or rejection. Others appeal for divine redress of wrongs, in terms familiar to any Roman magistrate, and promise a portion of the value (usually small) of lost or stolen property in return for its restoration. None of these defixiones seem produced by, or on behalf of the elite, who had more immediate recourse to human law and justice. Similar traditions existed throughout the empire, persisting until around the 7th century AD, well into the Christian era.

Question: What science has confirmed the existence of magic use from early times?
Answer: Archaeology

Question: What was the term for binding spells in the Roman world?
Answer: defixiones

Question: What did the elite use instead of spells and potions to redress a wrong?
Answer: law and justice

Question: Until what era did spells persist in the empire?
Answer: 7th century AD

Question: What era produced a decline in the use of spells?
Answer: Christian era
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Rome's government, politics and religion were dominated by an educated, male, landowning military aristocracy. Approximately half Rome's population were slave or free non-citizens. Most others were plebeians, the lowest class of Roman citizens. Less than a quarter of adult males had voting rights; far fewer could actually exercise them. Women had no vote. However, all official business was conducted under the divine gaze and auspices, in the name of the senate and people of Rome. "In a very real sense the senate was the caretaker of the Romans’ relationship with the divine, just as it was the caretaker of their relationship with other humans".

Question: What male group dominated all aspects of Rome?
Answer: aristocracy

Question: Of what class was more than half of Rome's population?
Answer: slave or free non-citizens

Question: What was the lowest class of Roman citizens?
Answer: plebeians

Question: How many adult males were able to vote in Rome?
Answer: Less than a quarter

Question: What organization was Rome's official caretaker?
Answer: the senate
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The links between religious and political life were vital to Rome's internal governance, diplomacy and development from kingdom, to Republic and to Empire. Post-regal politics dispersed the civil and religious authority of the kings more or less equitably among the patrician elite: kingship was replaced by two annually elected consular offices. In the early Republic, as presumably in the regal era, plebeians were excluded from high religious and civil office, and could be punished for offenses against laws of which they had no knowledge. They resorted to strikes and violence to break the oppressive patrician monopolies of high office, public priesthood, and knowledge of civil and religious law. The senate appointed Camillus as dictator to handle the emergency; he negotiated a settlement, and sanctified it by the dedication of a temple to Concordia. The religious calendars and laws were eventually made public. Plebeian tribunes were appointed, with sacrosanct status and the right of veto in legislative debate. In principle, the augural and pontifical colleges were now open to plebeians. In reality, the patrician and to a lesser extent, plebeian nobility dominated religious and civil office throughout the Republican era and beyond.

Question: The link between what groups was necessary to Rome?
Answer: religious and political

Question: Where was the basic power in Rome to be found?
Answer: patrician elite

Question: What group was excluded from high offices ?
Answer: plebeians

Question: Who did the Senate select to settle a strike by the lower classes?
Answer: Camillus

Question: To whom was a temple dedicated at the settlement of the strike?
Answer: Concordia
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

While the new plebeian nobility made social, political and religious inroads on traditionally patrician preserves, their electorate maintained their distinctive political traditions and religious cults. During the Punic crisis, popular cult to Dionysus emerged from southern Italy; Dionysus was equated with Father Liber, the inventor of plebeian augury and personification of plebeian freedoms, and with Roman Bacchus. Official consternation at these enthusiastic, unofficial Bacchanalia cults was expressed as moral outrage at their supposed subversion, and was followed by ferocious suppression. Much later, a statue of Marsyas, the silen of Dionysus flayed by Apollo, became a focus of brief symbolic resistance to Augustus' censorship. Augustus himself claimed the patronage of Venus and Apollo; but his settlement appealed to all classes. Where loyalty was implicit, no divine hierarchy need be politically enforced; Liber's festival continued.

Question: What did the patrician electorate keep in spite of a new plebeian nobility? 
Answer: political traditions and religious cults

Question: What cult arrived from southern Italy?
Answer: Dionysus

Question: During what time did the Dionysus cult become popular?
Answer: Punic crisis

Question: To what Roman god was Dionysus similar?
Answer: Bacchus

Question: With loyalty a necessity, what censorship did not need to be enforced?
Answer: divine hierarchy
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The Augustan settlement built upon a cultural shift in Roman society. In the middle Republican era, even Scipio's tentative hints that he might be Jupiter's special protege sat ill with his colleagues. Politicians of the later Republic were less equivocal; both Sulla and Pompey claimed special relationships with Venus. Julius Caesar went further, and claimed her as his ancestress. Such claims suggested personal character and policy as divinely inspired; an appointment to priesthood offered divine validation. In 63 BC, Julius Caesar's appointment as pontifex maximus "signaled his emergence as a major player in Roman politics". Likewise, political candidates could sponsor temples, priesthoods and the immensely popular, spectacular public ludi and munera whose provision became increasingly indispensable to the factional politics of the Late Republic. Under the principate, such opportunities were limited by law; priestly and political power were consolidated in the person of the princeps ("first citizen").

Question: What appointment was the start of Cesar's political rise?
Answer: pontifex maximus

Question: What did the Augustan settlement signify in Rome's classes?
Answer: cultural shift

Question: What did the claims of officials imply about the nature of the individuals?
Answer: divinely inspired

Question: In what year was Cesar made pontifex maximus?
Answer: 63 BC

Question: How were opportunities limited in the principate for the citizens of Rome?
Answer: by law
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Rome's diplomatic agreement with her neighbours of Latium confirmed the Latin league and brought the cult of Diana from Aricia to the Aventine. and established on the Aventine in the "commune Latinorum Dianae templum": At about the same time, the temple of Jupiter Latiaris was built on the Alban mount, its stylistic resemblance to the new Capitoline temple pointing to Rome's inclusive hegemony. Rome's affinity to the Latins allowed two Latin cults within the pomoerium: and the cult to Hercules at the ara maxima in the Forum Boarium was established through commercial connections with Tibur. and the Tusculan cult of Castor as the patron of cavalry found a home close to the Forum Romanum: Juno Sospita and Juno Regina were brought from Italy, and Fortuna Primigenia from Praeneste. In 217, Venus was brought from Sicily and installed in a temple on the Capitoline hill.

Question: Whose cult appeared from Africa at the time of the Latin League?
Answer: Diana

Question: To whom was a new temple dedicated on the Alban Mount?
Answer: Jupiter Latiaris

Question: What cult was formed at the ars maxima in the Forum Boarium ?
Answer: Hercules

Question: For what group was Castor a patron?
Answer: cavalry

Question: From where was Venus brought and lodged on the Capitoline Hill?
Answer: Sicily
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The introduction of new or equivalent deities coincided with Rome's most significant aggressive and defensive military forays. In 206 BC the Sibylline books commended the introduction of cult to the aniconic Magna Mater (Great Mother) from Pessinus, installed on the Palatine in 191 BC. The mystery cult to Bacchus followed; it was suppressed as subversive and unruly by decree of the Senate in 186 BC. Greek deities were brought within the sacred pomerium: temples were dedicated to Juventas (Hebe) in 191 BC, Diana (Artemis) in 179 BC, Mars (Ares) in 138 BC), and to Bona Dea, equivalent to Fauna, the female counterpart of the rural Faunus, supplemented by the Greek goddess Damia. Further Greek influences on cult images and types represented the Roman Penates as forms of the Greek Dioscuri. The military-political adventurers of the Later Republic introduced the Phrygian goddess Ma (identified with Roman Bellona, the Egyptian mystery-goddess Isis and Persian Mithras.)

Question: What cult appeared from Pessinus in 206 BC?
Answer: Magna Mater

Question: What cult was brought in to Rome after the Great Mother cult?
Answer: Bacchus

Question: In what year did the Senate declare the Bacchus subversive?
Answer: 186 BC

Question: In what year was Diana  brought into the pomerium?
Answer: 179 BC

Question: What god was introduced in Rome in 138 BC?
Answer: Mars
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The spread of Greek literature, mythology and philosophy offered Roman poets and antiquarians a model for the interpretation of Rome's festivals and rituals, and the embellishment of its mythology. Ennius translated the work of Graeco-Sicilian Euhemerus, who explained the genesis of the gods as apotheosized mortals. In the last century of the Republic, Epicurean and particularly Stoic interpretations were a preoccupation of the literate elite, most of whom held - or had held - high office and traditional Roman priesthoods; notably, Scaevola and the polymath Varro. For Varro - well versed in Euhemerus' theory - popular religious observance was based on a necessary fiction; what the people believed was not itself the truth, but their observance led them to as much higher truth as their limited capacity could deal with. Whereas in popular belief deities held power over mortal lives, the skeptic might say that mortal devotion had made gods of mortals, and these same gods were only sustained by devotion and cult.

Question: The spread of all things Greek provided what for the interpretation of Rome's religions?
Answer: model

Question: What writer defined the development of the gods?
Answer: Euhemerus

Question: At the end of the Republic, who read the Stoic interpretations of Roman gods and religion?
Answer: literate elite

Question: What factors sustained the beliefs in gods according to Varro?
Answer: devotion and cult.

Question: What theory claims that popular belief was based on fiction?
Answer: Euhemerus' theory
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Just as Rome itself claimed the favour of the gods, so did some individual Romans. In the mid-to-late Republican era, and probably much earlier, many of Rome's leading clans acknowledged a divine or semi-divine ancestor and laid personal claim to their favour and cult, along with a share of their divinity. Most notably in the very late Republic, the Julii claimed Venus Genetrix as ancestor; this would be one of many foundations for the Imperial cult. The claim was further elaborated and justified in Vergil's poetic, Imperial vision of the past.

Question: What did many Romans claim in the Republican era?
Answer: divine ancestor

Question: What style of claim did Romans favor as a link to the gods?
Answer: personal claim

Question: What deity did the Julii claim as an ancestor?
Answer: Venus Genetrix

Question: Of what were such claims of deity relations the start?
Answer: Imperial cult

Question: What author further elaborated on the imperial claim of godhood? 
Answer: Vergil
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Towards the end of the Republic, religious and political offices became more closely intertwined; the office of pontifex maximus became a de facto consular prerogative. Augustus was personally vested with an extraordinary breadth of political, military and priestly powers; at first temporarily, then for his lifetime. He acquired or was granted an unprecedented number of Rome's major priesthoods, including that of pontifex maximus; as he invented none, he could claim them as traditional honours. His reforms were represented as adaptive, restorative and regulatory, rather than innovative; most notably his elevation (and membership) of the ancient Arvales, his timely promotion of the plebeian Compitalia shortly before his election and his patronage of the Vestals as a visible restoration of Roman morality. Augustus obtained the pax deorum, maintained it for the rest of his reign and adopted a successor to ensure its continuation. This remained a primary religious and social duty of emperors.

Question: By the end of the Republic, what offices were increasingly joined?
Answer: religious and political

Question: What Roman figure was given wide and lifeime powers?
Answer: Augustus

Question: How many priesthoods was Augustus given?
Answer: unprecedented number

Question: How were Augustus's reforms viewed?
Answer: adaptive, restorative and regulatory

Question: As a return to what did Augustus portray the Vestals in his reforms?
Answer: Roman morality
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The Roman Empire expanded to include different peoples and cultures; in principle, Rome followed the same inclusionist policies that had recognised Latin, Etruscan and other Italian peoples, cults and deities as Roman. Those who acknowledged Rome's hegemony retained their own cult and religious calendars, independent of Roman religious law. Newly municipal Sabratha built a Capitolium near its existing temple to Liber Pater and Serapis. Autonomy and concord were official policy, but new foundations by Roman citizens or their Romanised allies were likely to follow Roman cultic models. Romanisation offered distinct political and practical advantages, especially to local elites. All the known effigies from the 2nd century AD forum at Cuicul are of emperors or Concordia. By the middle of the 1st century AD, Gaulish Vertault seems to have abandoned its native cultic sacrifice of horses and dogs in favour of a newly established, Romanised cult nearby: by the end of that century, Sabratha’s so-called tophet was no longer in use. Colonial and later Imperial provincial dedications to Rome's Capitoline Triad were a logical choice, not a centralised legal requirement. Major cult centres to "non-Roman" deities continued to prosper: notable examples include the magnificent Alexandrian Serapium, the temple of Aesculapeus at Pergamum and Apollo's sacred wood at Antioch.

Question: From what were countries in the empire free?
Answer: Roman religious law

Question: What were Rome's policies in regards to foreign peoples?
Answer: inclusionist policies

Question: What was Rome's policy towards government?
Answer: Autonomy and concord

Question: What did foreign cults gradually begin to display in similarity to Roman cults? 
Answer: Romanised

Question: What was Rome not demanding of in religion of foreign areas of the empire?
Answer: centralised legal requirement
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Military settlement within the empire and at its borders broadened the context of Romanitas. Rome's citizen-soldiers set up altars to multiple deities, including their traditional gods, the Imperial genius and local deities – sometimes with the usefully open-ended dedication to the diis deabusque omnibus (all the gods and goddesses). They also brought Roman "domestic" deities and cult practices with them. By the same token, the later granting of citizenship to provincials and their conscription into the legions brought their new cults into the Roman military.

Question: To whom did Roman soldiers set up alters?
Answer: traditional gods

Question: What style of religious dedication was not uncommon for outer border areas?
Answer: diis deabusque omnibus

Question: What type of household gods and cults did soldiers bring to outer areas?
Answer: domestic

Question: What act  of provincials brought new gods into the military?
Answer: conscription

Question: What did Rome typically award to provincial members of the empire?
Answer: citizenship
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The first and last Roman known as a living divus was Julius Caesar, who seems to have aspired to divine monarchy; he was murdered soon after. Greek allies had their own traditional cults to rulers as divine benefactors, and offered similar cult to Caesar's successor, Augustus, who accepted with the cautious proviso that expatriate Roman citizens refrain from such worship; it might prove fatal. By the end of his reign, Augustus had appropriated Rome's political apparatus – and most of its religious cults – within his "reformed" and thoroughly integrated system of government. Towards the end of his life, he cautiously allowed cult to his numen. By then the Imperial cult apparatus was fully developed, first in the Eastern Provinces, then in the West. Provincial Cult centres offered the amenities and opportunities of a major Roman town within a local context; bathhouses, shrines and temples to Roman and local deities, amphitheatres and festivals. In the early Imperial period, the promotion of local elites to Imperial priesthood gave them Roman citizenship.

Question: What Roman leader aspired to be a living god?
Answer: Julius Caesar

Question: What form of government did Cesar seem to be attempting?
Answer: divine monarchy

Question: To what ruler did foreign allies offer a divine cult? 
Answer: Augustus

Question: For what was Augustus's reformed system of government notiable?
Answer: integrated

Question: By the end of Augustus's reign what was an established fact?
Answer: Imperial cult
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

In Rome, state cult to a living emperor acknowledged his rule as divinely approved and constitutional. As princeps (first citizen) he must respect traditional Republican mores; given virtually monarchic powers, he must restrain them. He was not a living divus but father of his country (pater patriae), its pontifex maximus (greatest priest) and at least notionally, its leading Republican. When he died, his ascent to heaven, or his descent to join the dii manes was decided by a vote in the Senate. As a divus, he could receive much the same honours as any other state deity – libations of wine, garlands, incense, hymns and sacrificial oxen at games and festivals. What he did in return for these favours is unknown, but literary hints and the later adoption of divus as a title for Christian Saints suggest him as a heavenly intercessor. In Rome, official cult to a living emperor was directed to his genius; a small number refused this honour and there is no evidence of any emperor receiving more than that. In the crises leading up to the Dominate, Imperial titles and honours multiplied, reaching a peak under Diocletian. Emperors before him had attempted to guarantee traditional cults as the core of Roman identity and well-being; refusal of cult undermined the state and was treasonous.

Question: What was the emperor's rule in Rome?
Answer: divinely approved

Question: As first citizen, what must the emperor's mores represent?
Answer: traditional

Question: As a living divus, what was the emperor to Rome?
Answer: father of his country

Question: After his death, how was the emperor's afterlife decided?
Answer: vote in the Senate

Question: What did emperors before Diocletian try to guarantee in religion? 
Answer: traditional cults
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

For at least a century before the establishment of the Augustan principate, Jews and Judaism were tolerated in Rome by diplomatic treaty with Judaea's Hellenised elite. Diaspora Jews had much in common with the overwhelmingly Hellenic or Hellenised communities that surrounded them. Early Italian synagogues have left few traces; but one was dedicated in Ostia around the mid-1st century BC and several more are attested during the Imperial period. Judaea's enrollment as a client kingdom in 63 BC increased the Jewish diaspora; in Rome, this led to closer official scrutiny of their religion. Their synagogues were recognised as legitimate collegia by Julius Caesar. By the Augustan era, the city of Rome was home to several thousand Jews. In some periods under Roman rule, Jews were legally exempt from official sacrifice, under certain conditions. Judaism was a superstitio to Cicero, but the Church Father Tertullian described it as religio licita (an officially permitted religion) in contrast to Christianity.

Question: What means guaranteed the Jews and Judaism in Rome?
Answer: treaty

Question: What religious buildings were established in Rome in the imperial period?
Answer: synagogues

Question: When did Judea become an allied kingdom to Rome?
Answer: 63 BC

Question: Who recognized the Jewish synagogues as being legitimate in Rome?
Answer: Julius Caesar

Question: In contrast to what religion was Judaism acceptable in Rome?
Answer: Christianity
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

After the Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, Emperor Nero accused the Christians as convenient scapegoats, who were later persecuted and killed. From that point on, Roman official policy towards Christianity tended towards persecution. During the various Imperial crises of the 3rd century, “contemporaries were predisposed to decode any crisis in religious terms”, regardless of their allegiance to particular practices or belief systems. Christianity drew its traditional base of support from the powerless, who seemed to have no religious stake in the well-being of the Roman State, and therefore threatened its existence. The majority of Rome’s elite continued to observe various forms of inclusive Hellenistic monism; Neoplatonism in particular accommodated the miraculous and the ascetic within a traditional Graeco-Roman cultic framework. Christians saw these ungodly practices as a primary cause of economic and political crisis.

Question: What group was accused of starting the Great Fire of 64 AD?
Answer: Christians

Question: Who made the accusation that the Christians had started the Great Fire?
Answer: Emperor Nero

Question: What outcome did the accusations against the Christians produce? 
Answer: persecution

Question: What was the persecution of the Christians by Rome?
Answer: official policy

Question: How did early Christians view traditional Roman cultism?
Answer: ungodly practices
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

In the wake of religious riots in Egypt, the emperor Decius decreed that all subjects of the Empire must actively seek to benefit the state through witnessed and certified sacrifice to "ancestral gods" or suffer a penalty: only Jews were exempt. Decius' edict appealed to whatever common mos maiores might reunite a politically and socially fractured Empire and its multitude of cults; no ancestral gods were specified by name. The fulfillment of sacrificial obligation by loyal subjects would define them and their gods as Roman. Roman oaths of loyalty were traditionally collective; the Decian oath has been interpreted as a design to root out individual subversives and suppress their cults, but apostasy was sought, rather than capital punishment. A year after its due deadline, the edict expired.

Question: Which emperor decreed that all Romans must sacrifice to traditional gods?
Answer: Decius

Question: What religious group was exempt from sacrifices?
Answer: Jews

Question: What oath was a requirement of the emperor's decree?
Answer: Decian oath

Question: What was the Decian decree meant to root out?
Answer: subversives

Question: What happened to the decree after a year?
Answer: edict expired.
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Valerian's first religious edict singled out Christianity as a particularly self-interested and subversive foreign cult, outlawed its assemblies and urged Christians to sacrifice to Rome's traditional gods. His second edict acknowledged a Christian threat to the Imperial system – not yet at its heart but close to it, among Rome’s equites and Senators. Christian apologists interpreted his disgraceful capture and death as divine judgement. The next forty years were peaceful; the Christian church grew stronger and its literature and theology gained a higher social and intellectual profile, due in part to its own search for political toleration and theological coherence. Origen discussed theological issues with traditionalist elites in a common Neoplatonist frame of reference – he had written to Decius' predecessor Philip the Arab in similar vein – and Hippolytus recognised a “pagan” basis in Christian heresies. The Christian churches were disunited; Paul of Samosata, Bishop of Antioch was deposed by a synod of 268 for "dogmatic reasons – his doctrine on the human nature of Christ was rejected – and for his lifestyle, which reminded his brethren of the habits of the administrative elite". The reasons for his deposition were widely circulated among the churches. Meanwhile, Aurelian (270-75) appealed for harmony among his soldiers (concordia militum), stabilised the Empire and its borders and successfully established an official, Hellenic form of unitary cult to the Palmyrene Sol Invictus in Rome's Campus Martius.

Question: What did  Valerian call the Christian religion?
Answer: subversive foreign cult

Question: What Christian events did Valerian outlaw?
Answer: assemblies

Question: To what gods did Valerian tell the Christians to sacrifice?
Answer: Rome's traditional

Question: What did Valerian's second edict call the Christians' presence in the empire?
Answer: threat

Question: What did the Christian church become in the years after Valerian's death?
Answer: stronger
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

In 295, a certain Maximilian refused military service; in 298 Marcellus renounced his military oath. Both were executed for treason; both were Christians. At some time around 302, a report of ominous haruspicy in Diocletian's domus and a subsequent (but undated) dictat of placatory sacrifice by the entire military triggered a series of edicts against Christianity. The first (303 AD) "ordered the destruction of church buildings and Christian texts, forbade services to be held, degraded ofﬁcials who were Christians, re-enslaved imperial freedmen who were Christians, and reduced the legal rights of all Christians... [Physical] or capital punishments were not imposed on them" but soon after, several Christians suspected of attempted arson in the palace were executed. The second edict threatened Christian priests with imprisonment and the third offered them freedom if they performed sacrifice. An edict of 304 enjoined universal sacrifice to traditional gods, in terms that recall the Decian edict.

Question: For what reason were Maximillian and Marcellus executed?
Answer: treason

Question: In what year did Diocletian's edict order the destruction of Christian churches and texts?
Answer: 303 AD

Question: In 303 AD what did Christians begin losing?
Answer: legal rights

Question: With what were Christian priests threatened in the second edict?
Answer: imprisonment

Question: To what did the edict of 304 admonish Christians to sacrifice?
Answer: traditional gods
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

In some cases and in some places the edicts were strictly enforced: some Christians resisted and were imprisoned or martyred. Others complied. Some local communities were not only pre-dominantly Christian, but powerful and influential; and some provincial authorities were lenient, notably the Caesar in Gaul, Constantius Chlorus, the father of Constantine I. Diocletian's successor Galerius maintained anti-Christian policy until his deathbed revocation in 311, when he asked Christians to pray for him. "This meant an ofﬁcial recognition of their importance in the religious world of the Roman empire, although one of the tetrarchs, Maximinus Daia, still oppressed Christians in his part of the empire up to 313."

Question: How were the Roman edicts handled in some areas?
Answer: strictly enforced

Question: In areas of strict enforcement, what happened to Christians?
Answer: imprisoned or martyred

Question: What were some Christian communities?
Answer: powerful and influential

Question: What were some provincial governors in enforcement of the Roman edicts?
Answer: lenient

Question: When did Galerius revoke the anti-Christian policies?
Answer: 311
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

With the abatement of persecution, St. Jerome acknowledged the Empire as a bulwark against evil but insisted that "imperial honours" were contrary to Christian teaching. His was an authoritative but minority voice: most Christians showed no qualms in the veneration of even "pagan" emperors. The peace of the emperors was the peace of God; as far as the Church was concerned, internal dissent and doctrinal schism were a far greater problem. The solution came from a hitherto unlikely source: as pontifex maximus Constantine I favoured the "Catholic Church of the Christians" against the Donatists because:

Question: Who said the imperial honors were against Christian teachings?
Answer: St. Jerome

Question: With what veneration did most Christians have little trouble?
Answer: "pagan" emperors

Question: To what did the Christian church equate the peace of the emperors?
Answer: peace of God

Question: What pontifax maximus favored the Catholic church? 
Answer: Constantine I

Question: What Christian group did Constantine I disapprove?
Answer: Donatists
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Constantine successfully balanced his own role as an instrument of the pax deorum with the power of the Christian priesthoods in determining what was (in traditional Roman terms) auspicious - or in Christian terms, what was orthodox. The edict of Milan (313) redefined Imperial ideology as one of mutual toleration. Constantine had triumphed under the signum (sign) of the Christ: Christianity was therefore officially embraced along with traditional religions and from his new Eastern capital, Constantine could be seen to embody both Christian and Hellenic religious interests. He may have officially ended – or attempted to end – blood sacrifices to the genius of living emperors but his Imperial iconography and court ceremonial outstripped Diocletian's in their supra-human elevation of the Imperial hierarch. His later direct intervention in Church affairs proved a political masterstroke. Constantine united the empire as an absolute head of state, and on his death, he was honored as a Christian, Imperial, and "divus".

Question: What edict defined imperial ideas as being those of toleration?
Answer: edict of Milan

Question: How did Constantine accept Christianity?
Answer: officially

Question: Besides the acceptance of Christianity, what other religious cults were tolerated?
Answer: traditional religions

Question: As what type of ruler did Constantine unite the empire and church?
Answer: absolute head of state

Question: As what was Constantine honored when he died?
Answer: Christian, Imperial, and "divus"
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

At the time, there were many varying opinions about Christian doctrine, and no centralized way of enforcing orthodoxy. Constantine called all the Christian bishops throughout the Roman Empire to a meeting, and some 318 bishops (very few from the Western Empire) attended the First Council of Nicaea. The purpose of this meeting was to define Christian orthodoxy and clearly differentiate it from Christian heresies. The meeting reached consensus on the Nicene Creed and other statements. Later, Philostorgius criticized Christians who offered sacrifice at statues of the divus Constantine. Constantine nevertheless took great pains to assuage traditionalist and Christian anxieties.

Question: What group did Constantine call to a meeting?
Answer: First Council of Nicaea

Question: How many bishops attended the First Council?
Answer: 318

Question: From where were the bishops in attendance at the Council few in number?
Answer: Western Empire

Question: What was the Council of Nicaea meant to define?
Answer: Christian orthodoxy

Question: What agreement was reached a the Council of Nicaea ?
Answer: Nicene Creed
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

The emperor Julian made a short-lived attempt to revive traditional and Hellenistic religion and to affirm the special status of Judaism, but in 380 under Theodosius I, Nicene Christianity became the official state religion of the Roman Empire. Pleas for religious tolerance from traditionalists such as the senator Symmachus (d. 402) were rejected. Christianity became increasingly popular. Heretics as well as non-Christians were subject to exclusion from public life or persecution, but Rome's original religious hierarchy and many aspects of its ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian beliefs and practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions.

Question: What emperor tried to revive traditional religious practices?
Answer: Julian

Question: What was proclaimed the state religion under Theodosius I?
Answer: Nicene Christianity

Question: What pleas were rejected by the empire?
Answer: religious tolerance

Question: What group was excluded or persecuted by the empire?
Answer: Heretics

Question: What aspects of Roman religion influenced Christian forms?
Answer: ritual