page_title: Roman Republic
section_title: Religion
hierarchical_section_title: Roman Republic / Religion
caption_attribution_description: Temple of Portunus, Rome, Italy. This temple, dating from about 80-70 BC, stands near the Tiber in the old Forum Holitorium, the fruit and veg market of ancient Rome. It is dedicated to Portunus, the god of the port.
context_page_description: The Roman Republic was the era of classical Roman civilization, led by the Roman people, beginning with the overthrow of the Roman Kingdom, traditionally dated to 509 BC, and ending in 27 BC with the establishment of the Roman Empire. It was during this period that Rome's control expanded from the city's immediate surroundings to hegemony over the entire Mediterranean world.
  Roman society under the Republic was a cultural mix of Latin, Etruscan, and Greek elements, which is especially visible in the Roman Pantheon. Its political organisation was strongly influenced by the Greek city states of Magna Graecia, with collective and annual magistracies, overseen by a senate. The top magistrates were the two consuls, who had an extensive range of executive, legislative, judicial, military, and religious powers. While there were elections each year, the Republic was not a democracy, but an oligarchy, as a small number of powerful families monopolised the main magistracies. Roman institutions underwent considerable changes throughout the Republic to adapt to the difficulties it faced, such as the creation of promagistracies to rule its conquered provinces, or the composition of the senate.
context_section_description: Republican Rome's religious practises harked back to Rome's quasi-mythical history. Romulus, a son of Mars, founded Rome after Jupiter granted him favourable bird-signs regarding the site. Numa Pompilius, second king of Rome, had established Rome's basic religious and political institutions after direct instructions from the gods, given through augury, dreams and oracle. Each king thereafter was credited with some form of divinely approved innovation, adaptation or reform. An Imperial-era source claims that the Republic's first consul, Brutus, effectively abolished human sacrifice to the goddess Mania, instituted by the last king, Tarquinius.
  Romans acknowledged the existence of innumerable deities who controlled the natural world and human affairs. Every individual, occupation and location had a protective tutelary deity, or sometimes several. Each was associated with a particular, highly prescriptive form of prayer and sacrifice. Piety (pietas) was the correct, dutiful and timely performance of such actions. The well-being of each Roman household was thought to depend on daily cult to its Lares and Penates (guardian deities, or spirits), ancestors, and the divine generative essence embodied within its pater familias. A family which neglected its religious responsibilities could not expect to prosper.
  The well-being of the Roman state depended on its state deities, whose opinions and will could be discerned by priests and magistrates, trained in augury, haruspicy, oracles and the interpretation of omens. Impieties in state religion could produce expressions of divine wrath such as social unrest, wars, famines and epidemics, vitiate the political process, render elections null and void, and lead to the abandonment of planned treaties, wars and any government business. Accidental errors could be remedied by repeating the rite correctly, or by an additional sacrifice; outright sacrilege threatened the bonds between the human and divine, and carried the death penalty. As divine retribution was invoked in the lawful swearing of oaths and vows, oath-breakers forfeited their right to divine protection, and might be killed with impunity.
  Roman religious authorities were unconcerned with personal beliefs or privately funded cults, unless they offended natural or divine laws, or undermined the mos maiorum (roughly, "the way of the ancestors"); the relationship between gods and mortals should be sober, contractual, and of mutual benefit. Undignified grovelling, excessive enthusiasm (superstitio) and secretive practises were "weak minded" and morally suspect. Magical practises were officially banned, as attempts to subvert the will of the gods for personal gain, but were probably common among all classes. Private cult organisations that seemed to threaten Rome's political and priestly hierarchy were investigated by the Senate, with advice from the priestly colleges. The Republic's most notable religious suppression was that of the Bacchanalia, a widespread, unofficial, enthusiastic cult to the Greek wine-god Bacchus. The cult organisation was ferociously suppressed, and its deity was absorbed within the official cult to Rome's own wine-god, Liber. The official recognition, adoption and supervision of foreign deities and practices, whether Etruscan, Sabine, Latin or colonial Greek, had been an important unitary feature in Rome's territorial expansion and dominance since the days of the kings. For example, king Servius Tullius had established an Aventine temple to Diana as a Roman focus for the Latin League.
  The gods were thought to communicate their wrath (ira deorum) through prodigies (unnatural or aberrant phenomena). During the crisis of the Second Punic War an unprecedented number of reported prodigies were expiated, in more than twenty days of public ritual and sacrifices. In the same period, Rome recruited the "Trojan" Magna Mater (Great Mother of the Gods) to the Roman cause, "Hellenised" the native Roman cult to Ceres; and took control of the Bacchanalia festival in Rome and its allied territories. Following Rome's disastrou
caption: The Temple of Portunus, god of grain storage, keys, livestock and ports.[249] Rome, built between 120–80 BC
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