nc33/MultiSpan_SQUAD huggingface dataset:
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

A pater familias was the senior priest of his household. He offered daily cult to his lares and penates, and to his di parentes/divi parentes at his domestic shrines and in the fires of the household hearth. His wife (mater familias) was responsible for the household's cult to Vesta. In rural estates, bailiffs seem to have been responsible for at least some of the household shrines (lararia) and their deities. Household cults had state counterparts. In Vergil's Aeneid, Aeneas brought the Trojan cult of the lares and penates from Troy, along with the Palladium which was later installed in the temple of Vesta.

Question: Which individual in the household was responsible for the Vesta cult?
Answer: wife

Question: Who was the senior priest of the household in Rome?
Answer: pater familias

Question: Which ancient hero brought the lares cult to Rome?
Answer: Aeneas

Question: From what city did Aeneas bring the lares cult?
Answer: Troy

Question: What was put in the temple of Vesta?
Answer: Palladium
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Rome had no separate priestly caste or class. The highest authority within a community usually sponsored its cults and sacrifices, officiated as its priest and promoted its assistants and acolytes. Specialists from the religious colleges and professionals such as haruspices and oracles were available for consultation. In household cult, the paterfamilias functioned as priest, and members of his familia as acolytes and assistants. Public cults required greater knowledge and expertise. The earliest public priesthoods were probably the flamines (the singular is flamen), attributed to king Numa: the major flamines, dedicated to Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus, were traditionally drawn from patrician families. Twelve lesser flamines were each dedicated to a single deity, whose archaic nature is indicated by the relative obscurity of some. Flamines were constrained by the requirements of ritual purity; Jupiter's flamen in particular had virtually no simultaneous capacity for a political or military career.

Question: What was lacking as to the profession of a priest class in Rome?
Answer: separate priestly caste

Question: What authority in a community sponsored religious rites? 
Answer: highest

Question: What type of religious participants were available for consultation?
Answer: Specialists

Question: What were the earliest priesthoods? 
Answer: flamines

Question: Which member of a family functioned as priest?
Answer: paterfamilias
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

A Vestal's dress represented her status outside the usual categories that defined Roman women, with elements of both virgin bride and daughter, and Roman matron and wife. Unlike male priests, Vestals were freed of the traditional obligations of marrying and producing children, and were required to take a vow of chastity that was strictly enforced: a Vestal polluted by the loss of her chastity while in office was buried alive. Thus the exceptional honor accorded a Vestal was religious rather than personal or social; her privileges required her to be fully devoted to the performance of her duties, which were considered essential to the security of Rome.

Question: What vow was required of Vestals?
Answer: chastity

Question: How were the Vestals' devotion to Rome's security viewed to be ?
Answer: essential

Question: What was the punishment for the loss of a Vestal's chastity?
Answer: buried alive

Question: What was a Vestal expected to be to her duties?
Answer: devoted

Question: What was the honor granted a Vestal ?
Answer: religious
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Prodigies were transgressions in the natural, predictable order of the cosmos – signs of divine anger that portended conflict and misfortune. The Senate decided whether a reported prodigy was false, or genuine and in the public interest, in which case it was referred to the public priests, augurs and haruspices for ritual expiation. In 207 BC, during one of the Punic Wars' worst crises, the Senate dealt with an unprecedented number of confirmed prodigies whose expiation would have involved "at least twenty days" of dedicated rites.

Question: What were considered to be natural transgressions by the Romans?
Answer: Prodigies

Question: Of what were prodigies predictors?
Answer: conflict and misfortune

Question: What did prodigies show the Romans?
Answer: divine anger

Question: What did the expiation of a prodigy impose?
Answer: dedicated rites

Question: What group determined the truth of a prodigy?
Answer: Senate
Religion_in_ancient_Rome

Livy presents these as signs of widespread failure in Roman religio. The major prodigies included the spontaneous combustion of weapons, the apparent shrinking of the sun's disc, two moons in a daylit sky, a cosmic battle between sun and moon, a rain of red-hot stones, a bloody sweat on statues, and blood in fountains and on ears of corn: all were expiated by sacrifice of "greater victims". The minor prodigies were less warlike but equally unnatural; sheep become goats, a hen become a cock (and vice versa) – these were expiated with "lesser victims". The discovery of an androgynous four-year-old child was expiated by its drowning and the holy procession of 27 virgins to the temple of Juno Regina, singing a hymn to avert disaster: a lightning strike during the hymn rehearsals required further expiation. Religious restitution is proved only by Rome's victory.

Question: What author wrote of disaster prodigies?
Answer: Livy

Question: What type of sacrifices were required to expiate the minor prodigies ?
Answer: lesser victims

Question: Of what did the greater prodigies require in sacrifice?
Answer: greater victims

Question: Of what did Livy think the prodigies proved about Roman religion?
Answer: widespread failure

Question: What is the only proof of religious success over prodigies?
Answer: Rome's victory
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: What was excessive religio equated with in Rome?
Answer: superstition

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

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

Question: What type of knowledge seeking was superstitio considered to be?
Answer: inappropriate
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: What witch was reputed to be able to stop the rotation of the heavens?
Answer: Erichtho

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

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

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

Question: Where was magic conducted in Rome?
Answer: outside the sacred boundary
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: Of what were such claims of deity relations the start?
Answer: Imperial cult

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

Question: What author further elaborated on the imperial claim of godhood? 
Answer: Vergil
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: 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: To whom did Roman soldiers set up alters?
Answer: traditional gods

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

Question: For what was Augustus's reformed system of government notiable?
Answer: integrated
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 a living divus, what was the emperor to Rome?
Answer: father of his country

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Question: With what were Christian priests threatened in the second edict?
Answer: imprisonment
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: To what did the Christian church equate the peace of the emperors?
Answer: peace of God

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

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

Question: What pontifax maximus favored the Catholic church? 
Answer: Constantine I
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: From where were the bishops in attendance at the Council few in number?
Answer: Western Empire

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

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

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

The Western emperor Gratian refused the office of pontifex maximus, and against the protests of the senate, removed the altar of Victory from the senate house and began the disestablishment of the Vestals. Theodosius I briefly re-united the Empire: in 391 he officially adopted Nicene Christianity as the Imperial religion and ended official support for all other creeds and cults. He not only refused to restore Victory to the senate-house, but extinguished the Sacred fire of the Vestals and vacated their temple: the senatorial protest was expressed in a letter by Quintus Aurelius Symmachus to the Western and Eastern emperors. Ambrose, the influential Bishop of Milan and future saint, wrote urging the rejection of Symmachus's request for tolerance. Yet Theodosius accepted comparison with Hercules and Jupiter as a living divinity in the panegyric of Pacatus, and despite his active dismantling of Rome's traditional cults and priesthoods could commend his heirs to its overwhelmingly Hellenic senate in traditional Hellenic terms.[clarification needed] He was the last emperor of both East and West.

Question: What office did Western emperor Gratian decline?
Answer: pontifex maximus

Question: What group did Gratian seek the abolish?
Answer: Vestals

Question: Which emperor briefly united the empire again?
Answer: Theodosius I

Question: Of what was Theodosius the last emperor?
Answer: East and West

Question: What flame did Theodosius extinguish to remove the Vestals from power?
Answer: Sacred fire
Separation_of_church_and_state_in_the_United_States

Many early immigrant groups traveled to America to worship freely, particularly after the English Civil War and religious conflict in France and Germany. They included nonconformists like the Puritans, who were Protestant Christians fleeing religious persecution from the Anglican King of England. Despite a common background, the groups' views on religious toleration were mixed. While some such as Roger Williams of Rhode Island and William Penn of Pennsylvania ensured the protection of religious minorities within their colonies, others like the Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony had established churches. The Dutch colony of New Netherland established the Dutch Reformed Church and outlawed all other worship, though enforcement was sparse. Religious conformity was desired partly for financial reasons: the established Church was responsible for poverty relief, putting dissenting churches at a significant disadvantage.

Question: What was one of the reason early immigrant groups came to America?
Answer: to worship freely

Question: What were Protestant Christians fleeing from?
Answer: religious persecution

Question: Who was persecuting the Puritans?
Answer: King of England

Question: What did William Penn ensure the protection of in his colony?
Answer: religious minorities

Question: What did the Plymouth Colony and Massachusetts Bay Colony both establish?
Answer: churches