sentence-transformers/squad huggingface dataset:
Passage: Romulus was credited with several religious institutions. He founded the Consualia festival, inviting the neighbouring Sabines to participate; the ensuing rape of the Sabine women by Romulus's men further embedded both violence and cultural assimilation in Rome's myth of origins. As a successful general, Romulus is also supposed to have founded Rome's first temple to Jupiter Feretrius and offered the spolia opima, the prime spoils taken in war, in the celebration of the first Roman triumph. Spared a mortal's death, Romulus was mysteriously spirited away and deified.

Question: What type of organization did Romulus establish?

Question: According to myth, what god's temple did Romulus found?

Question: What did Romulus offer to Jupiter in the first Roman Triumph?

Question: What religious festival did Romulus found?

Question: Instead of death, what happened to Romulus?
Passage: Each of Rome's legendary or semi-legendary kings was associated with one or more religious institutions still known to the later Republic. Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius instituted the fetial priests. The first "outsider" Etruscan king, Lucius Tarquinius Priscus, founded a Capitoline temple to the triad Jupiter, Juno and Minerva which served as the model for the highest official cult throughout the Roman world. The benevolent, divinely fathered Servius Tullius established the Latin League, its Aventine Temple to Diana, and the Compitalia to mark his social reforms. Servius Tullius was murdered and succeeded by the arrogant Tarquinius Superbus, whose expulsion marked the beginning of Rome as a republic with annually elected magistrates.

Question: To what were the first kings of Rome associated?

Question: To what group of deities did Lucius Tarquinius Priscus establish a temple?

Question: The removal of whom marked the beginning of the Roman Republic?

Question: Where was the temple to the triad gods established?

Question: What organization did Servius Tullius found?
Passage: Rome offers no native creation myth, and little mythography to explain the character of its deities, their mutual relationships or their interactions with the human world, but Roman theology acknowledged that di immortales (immortal gods) ruled all realms of the heavens and earth. There were gods of the upper heavens, gods of the underworld and a myriad of lesser deities between. Some evidently favoured Rome because Rome honoured them, but none were intrinsically, irredeemably foreign or alien. The political, cultural and religious coherence of an emergent Roman super-state required a broad, inclusive and flexible network of lawful cults. At different times and in different places, the sphere of influence, character and functions of a divine being could expand, overlap with those of others, and be redefined as Roman. Change was embedded within existing traditions.

Question: What type of myth did Rome not have?

Question: To the Romans who ruled all aspects of heaven and earth?

Question: What did the Romans do for those deities that favored Rome?

Question: What did Rome make the myriad various cults?

Question: What was basic facet of Roman religious experience?
Passage: Several versions of a semi-official, structured pantheon were developed during the political, social and religious instability of the Late Republican era. Jupiter, the most powerful of all gods and "the fount of the auspices upon which the relationship of the city with the gods rested", consistently personified the divine authority of Rome's highest offices, internal organization and external relations. During the archaic and early Republican eras, he shared his temple, some aspects of cult and several divine characteristics with Mars and Quirinus, who were later replaced by Juno and Minerva. A conceptual tendency toward triads may be indicated by the later agricultural or plebeian triad of Ceres, Liber and Libera, and by some of the complementary threefold deity-groupings of Imperial cult. Other major and minor deities could be single, coupled, or linked retrospectively through myths of divine marriage and sexual adventure. These later Roman pantheistic hierarchies are part literary and mythographic, part philosophical creations, and often Greek in origin. The Hellenization of Latin literature and culture supplied literary and artistic models for reinterpreting Roman deities in light of the Greek Olympians, and promoted a sense that the two cultures had a shared heritage.

Question: To the Romans who was the most powerful of the gods?

Question: What did Jupiter personify in regards to Rome's highest offices?

Question: What gods did Juno and Minerva replace in Roman religious practice?

Question: From where does the practice of linking various gods into grouping come?

Question: Of what did the linking of Greek and Roman deities promote a feeling?
Passage: The impressive, costly, and centralised rites to the deities of the Roman state were vastly outnumbered in everyday life by commonplace religious observances pertaining to an individual's domestic and personal deities, the patron divinities of Rome's various neighborhoods and communities, and the often idiosyncratic blends of official, unofficial, local and personal cults that characterised lawful Roman religion. In this spirit, a provincial Roman citizen who made the long journey from Bordeaux to Italy to consult the Sibyl at Tibur did not neglect his devotion to his own goddess from home:

Question: What type of religious practices outnumbered the state observances?

Question: To what did the mixture of official and individual religious practices pertain?

Question: What were the characteristics of state religious observances?

Question: Who made the choices of personal religious practices in Rome?

Question: What type of deities did Roman communities have?
Passage: Roman calendars show roughly forty annual religious festivals. Some lasted several days, others a single day or less: sacred days (dies fasti) outnumbered "non-sacred" days (dies nefasti). A comparison of surviving Roman religious calendars suggests that official festivals were organized according to broad seasonal groups that allowed for different local traditions. Some of the most ancient and popular festivals incorporated ludi ("games," such as chariot races and theatrical performances), with examples including those held at Palestrina in honour of Fortuna Primigenia during Compitalia, and the Ludi Romani in honour of Liber. Other festivals may have required only the presence and rites of their priests and acolytes, or particular groups, such as women at the Bona Dea rites.

Question: How many religious celebrations did Rome have?

Question: What type of day were there more of in Rome?

Question: With what were Roman festivals organized in accordance?

Question: What traditions did the seasonal festivals incorporate?

Question: Instead of the public, what did some religious rites only require?
Passage: Other public festivals were not required by the calendar, but occasioned by events. The triumph of a Roman general was celebrated as the fulfillment of religious vows, though these tended to be overshadowed by the political and social significance of the event. During the late Republic, the political elite competed to outdo each other in public display, and the ludi attendant on a triumph were expanded to include gladiator contests. Under the Principate, all such spectacular displays came under Imperial control: the most lavish were subsidised by emperors, and lesser events were provided by magistrates as a sacred duty and privilege of office. Additional festivals and games celebrated Imperial accessions and anniversaries. Others, such as the traditional Republican Secular Games to mark a new era (saeculum), became imperially funded to maintain traditional values and a common Roman identity. That the spectacles retained something of their sacral aura even in late antiquity is indicated by the admonitions of the Church Fathers that Christians should not take part.

Question: What type of festivals happened when events warranted them?

Question: What is an example of an event organized religious celebration?

Question: In what aspect of the festival did political figures try to out do each other?

Question: Under what auspices did public displays come during the Principate?

Question: Who paid for the most lavish of festival events?
Passage: The meaning and origin of many archaic festivals baffled even Rome's intellectual elite, but the more obscure they were, the greater the opportunity for reinvention and reinterpretation — a fact lost neither on Augustus in his program of religious reform, which often cloaked autocratic innovation, nor on his only rival as mythmaker of the era, Ovid. In his Fasti, a long-form poem covering Roman holidays from January to June, Ovid presents a unique look at Roman antiquarian lore, popular customs, and religious practice that is by turns imaginative, entertaining, high-minded, and scurrilous; not a priestly account, despite the speaker's pose as a vates or inspired poet-prophet, but a work of description, imagination and poetic etymology that reflects the broad humor and burlesque spirit of such venerable festivals as the Saturnalia, Consualia, and feast of Anna Perenna on the Ides of March, where Ovid treats the assassination of the newly deified Julius Caesar as utterly incidental to the festivities among the Roman people. But official calendars preserved from different times and places also show a flexibility in omitting or expanding events, indicating that there was no single static and authoritative calendar of required observances. In the later Empire under Christian rule, the new Christian festivals were incorporated into the existing framework of the Roman calendar, alongside at least some of the traditional festivals.

Question: What did obscure festivals offer Romans the opportunity to do?

Question: What did Augustus wish to do for Roman religion?

Question: What poet wrote a long poem describing Roman religious holidays?

Question: What was lacking in the presentation of religious events in Rome?

Question: Under whose rule were new Christian festivals added to previous Roman holidays?
Passage: The Latin word templum originally referred not to the temple building itself, but to a sacred space surveyed and plotted ritually through augury: "The architecture of the ancient Romans was, from first to last, an art of shaping space around ritual." The Roman architect Vitruvius always uses the word templum to refer to this sacred precinct, and the more common Latin words aedes, delubrum, or fanum for a temple or shrine as a building. The ruins of temples are among the most visible monuments of ancient Roman culture.

Question: Around what aspect did the Romans a lot space?

Question: What religious practice did Rome use to determine ritual?

Question: What Roman word was used to refer to the scared precinct?

Question: What common Latin words were used to mean a shrine or building?

Question: What monuments were the some of most visible of Roman culture?
Passage: All sacrifices and offerings required an accompanying prayer to be effective. Pliny the Elder declared that "a sacrifice without prayer is thought to be useless and not a proper consultation of the gods." Prayer by itself, however, had independent power. The spoken word was thus the single most potent religious action, and knowledge of the correct verbal formulas the key to efficacy. Accurate naming was vital for tapping into the desired powers of the deity invoked, hence the proliferation of cult epithets among Roman deities. Public prayers (prex) were offered loudly and clearly by a priest on behalf of the community. Public religious ritual had to be enacted by specialists and professionals faultlessly; a mistake might require that the action, or even the entire festival, be repeated from the start. The historian Livy reports an occasion when the presiding magistrate at the Latin festival forgot to include the "Roman people" among the list of beneficiaries in his prayer; the festival had to be started over. Even private prayer by an individual was formulaic, a recitation rather than a personal expression, though selected by the individual for a particular purpose or occasion.

Question: What did each offering require to be valid in Roman religion?

Question: What did Pliny the Elder think that a sacrifice without prayer was?

Question: What act alone had power in Roman thought?

Question: What was missing in the formulas of prayer in Rome?

Question: What knowledge was of importance in the potency of prayer?
Passage: Sacrifice to deities of the heavens (di superi, "gods above") was performed in daylight, and under the public gaze. Deities of the upper heavens required white, infertile victims of their own sex: Juno a white heifer (possibly a white cow); Jupiter a white, castrated ox (bos mas) for the annual oath-taking by the consuls. Di superi with strong connections to the earth, such as Mars, Janus, Neptune and various genii – including the Emperor's – were offered fertile victims. After the sacrifice, a banquet was held; in state cults, the images of honoured deities took pride of place on banqueting couches and by means of the sacrificial fire consumed their proper portion (exta, the innards). Rome's officials and priests reclined in order of precedence alongside and ate the meat; lesser citizens may have had to provide their own.

Question: When did the sacrifices to the deities of the heavens occur?

Question: What color was the sacrifice mandated to be for heaven deities?

Question: What event was held after the sacrifice?

Question: What type of sacrifices were offered to gods with earth connections?

Question: Who ate the meat of the sacrifice during the after sacrifice banquet?
Passage: Chthonic gods such as Dis pater, the di inferi ("gods below"), and the collective shades of the departed (di Manes) were given dark, fertile victims in nighttime rituals. Animal sacrifice usually took the form of a holocaust or burnt offering, and there was no shared banquet, as "the living cannot share a meal with the dead". Ceres and other underworld goddesses of fruitfulness were sometimes offered pregnant female animals; Tellus was given a pregnant cow at the Fordicidia festival. Color had a general symbolic value for sacrifices. Demigods and heroes, who belonged to the heavens and the underworld, were sometimes given black-and-white victims. Robigo (or Robigus) was given red dogs and libations of red wine at the Robigalia for the protection of crops from blight and red mildew.

Question: When were the gods below and the dead celebrated?

Question: What type of sacrifice victims were the dark gods offered?

Question: How was the sacrifice to the gods below handled?

Question: What daylight event was not celebrated after the dark sacrifice?

Question: What feature had importance in sacrifices?
Passage: The same divine agencies who caused disease or harm also had the power to avert it, and so might be placated in advance. Divine consideration might be sought to avoid the inconvenient delays of a journey, or encounters with banditry, piracy and shipwreck, with due gratitude to be rendered on safe arrival or return. In times of great crisis, the Senate could decree collective public rites, in which Rome's citizens, including women and children, moved in procession from one temple to the next, supplicating the gods.

Question: What elements had the power of benefit or harm in Roman religion?

Question: What was expected when the divine intervention benefited the patron?

Question: What kind of intervention could be sought to avoid disasters?

Question: What act was decreed in times of crisis in Rome?

Question: What was the point of public procession to the god's temples?
Passage: Extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary sacrifice: in one of the many crises of the Second Punic War, Jupiter Capitolinus was promised every animal born that spring (see ver sacrum), to be rendered after five more years of protection from Hannibal and his allies. The "contract" with Jupiter is exceptionally detailed. All due care would be taken of the animals. If any died or were stolen before the scheduled sacrifice, they would count as already sacrificed, since they had already been consecrated. Normally, if the gods failed to keep their side of the bargain, the offered sacrifice would be withheld. In the imperial period, sacrifice was withheld following Trajan's death because the gods had not kept the Emperor safe for the stipulated period. In Pompeii, the Genius of the living emperor was offered a bull: presumably a standard practise in Imperial cult, though minor offerings (incense and wine) were also made.

Question: What type of circumstances were called for in times of extreme difficulties?

Question: What offering was Jupiter promised during the Second Punic War?

Question: From whom was Rome asking for protection?

Question: What happened to the sacrifice if the god failed to uphold the agreement?

Question: What was the offering for the Emperor in Pompeii?
Passage: The exta were the entrails of a sacrificed animal, comprising in Cicero's enumeration the gall bladder (fel), liver (iecur), heart (cor), and lungs (pulmones). The exta were exposed for litatio (divine approval) as part of Roman liturgy, but were "read" in the context of the disciplina Etrusca. As a product of Roman sacrifice, the exta and blood are reserved for the gods, while the meat (viscera) is shared among human beings in a communal meal. The exta of bovine victims were usually stewed in a pot (olla or aula), while those of sheep or pigs were grilled on skewers. When the deity's portion was cooked, it was sprinkled with mola salsa (ritually prepared salted flour) and wine, then placed in the fire on the altar for the offering; the technical verb for this action was porricere.

Question: What were the exta of a sacrifice?

Question: How were the exta read in Roman religious practice?

Question: What part of the sacrifice were reserved for the gods?

Question: What part of the sacrifice was shared among humans?

Question: Into what was the god's portion of the sacrifice placed?
Passage: Human sacrifice in ancient Rome was rare but documented. After the Roman defeat at Cannae two Gauls and two Greeks were buried under the Forum Boarium, in a stone chamber "which had on a previous occasion [228 BC] also been polluted by human victims, a practice most repulsive to Roman feelings". Livy avoids the word "sacrifice" in connection with this bloodless human life-offering; Plutarch does not. The rite was apparently repeated in 113 BC, preparatory to an invasion of Gaul. Its religious dimensions and purpose remain uncertain.

Question: What type of sacrifice was rare in Rome?

Question: What act was repulsive to Romans?

Question: How were sacrifices of humans carried out in Rome?

Question: Before the invasion of what area was human sacrifice carried out?

Question: When was the invasion of Gaul by Rome?
Passage: In the early stages of the First Punic War (264 BC) the first known Roman gladiatorial munus was held, described as a funeral blood-rite to the manes of a Roman military aristocrat. The gladiator munus was never explicitly acknowledged as a human sacrifice, probably because death was not its inevitable outcome or purpose. Even so, the gladiators swore their lives to the infernal gods, and the combat was dedicated as an offering to the di manes or other gods. The event was therefore a sacrificium in the strict sense of the term, and Christian writers later condemned it as human sacrifice.

Question: During what war was the first gladiator munus held?

Question: How was the gladiatorial combat described?

Question: What was not the ultimate purpose of gladiatorial rites?

Question: In what way was gladiatorial combat considered?

Question: How did later Christians view Gladiatorial combats?
Passage: The small woolen dolls called Maniae, hung on the Compitalia shrines, were thought a symbolic replacement for child-sacrifice to Mania, as Mother of the Lares. The Junii took credit for its abolition by their ancestor L. Junius Brutus, traditionally Rome's Republican founder and first consul. Political or military executions were sometimes conducted in such a way that they evoked human sacrifice, whether deliberately or in the perception of witnesses; Marcus Marius Gratidianus was a gruesome example.

Question: Who was the founder of the Roman Republic?

Question: What were stand-ins for child sacrifices to Mania?

Question: Who was Mania in Roman religion?

Question: What leader was the first consul of the Roman Republic?

Question: What acts were sometimes arranged so as to be sacrifices?
Passage: Officially, human sacrifice was obnoxious "to the laws of gods and men." The practice was a mark of the "Other", attributed to Rome's traditional enemies such as the Carthaginians and Gauls. Rome banned it on several occasions under extreme penalty. A law passed in 81 BC characterised human sacrifice as murder committed for magical purposes. Pliny saw the ending of human sacrifice conducted by the druids as a positive consequence of the conquest of Gaul and Britain. Despite an empire-wide ban under Hadrian, human sacrifice may have continued covertly in North Africa and elsewhere.

Question: What act did Romans view as obnoxious?

Question: To whom was human sacrifice usually attributed?

Question: What did Rome do about human sacrifice?

Question: As what did the law of 81 BC view human sacrifice?

Question: What ruler banned human sacrifice empire wide?
Passage: 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?

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

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

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

Question: What was put in the temple of Vesta?
Passage: Religious law centered on the ritualised system of honours and sacrifice that brought divine blessings, according to the principle do ut des ("I give, that you might give"). Proper, respectful religio brought social harmony and prosperity. Religious neglect was a form of atheism: impure sacrifice and incorrect ritual were vitia (impious errors). Excessive devotion, fearful grovelling to deities and the improper use or seeking of divine knowledge were superstitio. Any of these moral deviations could cause divine anger (ira deorum) and therefore harm the State. The official deities of the state were identified with its lawful offices and institutions, and Romans of every class were expected to honour the beneficence and protection of mortal and divine superiors. Participation in public rites showed a personal commitment to their community and its values.

Question: On what kind of system was Roman religious law focused?

Question: What form of religion was atheism considered to be?

Question: What results did proper religious practices produce?

Question: What could deviations from proper religious practices cause?

Question: What did participation in public religious rites show about the individual?