Roman Religion: Public and Private

Author: Stell, D., (2013), “Roman Religion: Public and Private”, first published on THE RMRS website.

The huge importance of correct religious observance to the Romans may be discerned from the writings of Marcus Tullius Cicero who, despite being sceptical of certain aspects of religious practice, could still proudly assert that:

“…if we care to compare our national characteristics with those of foreign peoples, we shall find that, while in all other respects we are only the equals or even the inferiors of others, yet in the sense of religion, that is in reverence for the gods, we are far superior” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum (“On the Nature of the Gods”), II.iii.8 - 9).

This national preoccupation with correct religious practices is also confirmed by the Greek historian Polybius who wrote:

“...[it] is actually the element which holds the Roman state together. These matters are treated with such solemnity and introduced so frequently both into public and into private life that nothing could exceed them in importance.” (Polybius, Historíai, (“Histories”), VI, 56.2)

The relationship between the Romans and their gods requires some clarification before moving on to consider family religion specifically. In the Regal period and the early Republic, Romans saw divine hands behind the vital processes of life such as birth, health, death, harvest, trade and war as well as many other aspects of their family lives and identified a deity with each function.

As Rome matured and expanded many ancient religious forms were retained as they had proved effective in the past, but new forms were developed as a perceived need arose. Roman religion was not a matter of moral rectitude but was rather a matter of establishing contractual agreements with the gods to achieve a successful outcome, happiness or wealth. Cicero asserts that for all mortals “all the comfort and prosperity of their lives, they think of as coming to them from the gods; but virtue no one ever imputed to a god's bounty” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum, III, xxxvi.86). The view that correct usage of tried and tested formulae for dealing with the gods was more important than one's moral state persisted until the 2nd-century AD due to the Roman concern for mos maiorum - the customs of the ancestors or “tradition”.

The lexicon of Sextus Pompeius Festus, published in the 2nd-century AD, known as “De verborum significatione libri XX” (“Twenty Books on the Meaning of Words”) is the one ancient text defining what constituted public religion compared to that considered private. Public religion was that carried out at public expense either on behalf of the whole populous or for specific subsections of the populous, although private individuals could be permitted to finance temples and festivals on behalf of the people. Private religion was on behalf of individuals, their gentes [1], as well as certain other small groups such as collegiae (associations, clubs; from Latin: “joined together”), guilds and sodalitas (Latin: “companions” or “brotherhoods”).

Private religion did not require the services of state priests, but there were several areas of overlapping between the two and they did not operate separately. State pontifices [2], for example, would give advice on private religious matters and on inheritance passing outside a familia [3] on the death of the last member. This was because both public and private religions were officially overseen by the state through the ius divinum [4]. But whereas public religion was restricted to the worship of a limited number of approved gods and select festivals, private religion allowed for the worship of any god and celebration of any festival providing that no breach of the peace occurred.

Legally there was also a major difference between things dedicated to the gods as part of public and private religion. Things dedicated for the people became consecrated, res sacra [5], whereas private dedications did not and so theft of such items would constitute sacrilegium [5] in the first case but not in the second.

Before examining the details of the domestic cult there are some caveats. The picture of Roman domestic religion is clouded by the restricted nature of the evidence currently available. Much of our evidence comes from the Campanian towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum as well as from Ostia and Rome itself and thus a question arises as to how “Roman” is our current understanding of the subject. We know of huge regional variations in terms of both the patron deities, the festivals and the rituals used throughout Italy, as well as variations over the time period in question. Here we will seek to highlight them where the evidence is clear. Finally, a detailed discussion of the mystery religions, such as Mithras and Isis, has been omitted because these cults were for individual initiates rather than families as a whole.

The Domestic Cult

Roman domestic religion was generally simpler and less formalized than its public counterpart. The former was primarily concerned with the acquisition of support for the constituent members of the familia from several groups of deities. Some of these protected and aided all within the house, while others benefited either the freeborn or only slaves, and others were only concerned with a particular part of the house or a particular function. Essentially “the household shrine of the Roman bound the family to its past and encouraged its present success” (Orr, 1978).

As with state religion it was the leaders of any group or society who were responsible for the proper observance of their religious rites. Thus, at the state level the senior magistrates of the city carried out most sacrifices on behalf of the people who were not required to be present in many cases. In private, the burden of ensuring the success of family endeavours through the appropriate religious observance for the various groups of household deities fell to the paterfamilias and sometimes to his wife or a senior member of the familia.

Lares The first of these groups of deities were the Lares. There is much controversy about the origin of these various spirits, not helped by the disagreements between ancient authors on the subject. The Lares did not have a specific sphere of influence but rather were general, protecting guardian forces. In his poem Fastorum Libri Sex (“Six Books of the Calendar”, referred to as the Fasti), Ovid identifies their earliest form, the Lares compitales, as the sons of the naiad Lara and Mercury (which tentatively identifies the Mater Larum of the ritual of the Fratres Arvales) (Ovid, Fasti, ii, 615 - 6). Current scholarship is divided, however. One camp believes the Lares were originally gods of the fields first adopted at the compita (shrines at crossroads) by the slaves of the familia and later taken by them to the household focus, the hearth or fireplace.

The alternative view suggests that the Lares were deified ancestors. This is possibly an idea of ancient Greek origin given the similarity to their notions of the word the Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus uses in place of lar (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Ῥωμαϊκὴ Ἀρχαιολογία, “Roman Antiquities”, IV, 2.3). This view also takes account of certain Greek aspects of their appearance in standard iconography, for example, their hair styles, footwear and rhyton cups.

The very vagueness and flexibility of the functions of the Lares led, by the end of the Roman Republic, to a range of adjectival epithets being attached to the word to clarify more precisely the supplicants' area of interest. It also indicates a major area of religious concern to the Romans, namely that any prayer offered should be “sent to the right address” if it were to be effective. Romans, therefore, went to great lengths to give all the possible names of the god to whom they were praying, even adding the formulaic expression “or by whatever other style you wish to be addressed” (Servius, “On the Aeneid”, II, 351) [6]. So, a traveller about to leave home might pray to the Lares viales before journeying by road, to the Lares semitales if going by byways and remote paths, or to the Lares permarini if the journey were to be a long sea voyage. Similarly, a man on military service might pray to the Lares militares.

Yet for the study of Roman family religion the most significant was the Lar Familiaris. This spirit gave protection to all the members of the household both free and servile. In his De Agri Cultura (“On agriculture”, 143.1) Marcus Porcius Cato [7] makes it clear that although “it is the master who sacrifices on behalf of all the familia”, a vilicus [8] or his wife (vilica) could also do so “on the master's or mistress’ express orders.” Indeed, Cato goes on to reveal that these overseers had specific religious responsibilities within the household: “On the Kalends, Ides, Nones and other feast-days, she must put up a garland over the hearth. And on the same days she must offer supplication to the family lares as well as she can” (Cato, De Agri Cultura, 143.2). In the Imperial period there is evidence that such servile worship became a virtual subsection of the domestic cult in the form of collegiae of the lares domini (cf. Columella, De Re Rustica, “On Rural Affairs”, 11, 1, 19). These collegiae were recorded amongst both Imperial slaves and freemen, and amongst those of other notables, and they very rarely contained any free people.

Originally there was a single Lar Familiaris, as represented in Plautus' play “Aulularia”, but by the Principate they are represented in pairs on all extant shrines (aediculae) large or small. Typical offerings to the Lares recorded by ancient authors include “frankincense and corn” (Juvenal, Satires, III, 9.138), grapes, garlands of grain, honey cakes and honeycomb (Tibullus, 1. 10. 21-4), as well as first fruits, wine, and blood sacrifices (Plautus, Rudens (“The Rope”), 1208).

Roman families would certainly worship their lares on the principal days of each month and on feast-days as we have seen Cato suggest, but they may well have done so on other days too according to the piety of the householders. Thus, in his play “Aulularia”, Plautus depicts the miser Euclio as being scorned by his Lar Familiaris because he pays him scant respect, while Euclio's daughter is beloved of the Lar as she carries out regular worship and shows the proper respect.

Before leaving the Lares mention must also be made of the Lares Augusti. In 7 BC, the Emperor Augustus carried out a major overhaul of Roman religious affairs in response to a general feeling in Rome that religion had been neglected during the preceding civil wars. One of his most significant reforms was to significantly reduce the number of “companions of the crossroads” who had, in the previous century, become more like hotbeds of political radicalism than religious institutions. At the same time, Augustus instituted the worship of the Lares and Genius Augusti at those remaining compita. In this way he effectively included all his subjects as members of his familia by having all people worship his own household gods, and thus linked personal loyalty to the emperor with religious duty (Latin: pietas, from which “piety” is derived [9]).

Genius Familiae Depicted with the Lares on the Campanian painted shrines is the Genius Familiae, the second of the major religious numena (pl. numina, Latin for “divinity”, or a “divine presence”, “divine will”) who formed the core of Roman family religion during this period. He is depicted wearing a toga making ritual libation from a broad, shallow dish known as a patera, and is also frequently shown holding a cornucopia (the “horn of plenty”). The genius was the principal guiding numen of the family, representing its continuity and fertility as well as the embodiment of the male procreative power of the paterfamilias. For this reason, the main feast-day of the genius was the birthday (dies natalis) of the paterfamilias. The genius was worshipped by the whole household, and many examples of dedications to him exist from all around the empire (e.g. ILS 3025 (GW27), ILS 3643 (GW30)). Indeed, the genius “served mainly to personalise the unity of the family, which is why slaves swore by their master's genius” (Ogilvie, 2000). In most cases, snakes are paired with the togate representations of the genius.

Snakes appear to have had a very wide range of religious associations for the Romans and even served as portents according to Cicero (De Divinatione (“Concerning Divination”), 2, 29. 61). On shrine paintings they are generally believed to represent the genii loci, or guardians of the place, and as such convey good luck. They also indicate that the site is sacred and should be treated accordingly.

Like the Lares, the genius underwent some changes during the late Republic and early Imperial period from the earlier form where he protects the vitality of the family to a wide variety of other guardianship roles. This may well be when the genii loci began to be associated with the zoomorphic depictions on aediculae (small shrines) paintings as snakes. So, by the early Empire, genii could be found associated with individuals, households, places, guilds and fraternities, and even with military units.

Although the genius served as the procreative source for the entire family, and could thus represent either gender, there was also a female spirit of similar kind representing each woman in the household. This was the Juno, wife of Jupiter, which despite being a later addition to the domestic cult became intricately linked with the genius by the late Republic. Imported from Lanuvium as early as 338 BC, the cult of Juno Sospita [10] was associated both with female fecundity and with a sacred serpent (Dumézil, 1996). It is tempting therefore to see the representation of twin snakes on many painted family shrines in Italy, one of which is bearded and crested and one not, as being depictions of respectively the genius and the Juno in their procreative capacity. This idea is partly supported by Roman author and teacher of rhetoric Claudius Aelianus’ (Aelian) misconception of how to tell male and female snakes apart; he believes that male snakes have crests and beards and female ones do not (De Natura Animalium (“On the Nature of Animals”), 11.26 & 10.25). Be this as it may, other representations or epigraphical references to the Juno are very scarce indeed (e.g. ILS 3644 (GW28)).

The usual sacrifices to the genius included wine and honey-cakes that were shared by both the numen and the worshippers. The poet Tibullus infers that sacrifices to the genius were bloodless (1.7.49), but Horace (Carmina (“Odes”), 3.17.14) contradicts him writing that pigs or occasionally lambs were suitable offerings.

Di Penates The third group of household deities (dii familiares) invoked most often in domestic rituals. are the Di Penates or Penates. Their name implies guardians of the storeroom, Latin penus, the innermost part of the house, where they guarded the household's food, wine, oil, and other supplies. As they were originally associated with the source of food, they eventually became a symbol of the continuing life of the family. Cicero explained that they “dwell inside, from which they are also called penetrales by the poets” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum II, xxvii, 67 - 68).

When the family had a meal, they threw an offering of food into the fire in the hearth for the Penates. These numena were thus associated with the goddess of the hearth, Vesta, the Lares, and the Genius of the paterfamilias in the “little universe” of the domus or house (Cicero, De Natura Deorum II, 60 - 69). By the first century AD, the term penates was commonly used as a blanket expression for all the deities of the household worshipped at the hearth. Cicero confirms the association, writing:

“the name Vesta comes from the Greeks, for she is the goddess whom they call Hestia. Her power extends over altars and hearths, and therefore all prayers and all sacrifices end with this goddess, because she is the guardian of the innermost things.”

Their function, therefore, was to reside in the innermost recesses (penitus) of the house and safeguard the food supply thereby ensuring the family's survival and continuance. So, it is not surprising that many examples of shrines have been discovered in and near kitchen areas in the houses of Pompeii and Herculaneum, although they are rarer in Ostia where the remains are mostly of later periods. Bakker (1994, p.43) notes, however, that “these gods seem to have been intimately related to the wealthier, free-born people” since no dedications survive to Penates from either slaves or freedmen. Yet, there are dedications made by slaves at some of these shrines to the Lares, and if the Lares and Penates are inextricably linked, is Bakker incorrect?

There are two reasons to think so. Firstly, as mentioned previously, by the early first century AD the expression Penates was commonly used of all the household gods connected with the hearth, including the Lares, to whom servile dedications certainly exist. Secondly, the ancient authors consistently state that the hearth was an area of the house under the Penates’ protection. As a member of the familia, therefore, it seems plausible that by worshipping the numena of the hearth, then by default slaves were making devotions to the Penates.

Moreover, both Ovid (Fasti, VI, 310) and Servius (Aeneid, 1.730) refer to the rite before every meal when a plateful of food was placed on the hearth, or a portion thrown to the flames, for the Penates while the gathered family remained silent until a slave declared the gods satisfied (cf. Dumézil p.354). If this was the case, then it appears that a slave is conducting the sacrifice perhaps in the kitchen. Where the family had gathered in the triclinium, the family dining room, then presumably some facility must have been made to conduct the appropriate sacrifice. In this circumstance, the offering was likely performed by the paterfamilias, in the more usual Roman style. If so, then some form of portable altar with coals from the hearth, or a portable bronze thermopodium stoves used for both cooking at table and keeping food warm, fulfilled the requirement.

Other gods The evidence for other gods in the domestic cult is very varied. The god Janus was traditionally associated both with the fauces or entry lobby (Ovid, Fasti, I, 133 - 139) and with the goddess Vesta whose hearth originally had been in the atrium beyond the lobby. Prayers would be offered to Janus when a member of the household was to depart the house. Oddly, however, no specific evidence exists for the god’s inclusion in the Campanian house shrines, although Janus’ image is very rare, so this is not conclusive. Deities also found at these shrines include:

• Minerva, the goddess of technology and patroness of artisans and doctors (nine times).

• Jupiter, the patron god of Rome and protector of the state (eight times).

• Fortuna, the goddess of chance and patroness of women and slaves (seven times).

• Hercules, who represented success in heroic activities and was patron to entrepreneurs (also seven times).

• Aesculapius, the god of healing and patron of doctors is found in both houses and viridaria, or “gardens” (seven times).

• Apollo, the god of good order and patron of Augustus Caesar (six times).

• Bacchus, the god of wine (five times).

• Mercurius, the god of journeys and patron of merchants and thieves (five times).

• Venus, the goddess of love who was associated with couples, with Rome and the gens Iulia (five times).

While Egyptian gods have been discovered on seven occasions, the Imperial cult is surprisingly only depicted once. Regional variation is also apparent by the presence of Sarnus (a Campanian river god), Venus Pompeiana and Vulcanus.

Gentes A further aspect of Roman family religion is evident in the cults and festivals associated with various patrician gentes [1]. Dumézil (1996, Vol 2, p.621) has identified in the cognomina (“surnames”) of the branch of the gens Lucretia called Tricipitinus a reference to an antique family cult. Festus (De verborum significatione libri XX, p.345 L2) similarly shows that the gens Claudia had a special type of victim associated with its rites called a propudialis porcus, while tradition had it that the state had taken over the duties of two extinct gentes, the Potitii and the Pinarii, in the care of the rites at the Ara Maxima. The Fabii had its own cult mentioned by the Roman historian Titus Livius (Livy) in his account [11] of the siege of the Capitol by the Gauls (Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, 5.46.2) elements of which seem to have been shared with the Quinctii and subsequently preserved in the popular festival of the Lupercalia where the two gentes gave their names to the two teams of runners. The Aurelii are known to have had cult associations with the worship of Sol and Festus says that they did this on land gifted to them by the Roman people (De verborum significatione libri XX, p.120 L2). Most of these subside in importance towards the end of the Republic, but of all the gentes the most significant was the gens Iulia with its associations with Venus. Gaius Julius Caesar claimed the favours of Venus Victrix (“Venus the conqueror”) in his military success and Venus Genetrix (Venus as founder of the family) as a personal, divine ancestress. Apparently, these claims were a long-standing family tradition among the Julii. When Caesar was assassinated, his heir, Augustus, adopted both as evidence of his inherent fitness for office, and divine approval of his rule. The Imperial cult of Augustus, instituted in 7 BC, became that to be venerated by all loyal subjects.

Rites of passage

As with most societies both before and since, Roman society marked the key stages in life with all due solemnity. Given their reputation as a religious people and their desire to achieve a felicitous continuation of their families, it is not surprising that these occasions were marked with family religious rites, nor that some of these overlapped with state religion on particular feast days.

Birth and naming As soon as a child was born to a Roman family it was customary for it to be immediately laid upon the ground. Its father would then lift it up with a ritual gesture to accept the child as his own. That this was performed immediately after birth is supported by Suetonius' comments on the birth of the future emperor Nero: “The sun was rising and his earliest rays touched the newly-born boy almost before he could be laid on the ground, as the custom was, for his father either to acknowledge or disavow” (Suetonius, Lives of the Twelve Caesars, Book 6, Nero). From the poet Publius Papinius Statius, we also learn that doors were garlanded and a flame lit upon an altar: “When this third child gave cry…telling me to heap hot coals on the altar fire, garland my lyre, and adorn my doorposts, bring out a jar dark with Alban smoke, and mark the day with chalk?” (Statius, Silvae, Book IV, poem 8 “Congratulations to Julius Menacretes”, 40).

In Republican times a modest lectisternium or banquet was laid for the ancient gods of babies, Pilumnus and Picumnus. By the Imperial period these two deities had come to be regarded as quaint, rustic numena and a much grander lectisternium was set out in honour of either Juno Lucina (Juno in her role of goddess of childbirth) if the child was a girl or Hercules if it was a boy. The banquet would remain in place for eight days for a girl and nine days for a boy. With the period immediately after birth being an extremely dangerous time for both mother and infant, Roman families took every precaution to ensure the assistance of all the appropriate gods in their survival and the continuance of the household. As described by the Roman scholar and prolific author Marcus Terentius Varro, a ceremony was carried out on the night of the birth designed to protect mother and child from the nocturnal depredations of Silvanus, the god of the wild. The rituals invoked the protection of three guardian deities, including Pilumnus. The ceremony is known to us today because it was once mocked by St Augustine in his work De civitate Dei contra paganos (“On the city of God against the pagans”):

“To represent the three guardian gods, three men go about the thresholds of the house at night and strike the threshold first with an axe, next with a pestle, and in the third place sweep it with a broom. These symbols of agriculture prevent Silvanus from entering - for trees are not cut down or pruned without iron tools, nor is grain ground without a pestle, nor is the harvested grain collected in a heap without a broom. From these operations three gods get their names: Intercidona from cutting down (intercisio) with an axe, Pilumnus from the pestle, Deverra from the broom. These gods were the guardians by whom the new mother was to be preserved from attack by the god Silvanus” (Augustine, De civitate Dei, 6.9.2).

Whether this rite persisted beyond the end of the Republic is not clear but, given that St Augustine has taken the time to deride it, one would assume that he expected his audience to have at least heard of it. As time moved on, dies natalis or the birthday would become a family festival (feriae familiares), and would call for a major sacrifice to the household gods. As we have seen, for a boy this would become the principal festival of his genius once he himself became a paterfamilias.

The eighth day of a girl’s life or the ninth day for a boy was known as dies lustricus when a lustratio or rite of purification for both mother and child after the birth was performed. On this day the child was named, presented as a person to the household gods, and officially became a member of the familia. To mark the occasion, freeborn children, and only them, received a talisman known as a bulla that they would wear until coming of age.

Coming of age Just as family religious observances marked a birth, so too did they mark the reaching of manhood for a boy. This was generally held to occur between the ages of fourteen and seventeen. The poet Sextus Propertius remarks that this was the day (Propertius, Elegiarum (“Elegies”), IV.i.131 ff):

“At novice age no more

Your neck put off the golden badge it bore,

And for boy's clothing you were called to don

The freeman's, while you mother's gods looked on.”

Here Propertius clearly refers to the setting aside of the bulla but also of the striped toga praetexta in favour of the plain white toga virilis or toga libera as it was also known. We know the bulla was dedicated, with due sacrifices, to the Lares on this day and was commonly hung from their figurines at the shrines. This act was used by Gaius Petronius to mock the pretension of the nouveau riches freedman Trimalcio who, having not been freeborn, had not been entitled to wear a bulla (Petronius, Satyricon liber, “The Book of Satyrlike Adventures”, 60 (GW26)):

“…three boys entered with their white tunics ritually tucked into their belts. Two of them placed images of the Lares wearing bullae round their necks on the table, the other carried a dish of wine round and cried, 'May the gods be favourable'.”

We know certain people celebrated this landmark in their lives on specific days. For example, Ogilivie states that: “Virgil assumed the toga virilis on October 15th and Nero on July 7th” (Ogilvie, 2000, p.103). For most Roman boys, however, it seems the transition to manhood was celebrated on March 17th as part of the festival of Liberalia. This public festival, occurring two days after the original Roman date of New Year, was sacred to the god Bacchus, or Liber as he was also known. Ovid (Fasti, III 771 - 788) seems quite uncertain about why the association with this day had arisen, so it may have had ancient connections. Several sources indicate that it was customary for fathers to take their sons with their friends to the forum to enrol them as men and voters with the Censor [12]. The family also made appropriate dedications to Juventas [13] in the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

Girls did not go through so grand a rite of passage. Instead, a more basic transition ceremony to womanhood was conducted the day before they were due to marry. On that day the girl’s dolls (pupas), soft balls (mollis pilas), hairnets (reticula) and head bands (strophia) were set aside as things of childhood (Harmon p.1598) and dedicated to the Lares.

Marriage

Religious rites were only a requirement in one of the three forms of Roman marriage, namely confarreatio, which was only practiced by the patrician gentes. The ceremony involved the bride and bridegroom sharing a cake of spelt, in Latin far or panis farreus, hence the rite's name. The Flamen Dialis [14] and Pontifex Maximus [2] presided over such weddings, for which ten witnesses had to be present. The woman passed directly from the hand (manus) of her father or head of household (paterfamilias) to that of her new husband. There is evidence that such an important stage in the life of the familia was accompanied by some degree of religious devotion, particularly to Juno Pronuba (Juno in her guise as goddess of marriage).

This union “per fruges et molam salsam” is confirmed by Servius (Georgics , 31), and Treggiari asserts that in at least some cases “a sheep was sacrificed and the couple then, with their heads veiled, sat on two seats covered by the sheepskin” (O.P.Collection p.108). In addition to these special religious observances for confarreatio there is a large corpus of evidence concerning marriage in general. Both Cicero (De Divinatione (“Concerning divination”), 1.104) and the poet Catullus (Poem 61 v.4) refer to the established practice of taking the auspices for the marriage, and there were many days each year that were automatically considered to be inauspicious because of their religious associations. In the same poem Catullus describes many of the customs associated with marriage, including the torch lit procession from the bride's house to the groom's, accompanied by bawdy jokes and the throwing of nuts, and the still performed act of carrying the bride across the threshold to avoid the bad omen of her tripping (Catullus, Poem 61 v.33).

Once crossed the threshold, other rites enshrined the integration of the bride in the matrimonial home. Her husband welcomed her “with water and fire”. It is not known exactly how the rite unfolded, but its meaning is clear: aqua and igni accipere is exactly the opposite of the formula of exile: aqua and igni interdicere. In the latter the exile is deprived of the two elements that symbolise domestic life. Likewise, no house will welcome him. On the contrary, the new wife receives proof of her integration into domestic life upon arrival.

Next the bride would give a coin to her husband thereby reconciling the favour of her husband's genius so that she was accepted as the wife of the master of the house and that her union would be happy and fruitful. A second coin would be deposited on the fireplace intended for the household Lares. A third might be thrown at the nearest junction where there was an altar dedicated to the Lares of the crossroads who protected the neighbourhood’s inhabitants at these dangerous places. The bride thus put herself under their protection. By these rituals she incorporated herself in “her household, her home, and her neighbourhood” (Dumézil, 1996, Vol. 2, p.615).

Death, burial and remembrance

Just as it was central to the life of the Roman family, so too was religion pivotal in how they reacted to death. Although there was considerable confusion and scepticism about what happened after death, it was certainly recognised by the Romans that care had to exercised when performing the proper rites of the dead. Their main concern was any defilement brought about by a death should be expunged from the living members of the family. To achieve this an elaborate set of religious rituals were followed. First the body was washed, anointed, and dressed in fine clothing. The deceased was then taken in procession, with more or less pomp and ceremony according to the family's social standing, either to the public burial grounds (ustrina) located along the roadsides of the highways outside the city gates, or to similar private ones on the boundaries of country estates. From the first century BC until the reign of Emperor Hadrian the deceased’s remains were usually disposed by cremation. Post-Hadrian burial became once more the favoured method. Whichever was the contemporary practice, the deceased was believed to have joined their di manes, the spirits of the dead and guardian divinities of the family. Vast numbers of tomb inscriptions are inscribed with the abbreviated formula “D M”, which stood for dis manibus, as a dedication to these spirits.

The sacrifice of a sow, known as the porca praesentanea, was then made to Ceres, goddess of agriculture, grain crops, fertility and motherly relationships. Offerings of perfume, wine and oil were also made to the di manes of the deceased either on the pyre itself or on a fire next to the tomb in the case of burials. This “meal” was not shared by the relatives, but rather seems to be symbolic of the deceased's change of status from living to spirit, the smoke from the burning food mirroring this transformation. The family did share in a meal known as “silicernium” that was sacrificed to the Penates. The deceased’s ashes and any bones were gathered up, washed in wine, before being placed in an urn that was deposited in the family tomb. Thereafter each year on the anniversary of the funeral family members would gather at the graveside with offerings of perfume, wine and oil in remembrance of the departed.

Once the corpse had departed the family home, the house would be specially swept with a certain kind of broom as part of the ritual cleansing process called exverrae. Once the mourning family had returned from the funeral, they underwent a further purification called suffitio, which consisted in being sprinkled with water and stepping over a fire. The family would remain in mourning for a further nine days during which they would wear dark clothing and would neither shave, attend to personal grooming, nor carry out any public function.

The period of isolation ended with the cena novemdialis, a feast marking the end of the nine-day mourning period after the loved one’s death. Family and friends would gather at the grave, prepare a meal onsite, and ritually share that meal with the deceased. For the great patrician families this could include memorial games honouring the deceased. With the cena novemdialis concluded, the family was finally free of any pollution and could both resume business as usual and deal with inheritance matters.

The family’s religious obligations to the dead were not over, however. There were numerous state religious festivals that were coupled with private religious devotions, which Festus called sacra popularia, several of which related to the dead. The first was the Parentalia observed from February 13th to February 21st annually; the last day also being known as the Feralia. During Parentalia every family went into mourning and was expected to pay their respects to and commemorate their deceased ancestors with the usual offerings of perfume, wine and oil [15]. The day after the Feralia another festival took place called the Caristia which involved, according to Ovid: “a crowd of near relations comes to meet the family gods…Give incense to the family gods, ye virtuous ones (on that day above all others Concord is said to lend her gentle presence); and offer food, that the Lares, in their girt-up robes, may feed at the platter presented to them as a pledge of the homage that they love” (Ovid, Fasti, II.618 - 634).

The Romans were genuinely concerned to avoid the ill-will of malign spirits, thus for the dead whose burials had not been carried out properly, or indeed at all, another of the sacra popularia was observed. Called Lemuria, it took place over three nights each year in May; the 9th, 11th and 13th respectively. On each of these nights it was the paterfamilias‘ duty to appease these restless, wandering and vengeful spirits (Lemures) with a token repast of beans. At midnight he would process through the house ensuring that “no knots constrict his feet; and he makes a sign with his thumb in the middle of his closed fingers, lest in his silence an unsubstantial shade should meet him. And after washing his hands clean in spring water, he turns, and first he receives black beans and throws them away with face averted; but while he throws them, he says: 'These I cast; with these beans I redeem me and mine.' This he says nine times, without looking back; the shade is thought to follow unseen behind. Again he touches water, and clashes Temesan bronze, and asks the shade to go out of his house. When he has said nine times 'Ghosts of my fathers, go forth!' he looks back, and thinks that he has duly performed the sacred rites” (Ovid, Fasti, V, 432 - 444). Thus concludes the rites for the dead.

Other family festivals

Other than the rites for the dead, there were several other festivals of the sacra popularia that should be mentioned as being of religious significance to the Roman family:

• Compitalia at the beginning of January was the feast day of the lares compitales. As such it had great significance for the entire household, including the slaves, and for whole neighbourhoods. It was an immensely popular time of much celebration.

• Lupercalia was held On February 15th, involving Juno Lucina, and is usually understood as a rite of purification and fertility to purify the city, promoting health and fertility. Lupercalia was also known as dies Februatus after the goat thong whips called februa used in the rituals and was the basis for the month named Februarius (February).

• Fornacalia, the feast of ovens and baking came next on or around February 20th.

• Matronalia or birthday (dies natalis) of Juno Lucina was celebrated a month later, on the kalends of March. To the Roman family this was one of the most important holy days set aside for the mother of the family (materfamilias) to visit the shrine of the goddess on the Esquiline Hill. While doing this, her husband offered prayers at home for the preservation of their marriage. At Matronalia it was usual for the husband to bestow his wife with gifts and money, while she, according to Macrobius (1.12.7), prepared a special feast in person for the servi (slaves).

• Saturnalia on December 17th was an occasion for great public and household celebration. It was the festival of Saturnus, to whom the Romans attributed the introduction of agriculture and the arts of civilized life. It was a sort of joyous harvest festival and viewed by all classes of the community as a period of absolute relaxation and unrestrained merriment. During Saturnalia no public business could be transacted, the law courts were closed, the schools kept holiday, to commence a war was impious, to punish a malefactor involved pollution (Macrobius, Saturnalia, I.10.16). Special indulgences were granted to the slaves of each household; they were relieved from all ordinary toils, were permitted to wear the pileus [16] the badge of freedom, were granted full freedom of speech, partook of a banquet attired in the clothes of their masters, and were waited upon by them at table (Macrobius, Saturnalia, I.7).

Finally, a brief mention should be made of the several festivals relating to the agrarian cycle of the year. Although these are not specifically related to the family, they too held a deep significance for a mostly agricultural-based economy as Rome was in her earlier days. Even though, by the Imperial period this was only one aspect of state revenue, the festivals nonetheless retain some of their importance for the Roman family. As the continued veneration of the penates shows, there was always a concern about the availability of adequate food. Each festival therefore had its primary focus: from growth of crops and their protection to broaching of the new vintage, the harvest and its storage, and the locating of water springs. Many of these would have a huge daily significance for large numbers of Roman families in particular those in rural areas for which less information survives.

Conclusion Although there were undoubtedly huge variations in just how strictly different rites were observed across the Roman period and across the Empire, it is evident that religion is encountered in and permeating through all aspects of Roman family life. If a man as sceptical as Cicero could assert that: “our empire was won by those commanders who obeyed the dictates of religion” (Cicero, De Natura Deorum, II.iii.8), then surely it was one of the fundamental influences shaping Roman society.

That much in Roman religious observance, both public and private, survived unchanged up until the advent of Christianity indicates two things. Firstly, that for Roman society in general, religious practices fulfilled their role satisfactorily, and secondly it was an integral part of the revered mos maiorum. In these circumstances then, no study of the Roman family can be considered complete without reference to the role played by sacra publica and sacra privata, the scared matters of public and private religion.

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References:

1. Orr, D. G., (1978), “Roman domestic religion: the evidence of the household shrines”, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, II, 16, 2, Berlin, pp. 1557 91.

2. Ogilivie, R.M., (2000), “The Romans and their Gods”, Pimlico, p.123.

3. Dumézil, G., (1996), “Archaic Roman Religion Volume 1”, The Johns Hopkins University Press.

4. Levene, D. (1997). J. T. Bakker, “Living and Working with the Gods: Studies of Evidence for Private Religion and its Material Environment in the City of Ostia (100–500 AD)” (Dutch Monographs on Ancient History and Archaeology 12). Amsterdam: Gieben, 1994. Pp. ix 311, 100 pls. ISBN 90-5063-056-1. Fl. 150. Journal of Roman Studies, 87, 301-301. doi:10.2307/301415.

5. Dumézil, G., (1996), “Archaic Roman Religion Volume 2”, The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Endnotes:

1. The gens (plural: gentes) was a Roman, Italic, or Etruscan family, consisting of all those individuals who shared the same nomen and claimed descent from a common ancestor. It was an important social and legal structure in early Roman history. The distinguishing characteristic of a gens was the nomen gentilicium, or gentile name. ▲

2. Pontifex (Latin: “bridge builder”, plural: pontifices), a member of a council of priests in ancient Rome. The ponitfex maximus, or “Chief Priest”, was therefore the chief administrator of Roman religious law. The role was quickly identified with and assumed by the emperors; a sound political move forever linking the emperor with Roman state religion. ▲

3. In Roman law, familia refers to the paterfamilias (the male head of the household), his legitimate descendants and their wives, all persons adopted into his family and their wives, and all slaves belonging to the household. ▲

4. The ius divinum was that part of the civil law regulating the relations of the community with the deities recognized by the state, together with a general superintendence of the worship of gens and familia. ▲

5. Res sacra, the sacred objects belonging to all. The theft of such items would constitute Sacrilegium, the stealing of sacred objects, and hence warrant a death sentence. ▲

6. Maurus Servius Honoratus was a late 4th-century and early 5th-century AD grammarian and author of a set of commentaries on the works of the poet Virgil. ▲

7. Marcus Porcius Cato (234 - 149 BC), also known as Cato the Censor (Latin: Censorius), the Elder and the Wise, was a Roman soldier, senator and historian. ▲

8. Vilicus was a servant who had oversight of the villa rustica (country villa), and of all the business of the farm, except the cattle, which were under the care of the magister pecoris. The duties of the vilicus were to follow the estate owner's instructions, and to govern the slaves with moderation, never to leave the villa except to go to market, to have no intercourse with soothsayers, to take care of the cattle and the implements of husbandry, and to manage all the operations of the farm villa. His duties and those of his wife (the vilica) are described by Columella (Res rustica, I.8, XI.1, and XII.1), and by Cato (De Agri Cultura, cxlii–cxliii, focusing on the vilica). ▲

9. Pietas was one of the chief virtues of the ancient Romans admonishing them to do their duty to their country, their parents or other blood relations, and to the gods. In this sense, Roman religion combined a strict sense of duty or justice with a binding obligation, the latter often driven by a fear of the unknown. Thus pietas, as a virtue, resided within a person and a Roman simply did not leave their religious duties at the temple door, but carried them everywhere, following the will of the gods in their business transactions and everyday life. ▲

10. Juno Sospita is Juno the Saviour or Defender, Mother of Rome, and Matron Deity of the Republic. This is the goddess Juno in her warrior aspect. ▲

11. Titus Livius, Ab Urbe Condita, “[Books] from the Founding of the City” otherwise known as the “History of Rome”. ▲

12. The censor was a magistrate in ancient Rome who was responsible for maintaining the census, supervising public morality, and overseeing certain aspects of the government's finances. ▲

13. Juventus, also known as Iuventas (Greek equivalent: Hebe), was the ancient Roman goddess whose sphere of tutelage was youth and rejuvenation. She was especially the goddess of young men “new to wearing the toga” (dea novorum togatorum) - that is, those who had just come of age. ▲

14. The Flamen Dialis was the high priest of Jupiter. The term Dialis is related to Diespiter, an Old Latin form of the name Jupiter. There were 15 flamines, of which three were flamines maiores, serving the Archaic Triad, the three original deities worshipped on Rome’s Capitoline Hill namely Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus. According to tradition the flamines were forbidden to touch metal, ride a horse, or see a corpse. ▲

15. Decimius Magnus Ausonius (c. AD 310 - c. AD 395) was a Roman poet and teacher of rhetoric from Burdigala in Aquitaine, modern Bordeaux, France. He was tutor to the future emperor Gratian, who afterwards bestowed the consulship on him. Ausonius’ Parentalia consisted of 30 poems of various lengths, mostly in elegiac meter, on deceased relations. They were composed after his consulate when he had already been a widower for 36 years. ▲

16. Pileus, or pileum: any piece of felt; more especially, a skullcap or hat of felt. ▲