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Today I will tell you a story about the Romans and their religion. In 7th century BC, when Rome was first built, it was just a village!
Eventually, Rome became a powerful city and sometime between the 2nd and 1st century BC it conquered Greece, Asia Minor, Judea, Spain, and Gaul (Galia, today’s France). After that, Rome was a great empire until the 5th century when barbarians invaded the whole area. The Roman religion had spread all around the conquered regions, but it also borrowed a lot of beliefs from them as well.
Romans first worshiped gods who protected the family, so every family honored the divinities of their house. Families performed various rituals in front of the domestic shrine called a lararium, led by the head of their household, who was considered a priest. They would put offerings on the shrine in the name of their home’s deity and these offerings were called lares: a bit of wine, a piece of bread and some fruits. Before getting married, girls would put their dolls on the lararium to symbolize the end of their childhood.
The household gods, called penates, would watch over the family’s furniture and storeroom, and protect the head of the family, whose prayers and offerings were meant to banish burglars and bad luck.
After the Romans conquered the Greeks, they blended the Roman and Greek gods together, changing their names and, in some cases, changing their functions. The main Roman gods are: Jupiter (Zeus), Juno (Hera), Neptune (Poseidon), Venus (Aphrodite), Minerva (Athena), Mercury (Hermes), Vulcan (Hephaestus), Ceres (Demeter), Bacchus (Dionysus), Apollo (Apollo), Mars (Ares), Diana (Artemis).
In the 1st century, under the rule of Augustus, the Roman Emperor became a sacred person for the whole Roman Empire and its inhabitants. August was a month full of celebrations in honor of Augustus. There were also temples and statues built in the name of the emperor. After his death, the senate deified the emperor, and his name would be forever associated with Jupiter, the king of the gods.
In the second half of the 1st century, the emperors started to be deified while still alive. Emperor Nero identified himself with Apollo, and Emperor Commodus with Hercules. In the Roman Empire there were statues Augustus (augustus = to be respected) and all the citizens were obliged to participate in the imperial cult of the god emperors.
The writer Suetonius tells us that Augustus boasted: “I found Rome built of sun-dried bricks. I leave her covered in marble.” He died in AD 14 and had brought thirty years of peace to the Roman Empire.
So the Romans believed in both spirits and gods, and these numerous rituals and beliefs of theirs came from diverse cultures and had their origins in ancient traditions that shaped this complex religion of the great empire.
