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3 unusual facts about Religion in ancient Rome


Religion in ancient Rome

Prodigies were transgressions in the natural, predictable order of the cosmos – signs of divine anger that portended conflict and misfortune.

MacMullen, R., Christianity and Paganism in the Fourth to Eighth Centuries, Yale University Press, 1997.

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.


Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus

The Altar of Domitius Ahenobarbus is an ancient Roman monument once thought to be an altar, discovered in the Campus Martius.

Geri and Freki

Michael Speidel finds similar parallels in the Vedic Rudra and the Roman Mars.

Lemures

Lemures is the more common literary term but even this is rare: it is used by the Augustan poets Horace and Ovid, the latter in his Fasti, the six-book calendar poem on Roman holidays and religious customs.

Mantus

The names of this divine couple indicate that they were connected to the Manes, chthonic divinities or spirits of the dead in ancient Roman belief and called man(im) by the Etruscans.

Orgy

Because of their secret, nocturnal, and unscripted nature, the orgia were subject to prurient speculation and regarded with suspicion, particularly by the Romans, who attempted to suppress the Bacchanals in 186 BC.


see also