Religious Life in Ancient Rome: Variety, Partcipation, Sinceriety | Early European History And Religion

DIVERSITY OF RELIGION IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE

Mithraism

Over time new gods, mainly introduced from places outside Rome, were added to pantheon of deities. New modes of worship came in with new gods. When Greek gods came in they were identified with the older gods. Greek craftsmen built temples and made statues of gods like those of Greece. Acquaintance with Greek mythology, literature, and art finally made the identification complete. Similar processes took place to a lesser degree with other foreign gods and forms of worship.

On Rome in the A.D. first century, Paula Fredriksen of Boston University told PBS: ““There's all sorts of religions. It's incredibly rich. It's not unlike twentieth century America. You have low-tech religions, like magic. People routinely go to magicians. If you have a sinus infection. If you need somebody to fall in love with you. If you're betting on a horse and you've lost the past three races, you go to a professional. We have magic books that are books of recipes, and they're indexed and you can look up what you need, and the professional will help you. By the way, Jews and also Christians, enter into this magical inheritance, too.... [Source: Paula Fredriksen, William Goodwin Aurelio Professor of the Appreciation of Scripture, Boston University, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]

“It's a spiritual universe that's thickly populated with gods and spirits. When you look up into the stars at night, you see thousands of heroes and ... and maybe where your soul will go if you know how to slip the coil and go back through the planetary spheres, and go up. Paganism is the rich native religious stew of traditional society in the Mediterranean. And centuries after even the conversion of Constantine, we find endowments to liturgies, to mystery cults, to different Egyptian and Greco-Roman gods. Paganism continues on even after the conversion to Christianity.”

J. A. S. Evans wrote in the New Catholic Encyclopedia: The gods and goddesses were numerous, and there was always room for new imports. Immigrants, whether freemen or slaves, brought their native gods with them. Paganism was tolerant, but there were limits. Judaism was a religio licita, that is, an "approved religion" which had been accorded certain rights and privileges by Julius Caesar, but Rome punished the Jewish rebellion (66–70) by destroying the temple in Jerusalem and bringing the temple treasure as loot to Rome, where it remained until the Vandals looted it once again when they sacked Rome in 451. Yet Rome was to protect the rabbinical school at Jamnia and later at Tiberias, and its head, the nasi, would be given the status of an honorary prefect. Anti-Judaism was not imperial policy. Christianity was different: it was a crime. The Druids whom the Romans found in Gaul and Britain were exterminated. Rome also frowned on self-mutilation: by the second century it was unlawful to practice self-castration with flint knives that was once a feature of the "Day of Blood" in the Attis festival. The Roman sense of propriety should not be offended, but Rome had a marked respect for piety, which might be defined as honoring one's divinities according to ancestral custom. [Source: J. A. S. Evans, New Catholic Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia.com]

Paganism had many facets. Dream interpretation, oracles, and theurgy fascinated growing numbers. Yet for most of the pagan cults, eternal salvation does not seem to have been the ultimate goal. Among the cults imported into the pantheon was a number of "mystery religions," so called because they admitted worshippers by an initiation ceremony where they were revealed a "mystery". Examples are the cult of Isis and Serapis from Egypt, Mithras with Iranian roots, Attis and the Great Mother from Asia Minor, Sol Invictus (the Unconquered Sun), Jupiter Dolichenus, and others.

Mithraism centers on mithras, a deity borrowed from Persian Zorastrianism, but in Iran there was no such cult, which seems to have developed towards the end of the first century A.D. within the Roman Empire itself. It may have begun as the royal cult of the client kingdom of Commagene where Mithras was identified with Sol Invictus, and moved to Rome when the last king, Antiochus IV, was deposed in A.D. 72, perhaps with a group of devotees. It became popular in the Roman army, but how universal it was is hard to say. Women were not admitted. Yet in the later third century the Sol Invictus/Mithras cult emerged as a rival for Christianity, counting among its devotees the emperor Aurelian ( A.D. 270–275).

Roman Tolerance of a Variety of Religions

Until Constantine adopted Christianity, citizens were allowed to worship whatever gods they wished as long as they respected the Roman religion by making sacrifices to the Roman gods and worshipping the Roman emperor as a god. Jesus and other saints were executed and many Christians were punished or killed, but theses measures were the exception not the rule.

The Romans demanded that their gods be worshipped, but at the same time they received the local gods. The reason the Jews and Christian were persecuted is that they presented a threat and refused to worship the Roman gods. [Source: "History of Art" by H.W. Janson, Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J."

Mithraic cameoJudaism and Christianity were not the only religions in the Roman empire. Mithraism, Manichaeism, Gnosticism and many others were practiced. There were lots of practitioners of strange religions around — Donatists, Pelagians, Arians. Holland Lee Hendrix of the Union Theological Seminary told PBS: In the Roman Empire “you have an enormous set of religious options. It would be like going to a supermarket and being able to sort of shop for God. And you have them at various times in your life and for various functions of your living. If you were ill and had access to a physician and could afford the care of a physician, certainly you would do that, but if the physician didn't work out or if you didn't have access to a physician then you would have gone to a sanctuary of Aesclepius. [Source: “Holland Lee Hendrix, President of the Faculty, Union Theological Seminary, Frontline, PBS, April 1998 ]

“Your principal deity, however, might well be Athena, the Athena of the city. And so you would take part in the civic celebrations around Athena, who would be the protector of the city. If one were a farmer, or even if were not, but dependent on agriculture, certainly Dionysus would have been a very important deity, the one who makes things grow. Dionysus was a beloved character in the Roman Empire; we find him everywhere.

“There were any number of very popular deities. In the rural areas Pan was a very popular deity, and we're finding more and more grottos of Pan where there would have been devotions directed to Pan in the grove, shrines for various nymphs and forest phenomena. Certainly Artemis was a very popular deity. In fact, one version of Artemis is Artemis Lochia who oversees childbirth, and we find dedications of women who have just had children or who are going to have children invoking the care of Artemis Lohea as they go through childbirth. One would have found a rich array of deities meeting the various needs of individuals in this particular period.

Competition Between Religions in the Roman World

On Roman-era graffiti found at Aphrodisias in present-day Turkey, Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: Graffiti was one way in which religious groups “competed. Archaeologists have found the remains of statues representing governors (or other elite persons) who supported polytheistic beliefs. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, June 15, 2015]

"Christians had registered their disapproval of such religions by carving abbreviationson the statues thatmean"Mary gives birth to Jesus," refuting the idea that many gods existed. Christians, Jews and a strong group of philosophically educated followers of the polytheistic religions competed in Aphrodisias for the support of those who were asking the same questions: Is there a god? How can we attain a better afterlife?" said Angelos Chaniotis, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton New Jersey, told Live Science.

“Those who followed polytheistic beliefs carved graffiti of their own. "To the Christian symbol of the cross, the followers of the old religion responded by engraving their own symbol, the double axe," said Chaniotis, noting that this object was a symbol of Carian Zeus (a god), and is seen on the city's coins. Aphrodisias also boasted a sizable Jewish population. Many Jewish traders set up shop in an abandoned temple complex known as the Sebasteion.

“Among the graffiti found there is a depiction of a Hanukkah menorah, a nine-candle lamp that would be lit during the Jewish festival. "This may be one of the earliest representations of a Hanukkah menorah that we know from ancient times," said Chaniotis.

“Most of the graffiti Chaniotis recorded dates between roughly A.D. 350 and A.D. 500, appearing to decline around the time Justinian became emperor of the Byzantine Empire, in A.D. 527. In the decades that followed, Justinian restricted or banned polytheistic and Jewish practices. Aphrodisias, which had been named after the goddess Aphrodite, was renamed Stauropolis. Polytheistic and Jewish imagery, including some of the graffiti, was destroyed.”

Religion in the Roman Provinces

Dr Nigel Pollard of Swansea University wrote for the BBC: “Given the toleration of other religions by Roman authorities, the situation in a place like Britain - a province of the Roman empire - might well have been quite complex. We can see evidence in Britain for the existence of Roman state religion - including both emperor worship and the worship of traditional Roman gods such as Jupiter. We can also see evidence for the worship of imported gods, who were neither British nor part of the Roman state cult - there is evidence, for example, of Mithraism and Isis-worship. We can also see the continuity and development of local gods. |[Source: Dr Nigel Pollard of Swansea University, BBC, March 29, 2011 |::|]

“Finally, very commonly all over the empire, we see Roman gods twinned ('syncretised') with local gods, just as the Romans had twinned their gods with Greek equivalents. For example, at Bath (Roman Aquae Sulis) in England, we see the worship of Sulis-Minerva, a goddess with twin Celtic (Sulis) and Roman (Minerva) identities. She was worshipped at a temple built near a thermal spring that had been the focus of a pre-Roman cult. |::|

Dr Mike Ibeji wrote for the BBC: “Both Rome and Britain had polytheistic religions, in which a multiplicity of gods could be propitiated at many levels. At one end of the spectrum were the official cults of the emperor and the Capitoline Triad: Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, linked to other Olympian gods like Mars. At the other end, every spring, every river, every cross-roads, lake or wood had its own local spirit with its own local shrine. The Romans had no problem in combining these with their own gods, simply associating them with the god(s) or goddess(es) who most resembled them. [Source: Dr Mike Ibeji, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

Eastern Religions in the Roman World

Roman Isis

According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art: “Roman religion, both by native instinct and deliberate policy, was widely inclusive, comprised of different gods, rituals, liturgies, traditions, and cults. Romans, considered by Cicero as the religiosissima gens (the most religious peoples), not only worshipped their own traditional Latin gods and associated divinities imported from the culturally respectable and authoritative world of their Greek neighbors, but often acknowledged the gods of peoples they otherwise considered to be quite alien (such as, for example, the Semitic Aphrodite of Mount Eryx). [Source: Claudia Moser, Metropolitan Museum of Art, April 2007, metmuseum.org \^/]

“They even annexed the gods of despised enemies, such as Carthage's Tanit-Caelestis, in a process of evocatio which assigned foreign gods Latin names. Between the late third century B.C. and the third century A.D., some eastern cults, such as those of Cybele (also known as Magna Mater), Isis, and Mithras, permeated the Roman world. These exotic cults differed from Judaism, another eastern religion, whose rites were "sanctioned by their antiquity" (Tacitus, Histories V.5) and which flourished throughout the Mediterranean world from the time of the Babylonian Captivity through the Roman diaspora and after. The cults of Cybele, Isis, and Mithras captivated Roman citizens with intriguing rituals and the promise of spiritual renewal in this world and salvation in the next. \^/

“Romans were particularly receptive to foreign cults at times of social upheaval, when old beliefs no longer provided answers to new uncertainties and fears. In 204 B.C., during the Second Punic War, the Romans consulted the Sibylline Oracles, which declared that the foreign invader would be driven from Italy only if the Idaean Mother (Cybele) from Anatolia were brought to Rome. The Roman political elite, in a carefully orchestrated effort to unify the citizenry, arranged for Cybele to come inside the pomerium (a religious boundary-wall surrounding a city), built her a temple on the Palatine Hill, and initiated games in honor of the Great Mother, an official political and social recognition that restored the pax deorum. \^/

Did Cults in the Roman Empire Encourage Religious Pluralism?

According to the Encyclopedia of Religion: There is a constant danger of either overrating or underrating the influence of these Eastern cults on the fabric of the Roman Empire. If, for instance, Mithraists knew of the Zoroastrian deity Angra Mainyu, what did he mean to them? How did this knowledge affect the larger society? At a superficial level these cults can be seen as an antidote to the imperial cult, an attempt to retreat from the public sphere of political allegiance to the private sphere of small, free associations. The need for small loyalties was widely felt during the imperial peace. Distinctions between social, charitable, and religious purposes in these multiform associations are impossible. Tavern keepers devoted to their wine god and poor people meeting regularly in burial clubs are examples of such associations (collegia). [Source: Arnaldo Momigliano (1987), Simon Price (2005), Encyclopedia of Religion, Encyclopedia.com]

Ritualization of ordinary life emerged from their activities. Nor is it surprising that what to one was religion was superstition to another (to use two Latin terms that ordinary Latin speakers would have been hard-pressed to define). Although allegiance to the local gods (and respect for them, if one happened to be a visitor) was deeply rooted, people were experimenting with new private gods and finding satisfaction in them. Concern with magic and astrology, with dreams and demons, seems ubiquitous. Conviviality was part of religion. Aelius Aristides has good things to say about Sarapis as patron of the symposium. Pilgrimages to sanctuaries were made easier by relative social stability. Several gods, not only Asclepius (Gr., Asklepios), offered healing to the sick. (Here again, Aelius Aristides is chief witness for the second century.) Hence miracles, duly registered in inscriptions; hence also single individuals, perhaps cranks, attaching themselves to temples and living in their precincts.

How Sincere was Interest in Religion in Ancient Rome?

Jerome Carcopino wrote: The populace, it is true, still showed lively enthusiasm for the festivals of the gods which were subsidised from public funds, but it seems unduly optimistic to attribute this enthusiasm to piety. Among the celebrations which were most eagerly attended there were some which pleased the humbler people better because "they were gayer, 'noisier, and seemed to belong more particularly to them." We need be under no misapprehension as to the sentiments which underlay their devotion to these celebrations. In particular, to conclude from their taste for the drinking and dancing on the banks of the Tiber which annually accompanied the festival of Anna Perenna, that they worshipped the ancient Latin goddess of the circling year with enlightened sincerity would be as rash as to measure the extent and vigour of Roman Catholicism in Paris today by the crowds of Parisians who flock to the Reveillon. It may be admitted that there is plenty of proof of the constancy with which the bourgeoisie of Rome under the empire discharged its duties toward the divinities recognised by the State. [Source: “Daily Life in Ancient Rome: the People and the City at the Height the Empire” By Jerome Carcopino, Director of the Ecole Franchise De Rome Member of the Institute of France, Routledge 1936]

A "conservative" like Juvenal, who professedly execrates all foreign superstitions, might at first sight appear to be devoted in every fibre to the national religion; and reading the delightful opening of Satire XII, one might well imagine that he still loved it profoundly. He paints with charming freshness the preparations for one of the sacrifices to the Triad of the Capitol:Dearer to me, Corvinus, is this day, when my festal turf is awaiting the victims vowed to the gods, than my own birthday. To the Queen of Heaven I offer a snowwhite lamb; a fleece as white to Pallas, the goddess armed with the Moorish Gorgon; hard by is the frolicsome victim destined for Tarpeian Jove, shaking the tight-stretched rope and brandishing his brow; for he is .a bold young steer, ripe for temple and for altar, and fit to be sprinkled with wine; it already shames him to suck his mother's milk and with his budding horn he assails the oaks. Were my fortune large, and as ample as my love, I should have been hauling along a bull fatter than Hispulla, slow-footed from his very bulk; reared on no neighbouring herbage he, but showing in his blood the rich pastures of Clitumnus, and marching along to offer his neck to the stroke of the stalwart priest, to celebrate the return of my still-trembling friend who has lately gone through such terrors, and now marvels to find himself safe and sound . .

But let us reread these exquisite verses. Their affectionate enthusiasm is not for the gods but for the country scene where the offerings are prepared, for the familiar beasts whom Juv'enal has chosen from his flocks as worthiest of sacrifice, and whose beauty he appreciates both as connoisseur and poet; but above all for the friend whose unhoped-for return he celebrates and who in this clear description will savour in advance the joyous festival to which he is invited. As for the deities who occupy the obscure background of the picture, they must content themselves with a sketchy paraphrase like Minerva, or with their ritual adjective like Juno, Queen of Heaven, or with the purely geographical epithet attached to Jupiter, whose temple on the Capitol overhung, as everybody knows, the Tarpeian Rock. Juvenal would have been at a loss to throw any greater light on them. Their features were indeterminate to his eyes; the gods were to him no living personalities. He rejected the whole tissue of their mythology, for "that there are such things as Manes and kingdoms below ground, and punt poles, and Stygian pools black with frogs, and all those thousands crossing over in a single bark these things not even boys believe, except such as are not yet old enough to have paid their penny bath . . ."

Women and Religion in the Roman Empire

According to the Encyclopedia of Religion: Gender had always been a factor in the organization of cults. It is important to consider how the appeal of the various cults to different genders determined the membership of new religions. The official civic cults of Rome were principally in the control of men — though there were some exceptions (e.g. Vestal Virgins). Some cults and festivals demanded the participation of women. According to tradition, The temple of Fortuna Muliebris, "the Fortune of Women," was dedicated by senatorial wives in 493 B.C. and served as the focus for their religious activities. In the imperial period, the temple was restored by Augustus's wife, Livia (and again by Emperor Septimius Severus, along with his two sons and his wife, Julia Domna). Formal involvement of women in the official cults of Rome was largely restricted to women of senatorial families. [Source: Arnaldo Momigliano (1987), Simon Price (2005), Encyclopedia of Religion, Encyclopedia.com]

In general, although the attendance of women at most religious occasions (including games) was not prohibited, women had little opportunity to take an active religious role in state cults. Even occupational or burial associations generally did not include women; only in the purely domestic associations of the great households were women normally members. Much more fundamentally, women may have been banned — in theory, at any rate — from carrying out animal sacrifice; and so prohibited from any officiating role in the central defining ritual of civic religious activity.

These limited roles may have been satisfying to some women, but almost certainly not to all. How far then did women find in the new cults a part to play that was not available to them in civic religions? Some women no doubt found an opportunity within these cults for all kinds of religious expression not available within the civic cults of Rome. For some women, it may even have been precisely that opportunity which first attracted them to an alternative cult. On the other hand, there is no evidence to suggest that women were particularly powerful within these cults in general or that they dominated the membership in the way suggested by the conventional stereotype of the literature of the period. In the cult of Isis, men held the principal offices, and the names of cult members recorded in inscriptions do not suggest that women predominated numerically.

The literary stereotype, in other words, almost certainly exaggerates the number and importance of women in the cults by representing them effectively as "women's cults." Why is this? In part the explanation may lie in the exclusively elite vision of most of the literary sources. Even if women did not dominate the new religions, it seems certain that upper-class women were involved in these cults before their male counterparts. Wives of senators, that is, were participating in the worship of Isis at a period when no senator was involved in the cult; and wives of senators are attested as Christians from the late second century ce, before any Christian senator. Thus, the literary stereotype may reflect a (temporary) difference between the involvement of elite men and women that did not necessarily apply at other levels of society. Much more fundamentally, however, the claims of female fascination with foreign religion are embedded in the vast literary and cultural traditions of Greco-Roman misogyny. And, at the same time, foreign peoples and places were denigrated in specifically female terms. In traditional Roman ideology, "Oriental" cults would inevitably raise questions of gender.

Women's participation in new cults is one aspect of the active part they played in the religious life of the imperial period. Women, especially wealthy women, experienced considerable freedom of movement and could administer their own estates. Roman empresses of Eastern origin (Julia Domna, wife of Septimius Severus, and Julia Mamaea, mother of Severus Alexander) contributed to the diffusion outside Africa of the cult of Caelestis, who received a temple on the Capitol in Rome. The wife of a Roman consul, Pompeia Agrippinilla, was priestess of an association of about four hundred devotees (all members of her household) of Liber-Dionysos in the Roman Campagna in the middle of the second century ce. In the Greek world, women served as priestesses (as they had always done) but received new public honors. In the city of Thasos in the third century ce, a woman, Flavia Vibia Sabina, was honored by the local council "as a most noteworthy high priestess … the only woman, first in all times to have honors equal to those of the councilors". Women could be asked to act as theologoi, that is, to preach about gods in ceremonies even of a mystery nature. It is revealing that the emperor Marcus Aurelius declared himself grateful to his mother for teaching him veneration of the gods.

The intellectual and religious achievements of women become more conspicuous in the fourth century ce. Women such as Sosipatra, described in Eunapius's account of the lives of the Sophists, and Hypatia of Alexandria are the counterparts (though apparently more broadly educated and more independent in their social actions) of Christian women such as Macrina, sister of Gregory of Nyssa (who wrote her biography), and the followers of Jerome.

Dedications of religious and philosophical books by men to women appear in the imperial period. Plutarch dedicated his treatise on Isis and Osiris to Clea, a priestess of Delphi. Diogenes Laertius dedicated his book on Greek philosophers (which has anti-Christian implications) to a female Platonist. Philostratus claims that Julia Domna encouraged him to write the life of Apollonius of Tyana. What is more, according to the Christian writer Eusebius, Julia Mamaea (mother of the emperor Alexander Severus) invited Origen to visit her in Antioch, allegedly to discuss Christianity.

Philosophy and Religion in the Roman Empire

According to Encyclopedia.com: With the exception of Epicureanism, which was in rapid decline in the 2d century A.D., philosophy in general became progressively more occupied with religion. Stoicism, Middle platonism, and neo-pythagoreanism were really religions, or at least religious philosophies. Astral religion, with its accompanying fatalism, had numerous adherents in this period also and, as already noted, had found a place within Stoicism. The supposed revelations of Hermes Trismegistus and other Gnostic teachings, derived from Oriental as well as Greek sources, combined philosophy, religion, and magic in more or less fantastic ways. Syncretism was a marked feature in all these philosophical religions. Furthermore, philosophy was regarded as a religious way of life. Hence there is frequent mention of "conversion," as in a strictly religious sense. [Source: Encyclopedia.com]

The last great philosophy of antiquity, neoplatonism, founded by Plotinus (fl. 250–270), was a religion as well as a philosophy. With modifications by Porphyry (223–305) and Iamblichus (d. around 330), Neoplatonism was able to include all pagan beliefs in its system. Thus, late paganism acquired a systematic theology, and in this form it became much more formidable to Christianity. Its refutation demanded the new kind of Christian philosophical and theological apologetic that is evident in St. Augustine's treatment of the major tenets of Porphyry in his City of God. Philosophical paganism was a conspicuous feature of Julian's attempted revival and of the circle of Macrobius. It had a continued life in the philosophical schools of Athens until their closing by Justinian in A.D.529.

Repression and Persecution of Religion in Ancient Rome

According to the Encyclopedia of Religion: The Roman state had always interfered with the freedom to teach and worship. In republican times, astrologers, magicians, philosophers, and even rhetoricians, not to speak of adepts of certain religious groups, had been victims of such intrusion. Under which precise legal category this interference was exercised remains a question, except perhaps in cases of sacrilege. Tacitus writes that Augustus considered adultery in his own family a crime against religio (Annals 3.24). Whatever the legal details, Druid cults and circles were persecuted in Gaul and Britain in the first century. [Source: Arnaldo Momigliano (1987), Simon Price (2005),Encyclopedia of Religion, Encyclopedia.com]

Augustus prohibited Roman citizens from participating in Druid cults, and Claudius prohibited the cult of the Druids altogether. Though it is not clear what the consequences were for participating, there is little recorded of the Druids from this time on. Abhorrence of their human sacrifices no doubt counted for much. But Augustus also did not like the practice of foretelling the future, for which the Druids were conspicuous, and he is credited with the destruction of two thousand prophetic books (Suetonius, Augustus 31). The Druids were also known to be magicians, and Claudius condemned to death a Roman knight who had brought to court a Druidic magic egg (Pliny, Natural History 29.54).

Roman action against the Druids is an example of Roman action against practices deemed to be noxious superstitio. It is often said that the Roman government only exceptionally acted in this way: existing cults might or might not be encouraged, but they were seldom persecuted; even Jews and Egyptians were ordinarily protected in their cults. This view of a general liberal Roman state is false. The Romans acted whenever need arose against superstitio. In 19 ce two scandals in Rome brought the cults of Isis and Judaism to the attention of emperor and Senate. The outcome, according to Tacitus, was that the Senate banished four thousand ex-slaves to a labor camp in Sardinia and expelled those of higher status from Italy "unless they gave up their profane rites before an appointed day" (Annals 2.85; cf. Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 18.65–84). The principles of religious coercion were firmly in place before the emergence of Christianity.

The long-standing conflict between the Christians and the Roman state has to be set against this background. As with actions against other troublesome people, persecution was desultory and instigated from below, until the mid-third century. However, there are some unique aspects, mostly as a result of Christian rather than of imperial behavior. First, the Christians obviously did not yield or retreat, as did the Druids. Indeed they were believed actively to seek conversions, even without the knowledge or approval of the head of the household. Second, the Christians hardly ever became outright enemies of, or rebels against, the Roman state.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated October 2024