Roman Religious Practices

Originally, food and wine

As Rome developed, practices included animal sacrifices, gifts, promises of even more offerings

Promises called vota

How to appease numina

numina controlled everything, they inhabited all aspects of life

numina made seasons and life events happen

BUT numina needed to be appeased to guarantee positive life events

numina are divine spirits

Before major life events

General going off to war
Birth of a child
Voyage on the sea
Successful business deal
Weddings

Two types of household gods:
ancestral (lares) and related to the pantry/food supply (penates).

Lares & Penates

Food offerings to the goddess of the hearth and family
Festivals to honor the goddess

Vesta

haruspex: watch what happens to an animal sacrifice victim during a ceremony
How did it fall? What did the smoke and flames look like when the victim was on the altar in the sacred fire? What do the entrails of the animal look like? Specifically what does the liver look like? Color/ shape/texture?

​

Religious Officials

haruspex: interpretation of omina from the gods

​

priest who watches the flight of birds and makes predictions about the gods’ will based on direction of flight, singularity or crowding of flock, kind of birds, noises made.

​(plural: augures)

augur:

Roman government promoted worship of traditional pantheon of deities, e.g. Jupiter, Juno, Minerva, Ceres, et al.

Priest and religious officials were state-organized (often featuring senators, like Salvius, in the “Arval Brotherhood” who prayed for the emperor’s family)

Roman State Religion

​Women served as priestesses, too, in positions worshiping Ceres and Vesta (Rufilla served the worship of the emperor)

Women served, too!

CHIEF PRIEST
(also title of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church)

Position held by emperor during Empire
(27 B.C.E. - 476 C.E.)

pontifex maximus

Tolerance practiced, though non-Romans were encouraged to consider their own gods with Roman names/equivalents

Moreover, non-Romans were asked to worship the emperor as a god, sometimes also his wife and family as well, in order to show support for Rome in a spiritual sense.

Emperors deified upon their death for ease of worship

Practices were successful in establishing sense of commonality throughout Empire