Roman religious rituals appear utterly traditional, yet were in fact subject to constant change and development, to influence from the Greek world, and to control by the state. The module studies the main features of Roman beliefs and practices, as they originated, and as they developed during the period when Rome became a major world power and reacted to contacts with other religious systems. METHODS OF TEACHING: 10 lectures; at least 2 seminars. METHODS OF ASSESSMENT: For Study Abroad and Erasmus students, coursework (100%). REQUISITES: Pre-requisite Modules: HS3102 or HS2102 or RT1101 and RT1102 or RT1101 and RT6102.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

There is a very wide range of books on this subject, of which only a selection is given below. You should be aware that attitudes to Roman religion have changed dramatically in recent years, and that older books (and some of the more dated general works on Roman history) should be used with caution. If you have problems drawing up a bibliography, speak to your seminar tutor.

[SWL] means available in the Sheila White Library. Books marked with an asterisk are the best textbooks to buy, if you feel so inclined (there are no required purchases for this module).

Remember that various books not available in Cardiff may be consulted online via googlebooks and similar web-based resources.

General (These books can be consulted for most class and essay topics.)

F. Altheim, A History of Roman Religion (London, 1938) [good source of information, but outdated interpretation]
*C. Ando (ed.), Roman Religion (Edinburgh, 2003) [SWL; useful collection of previously published articles]

C. Ando, J. Rüpke, Religion and Law in Classical and Christian Rome (Stuttgart, 2006)

C. Ando, TheMatter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire(Berkeley, 2008) [mostly later stuff, but useful for theoretical approaches]
*M. Beard, J.A. North, S. Price, Religions of Rome vol. 1 (Cambridge, 1998) [SWL] [the most authoritative interpretation of the subject; a recommended purchase]
E. Bispham, C. Smith (eds), Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy: Evidence and Experience (Edinburgh, 2000) [interesting collection of essays on particular and more general aspects of religion in Italy]
A. Clark, Divine Qualities: Cult and Community in Republican Rome (Oxford, 2007)

K. Dowden, Religion and the Romans (Bristol, 1982) [lively introduction]
K. Dowden, European Paganism (London, 1999) [overview, covering larger area than this module]

S. Iles Johnston (ed.), Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Cambridge MA, 2004) =Ancient Religions (Cambridge MA, 2007)

C. King, 'The organization of Roman religious beliefs' Classical Antiquity 22 (2003), pp. 275-312
J. Linderski, Roman Questions II. Selected Papers (Stuttgart, 2007)

J.A. North, Roman Religion. Greece & Rome New Surveys in the Classics 30 (Oxford, 2000) [brief, analytical guide]
R.M. Ogilvie, The Romans and their Gods (London, 1969) [accessible introduction, but some dated assumptions]

E. Orlin, Foreign Cults in Rome. Creating a Roman Empire (Oxford, 2010) [important recent discussion reviewing this critical area of religion]

J. Rüpke, 'Roman religion', in H. Flower (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Roman Republic (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 179-98

J. Rüpke, A Companion to Roman Religion (Oxford, 2007) [SWL] [very useful collection of short articles on all aspects of Roman religion]

J. Rüpke, Religion of the Romans (Cambridge, 2007) [SWL]

*J. Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion (Edinburgh, 2003) [SWL] [reliable thematic textbook]
C.E. Schultz, P.B. Harvey (eds), Religion in Republican Italy (Cambridge, 2006) [essays on various specific aspects of religion in Republican Italy]

*R. Turcan, The Gods of Ancient Rome. Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times (London, 2000) [accessible, but deals with much later material]
H.S. Versnel, Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion II. Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual (Leiden, 1993)

W. Warde Fowler, The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London, 1911) [outdated, but a mine of information]
A. Wardman, Religion and Statescraft among the Romans (London, 1982) [reasonable study of religion and politics]
 

There are also various articles concerning religion, many in English, in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, volumes II.16, II.17 (Oriental and Roman cults); only a small selection are given in this bibliography.

Collections of Sources
*M. Beard, J.A. North, S. Price, Religions of Rome vol. 2 (Cambridge, 1998) [the best sourcebook; recommended purchase]
R.S. Kraemer, Maenads, Martyrs, Matrons, Monastics: A Sourcebook on Women's Religions in the Greco-Roman World (Philadelphia, 1988)

M.R. Lefkowitz, M.B. Fant, Women's Life in Greece and Rome: A Source Book in Translation (2nd ed., London, 1992), ch. 10

N. Lewis, M. Reinhold, Roman Civilization (3rd ed., 1990), vol. 1, pp. 501-17; vol. 2, pp. 514-82 [useful collection, but beware the interpretation!]
K. Lomas, Roman Italy (1995), ch. 7 [on sanctuaries and religion in Italy]

I. Scott Ryberg, ‘Rites of the state religion in Roman art’, Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 22 (Rome, 1955) [excellent collection of ancient images, available to download via JSTOR]
J.-A. Shelton, As the Romans Did (Oxford, 1988), ch. 15 [as for Lewis and Reinhold]

Reference Works and Further Bibliography
S. Hornblower, A. Spawforth (eds), The Oxford Classical Dictionary (3rd ed., Oxford, 1996)

W. Smith, A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (London, 1875) [useful for facts on individual festivals, but beware interpretation], in library and (mostly) online at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/secondary/SMIGRA/home.html

Literary Sources and Literacy
M. Beard, 'Writing and ritual: a study of diversity and expansion in the Arval Acta', Papers of the British School at Rome 53 (1985), pp. 114-62
M. Beard, 'Writing and religion: Ancient Literacy and the function of the written word in Roman religion', in S. Humphrey (ed.), Literacy in the Roman World (Ann Arbor MI, 1991), pp. 35-58
J.P. Davies, Rome’s Religious History. Livy, Tacitus, and Ammianus on their Gods (Cambridge, 2004)

E. Fantham, Ovid Fasti Book IV (Cambridge, 1998) [text and commentary]

E. Fantham, ‘Ovid’s Fasti: politics, history, and religion,’ in B.W. Boyd (ed.) Brill’s

Companion to Ovid(Leiden, 2002), pp. 197-234

D. Feeney, ‘Si licet fas est: Ovid’s Fasti and the problem of free speech under the Principate,’ in A. Powell (ed.) Roman Poetry and Propaganda in the Age of Augustus (London, 1992), pp. 1-25

D. Feeney, The Gods in Epic (Oxford, 1991)

D. Feeney, Literature and Religion at Rome (Cambridge, 1998) [punchy, sophisticated introduction to new approaches to Roman religion]
M. Gale, Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge, 1994)
G. Herbert-Brown (ed.), Ovid and the Fasti: A Historical Study (Oxford, 1994)

D.S. Levene, Religion in Livy (Leiden, 1993)
J.H.W.G. Liebeschuetz, 'The religious position of Livy's history', JRS 57 (1967), pp. 45-55
H.F. Mueller, Roman Religion in Valerius Maximus (London, 2002)
C. Newlands, Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Ithaca, 1995)

S.P. Oakley, A Commentary on Livy books VI-X, vols 1-4 (Oxford, 1997-2004)
R.M. Ogilvie, A Commentary on Livy Books I-V (Oxford, 1965) [useful commentaries where Livy talks about religion]
C.R. Phillips, 'Roman religion and literary studies of Ovid's Fasti', Arethusa 15 (1992), pp. 55-80
J. Scheid, 'Myth, cult and reality in Ovid's Fasti', Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 38 (1992), pp. 118-31
J.E. Vaahtera, 'Roman religion and the Polybian politeia', in C. Bruun (ed.), The Roman Middle Republic: Politics, Religion, and Historiography c. 400-133 BC (Rome, 2000), pp. 251-64
S. Weinstock, 'Libri fulgurales’, Papers of the British School at Rome 6 (1951), pp. 122-53
P.G. Walsh, Livy. His Historical Aims and Methods (Cambridge, 1961), ch. 3

Roman Myth(see also Feeney under Literary Sources)

M. Beard, 'A complex of times: no more sheep on Romulus' birthday', Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society 33 (1987), pp. 1-15 [reprinted in Ando, Roman Religion]
J.N. Bremner, N.M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography. BICS Supplement 52 (London, 1987) [SWL; excellent, wide-ranging collection of essays]
G. Dumézil, The Destiny of a Warrior (Chicago, 1970) [SWL]
G. Dumézil, Camillus (Berkeley, 1980) [SWL; rather whacky studies of early Roman myth seeking Indo-European origins]
M. Fox, Roman Historical Myths. The Regal Period in Augustan Literature (Oxford, 1996)
G.K. Galinsky, Aeneas, Sicily and Rome (Princeton, 1969)
J.F. Gardner, Roman Myths (London, 1993) [brief general account]
M. Grant, Roman Myths (London, 1971) [helpful handbook]
N. Horsfall, 'Some problems in the Aeneas legend', Classical Quarterly (1979), pp. 372-90
T.P. Wiseman, Remus. A Roman Myth (Cambridge, 1995) [exciting, speculative reading of myth]
T.P. Wiseman, 'Roman legend and oral tradition', JRS 79 (1989), pp. 129-37
T.P. Wiseman, 'Liber: myth, drama and ideology in Republican Rome', in in C. Bruun (ed.), The Roman Middle Republic (Rome, 2000), pp. 265-99

T.P. Wiseman, The Myths of Rome (Exeter, 2004) [best survey, focusing on 'historical' myths]

Origins of Roman Religion (see also under General, especially North in the CAH)
T.J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome (1995) [use the index]
G. Dumézil, Archaic Roman Religion (Chicago and London, 1970) [erudite and stimulating, but overstates its Indo-European inheritance thesis]
A. Momigliano, 'Georges Dumézil and the trifunctional approach to Roman civilization', in On Pagans, Jews and Christians (Connecticut, 1987), pp. 289-314 [SWL]

Priests and Participants

M. Beard, 'The sexual status of Vestal Virgins', JRS 70 (1980), pp. 12-27
M. Beard, ‘Acca Laurentia gains a son: myths and priesthoods at Rome,’ in M.M.

Mackenzie and C. Roueché (eds), Images of Authority (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 41-61

M. Beard, 'Re-reading (Vestal) virginity', in R. Hawley, B. Levick (eds), Women in Antiquity: New Assessments (1995), pp. 166-77
M. Beard, J.A. North (eds), Pagan Priests (London, 1990) [essential collection on subject]

T.J. Cornell, ‘Some observations on the “crimen incesti”’, in Le Délit Religieux dans la Cité Antique (Rome, 1981), pp. 27-37 [available from GJB]

M.H. Lewis, The Official Priests of Rome under the Julio-Claudians: A Study of the Nobility from 44 BC to 68 AD (Papers and Monographs of the American Academy in Rome 16) (Rome, 1955)
J. Linderski, 'The augural law', in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischenWelt II.16.3 (Berlin, 1986), pp. 2146-312

L. Rawlings, 'Condottieri and clansmen: early Italian raiding, warfare and the state', in K. Hopwood (ed.), Organised Crime in Antiquity (London, 1999), pp. 97-127 [on the origin of the fetials]

J. Scheid, ‘Le prêtre et le magistrate,’ in C. Nicolet (ed.), Des orders à Rome (Paris, 1984), pp. 243-280

J. Scheid, 'The priest', in A. Giardina (ed.), The Romans (Chicago, 1993), pp. 55-84

G.J. Szemler, The Priests of the Roman Republic: A Study of Interactions between Priesthoods and Magistracies (Brussels, 1972)

G. J. Szemler, 'Priesthoods and priestly careers in ancient Rome', in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischenWelt II.16.3 (Berlin, 1986), pp. 2314-31

T. Wiedemann, 'The fetiales: a reconsideration', Classical Quarterly 36 (1986), pp. 478-90

Women's roles in Roman religion (see also Specific Cults, Domestic Cults)
E. Fantham, ‘The Fasti as a source for women’s participation in Roman cult’, in G. Herbert-Brown (ed.), Ovid and the Fasti: A Historical Study (Oxford, 1994), pp. 23-46

R. Flemming, ‘Festus and the role of women in Roman religion’, in F. Glinister, C. Woods (eds), Verrius, Festus, and Paul. Lexicography, Scholarship, and Society (London, 2007), pp. 87-108

H. I. Flower, 'Rereading the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186 BC: Gender Roles in the Roman Middle Republic', in V. B. Gorman, E. W. Robinson, Oikistes (2002) 79-98 
R.S. Kraemer, Her Share of the Blessings: Women's Religions among Pagans, Jews, and Christians in the Greco-Roman world (New York, 1993)

S. Pomeroy, Goddesses,Whores, Wives and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity(New York, 1975), ch. 10

J. Scheid, 'Religious roles of Roman women', in P. Schmitt Pantel (ed.), A History of Women: from Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints (Cambridge MA, 1992) pp. 377-408
C. Schultz, 'Modern prejudice and ancient praxis: female worship of Hercules at Rome', ZPE 133 (2000), pp. 291-7

C. Schultz, Women’s Religious Activity in the Roman Republic (Chapel Hill, 2006)

A. Staples, From Good Goddess to Vestal Virgins: Sex and Category in Roman Religion (London, 1998)
S. A. Takács, 'Politics and Religion in the Bacchanalian Affair of 186 B.C.E.', Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 100 (2000) 301-10 [JSTOR]

S.A. Takács, Vestal Virgins, Sibyls, and Matrons. Women in Roman Religion. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2008

Festivals and the Calendar

D. Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar. Ancient Time and the Beginnings of History (Berkeley CA, 2007)

D.P. Harmon, ‘The public festivals of Rome’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischenWelt II.16.2 (Berlin, 1978), pp. 1440-68
A.K. Michels, The Calendar of the Roman Republic (Princeton, 1967) [thorough, reliable]

H. H. Scullard, Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (London, 1981) [useful information, but old fashioned interpretation]
W. Warde Fowler, The Roman Festivals (London, 1899) [also very useful but obviously outdated in interpretation]
See also Smith's Dictionary and the Oxford Classical Dictionary under Reference for details of individual festivals, Beard under Myth for the Parilia

Temples and Sanctuaries
I.M. Barton, 'Capitoline temples in Italy and the provinces (especially Africa)', in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischenWelt II.12.1 (Berlin, 1982), pp. 259-342

I.M. Barton, 'Religious buildings', in I. M. Barton (ed), Roman Public Buildings (Exeter, 1989), pp. 67-95
E. Bispham, C. Smith (eds), Religion in Archaic and Republican Rome and Italy: Evidence and Experience (Edinburgh, 2000)
A. Boethius, Etruscan and Early Roman Architecture (London, 1978)
F. Coarelli, ‘Public building in Rome between the second Punic War and the death of Sulla,’ PBSR 45 (1977), pp. 1-23

T.J. Cornell, The Beginnings of Rome (London, 1995), pp. 108-112 and elsewhere [use index]
F. Glinister, 'What is a sanctuary?', Cahiers du Centre G. Glotz 8 (1998), pp. 61-80 [available from GJB]
J.A. North, 'Deconstructing stone theatres', in Apodosis. Essays presented to Dr. W.W. Cruickshank (London, 1992), pp. 75-83
E. M. Orlin, Temples, Religion and Politics in the Roman Republic (Leiden, 1997)
R. Ross Holloway, The Archaeology of Early Rome and Latium (1994), chs 5 and 6
J.E. Stambaugh, 'The functions of Roman temples', in Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischenWelt II.16.1 (Berlin, 1978), pp. 554-608

J. W. Stamper, The Architecture of Roman Temples: the Republic to the Middle Empire (Cambridge, 2005)

[controversial revision of the Capitoline temple: to be read with reviews e.g. by Zarmakoupi in BMCR,  http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/bmcr/2006/2006-04-22.html#n8]

On temples in Rome:
A. Claridge, Rome (Oxford, 1998)
M. Grant, The Roman Forum (London, 1970)
S. Platner, T. Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Oxford, 1929) [online at http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/Europe/Italy/Lazio/Roma/Rome/_Texts/PLATOP*/home*.html]
L. Richardson Jr, A New Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (Baltimore, 1992)

M. Steinby (ed.), Lexicon Topographicum Urbis Romae, 6 vols (Rome, 1993-2000)

[entries in various languages, but the best modern work on Roman topography]

Aspects of ritual
M. Kiley (ed.), Prayer from Alexander to Constantine. A Critical Anthology (1997) [SWL]
J. Scheid, 'Graeco ritu. A typically Roman way of honouring the gods', Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 98 (1996), pp. 15-31

Religion in Italy
G.J. Bradley, 'Archaic sanctuaries in Umbria', Cahiers du Centre G. Glotz 8 (1997), pp. 111-29 [can be borrowed off GJB]