Ursus

I don't see a difference. Just about all the ancient societies were "patriarchal" by modern standards, so women didn't have a much of a say in the choice of patron deities. Rome had three deities, two of which were female, and it was known more for its armies than for its arts. So I don't think gender was reflective of cultural development.

Patricians get a private forum called the Senate where they can advise the powers that be. They are also eligible for free book giveaways. Long term activity and good character are the main traits, but we also like to see that our Patricians are scholarly and well-written, because we do like book reviews in exchange for the free books. So if you want to write an article or review on a Romanophile topic, e-mail it to Viggen. Just don't write anything on Harry Potter or I will commit ritual suicide.

Paganism means different things to different people. Pagans, of course, never referred to themselves as such, the term being coined by early Christians to refer to their religious opponents. In the modern era a variety of New Age cults have lain claim to Paganism, though their connection to the cults of antiquity are tenuous at best. What then, was Paganism so-called? Paganism as such was a collection of practices, mythologies and worldviews from a variety of cultures that existed before the Christian era. The history of religion begins somewhere in the Stone Age, but those murky origins lie outside the scope of this essay. It is in the Bronze Age, with the beginning of written history, and formation of nascent classical cultures, that the student of paganism can begin on a sound footing. This essay is designed to be a brief overview. It necessarily places breadth over depth and concentrates on generalities rather than particulars. Am emphasis is placed on the Hellenistic era Ptolemaic conception of the cosmos, given the influence it would later exert on imperial Roman cults. The mythologies of the various Bronze Age cultures in the Mediterranean and Near East usually partitioned the cosmos in a similar scheme. At the center of the universe was the earth, or rather its land mass, often conceived as a flat disk. Upon this disk lay humanity and animals, and a variety of minor spirits and mythical creatures. Surrounding the earth was a watery firmament or other natural barrier against which no human could hope to pass. Beneath the earth was the underworld, where the dead were interred and where nefarious spirits resided. Above the earth were the heavens, where the highest gods were thought to reside. Students of Greek mythology can easily recognize this in the tale told by Hesiod, where three divine brothers cast lots for the cosmos. Hades gains the underworld, Poseidon the ocean, and Zeus the heavens. Earth lay in common to all three, and earth was sometimes personified as a goddess herself, perhaps even the mother of the other gods. The political reality of the early Bronze Age was dominated by the city-state. Each city-state laid claim from one to three deities whom they especially revered; patron deities, in effect. The idea was that while the gods resided in the heavens (or sometimes the ocean or underworld), they had for whatever mythical reason become attached to a particular locale on earth. City-states constructed temples to these deities, which usually had a cult statue of the deity and other relics of interest tended to by clergy. It was felt that temples and the statues provided a nexus between divinity and humanity, a focal point whereby humanity could reach out to divinity. The central idea was that a patron deity could confer certain supernatural benefits on its chosen locale (good harvests, cure for diseases, military victory) in exchange for regularly performed offerings and sacrifices. Beneath these deities were lesser powers still propitiated: demigods, heroes, local demons and the spirits of ancestors living in the underworld. Mythographers were wont to assemble the patron deities of all the city-states of a given culture into a pantheon, a kind of divine family or association. And so we have the charming, sometimes confusing and often contradictory tales associated with the gods of Greece, Egypt and other cultures. While culture-spanning mythology held a certain power over the population's imagination, the fact remains that cultic practices of deities throughout much of the Bronze Age were localized and specific. The inhabitants of the era lived in a small world after all; a small disk floating in aether, with the heavens above and hell below, and their city-state as the chief socio-political reference point in this cosmos. Their city's patron, if properly propitiated, should be enough to guide them through the rigors of earthly life. Two phenomena shattered this worldview. On a cosmological level, advances in science had expanded the celestial horizons. The Near East and Egypt had long been students of astronomy, and their science was further refined by the Greeks. The movements of the heavens could now be watched to some degree, and while the ancients still mistook the earth for the center of the universe, they were at least aware the earth shared its immediate space with other planetary neighbors. The old distinctions of earth, heaven and underworld now seemed inadequate. Politically, the trend for sometime in the Near East and the Mediterranean was the consolidation of independent city-states into multi-ethnic kingdoms. This reached the culmination in Alexander's vast if briefly held empire, uniting East and West for the first time. The city-state now found itself simply a component of a much larger realm, and its provincial gods less suited to a spanning world cosmos. These two trends slowly transformed religion. The Ptolemaic cosmos knew of the earth and the moon, and of the seven planets that could be observed with the naked eye. It also knew of the stars, but mistook them for fixed points of light just beyond the observable planets. The major deities were often equated with the sun, moon, planets and stars. Their movements around the earth exacted a certain sympathetic reaction on earth and its creatures. Beneath the moon lay a variety of elemental and demonic powers that also exerted influences on hapless humans. But unlike the planetary deities, these lesser powers might be negotiated with or even controlled. And beyond the fixed stars, beyond human vision, were the empyrean heavens where resided the highest deity, by whatever name he or she was known, the real power of the universe and the origin of creation. When one starts building a vast and clock-like universe, one begins to wonder how much free will one really has amidst a flood of impersonal cosmic forces. Fate, Chance, Fortune - whatever it may be called, this was now felt the real master of those born beneath the sublunar realm. Astrology became increasingly popular as a way of predicting the influence of the planetary deities on earthly life. Side by side, and often in conjunction with this, the art of magic gained acceptance as a way of dealing with the demonic spirits of the earth. While the cults of the city-state gods still formally existed, these newer forces in religion proved quite influential with the masses. The political heads of the new superstates were regarded as divine themselves. For what were gods and spirits but forces of vast power that could intercede in human affairs for better or worse? From that perspective, there was no more immediate manifestation of said power than the Monarch who headed a vast multi-ethnic state, commanding armies and a bureaucracy with the power of life and death over its subjects. The ruler cult flourished, and the monarch was entreated as another god who could save the suppliant from an often unfortunate fate. But even this was not enough. For it was construed that the highest deity who lived in the Empyrean, beyond the fixed stars, might be persuaded to come down from its lofty heights and rescue men from the march of Fate. Amazingly enough, these soteriological deities were, in the midst of patriarchal societies, usually construed as feminine. Perhaps the old cults of the Mother Earth Goddess that had been common in the Bronze Age were simply elevated to Supreme Celestial Goddess once Ptolemy had expanded the cosmos. However it was, cults of goddesses that had once been localized were now universalized into savior goddesses. Within closed societies, initiates learned mysterious rites that would appeal to the savior goddess and implore her to intercede in the life of her adherents for a better fate. Demeter from Greece, Atagartis from Syria, Cybele from Phyrgia - all formerly culturally specific goddesses now elevated to the level of the empyrean savior. But the most successful of these was the Egyptian Isis, whose cult captured all the major port towns in the Mediterranean and beyond. In an increasingly intellectual age, the intellectual elite took things a step further. Perhaps the city-state gods were mere social conventions, quaint metaphors for common people who could not understand the true nature of the cosmos? Thus the cosmos was seen by philosophers as a creature of a single divine force. It could be one of two things. If one were a Stoic, one believed in a pantheistic universe (call it the fire of Zeus if you like!) exerting a fate to which all must peacefully submit. Or if one was a Platonist, one believed the universe had an ultimate point of divine origin that emanated through various layers, until the bottom realm we humans inhabit was but a shadowy pale reflection of higher truth. But in a syncretic age, things often blended together whether they were intended to or not. The fatalistic pantheism of the Stoics merged quite nicely with astrology. The Platonic belief in an ultimate reality was reconciled with soteriological savior cults and their deities of the empyrean. Under the Roman Empire, which expanded and refined the Hellenistic Age, these two trends merged further still, along with a widespread belief in magic. Thus by the Late Empire, the last breath of paganism was exemplified by Neoplatonic philosophers. In the furthest heavens of the Empyrean, they believed, lived the highest god, the ultimate source of creation, the first spark of the divine. Through him emanated various lesser deities and powers, the planets and the stars, and all these exerted their various level of influences on humanity. Through a practice known as theurgy, the magician could learn to recognize and navigate the various levels of a divine universe, until finally the human conscious could absorb the likeness of godhood and ascend into the empyrean. The last pagan Emperor, Julian, belonged to this school of thought. This evolution of paganism came to a screeching halt when Christianity came into possession of Roman imperial power. Fittingly though, Christianity was itself a product of the times. Yahweh was no longer merely the patron god of parochial Hebrew tribes, as he once had been, but had become the universal Creator deity of all humanity before whom no other gods could be placed. His presumed son, Yeshua, called the Christ or "anointed one" by his adherents, embodied in his person various of the soteriological devices of the age. In a syncretic age wrought by the empires of the Greeks and then the Romans, Christianity blended the cultural religions of the Hebrew with the Hellene. Some versions of the cult such as the Gnostics, later considered heretical by the Pauline churches, were even more firmly entrenched in the various syncretic movements of the era before their eventual eradication. Works used and further resources Martin, Luther. Hellenistic Religions: an Introduction. Rives, James. Religion in the Roman Empire. Turcan, Robert. Cults of the Roman Empire.

It looks really nice, and it is very convenient.

Well, I, for one, am laughing. Not about Bibulus, but over the fact that you apparently read Harry Potter.

You could always write a much shorter work for UNRV on whatever topic you chose. Could give you some free publicity. It also helps for promotion to Patrician status, and there are certain benefits involved along those lines.

Psychologically: oceans, earthquakes and wild horses all have a unity in the power of untamed nature, which Poseidon wields. I'm not a fan of the psychology school, however. Possibly my fellow legate Pantagathus could give you more insight on Poseidon. To answer the broader question: remember that Greco-Roman religion is not a coherent, monolithic entity. It is a collection of cults for each deity. To study why this and that go with such and such god, you have to research the cult and myth of said god. Some answers are obvious: the eagle is Zeus' bird because Zeus is the king of gods and the eagle is the most majestic of birds. Zeus furthermore turns into an eagle to snatch up Ganymede. Some answers are less obvious. The ram is associated with Hermes. Why? Because Hermes was to the Arcadians a god of flocks and fertility, and the ram was an animal indicative of pastoral fertility. Walter Burkert addresses all the major Olympian gods in his Greek Religion. Were I to suggest one book to start, it would be that.

Indeed, and when the Vandal hordes trounced the token legion, seizing Africa's tax base and grain supply for themselves, it was effectively the end of the Western Empire. Roman Africa was probably the most important province in the West after Italy. It's interesting that not much is written about it. It's interesting to speculate, before the Islamic invasions, that part of Africa was more a part of Western civilization than Britain and northern Gaul. Given the increasing trend in Romanophile studies to study native cultures other than Greece under Roman dominion, it shouldn't be too long before some enterprising scholar gives us a full fledged account of this area. I can see a burgeoning explosion of Romano-Punic studies.

I second the nominations for Sejanus. Quite an interesting fellow.

Military history? Someone slightly less well know than Caesar and Alexander? How about Agrippa?

"Spartacus" has some of the best movie moments in history, given the quality of the actors, but one must not take it as a shining example of historicism. I wouldn't recommend "Gladiator" for anything beyond the opening battle sequence. The Season 1 DVD of HBO-Rome is near the top of my list. I haven't seen Season 2, but I'm told it suffers by comparison. Anyone ever see a young Marlo Brando as Antony in Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar"? Quite powerful, I thought.

And a year later, I finally got to read it. A book on Greek history for those who may not otherwise enjoy Greek history. Excellent, written with the same novel-like eye to drama as Rubicon. Also provided some wonderful background on the relatively little known Persian Empire. I'm not sure I agree with the introductory premise though that the Persian Wars are still oh-so-relevant because of 9/11. Holland needs to write something on Ancient Egypt now.

I admire the aesthetics of Hellenic culture; the mythology, the architecture, the sculpture, pottery, literature, drama, etc. I believe the Roman Empire and thus Western Civilization would have been much poorer without them. But I often have trouble identifying with them. I have little kinship with the Spartans. The over intellectualization of Athenian and Ionian philosophers can also leave me cold. The Greek contempt for anything not Greek, and the internecine wars the petty city-states fought amongst themselves, also seems myopic at best. Its a pity we don't know more about the cultures of other city-states besides Athens and Sparta. Both those cities were in some sense exceptional and not truly indicative of the rest of Greece. What if the commercialism of Corinth had triumphed over the other city-states, for instance?

I hope you find a sense of community you're seeking. Neopaganism is a lot more common than it was even a few years ago. Every college that isn't specifically Judeo-Christian will probably have a pagan club.

Currently I am reading Persian Fire by Tom Holland. Loving every minute of it.

Haven't read the book in question. I remember being a lad in the 80's and our schoolteachers telling us we all might be working for the Japanese. It never happened. Predicting the future has been a risky affair since the Oracle of Delphi went out of business.

Except maybe the pyramids.

I still say we are Carthage, not Rome.

Roman Architecture by Nigel Rogers. Ancient Rome on Five Denari a Day by our distinguished guest writer. Both books that draw most of their subject matter from the Principate. Highly recommended. Yours truly has submitted reviews on both to the queue.

Guinness is quintessential, and I shall drink it at every opportunity on draft. Secondary beers that come in bottles include Yuengleng (a Pennsylvania special) , Sam Adams, Honeybrown, and Michelob's Amber Bock. The ideal beer is much like the ideal woman: mysterious but inviting, thick in the right places and light in others, and neither overly cheap nor unaffordable.

Quite. I believe the book's levity is its real strength, as a more scholarly tone would have dulled the information it was trying to convey. This would honestly make an excellent intro book to secondary school students, a way of hooking their interests, so to speak. Though I am sure more conservative types would object to the section on prostitutes and commercial sex in the eternal city.

Indeed. I believe a Hatshepsut special airs on Discovery in mid July. This find comes on the heels of my renewed interest in Ancient Egypt. It's a sign, I tell you.

A delightful read. Informative yet entertaining. I read it quickly this sunny afternoon. Perhaps the best daily life book I have read. The graphical illustrations of the sites in question are well done. And Amazon offered it cheap!

I think the modern intellectual movement as a whole eschews individuals in favor of various identity groups and how those groups relate to the overall culture. Usually it is from the standpoint of which group is allegedly oppressed by which other group, but once we leave oppression behind as a focus, the dynamics among various demographic groups is actually quite interesting. In modern American politics, much is made of various "lobbying groups" and how these groups influence Congress and the White House. Not sure if it is a direct influence, but this level of analysis does find its way into recent studies. David Potter in The Roman Empire at Bay does seem to see the Princeps as a referee between competing power groups: The Senate and Equestrians, freedman and slaves, the army and the Praetorians, the Roman mob and the provinces. The cult of personality is important as it pertains to what kind of referee the Princeps shall serve among these competing groups.