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Who Were The Romans? Evidence From Religion1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2009
Extract
If I had asked ten years ago the question I am asking to-day, I should have answered it with a good deal of confidence. I should have told you that we have irrefragable evidence of a group of very ancient cults, those of the di indigetes or native Roman gods, in whom we might safely recognize the reflection of purely Roman thought, untouched by the influence of Etruria, of Greece, or even of the other Italian states. I should then have proceeded to describe briefly the general characteristics of these gods and deduce therefrom the mental development and social status of their worshippers. I should probably have added that one of the most ancient of Roman institutions, the templum, showed clear traces of being derived from the customs of the terramara people, and therefore that that interesting branch of the Bronze culture had a good deal to do with the founding of the Eternal City. Then I might have gone on to tell you of other elements known or supposed to exist in the earliest cults, as revealed by modern investigation.
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- Copyright © The Classical Association 1935
References
page 163 note 1 For instance, in Peet, T. E., Stone and Bronze Ages in Italy, p. 333.Google Scholar
page 164 note 1 Athenaeum (Pavia), viii (1930/viii), pp. 425–51.Google Scholar
page 164 note 2 Ibid. ix (1931/ix), pp. 3–14.
page 164 note 3 Röm. Mitt, xlv, pp. 111–23.Google Scholar
page 164 note 4 SMSR, vii (1931/ix), pp. 3–15.Google Scholar
page 164 note 5 Röm. Mitt, xlvii (1932), pp. 95–121.Google Scholar
page 164 note 6 Latest discussion (brief but good) in Altheim, F., Römische Religionsgeschichte, 1, pp. 26 sqq. (Berlin; W. de Gruyter & Co., 1931).Google Scholar
page 165 note 1 Essere celeste: see Pettazzoni, R., Dio, vol. i (Rome, 1922), passim.Google Scholar
page 166 note 1 See Rose, , Primitive Culture in Italy, pp. 45–6, and references there.Google Scholar
page 166 note 2 Serv. on Aen. i. 448Google Scholar; other priests observed the same rule, Macrob. Sat. v. 19. 13 (Sabines), Lydus, de mens., p. 16, 5 Wuensch (Romans).Google Scholar
page 166 note 3 Varro, apud Non., p. 223, 20 M.Google Scholar
page 166 note 4 Besides the few examples given above, the reader is referred to the ingenious and learned, though highly controversial, works of Altheim, Griechische Götter im alten Rom (Töpelmann, Giessen, 1930)Google Scholar, Terra Mater (same pub., 1931)Google Scholar, and also the essays of Tabeling, E., Mater Larum, Vittorio Klostermann, Frankfurt a/M., 1932Google Scholar, and of Koch, C., Gestirnverehrung im alten Italien (same, 1933).Google Scholar