Quotes from Robert Turcan

Seneca (see Aug., CG, 6, 10) deplored this blood-soaked obscenity: One amputates his manhood, another slashes his arms. Can one fear the gods when one seeks their favour in this manner?

As the law ruled out castration, a procedure had to be provided that would confer an equivalent 'sacrament' on those who wished to remain Roman citizens. It was a special problem for the archgallus, who was officially in charge of the galli but, as a Roman priest, could not be castrated.

Another Thraco-Phrygian god, Sabazius, known for his nocturnal orgies and the role played in them by a snake (as in the Bacchic cult), made news in 139 Bc. At that time his followers were expelled from Rome by the praetor peregrinus; Valerius Maximus (1, 3, 3) confused them with the Jews who worshipped Sabaoth.

This double phenomenon - the influence of occult sciences and devotion to a particular deity - affected many Romans during the imperial era.

Like Dionysus, the Egyptian gods reached Rome by way of Campania. In the second century BC, traders on Delos made the acquaintance of Isis and Serapis, whom a priest from Memphis had imported at the beginning of the preceding century. Many of these negotiatores were originally from southern Italy where, with Alexandrian sailors, they spread Nilotic representations. Very soon Pompeii had its Iseum and Pozzuoli its Serapeum.

Besides Tiberius, Nero, Otho and Vespasian all had their astrologer. Titus, Domitian and Hadrian were sufficiently expert themselves to draw up a horoscope, and Septimius Severus (who married Julia Domna after making enquiries about marriageable daughters of royal blood) dispensed justice in a hall of the palace where his own astral horoscope was painted on the ceiling (DC, 77, 11, 1).

But the enthusiasm of the urban plebs for the gods of the Delta caused some disturbances. In 59 BC, when the Senate ordered the destruction of the altars of Serapis, Harpocrates and Anubis, they were very soon reinstated 'owing to the violence of the people's intervention

Significantly, too, the triumvirs Octavian, Antony and Lepidus, promised to build a temple to Isis and Serapis to win favour with the populace (DC, 47, 15, 4). But the promise was not kept, and the war setting Octavian against Cleopatra's lover would become a war of the gods, between Apollo and 'barking Anubis

Followers of Jupiter Heliopolitanus had to meet in a sanctuary in the Trastevere district where water had a role to play, as in the temples of Atargatis which were complemented by a pool containing sacred fish. This Syrian goddess was part of a triad worshipped in Baalbek, with a divine son likened to Mercury:

Marriage was so sacred that it couid not be celebrated on just any day or month of the year. May was ruled out, because it was the month of the old (maiores): 'Who marries then has not long to live' (Ov., F, 5, 488); the 9, 11 and 13 were in any case devoted to the dead. This prohibition was still observed not long ago in Provence. Also ruled out were the first fortnight of March (season of war: Ov., F, 3, 395) and June (before the 'purification' of Vesta's temple).

Ubi tu Gaius, ego Gaia, she would say to her husband, who lifted her in his arms to cross the threshold, in memory (so it was believed) of the rape of the Sabines, but doubtless also because the threshold was sacred: it was the god Limentinus.

He associated Elagabal with two goddesses: Pallas-Allat and the 'Caelestis' of Carthage, whom the Romans identified with Juno but who was not unrelated to Venus-Astarte.

This was a religion of small groups, certain caverns being incapable of holding more than ten or twelve participants. Bound by an oath which repeated the handshake (dextrarum junctio) uniting the god of light with the Daystar, the Mithraists knew and helped one another like the brothers of a Masonic lodge. As soon as one community expanded, another was organised rather than exceed the right measure of intimacy.

and, more generally, Febris, whom the Christians laughed to scorn, little knowing that in the Vatican quarter their fellow-Christians would one day honour a 'Madonna delle Febbri'.

These Manes were present in the house through the images of the ancestors, or in the tutelary powers of the Lares. They mysteriously survived in order to help the living, provided that on their death they had received the justa, or ritual honours that were their due;

the posthumous deification of Julius Caesar made his heir the son of a god, destined for the same apotheosis. The emperor belonged to a family of divi. But the Roman family, too, had its heroised ancestors.

For the antiquarian Cornelius Labeo, Bona Dea was identified with the Earth, Maia, Fauna, Fatua or Ops (Macr., S, 1, 12, 21). The celebration was performed pro populo - for the safety and well-being of the Roman people.

While Mark Antony paraded as Dionysus, and Sextus Pompey claimed Neptune as his father, Octavian officially called himself Divi filius, at the same time invoking the patronage of Apollo.

if a gens died out, in theory its cults disappeared with it; but the state made efforts to preserve at least some of those whose celebration was important to the Roman people (who were always concerned to treat the most minor deities tactfully) by entrusting them to an association (sodalitas).

From the cultic point of view, the consequences were not fundamentally alien to tradition. Oaths were sworn by the genius of the master, and just as that of the paterfamilias was honoured in domestic lararia, henceforward Augustus's 'Genius' had his place in private chapels. But the veiled genius, who exemplified piety with his patera for libations and promised happiness with his horn of plenty, was often replaced by the sovereign's picture.

In the early fifth century AD, Macrobius (S, 1, 16, 7) comments that the Claudii, Aemilii, Julii and Cornelii still had their own ritual festivals. There were others which each family celebrated 'according to the tradition of domestic solemnities'. We know nothing about the special sacra of the Aemilii or Cornelii, though it is known that the Julii paid special honour to Apollo and Venus, but evidence of this devotion appeared belatedly and not without some political ulterior motive.

Their hands bathed in purifying water, the family members gathered up the calcined bones in the folds of their black garments, then sprinkled them with wine and milk, dried them with fine linen before enclosing them in a marble urn (Tib., 3, 2, 16-22). In memory of the time when burial was performed, a finger severed before the body was burnt was buried separately, and a handful of earth was thrown three times on this os resectum.

The Aurelii, or Sabine origin like the Claudii, had charge of the cult of the Sun, to whom they owed their name (Ausel which harked back in fact to the Etruscan Usil) and to whom the family sacrificed in the name of the Roman people

For her birthday, a woman honoured her natalis Juno (Tib., 4, 6, 14): Here is a triple offering of cakes, chaste goddess, a triple offering of pure wine.