Religion and politics (Bacchus) with long torch sitting on a throne, with
Helios (
Sol),
Aphrodite (
Venus) and other gods. Wall-painting from
Pompeii, Italy Rome's government, politics and religion were dominated by an educated, male, landowning military aristocracy. Approximately half of Rome's population were slave or free non-citizens. Most others were
plebeians, the lowest class of Roman citizens. Less than a quarter of adult males had voting rights; far fewer could actually exercise them. Women had no vote. However, all official business was conducted under the divine gaze and auspices, in the name of the Senate and people of Rome. "In a very real sense the senate was the caretaker of the Romans' relationship with the divine, just as it was the caretaker of their relationship with other humans". The links between religious and political life were vital to Rome's internal governance, diplomacy and development from kingdom, to Republic and to Empire. Post-regal politics dispersed the civil and religious authority of the kings more or less equitably among the patrician elite: kingship was replaced by two annually elected consular offices. In the early Republic, as presumably in the regal era, plebeians were excluded from high religious and civil office, and could be punished for offenses against laws of which they had no knowledge. They resorted to
strikes and violence to break the oppressive patrician monopolies of high office, public priesthood, and knowledge of civil and religious law. The Senate appointed
Camillus as
dictator to handle the emergency; he negotiated a settlement, and sanctified it by the dedication of a temple to
Concordia. The religious calendars and
laws were eventually made public.
Plebeian tribunes were appointed, with sacrosanct status and the right of veto in legislative debate. In principle, the augural and pontifical colleges were now open to plebeians. In reality, the patrician and to a lesser extent, plebeian nobility dominated religious and civil office throughout the Republican era and beyond. ("Temple of the Sun"), c. 150 AD While the new plebeian nobility made social, political and religious inroads on traditionally patrician preserves, their electorate maintained their distinctive political traditions and religious cults. During the Punic crisis, a popular cult to
Dionysus emerged from southern Italy; Dionysus was equated with
Father Liber, the inventor of plebeian augury and personification of plebeian freedoms, and with Roman
Bacchus. Official consternation at these enthusiastic, unofficial
Bacchanalia cults was expressed as moral outrage at their supposed subversion, and was followed by ferocious suppression. Much later, a statue of
Marsyas, the
silen of Dionysus flayed by
Apollo, became a focus of brief symbolic resistance to Augustus' censorship. Augustus himself claimed the patronage of Venus and Apollo; but his settlement appealed to all classes. Where loyalty was implicit, no divine hierarchy need be politically enforced;
Liber's festival continued. The Augustan settlement built upon a cultural shift in Roman society. In the middle Republican era, even
Scipio's tentative hints that he might be Jupiter's special protege sat ill with his colleagues. Politicians of the later Republic were less equivocal; both
Sulla and
Pompey claimed special relationships with
Venus. Julius Caesar went further; he claimed her as
his ancestress, and thus an intimate source of divine inspiration for his personal character and policies. In 63 BC, his appointment as
pontifex maximus "signaled his emergence as a major player in Roman politics". Likewise, political candidates could sponsor temples, priesthoods and the immensely popular, spectacular public
ludi and
munera whose provision became increasingly indispensable to the factional politics of the Late Republic. Under the
principate, such opportunities were limited by law; priestly and political power were consolidated in the person of the princeps ("first citizen"). Because of you we are living, because of you we can travel the seas, because of you we enjoy liberty and wealth. —A thanksgiving prayer offered in Naples' harbour to the princeps Augustus, on his return from Alexandria in 14 AD, shortly before his death.
Early Republic King of the Gods, and
Juno, Queen of Heaven and goddess of marriage, and women. Fresco in Pompeii By the end of the
regal period Rome had developed into a city-state, with a large plebeian, artisan class excluded from the old patrician
gentes and from the state priesthoods. The city had commercial and political treaties with its neighbours; according to tradition, Rome's
Etruscan connections established a temple to
Minerva on the predominantly plebeian
Aventine; she became part of a new Capitoline triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, installed in a Capitoline temple, built in an
Etruscan style and dedicated in a new September festival,
Epulum Jovis. These are supposedly the first Roman deities whose images were adorned, as if noble guests, at their own inaugural banquet. Rome's diplomatic agreement with its neighbours of
Latium confirmed the
Latin league and brought the cult of
Diana from
Aricia to the Aventine. and established on the Aventine in the "commune Latinorum Dianae templum": At about the same time, the temple of
Jupiter Latiaris was built on the
Alban mount, its stylistic resemblance to the new Capitoline temple pointing to Rome's inclusive hegemony. Rome's affinity to the Latins allowed two Latin cults within the
pomoerium. The cult to
Hercules at the
ara maxima in the
Forum Boarium was established through commercial connections with
Tibur. The
Tusculan cult of
Castor as the patron of cavalry found a home close to the
Forum Romanum:
Juno Sospita and
Juno Regina were brought from Italy, and
Fortuna Primigenia from
Praeneste. In 217, the Venus of Eryx was brought from Sicily and installed in a temple on the Capitoline hill.
Later Republic to Principate ,
Hyllus,
Deianira, and the centaur
Nessus from
Greco-
Roman mythology, 30–45 AD The introduction of new or equivalent deities coincided with Rome's most significant aggressive and defensive military forays. Livy attributed the disasters of the early part of Rome's
second Punic War to a growth of superstitious cults, errors in augury and the neglect of Rome's traditional gods, whose anger was expressed directly through Rome's defeat at
Cannae (216 BC). The Sibylline books were consulted. They recommended a general vowing of the
ver sacrum and in the following year, the living burial of two Greeks and two
Gauls; not the first nor the last sacrifice of its kind, according to Livy. In 206 BC, during the Punic crisis, the Sibylline books recommended the introduction of a cult to the
Magna Mater (Great Mother) from
Pessinus, supposedly an ancestral goddess of Romans and Trojans. She was installed on the
Palatine in 191 BC. Deities with troublesome followers were taken over, not banned. An unofficial, popular mystery cult to
Bacchus was officially taken over, restricted and supervised as potentially subversive in 186 BC. caresses Venus enthroned. Wall-painting in Pompeii, c. 20 BC – 50s AD The priesthoods of most Roman deities with clearly Greek origins used an invented version of Greek costume and ritual, which Romans called "Greek rites." The spread of Greek literature, mythology and philosophy offered Roman poets and antiquarians a model for the interpretation of Rome's festivals and rituals, and the embellishment of its mythology.
Ennius translated the work of Graeco-Sicilian
Euhemerus, who explained the genesis of the gods as
deified mortals. In the last century of the Republic,
Epicurean and particularly
Stoic interpretations were a preoccupation of the literate elite, most of whom held – or had held – high office and traditional Roman priesthoods; notably,
Scaevola and the polymath
Varro. For Varro – well versed in Euhemerus' theory – popular religious observance was based on a necessary fiction; what the people believed was not itself the truth, but their observance led them to as much higher truth as their limited capacity could deal with. Whereas in popular belief deities held power over mortal lives, the skeptic might say that mortal devotion had made gods of mortals, and these same gods were only sustained by devotion and cult. Just as Rome itself claimed the favour of the gods, so did some individual Romans. In the mid-to-late Republican era, and probably much earlier, many of Rome's leading clans acknowledged a divine or semi-divine ancestor and laid personal claim to their favour and cult, along with a share of their divinity. Most notably in the very late Republic, the
Julii claimed
Venus Genetrix as an ancestor; this would be one of many foundations for the Imperial cult. The claim was further elaborated and justified in Vergil's poetic, Imperial vision of the past. The consequent civil wars led to changes at every level of Roman society. Augustus'
principate established peace and subtly transformed Rome's religious life – or, in the new ideology of Empire, restored it (see
below).
Sissel Undheim has argued that, with their
Religions of Rome volumes,
Mary Beard, John North, and
Simon Price dismantled the well-established narrative of the decline of religious in the late Republic, opening the way for more innovative and dynamic perspectives. Towards the end of the Republic, religious and political offices became more closely intertwined; the office of
pontifex maximus became a
de facto consular prerogative. Augustus obtained the
pax deorum, maintained it for the rest of his reign and adopted a successor to ensure its continuation. This remained a primary religious and social duty of emperors.
Roman Empire Eastern Influence ,
Pegasus, and
Athena (
Minerva), fresco of the 3rd style from Pompeii, first half of the 1st century Under the rule of Augustus, there existed a deliberate campaign to reinstate previously held belief systems amongst the Roman population. These once held ideals had been eroded and met with cynicism by this time. The imperial order emphasized commemoration of great men and events which led to the concept and practice of divine kingship. Emperors postceding Augustus subsequently held the office of Chief Priest (pontifex maximus) combining both political and religious supremacy under one title.
Absorption of Cults in a Roman wall painting The Roman Empire expanded to include different peoples and cultures; in principle, Rome followed the same inclusionist policies that had recognised Latin, Etruscan and other Italian peoples, cults and deities as Roman. Those who acknowledged Rome's hegemony retained their own cult and religious calendars, independent of Roman religious law. Newly municipal
Sabratha built a Capitolium near its existing temple to
Liber Pater and
Serapis. Autonomy and concord were official policy, but new foundations by Roman citizens or their Romanised allies were likely to follow Roman cultic models. Romanisation offered distinct political and practical advantages, especially to local elites. All the known effigies from the 2nd century AD forum at
Cuicul are of emperors or
Concordia. By the middle of the 1st century AD, Gaulish
Vertault seems to have abandoned its native cultic sacrifice of horses and dogs in favour of a newly established, Romanised cult nearby: by the end of that century, Sabratha's so-called
tophet was no longer in use. Colonial and later Imperial provincial dedications to Rome's Capitoline Triad were a logical choice, not a centralised legal requirement. Major cult centres to "non-Roman" deities continued to prosper: notable examples include the magnificent Alexandrian
Serapium, the temple of Aesculapeus at Pergamum and Apollo's sacred wood at Antioch. The overall scarcity of evidence for smaller or local cults does not always imply their neglect; votive inscriptions are inconsistently scattered throughout Rome's geography and history. Inscribed dedications were an expensive public declaration, one to be expected within the Graeco-Roman cultural ambit but by no means universal. Innumerable smaller, personal or more secretive cults would have persisted and left no trace. Military settlement within the empire and at its borders broadened the context of
Romanitas. Rome's citizen-soldiers set up altars to multiple deities, including their traditional gods, the Imperial genius and local deities – sometimes with the usefully open-ended dedication to the
diis deabusque omnibus (all the gods and goddesses). They also brought Roman "domestic" deities and cult practices with them. By the same token, the later granting of citizenship to provincials and their conscription into the legions brought their new cults into the Roman military. Traders, legions and other travellers brought home cults originating from Egypt, Greece, Iberia, India and Persia. The cults of
Cybele,
Isis,
Mithras, and
Sol Invictus were particularly important. Some of those were initiatory religions of intense personal significance, similar to Christianity in those respects.
Imperial cult in
Nîmes, one of the best-preserved
Roman temples. It is a mid-sized
Augustan provincial temple of the Imperial cult. In the early Imperial era, the
princeps () was offered
genius-cult as the symbolic
paterfamilias of Rome. His cult had further precedents: popular, unofficial cult offered to powerful benefactors in Rome: the kingly, god-like honours granted a Roman general on the day of his
triumph; and in the divine honours paid to Roman magnates in the Greek East from at least 195 BC. The deification of deceased emperors had precedent in Roman domestic cult to the
dii parentes (deified ancestors) and the mythic
apotheosis of Rome's founders. A deceased emperor granted apotheosis by his successor and the Senate became an official State
divus (divinity). Members of the Imperial family could be granted similar honours and cult; an Emperor's deceased wife, sister or daughter could be promoted to
diva (female divinity). The first and last Roman known as a living
divus was
Julius Caesar, who seems to have aspired to divine monarchy; he was murdered soon after. Greek allies had their own traditional cults to rulers as divine benefactors, and offered similar cult to Caesar's successor, Augustus, who accepted with the cautious proviso that expatriate Roman citizens refrain from such worship; it might prove fatal. By the end of his reign, Augustus had appropriated Rome's political apparatus – and most of its religious cults – within his "reformed" and thoroughly integrated system of government. Towards the end of his life, he cautiously allowed cult to his
numen. By then the Imperial cult apparatus was fully developed, first in the Eastern Provinces, then in the West. Provincial Cult centres offered the amenities and opportunities of a major Roman town within a local context; bathhouses, shrines and temples to Roman and local deities, amphitheatres and festivals. In the early Imperial period, the promotion of local elites to Imperial priesthood gave them Roman citizenship. In an empire of great religious and cultural diversity, the Imperial cult offered a common Roman identity and dynastic stability. In Rome, the framework of government was recognisably Republican. In the Provinces, this would not have mattered; in Greece, the emperor was "not only endowed with special, super-human abilities, but... he was indeed a visible god" and the little Greek town of
Akraiphia could offer official cult to "liberating Zeus Nero for all eternity". In Rome, state cult to a living emperor acknowledged his rule as divinely approved and constitutional. As
princeps (first citizen) he must respect traditional Republican mores; given virtually monarchic powers, he must restrain them. He was not a living
divus but father of his country (
pater patriae), its pontifex maximus (greatest priest) and at least notionally, its leading Republican. When he died, his ascent to heaven, or his descent to join the
dii manes was decided by a vote in the Senate. As a
divus, he could receive much the same honours as any other state deity – libations of wine, garlands, incense, hymns and sacrificial oxen at games and festivals. What he did in return for these favours is unknown, but literary hints and the later adoption of
divus as a title for Christian Saints suggest him as a heavenly intercessor. In Rome, official cult to a living emperor was directed to his
genius; a small number refused this honour and there is no evidence of any emperor receiving more than that. In the crises leading up to the Dominate, Imperial titles and honours multiplied, reaching a peak under Diocletian. Emperors before him had attempted to guarantee traditional cults as the core of Roman identity and well-being; refusal of cult undermined the state and was treasonous.
Buddhism and the Roman world '', discovered in
Berenice, Egypt, in 2022. In
Berenice, Egypt, in March 2022 an American-Polish archaeological mission excavating the main early Roman period temple dedicated to the Goddess Isis uncovered in the forecourt of the temple a marble statue of a
Buddha, the
Berenike Buddha.
Jews and Roman religion from Rome For at least a century before the establishment of the Augustan principate, Jews and Judaism were tolerated in Rome by diplomatic treaty with Judaea's Hellenised elite.
Diaspora Jews had much in common with the overwhelmingly Hellenic or Hellenised communities that surrounded them. Early Italian synagogues have left few traces; but one was dedicated in Ostia around the mid-1st century BC and several more are attested during the Imperial period. Judaea's enrollment as a client kingdom in 63 BC increased the Jewish diaspora; in Rome, this led to closer official scrutiny of their religion. Their synagogues were recognised as legitimate
collegia by Julius Caesar. By the Augustan era, the city of Rome was home to several thousand Jews. In some periods under Roman rule, Jews were legally exempt from official sacrifice, under certain conditions. Judaism was a
superstitio to Cicero, but the
Church Father Tertullian described it as
religio licita (an officially permitted religion) in contrast to Christianity.
Christianity in the Roman Empire (1883) Roman investigations into early Christianity found it an irreligious, novel, disobedient, even atheistic sub-sect of Judaism: it appeared to deny all forms of religion and was therefore
superstitio. By the end of the Imperial era, Nicene Christianity was the one permitted Roman
religio; all other cults were heretical or pagan
superstitiones. After the
Great Fire of Rome in 64 AD, Emperor
Nero accused the Christians as convenient scapegoats, who were later
persecuted and killed. From that point on, Roman official policy towards Christianity tended towards persecution. During the various Imperial crises of the 3rd century, "contemporaries were predisposed to decode any crisis in religious terms", regardless of their allegiance to particular practices or belief systems. Christianity drew its traditional base of support from the powerless, who seemed to have no religious stake in the well-being of the Roman State, and therefore threatened its existence. The majority of Rome's elite continued to observe various forms of inclusive Hellenistic monism; Neoplatonism in particular accommodated the miraculous and the ascetic within a traditional Graeco-Roman cultic framework. Christians saw these practices as ungodly, and a primary cause of economic and political crisis. In the wake of religious riots in Egypt, the emperor
Decius decreed that all subjects of the Empire must actively seek to benefit the state through witnessed and certified sacrifice to "ancestral gods" or suffer a penalty: only Jews were exempt. Decius' edict appealed to whatever common
mos maiores (ancestors' customs) might reunite a politically and socially fractured Empire and its multitude of cults; no ancestral gods were specified by name. The fulfillment of sacrificial obligation by loyal subjects would define them and their gods as Roman.
Apostasy was sought, rather than capital punishment. A year after its due deadline, the edict expired. '', by
Henryk Siemiradzki (1876). According to Tacitus, Nero used Christians as human torches
Valerian singled out Christianity as a particularly self-interested and subversive foreign cult, outlawed its assemblies and urged Christians to sacrifice to Rome's traditional gods. In another edict, he described Christianity as a threat to Empire – not yet at its heart but close to it, among Rome's equites and Senators. Christian apologists interpreted his eventual fate – a disgraceful capture and death – as divine judgement. The next forty years were peaceful; the Christian church grew stronger and its literature and theology gained a higher social and intellectual profile, due in part to its own search for political toleration and theological coherence.
Origen discussed theological issues with traditionalist elites in a common Neoplatonist frame of reference – he had written to Decius' predecessor
Philip the Arab in similar vein – and Hippolytus recognised a "pagan" basis in Christian heresies. The Christian churches were disunited;
Paul of Samosata,
Bishop of Antioch was deposed by a synod of 268 both for his doctrines, and for his unworthy, indulgent, elite lifestyle. Meanwhile,
Aurelian (270–275) appealed for harmony among his soldiers (
concordia militum), stabilised the Empire and its borders and successfully established an official, Hellenic form of unitary cult to the
Palmyrene Sol Invictus in Rome's
Campus Martius. '', by
Saint George Hare, depicts two Christians in the eve of their
damnatio ad bestias In 295,
Maximilian of Tebessa refused military service; in 298
Marcellus renounced his military oath. Both were executed for treason; both were Christians. The first (303 AD) "ordered the destruction of church buildings and Christian texts, forbade services to be held, degraded officials who were Christians, re-enslaved imperial freedmen who were Christians, and reduced the legal rights of all Christians... [Physical] or capital punishments were not imposed on them" but soon after, several Christians suspected of attempted arson in the palace were executed. The second edict threatened Christian priests with imprisonment and the third offered them freedom if they performed sacrifice. An edict of 304 enjoined universal sacrifice to traditional gods, in terms that recall the Decian edict. In some cases and in some places the edicts were strictly enforced: some Christians resisted and were imprisoned or martyred. Others complied. Some local communities were not only pre-dominantly Christian, but powerful and influential; and some provincial authorities were lenient, notably the Caesar in Gaul,
Constantius Chlorus, the father of
Constantine I. Diocletian's successor Galerius maintained anti-Christian policy until his deathbed revocation in 311, when he asked Christians to pray for him. "This meant an official recognition of their importance in the religious world of the Roman empire, although one of the tetrarchs, Maximinus Daia, still oppressed Christians in his part of the empire up to 313."
Emperor Constantine and Christianity of
Trier,
Germany (then part of the
Roman province of
Gallia Belgica), built during the reign of
Constantine I (r. 306-337 AD) The conversion of
Constantine I ended the Christian persecutions. Constantine successfully balanced his own role as an instrument of the
pax deorum with the power of the Christian priesthoods in determining what was (in traditional Roman terms) auspicious – or in Christian terms, what was orthodox. The edict of Milan (313) redefined Imperial ideology as one of mutual toleration. Constantine had triumphed under the
signum (sign) of the Christ: Christianity was therefore officially embraced along with traditional religions and from his new
Eastern capital, Constantine could be seen to embody both Christian and Hellenic religious interests. He passed laws to protect Christians from persecution; he also funded the building of churches, including
Saint Peter's Basilica. He may have officially ended – or attempted to end – blood sacrifices to the
genius of living emperors, though his Imperial iconography and court ceremonial outstripped Diocletian's in their elevation of the emperor as somehow more than human. Constantine promoted orthodoxy in Christian doctrine, so that Christianity might become a unitary force, rather than divisive. He summoned Christian bishops to a meeting, later known as the
First Council of Nicaea, at which some 318 bishops (mostly easterners) debated and decided what was orthodox, and what was
heresy. The meeting reached consensus on the
Nicene Creed. At Constantine's death, he was honored as a Christian and as an Imperial "
divus". Later,
Philostorgius would criticize those Christians who offered sacrifice at statues of the
divus Constantine.
Transition to Christian hegemony ) on a plaque of a marble
sarcophagus, 4th century CE (Musei Vaticani, here in a temporary exhibition at the Colosseum in Rome, Italy) Christianity and traditional Roman religion proved incompatible. From the 2nd century onward, the
Church Fathers had condemned the diverse non-Christian religions practiced throughout the Empire as "pagan". Constantine's actions have been regarded by some scholars as causing the rapid growth of Christianity, though many modern scholars disagree. Constantine's unique form of Imperial orthodoxy did not outlast him. After his death in 337, two of his sons,
Constantius II and
Constans, took over the leadership of the empire and re-divided their Imperial inheritance. Constantius was an
Arian and his brothers were Nicene Christians. Constantine's nephew
Julian rejected the "Galilean madness" of his upbringing for an idiosyncratic synthesis of
neo-Platonism, Stoic asceticism and universal solar cult. Julian became Augustus in 361 and actively fostered a religious and cultural pluralism, attempting a restitution of non-Christian practices and rights. He proposed the rebuilding of Jerusalem's temple as an Imperial project and argued against the "irrational impieties" of Christian doctrine. His attempt to restore an Augustan form of principate, with himself as
primus inter pares ended with his death in 363 in Persia, after which his reforms were reversed or abandoned. The empire once again fell under Christian control, this time permanently. In 380, under
Theodosius I,
Nicene Christianity became the official
state religion of the Roman Empire.
Christian heretics as well as non-Christians were subject to exclusion from public life or persecution, though Rome's original religious hierarchy and many aspects of its ritual influenced Christian forms, and many pre-Christian beliefs and practices survived in Christian festivals and local traditions. The Western emperor
Gratian refused the office of
pontifex maximus, and against the protests of the Senate, removed the
altar of Victory from the Senate house and began the disestablishment of the Vestals.
Theodosius I briefly re-united the Empire: in 391 he officially adopted Nicene Christianity as the Imperial religion and ended official support for all other creeds and cults. He not only refused to restore Victory to the senate-house, but extinguished the Sacred fire of the Vestals and vacated their temple: the senatorial protest was expressed in a letter by
Quintus Aurelius Symmachus to the Western and Eastern emperors.
Ambrose, the influential
Bishop of Milan and future saint, wrote urging the rejection of Symmachus's request for tolerance. Yet Theodosius accepted comparison with Hercules and Jupiter as a living divinity in the panegyric of
Pacatus, and despite his active dismantling of Rome's traditional cults and priesthoods could commend his heirs to its overwhelmingly Hellenic Senate in traditional Hellenic terms. He was the last emperor of both East and West.
Pagan continuity Christianity was introduced late in the
Mani Peninsula, with the first Greek temples converted into churches during the 11th century. Byzantine monk
Nikon "the Metanoite" (Νίκων ὁ Μετανοείτε) was sent in the 10th century to convert the predominantly
pagan Maniots. Although his preaching began the conversion process, it took over 200 years for the majority to accept Christianity fully by the 11th and 12th centuries.
Patrick Leigh Fermor noted that the Maniots, isolated by mountains, were among the last Greeks to abandon the old religion, doing so towards the end of the 9th century: According to
Constantine VII in
De Administrando Imperio, the Maniots were referred to as 'Hellenes' and only fully
Christianized in the 9th century, despite some church ruins from the 4th century indicating early Christian presence. The region's mountainous terrain allowed the Maniots to evade the Eastern Roman Empire's Christianization efforts, thus preserving pagan traditions, which coincided with significant years in the life of
Gemistos Plethon. Traces of the old religion can still surface in Naples' underground esoteric circles. The
Osirian Egyptian Order claimed descent from a group of Alexandrian priests who fled to Naples around the 4th century CE, following the Christian destruction of pagan temples such as the Serapeum of Alexandria. In 1899, after being initiated into the OOE,
Ciro Formisano (Giuliano Kremmerz) founded the Brotherhood of Myriam as its direct offshoot, adapting those Egyptian and Greco–Roman rituals into a therapeutic initiation path. Archaeological, epigraphic, and textual evidence indicates that elements of traditional Roman religious practices continued to influence cultic life in Italy from late antiquity through the Late Middle Ages. In the 5th–7th centuries, excavations at
Crypta Balbi in Rome document domestic layers containing reused cult objects, protective amulets, and small figurative items, interpreted as remnants of late Roman ritual behavior. Late antique deposits across various regions of Italy yield defixiones, apotropaic pendants, and inscribed amulets datable to the 6th century, suggesting the persistence of ritual techniques outside official civic cults. Intellectual continuity is further evidenced by the survival of Neoplatonic schools at Athens and Alexandria into the 5th and 6th centuries, which preserved mythological, theurgic, and ritual concepts after public sacrifices largely ceased. In the 7th–10th centuries, under Byzantine and Lombard rule, canon law records religious norms reflecting the coexistence of local beliefs and Christian rituals, indicating the survival of ritual practices of pagan origin. Between the 11th and 14th centuries, in the magical and witchcraft-related culture of medieval Italy, amulets, invocations, and symbols inherited from classical tradition persisted and were reinterpreted within a Christian context. Modern historiography interprets these traces according to three models: a “survivalist” approach emphasizing the direct persistence of ancient rites, a “transformationist” model focused on reinterpretation and adaptation, and a “discontinuity” model positing an ideological rupture; together, these frameworks illustrate how Roman paganism was gradually relocated and reworked within medieval Christian culture. The
modern Roman religion, unlike other neopagan movements, is regarded as having been transmitted esoterically through families such as the Latriani, connected to the
Medici and inspired by
George Gemistus Plethon, who contributed to the founding of the
Neoplatonic Academy in Florence. This tradition also influenced the
Roman Academy of
Pomponio Leto in the 15th century. Leto symbolically restored the role of the
Pontifex Maximus and celebrated the
Natalis Romae, though the academy was dissolved by
Pope Paul II in
1468. Between the 19th and 20th centuries, figures such as Giacomo Boni and
Julius Evola revived ancient Roman rituals for cultural and political purposes. Evola, through the
Gruppo di Ur and his book Imperialismo Pagano (1928), advocated for a resurgence of Roman spirituality. During the same period,
Leone Caetani asserted that Etruscan-Roman rituals had influenced historical events, including victory in
World War I. of Rome, for the 2777th
Natale di Roma. Carried out by Pietas Comunità Gentile In the 2000s, the
Associazione Tradizionale Pietas reconstructed temples such as the Temple of Minerva in Taranto and initiated steps for legal recognition. It also participated in the
European Congress of Ethnic Religions (ECER), signing the Riga Declaration advocating for the acknowledgment of ethnic religions. Public celebrations like the Natalis Romae continue, thanks to groups such as the Gruppo Storico Romano. ==See also==