Testing the Gods

doi:10.1017/9781009240970.014

Chapter 11 - Testing the Gods

Religious Belief in Roman Imperial Epic

from Part III - Belief and Experience in Antiquity

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 May 2026

Pramit Chaudhuri

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Ralph Anderson and

Pramit Chaudhuri

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Ralph Anderson: Affiliation:
University of St Andrews, Scotland
Pramit Chaudhuri: Affiliation:
University of Texas, Austin

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Summary

This chapter examines the discourse of religious belief in Latin epic of the first century CE. The first section advances a methodological case for the value of high-register poetry as evidence for Roman thinking about religious belief. Building on the model of Charles King, the argument highlights the implications of the literary evidence for key theoretical debates about belief. The second section consists of a series of case studies demonstrating Roman imperial epic’s interest in the role of empiricism in shaping beliefs about the divine. Human testing of the gods features especially prominently in Ovid’s Metamorphoses and Statius’ Thebaid: how to recognise a deity, whether a mortal can perform the same acts as a god, what qualities distinguish the human from the divine. Using Ovid’s Lycaon and Niobe and Statius’ Capaneus as paradigms of a broader phenomenon, the chapter shows how Latin epic develops both a vocabulary and behavioural code of theological scrutiny, which subjects divinity to rigorous examination by mortals as a method of grounding belief. The motivations for this poetic line of inquiry can be traced not only to philosophical discourse but also to contemporary practices of emperor cult and deification.

Keywords

epic belief religion empiricism Emperor Theomachy Ovid Statius MetamorphosesThebaid

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Type: Chapter
Information: Belief in Greek and Roman Religion , pp. 269 - 303

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009240970.014 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2026

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