Roman Religion in a Mediterranean Perspective

doi:10.1017/9781009532396.006

6 - Roman Religion in a Mediterranean Perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 August 2026

Jörg Rüpke

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Rubina Raja

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Rubina Raja: Affiliation:
Aarhus Universitet, Denmark

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Summary

Abstract: Rome’s religious history, encompassing the entire Mediterranean basin during the Roman Empire, is fundamental for the religious history of Europe. Portrayals of the religious history of this space have been confined to cumulative descriptions of individual cults and religions. This chapter suggests that the critical factor during the Roman Imperial Age was not a change or increase in the number of religions but an alteration to the phenomenon of ‘religion’ and its social significance. From a medium by which an individual could address human contingencies such as illness, insecurity, and death and create a public political identity, it became a context for human life and the formulation of group identities and political legitimation. A Mediterranean approach invites an inquiry into the interaction between changes of a local and regional, administrative, and political nature and developments that were cultural or religious. This brings us to consider how contemporaries conceptualized the processes identified, and the reciprocal consequences of changes in the concepts and social dynamics of what is conceptualized as ancient Mediterranean religion: a multilayered ‘entangled history’.

Keywords

Provincial religion Mediterranean religion religious practices religion regionalization globalization

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Type: Chapter
Information: The Mediterranean in Antiquity
New Perspectives from Prehistory to the Byzantine Period
, pp. 119 - 142

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009532396.006 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2026

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