In this book C. sets out to demonstrate some weaknesses of ‘elite-instrumentalism’, the view ‘that Roman elites used religion to control nonelites’ (p. ix). Although the demonstration is more convincing in some areas than in others, C. succeeds in reminding us that members of the Republican elite took their religion seriously.
The book comprises an introduction, five chapters and an ‘epilogue’. The introduction and Chapter 1 outline the goals of the work. C. poses the question ‘Did the Romans believe in their gods?’ and answers in the affirmative, defining ‘belief’ as ‘a genuine, collective conviction on the part of governing elites that Roman success, and indeed the city's very existence, depended on maintaining correct relations with the gods through orthopraxy’ (pp. xii–xv). His aim is to draw our attention to ‘the interiorized, subjective religious experiences of individual historical agents … as they are reflected in their religious behaviours’ (p. 6). Drawing on current findings in psychology, sociology and anthropology, C. emphasises the amount of fear and anxiety that members of the Roman elite must often have felt (pp. 20–1). Religion, for C., plays the role of security blanket, functioning ‘to mitigate and meliorate the insecurities of life in psychological terms’ (p. x, also pp. 106–8, 127, 195). This effect of state religion was more historically important than the putative power it gave to elite practitioners over those beneath them (esp. pp. 73–5, 218).
Chapter 1 surveys ancient and modern invocations of ‘elite-instrumentalism’, ranging from the Sisyphus fragment to the Enlightenment, Marx and continuing echoes of the theory in recent work on Roman religion. Chapter 2 follows the arguments of H. Mouritsen (Plebs and Politics in the Late Roman Republic [2001]) for the very limited extent of public participation in Republican politics, to argue that the non-elite was similarly unengaged in, and independent of, public religion. Chapter 3 considers several historical cases where we see ‘serious commitment to ritual orthopraxy on the part of Roman generals’ (p. 116). Chapter 4 surveys the triumph, the importation (and suppression) of ‘foreign’ cults, and human sacrifice, arguing that since rational explanations for these behaviours are hard to come by, the primary motive must have been a conviction that such action was required to protect the city. Chapter 5 reviews P. Veyne (Did the Greeks Believe in Their Myths? [1988]) and D. Feeney (Literature and Religion at Rome [1998]) on ‘modalities of belief’ and concludes with two detailed case studies of the religious activities of Scipio Africanus and Scipio Aemilianus. C. argues that the behaviour of the Scipiones is best understood not as an ‘elite-instrumentalist charade’ but as motivated by their religious convictions (p. 212).
The book has several strong points. The conclusion that Roman politicians and commanders were often driven by their own concern for orthopraxy must be correct, and C. is right to note that modern treatments of Roman religion have not succeeded fully in incorporating this observation. C.’s interest in the elite practitioner's own experience of religion also indicates interesting avenues for research. The endeavour to draw in current research in the social sciences shows that Classicists can make fruitful use of findings from other disciplines. Finally, the case studies in Chapter 5 shed light on the religious considerations that guided the decisions of the Roman commander.
There are respects in which the book could have been strengthened. At times C. takes our ancient sources to be more ‘elite-instrumentalist’ than they are. C. takes issue with Polybius’ celebrated statement (Histories 6.56) that ‘superstition maintains the cohesion of the Roman state’, to which the Megalopolitan subjoined his own opinion that this was so ‘for the sake of the common people’. For C. this boils down to a claim that ‘Roman elites used religious ceremony and ritual to awe and cow the gullible, common people’, which he rejects as ‘perhaps Polybius’ greatest historical distortion in his representations of the Romans’ (pp. ix, xiii, 196). However, Polybius does not say that the Roman elite did not share the ‘superstitions’ he describes: indeed, the proof he goes on to offer, the scrupulous honesty of Roman officials, attests this effect of religion on the elite, not the non-elite (well-observed by M. Beard, J. North and S. Price, Religions of Rome [1998], vol. 1, p. 108). It is true that modern scholars have sometimes taken Polybius and similar sources to hold the ‘elite-instrumentalist’ view, but more detailed scrutiny of the ancient texts would in fact have supported C.’s argument by demonstrating that in many cases they need not be taken this way.
C. tends to work with one model of how religion should function to maintain social cohesion, sometimes making questionable assumptions. In Chapter 2 C. posits that a religion that enhanced elite control over the non-elite would have ‘administered to the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual needs of the populace’, for example by ‘charitable and alimentary projects’ (p. 29). Since Roman state religion generally did not do this, it was not an effective tool for social control. I am not sure that this conclusion is inescapable, especially in a society where charity was exercised through euergetism rather than religion. Similarly, C. suggests that ‘the fragmentation and diffusion of religious functions and the lack of hierarchical organization and integration within and among the priesthoods … is not what we would expect to find in a religious system whose primary purpose was to uphold the political and socioeconomic status quo’ (p. 45). It is true, and interesting, that individual priests did not typically acquire the kind of charismatic authority we see in some other religions, but direct action by one priest, or by all the priestly colleges in concert, may be only one possible means of exerting or maintaining broader control. Many would argue that the abundance and distribution of priestly rituals, roles and rules at Rome maintained the cachet of the religious ‘specialist’ in the eyes of non-practitioners, a possibility C. acknowledges but does not eliminate (pp. 45–6). Deeper engagement with the ways in which scholars currently see religion as bolstering elite power at Rome would have built a stronger case.
C. has decided to focus on the least convincing version of ‘elite-instrumentalism’ (p. 4), and although he succeeds in dispatching it, readers may feel that stronger versions remain unscathed. C. insists, rightly, that we must let go of the idea that ‘elites consciously manipulated traditional civic polytheism as a tool for political and social control … while the elites themselves remained skeptical nonbelievers’ (pp. xviii, 21). The problem, as he admits, is that the more common view at present is that ‘[e]lite religious practitioners may be a part of the ideological belief system’ (p. 4). The conclusions reached are therefore unobjectionable, but not fatal for proponents of a more sophisticated form of the theory. It makes sense that ‘we cannot seriously consider the supreme and terrifying punishment of burial alive [of Vestal Virgins] as a religious charade’ (p. 44), and ‘that the conquering triumphator … making his way to a solemn concluding sacrifice of thanksgiving on the Capitol, was also a cynical, godless dissimulator whose interiority was untouched by the magnificent events of which he was the focal point, is implausible, to say the least’ (p. 125). Yet who now would make either of these claims? C. states that his goal is not to ‘refute’ ‘elite-instrumentalism’ but to put it into ‘its proper proportion’ (pp. ix, xxiv, 16–17, 21): it would have been interesting to see more of the latter.
This book puts one more nail in the coffin of the notion that elite Romans were nothing more than cynical manipulators of their own religion and shows the need for further study of Romans’ religious experience.
