One of the great contributions to the study of Roman religion in this century is Rüpke’s Fasti sacerdotum, a comprehensive guide to all known religious specialists in the city of Rome from 300 bce to 499 ce. The original German publication (2005) comprised three volumes: the first contained the introductory material and annual list of priests; the second brief biographies of all the figures in the annual list; and the third, over 250 pages of essays on topics both general (e.g. the typology of religious specialists) and specific (e.g. the lists of calatores for the years 101 and 102 ce). The one-volume English version (2008) contained most of the material from the first two volumes, but only a very few of the essays from the third. Fasti sacerdotum (often abbreviated FS) proved to be an invaluable reference work that facilitated further research into the shifting patterns of cultic organisation in Rome and the careers of the people who held formal cultic positions. Since its publication, Rüpke has supplemented the essays in the third volume of the German edition with a number of contributions to conference proceedings and other edited volumes. In the book under review, he has collected a dozen of these more recent papers, lightly revised and in some cases abridged, and provided them with a general introduction, an inclusive list of references and an inclusive (if slightly sketchy) index. The resulting volume is thus quite appropriately subtitled Fasti sacerdotum IV.
All the essays are fairly short, mostly in the range of ten to fifteen pages, and originally appeared in the years 2011 to 2018, with one from 2020 and another from 2023. Despite their brevity, most of them address large-scale issues rather than specific topics. There are, for example, papers on the sources and limits of religious authority, the role of priests in constructing the divine, and public priests and religious innovation. Given that most of the papers are based on the same data set (i.e. the material in FS), it is not surprising that there is a fair amount of overlap among them, in terms of both the questions posed and the data used to address them. This is by no means a bad thing, since it provides a degree of coherence to what might have been a rather haphazard collection. Instead, as readers revisit particular themes in different contexts and encounter the same episodes within different analytical frameworks, they develop an increasing appreciation for their richness and potential.
I will not attempt to review the full range of issues that Rüpke raises, but note only a few that struck me most. One is the interrelationship between priesthoods and magistracies. Scholars have at times regarded public priesthoods as more or less a distinctive type of magistracy, especially since major public priesthoods were an important element of the cursus honorum. Rüpke, by contrast, focuses on ‘the fractures and indeterminacy of the relationship between priestly roles and magisterial careers, the emergence of a “heterarchy” that generates numerous conflicts of rules’ (p. 33). He borrows the idea of ‘heterarchy’ from the anthropologist Carole Crumley, who defines it as ‘the relation of elements to one another when they are unranked or when they possess the potential for being ranked in a number of different ways’ (p. 33). Rüpke makes a cogent case for its utility in analysing priesthoods and magistracies at Rome. A related issue is the visibility of public priests: few priesthoods, he notes, involved dress or other visual cues that distinguished them from senators or magistrates, and many of the most prominent public rituals were performed by magistrates rather than priests. Most provocatively, Rüpke raises the question of what precisely was ‘public’ about public priesthoods, a status that most researchers simply take for granted. These issues and other similar ones (the collegial model of Roman priesthoods, the nature and implications of priestly knowledge) recur throughout the volume, although it was not always easy for me to track them; a more robust system of cross-referencing would have facilitated their exploration. The index is useful in this respect, although its utility is limited by the fact that it consists mostly of proper names.
The paper that I found most intriguing was also the most unusual in terms of subject. In ‘Flavian Innovations in the Concept of Priesthood and Their Repercussions in the Treatise “To the Hebrews”’ Rüpke makes the provocative case that Titus’ and Domitian’s more active deployment of their status as pontifex maximus provided an important point of reference for the author of the New Testament book of Hebrews, whose composition some scholars locate in late first-century ce Italy. Although Rüpke notes some distinctive elements of phrasing in support of his contention, he does not develop the analysis fully enough to convince me of their significance; nor does he mention the numerous passages in Hebrews that reference cult practices in the Jerusalem temple and passages in the Hebrew scriptures. I thus came away with the sense that here is a project that invites a more sustained treatment.
This feeling of excitement tempered by disappointment is to a large extent characteristic of my reaction to the volume as a whole. Rüpke’s command of a wide range of material is apparent, as is his brilliance at formulating compelling questions and devising new and stimulating conceptual frameworks within which to examine it. Yet, on the whole, I feel that his most important contribution lies not so much in the cogency of the papers published as in the stimulus to further research that they provide to other scholars.
Antoniou, however, is not one of them. That is to say, although Antoniou has clearly benefited from Rüpke’s work, which takes up over a page in the bibliography, and carefully cites the relevant entry in FS for every priest whom he mentions by name, he very much charts his own course; the concerns that inform his monograph differ significantly from those on which Rüpke tends to focus. Antoniou’s interests lie not so much in the social, political and institutional aspects of Roman priesthoods, but rather, as the subtitle of his book suggests, in the way in which Romans thought about their priests. The book, based on his DPhil thesis at Oxford under the supervision of Anna Clark, provides a comprehensive treatment of the topic.
The volume opens with an introduction in which Antoniou presents his key contention: that ‘membership of priesthoods was perceived to have had a significance that went beyond its political worth’ (p. 2). A key marker of that significance is that Romans expected their priests to display a set of distinctive virtutes and that these ‘were fundamental in the construction of what it meant to be a priest, both as an individual and as part of a collective’ (p. 19). By ‘Roman priests’ he means public priests in the city of Rome, excluding those of imperial cult, and especially pontifices, flamines, augurs, quindecimviri and Vestal virgins. Although the book’s main focus consists in the late republic and the early empire, Antoniou begins in Chapter 1 by considering whether the ‘vocabulary of virtues’ that can be documented for these later periods ‘existed earlier than the first century bce and when and why such language developed’ (p. 22). A careful analysis of extant texts leads him to posit that the discourse of virtues attested in later periods developed over the course of the second century bce, perhaps due in part to the ways in which novi homines such as the elder Cato ‘challenged notions of virtus by shifting attention away from birth and blood, and towards one’s achievements and moral standards’ (p. 27).
The bulk of the book is divided into two parts of unequal length. Part 1, ‘Expectations’, is synchronic in its approach and comprises two chapters. Chapter 2, ‘Qualities’, surveys the vocabulary that Roman writers frequently applied to priests, especially castus, pius, religiosus and sanctus; it also includes a discussion of ‘physical perfection and bodily integrity’. These qualities were especially desired in ‘those priests who were expected to constantly maintain a connection to the gods: the Vestals and the flamen and flaminica Dialis’ (p. 75), but were also thought to increase the efficacy of other priests’ interactions with the gods. Chapter 3, ‘Roles’, concerns not the specific tasks for which the various priests were responsible, a topic that, as Antoniou rightly notes, has already been thoroughly treated, but rather ‘more nebulous or contested expectations for the roles and modus operandi of priests’, particularly their role in ‘interpreting religiones (“religious imperatives”) and doing so sapienter’ and, more fundamentally, ‘the belief that priests should protect, maintain, and defend sacred institutions’ (pp. 77–8). He notes that, in both this and the previous chapter, it is not easy to determine whether the authors whose work he examines were ‘actively defining expectations or whether they were responding to more widely held views’; in either case it is clear that ‘Romans were conceptualizing, discussing, and challenging the kinds of virtues that they expected their priests to uphold (Chapter 2) and the kinds of roles that they should perform within society (Chapter 3)’ (p. 95).
The longer Part 2, ‘Evaluations’, is structured diachronically and contains three chapters. Chapter 4, ‘Priests in (and of) the Late Republic’, is a thorough study of all passages in the works of Cicero that comment on priests, with sections on augurs, pontifices, quindecimviri and sacerdotes (largely a discussion of Cicero’s treatment of P. Clodius), and Vestals. He summarises the results of this analysis in a conclusion: in Cicero’s view ‘Rome’s priests must do their utmost to defend established social constructs and work in service of the res publica’ (p. 159). Rightly noting that these imperatives are characteristic of Cicero’s political and social views more generally, Antoniou stresses that Cicero was also ‘able precisely to articulate specific ways that priests should achieve this social goal’ (p. 159). One way was through expertise in the field of cultic practice: ‘Cicero rarely praises any of his priests … for simply performing their duties as priests’, but rather ‘for going above and beyond what was expected of them. Knowledge was expected, but expertise was lauded’ (pp. 157–8).
In Chapter 5 Antoniou turns to the early empire and provides studies of priests from Rome’s past in the works of Livy and Valerius Maximus, with a brief coda on Plutarch. Somewhat like Cicero, ‘Livy expounds a social vision for priests’, who ‘take on the role of maintaining the institutional strength and legacy of the maiores, and are thus responsible for the social and moral contracts upon which Rome was built. In this role, Livy’s priests primarily act as collectives’ and ‘pillars of institutional longevity’, and are thus ‘outside the exemplary trends of the narrative’ (p. 188). In contrast, Valerius, as one might expect, carefully crafts his anecdotes about priests precisely as exempla, especially as regards their ability to understand and negotiate religio. In both cases Antoniou considers the extent to which their view of priesthoods was conditioned by the emperors under whom they wrote and concludes that, while we can trace some influence, each writer had his own distinctive view.
The role of emperors becomes dominant in Chapter 6, ‘Early Imperial Priests’, which, while drawing on such writers as Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny, is organised, not by author, but by emperor, with sections devoted to individual emperors from Augustus to Hadrian. As in earlier times, ‘the ways in which Rome’s priests of the imperial period performed their duties mattered for many of our early imperial writers’ (p. 268); in particular, ‘priesthoods became an important index for the moral disposition of the principes, both in the way that they wielded and manipulated their own priestly identity/identities, and in the way that they respected and treated the priests around them’ (p. 271). A short concluding chapter brings the book to a close.
As this summary should make clear, Antoniou’s project is very much a text-based one, consisting largely of semantic studies and close readings of literary texts, primarily historiography (broadly defined) and oratory. Within these parameters it is comprehensive, meticulous in its analyses and very well informed about the relevant primary and secondary sources. These virtues can sometimes verge on faults. The drive for comprehensive coverage at times threatens to overwhelm the analysis. The chapter on Cicero, for example, includes short subsections on virtually every priest whom Cicero mentions by name, not all of which seem to contribute much to the argument. Similarly, Antoniou’s meticulous attention to arguments and counter-arguments can lead him to be overly cautious; at times I wished that he had taken a bolder stance in drawing conclusions. As the preceding paragraphs might suggest, his large-scale conclusions can tend to be rather bland. The book’s great strength lies in the details, in the individual semantic studies and close readings, which are uniformly thoughtful and sensitive to complexity and nuance. It is in this context that Antoniou deploys his impressive skills to their best advantage. Anyone who has occasion to make use of a passage treated by Antoniou would be well advised to consult his discussion, a process facilitated by a thorough and careful index locorum.
For those whose interests lie in the history of Roman religion, the book offers much material for further reflection. I here briefly note only two. In recent decades, several scholars (C. Ando in particular) have emphasised the importance of knowledge in the Roman religious tradition, that is, practical knowledge in the sense of careful attention to details of cult practices, the results of those practices and the consequent need for maintenance or modification. Antoniou demonstrates how widespread and important assessments of knowledge and expertise were in the evaluations of priests. Another major issue on which the books sheds new light is the connection between cult practice and morality. It is often assumed that, in contrast to the Abrahamic religions, moral behaviour had in the Roman tradition at most a tangential relationship to cult practice. Although we might interpret many of the qualities that Romans expected of their priests in terms of cultic purity rather than moral values, there is enough overlap to suggest that it was more common for Romans to attribute to their gods a concern with moral behaviour than is sometimes thought.
These two volumes, for all that they share a common subject, differ markedly in both focus and approach. Together, they demonstrate that the role of priests in Roman culture was more important and more varied than has sometimes been assumed, and provide an effective stimulus for further research.
