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One way that Rome incorporated diverse peoples was by supporting their religious heritage, building temples to local deities that framed their theology within the hierarchy of Roman religion. Inscriptions throughout the Empire record the side-by-side worship of local and Roman deities, including dedications made by Romans to local gods. [5]
Roman statue of the infant Hercules strangling a snake. Hercules, god of strength, whose worship was derived from the Greek hero Heracles but took on a distinctly Roman character. Hermaphroditus, an androgynous Greek god whose mythology was imported into Latin literature. Honos, a divine personification of honor. Hora, the wife of Quirinus.
For five centuries, the Roman Republic (509–27 BC) did not give worship to any historic figure, or any living man, although surrounded by divine and semi-divine monarchies. Rome's legendary kings had been its masters; with their removal, Republican Romans could identify Romulus , the founder of the city, with the god Quirinus and still retain ...
As the Roman Republic, and later the Roman Empire, expanded, it came to include people from a variety of cultures, and religions. The worship of an ever increasing number of deities was tolerated and accepted. The government, and the Romans in general, tended to be tolerant towards most religions and religious practices. [1]
In the year before the First Council of Constantinople in 381, Christianity became the official religion of the Roman Empire when Theodosius I, emperor of the East, Gratian, emperor of the West, and Gratian's junior co-ruler Valentinian II issued the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, [1] which recognized the catholic orthodoxy [a] of Nicene Christians as the Roman Empire's state religion.
The goddess Diana joined the Roman Pantheon during the Monarchy times as the central goddess uniting worship between Rome and several of its neighbors, thus creating the basis for a coalition. The goddess Juno was imported to Rome from the ancient city of Veii, after Veii fell to the Roman military, following a long period of wars between the ...
In Plutarch's Phyrro, 19.5, the Greek ambassador declared amid the Roman Senate he felt instead like being in the midst of "a whole assembly of Kings". As the Roman Empire developed, the Imperial cult gradually developed more formally and constituted the worship of the Roman Emperor as a god.
According to Roman sources, the worship of Sol was introduced by Titus Tatius shortly after the foundation of Rome. [7] [8] In Virgil he is the grandfather of Latinus, the son of Sol's daughter Circe who lived not far from Rome at Monte Circeo. [9] A shrine to Sol stood on the banks of the Numicius, near many important shrines of early Latin ...