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Roman religio (religion) was an everyday and vital affair, a cornerstone of the mos maiorum, Roman tradition and ancestral custom. It was ultimately governed by the Roman state, and religious laws. It was ultimately governed by the Roman state, and religious laws.
The Roman Empire began when Augustus became the first emperor of Rome in 31 BC and ended in the west when the last Roman emperor, Romulus Augustulus, was deposed by Odoacer in AD 476. The Roman Empire, at its height (c. AD 100), was the most extensive political and social structure in Western civilization.
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 Roman Empire typically tolerated other religions insofar as they conformed to Roman notions of what proper religion meant and if their deities could be mapped onto Roman deities. Otherwise, the Romans produced a series of persecutions of offending and nonconforming religions.
For some Romans, this was caused by the neglect of traditional religious practices. For others – equally Roman – breakdown of empire was God's judgment on faithless or heretical Christians and hardened pagans alike. As Roman society evolved, so did cult to emperors: both proved remarkably resilient and adaptable.
Festivals in ancient Rome were a very important part in Roman religious life during both the Republican and Imperial eras, and one of the primary feat of "holy days"; singular also feriae or dies ferialis) were either public (publicae) or private . State holidays were celebrated by the Roman people and received public funding.
The Religio Romana (literally, the "Roman Religion") constituted the major religion of the city in antiquity.The first gods held sacred by the Romans were Jupiter, the highest, and Mars, the god of war, and father of Rome's twin founders, Romulus and Remus, according to tradition.
The Roman deities most widely known today are those the Romans identified with Greek counterparts, integrating Greek myths, iconography, and sometimes religious practices into Roman culture, including Latin literature, Roman art, and religious life as it was experienced throughout the Roman Empire. Many of the Romans' own gods remain obscure ...