COMMUNITY AS CULT IN PRE- AND POST-CONQUEST GAUL

”, in: Trans Padum … Vsque Ad Alpes. Roma tra il Po e le Alpi: dalla romanizzazione alla romanità. Atti del convegno Venezia 13-15 maggio 2014 (Studi e ricerche sulla Gallia Cisalpine, 26), ed. by Giovannella Cresci Marrone. Roma: Edizione Quasar, pp. 261-286., 2015

Despite the extent of intensive urbanisation and centuriation across Roman North Italy, Rome’s impact seems to have been less significant than often assumed. The religious landscape shows a number of non-Roman features, such as Celtic theonyms and non-Classical iconography. What is even more striking are parallels with cultural patterns of the late Iron Age: there emerges a particularly active region as attested by a myriad of votive inscriptions, largely focusing on the area between Vercelli/Vercellae, Novara/Novaria and Milan/Mediolanum, spreading north beyond the Lago Maggiore and Lago di Como, and east to Bergamo. This is an area where one can already recognise well-defined archaeological identities in the Iron Age, which in part go back to the Golasecca culture of the 6th-5th century BC and had given rise to new cultural identities in the late Iron Age, associated with the Insubres and their neighbours. Though it is difficult to talk about ‘indigenous’ (or ‘native’ or ‘autochthonous’) cults of pre-Roman (or pre-Augustan) origin, it does however seem likely that cults and deities in this region continued to be shaped, at least to some extent, by pre-Roman religious understandings and cultural identities, leading to specific expressions of ‘religiosity’ in the Principate. This does not mean that we are dealing with cultural resistance or persistence of pre-Roman cults, but that local inhabitants created cults that were typical for particular regions of the Transpadana in the Principate – a process that appears quite independent from urbanisation and municipalisation processes. Rather than resistance, we can recognise how Greco-Roman visual language and mythology were combined with existing local (‘indigenous’) beliefs and myths, giving rise to new religious expressions in the Principate, leading to an enormous diversity of the cults and sacred landscapes in the Transpadana and Cisalpine Gaul in general. This results in particularly localised religious features, like the popularity of the cult of Hercules, variations of the cults of Jupiter, Mars, Diana, as well as the Matronae.

Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 2017

This paper offers a new perspective on the reuse of Celtic fortified hilltops by Gallo-Roman shrines. Going beyond the simplistic explanation of continuity, I shall argue for the role of memory in the perception of the landscape and in the location of some Gallo-Roman shrines. This paper opposes the argument for continuity of sacred spaces and Celtic cults during the Roman period despite abandonment of the settlements. The evidence supports a more symbolic protohistoric expression, beyond that attendant on the place of a cult. The continuity concealed breaks, changes and modifications. I put forward the concept of 'fictive continuity', after Hobsbawm. The reclamation of a place of memory assigns a greater visibility to these shrines, enhancing their topographical appearance at the highest points in their respective landscapes, thus enabling the sites to appropriate fully space and place and to ensure cohesion within the community. CULT PLACES AT FORMER OPPIDA

in: Richardson and Santangelo (ed.), Priests and State in the Roman World. (PAwB 33) Stuttgart: Steiner 2011, 2011

Can we use the "polis religion" model for understanding religious activities in the Roman provinces? No! Models based on Classical Greece and religious institutions in Rome are not helpful for understanding developments in the Roman provinces, like here in the case of southern Gaul. There, we see the importance of individualisation in a highly connected world. Even in major cities in this highly "Romanized" province, the nature of the religious activities is non-Roman and not controlled by a pro-Roman "ordo". This paper looks at a number of cites, like Nemausus / Nîmes, Glanum, Aquae Sextiae / Aix and her territory. Despite the wealth of epigraphic evidence, we can recognise that "public priests" are marginal in shaping the religious activities in this region.

Academia.edu, 2021

This brief overview of Gaulish religion finds indications that the Gaulish worldview was animistic in nature, without dichotomy between humans and their surrounding world. Phenomena such as thunder and lightning, and entities such as mountains and rivers appear as deities, and seem to have played an important role in people's lives. /// Úra apísan'uchel vrío in credhlói Galáthach sin o bú in hapisan'víthu Ghaláthach hanathasach en hamvith, echan dhavíon enther dhoné ach só víthu erís. Bathwía dichenorúé comíu tarthar ach lócheth, ach ganvisúé comíu bríé ach avóné co dhévisúé, ach bathwía í o ré shuvor sí ran lhúithwár en víthé in tóth.

 Explanatory and Interactive  Interpreting and establishing lines of communication, interaction with reality ○ J. Rüpke, From Jupiter to Christ. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2014), pg. 171, 175.  Primarily pragmatic, external  External offering and exchange in order to gain rewards, avoid punishments (Religio) ○ Pax Deorum: Peaceful co-existence with gods.

2016

Prehistoric Society online book reviews

The sacrificial banquet : a space for noble sociability during Republican Rome and Early Principate The presentation examines the role of banquests as a means of sociablity between participants in public religion, especially between members of the Roman aristocracy. The aim is to show how sacrifice, as a moment of sharing between gods and humans, strengthened the cohesion of the different strata of Roman society around the baquet and commensality in Rome on distinct scales. By sacrificial banquets, we mean banquets organized or managed by the priestly structures of public worship in Rome in particular the great priestly colleges. The concept of sociability, as a heuristic tool, refers to practices and codes of any interpersonal relationship. It can therefore be used to consider a wide range of relationships and interactions, particularly at banquets, while bringing the question of commensality up to date. Eating the same food was undoubtedly a privileged moment of sociablity, all the more so in a ritual context. The sheer number of Roman banquets and the diversity of the groups taking part make them ideal subjects for studying the interweaving of religion and sociability. In Rome, the majority of ritual acts were performed by politicians, who represented the whole city. By virtue of their structure and the annuality of their offices, republican institutions encouraged an increasingly intense form of aristocratic competition, around which the great families of the Roman nobility evolved, and which invariably led them to form ties with one families another. Above all, certain sacrificial banquets invited the entire senate, and these moment of sharing a common meal 'forced' the political elite to unite around a greater objective: the service of public worship. Livy and Aulus Gellius report that during the Epulum Iovis banquet on the Capitol, the senators played an active role in reconciling Scipio the African and Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, a reconciliation sealed by a marriage between the former's daughter and the latter. We therefore propose to look at banquets on a group level, studying in particular their role in creating and strengthening ties within certain strata of society, in particular the aristocratic elite. This aristocratic elite was also at the head of the priestly colleges, and the aim is so understand, on the restrained scale of the colleges, how the priests interacted during the banquets that brought them together. This study also takes into consideration the question of women, as in the case of the cult of Bona Dea and its supervision by the Vestals, who were forbidden to allow men to participate. It is clear that while the principle of commensality remained the same, the sociability observed different depending on the group concerned, making these events special cases of female sociablity, as they were reserved for matrons. In this contribution, we therefore propose to show how sacrificial banquets appeared to be central social spaces, around which several groups and several individuals at the intersection of these groups were articulated, while taking into account the evolution of commensal practices during the Republican period and at beginning of the Principate.