Bailey C. The Religion of Ancient Rome

Chicago: Open Court, 1907. — 113 p.In every early religion there will of course be found, apart from external influence, traces of its own internal development, of stages by which it must have advanced from a mass of vague and primitive belief and custom to the organised worship of a civilised community. The religion of Rome is no exception to this rule; we can detect in its later practice evidences of primitive notions and habits which it had in common with other semi-barbarous peoples, and we shall see that the leading idea in its theology is but a characteristically Roman development of a marked feature in most early religions.The Religion of Ancient Rome does a wonderful job of discussing the ancient Roman religion, before being influenced by Egyptian, and especially, Greek Culture. The author was interested in and has written a tight short book (just under 1,000 locations) about the insubstantial, unknown ancient gods, spirits, thoughts, call them what you will, but the impact of religion on Rome's founding. The author does a good job of explaining how the household was the key element in ancient Rome and how often Romans of the Republic didn't even remember why they did some of the ritual or who a god might have been.Roman religion was, as Bailey describes, “the religion of Numa”. In its dimly distant origins this was related to numen (= power, something imprecise, sexless and mysterious and which predates deus = God) but later Numa came to be seen as a lawgiver (like Moses). The consequence of basing a religion on a lawgiver rather than a prophet or a poet was to increase the legalistic importance of ceremony, but empty it of piety or devotion. Hence, we read that “Roman religion was a tiresome ritual formalism, almost wholly lacking in ethical value.”