[Religious Cults And Power]

Thanks for the help folks. Alexander the false prophet makes for a very interesting read!

[The Brigantes]

Great post! As a Northumbrian I have read this with interest, good stuff!

[Why Was Rome The Greatest Empire?]

The Romans managed to spread "roman" identity and culture across their Empire, even though it was to varying degrees. The peculiar mix of stamping their Roman identity on provinces (identikit towns etc) and curiously open minded when absorbing other cultures when it came to religion etc made them a proto type to the jeans and coke globilisation today ie there was such an identity as being Roman even though you might not have come from Rome or indeed seen it. Therefore they were extremely succesful at spreading their culture (although it was a patchwork quilt of other cultures as well) Compare to the Athenian Empire 5BCE and they were very insular and even free folk living in Athens were not all citizens, they split the free into citizens and metics (and the Spartans were even worse) Rome, on the other hand had an increasingly open route to citizenship as the Empire went on. Obviously there are some sweeping statement in the above but brevity does not lend itself well to academic chit chat.lol Best of luck with your work.

[Help Identifying A God/goddess]

Schools, as we know them, did not exist in the ancient world. People studied with learned men. It was as if a student had one professor for all of his subjects. One did not 'major' in any one subject, but rather in all subjects. i.e., rhetoric, languages, philosophy, math, history, etc. If one were very rich, it might have been a one on one situation. It could also have been a small group in what was called a 'gymnasium'. I would guess that Livy wrote on history because he liked it and not because he 'majored' in it. I don't think that it was a 'job' for him. He was rich enough on his own account.

 

Thanks for that! Re the original post, if there was no subject simply taught as History, rather training in the liberal arts as a whole, how come there was a God/Goddess for History?- maybe your tutor should reframe the essay prompt!hehe

[Help Identifying A God/goddess]

The Muse in question is Clio. Since there were actually no 'history students' in the ancient world, I think that (as Ursus already suggests) it comes down to a fight between her and Athena. Incidentally, Athena was also the goddess of Athens, a place where lots of young Romans went to study.

 

Just wondering if you could expand on the comment about history students. Does this mean that it wasn't taught in the ancient world or that it was not a seperate subject? If so, how did Livy etc become historians. I am quite ignorant of the education in classical times beyond the bounds of Athens 5bce and the sophists and I think I just presumed the Romans (well the literary elite) were taught history etc (though why one would presume that I do not know)

[Roman Divination]

Yeah it was rumoured to be one of the Emperor Claudius's ancestors, Claudius the Fair, and he was supposed to have said, when the chickens wouldn't eat before the battle, " Then let them drink".... he lost the battle. lol

[Christianity As A Mystery Religion]

The Roman objection to Christianity was a horror at the concept of the consumption of the "body and blood" of Christ-and some of course thought this was literal -and if not literal seriously weird!

 

There was also the problem of identity, in the Roman's normative religions, political and ethnic units were the focus for public religious activity ( private religious belief did not take precendence to public cults.) That was one of the reasons some religions were regarded with suspicion ie Christianity, worshippers of Bacchus etc. These religions (and we could add more to the list) cut the normal Roman connection of civic and religious identity. However, that does not add to the orginal post, sorry.

[Roman Divination]

There is some talk of chickens that were used and if they ate greedily, it was favourable but if they wouldn't eat or flew away when let out, that was unfavourable. There is a good account of augurs at Lacus Curtius Roman Religion . Hope that helps.

[Religious Cults And Power]

Just wanted to throw a general enquiry into the air, I apologise if it has been covered somewhere else on the site. Does anyone have a view on whether religious cults were used as opportunities for power. I am thinking along the lines of the Greek cities and the Imperial Cult eg the Ephesian cult and the standing of the city as Ephesion Proton Asias (first in Asia) twice neokoros, did the establishment of the Imperial Cult in Ephesus add to their standing amongst other cities? Any references to individuals and power would also be interesting.