ABSTRACT
The Romans had a pragmatic attitude to religion, as to most things. Insofar as they had a religion of their own, any more than they could claim to have an indigenous mythology, it was not based on any central belief, but on a mixture of fragmented rituals, taboos, superstitions, and traditions which they collected over the years from a number of sources, including their own Indo-European roots. To the Romans, religious faith was effectively a contractual relationship between mankind and the forces which were believed to control people’s existence and wellbeing. The result was essentially twofold: a state cult whose significant influence on political and military events outlasted the republic, and a private concern, in which the head of the family supervised the domestic rituals and prayers in the same way as the elected representatives of the people performed the public ceremonials. As circumstances and people’s view of the world changed, individuals whose personal religious needs remained unsatisfied turned increasingly to the cults of the east, to Christianity, and to the tenets of the Greek philosophers.
