ABSTRACT
Religious practices played an important part in Roman daily life. They bound members of families together and regulated the relationship of the individual to the state. On the one hand the bystander at a state sacrifice felt personally involved in something important; on the other, even a prominent politician would appreciate the sanctity attached to groves and streams and boundary posts or, indeed, his own household shrine. The world of the gods was very near when every fountain had its nymph, every valley its genius loci.
