Religion in Republican Rome: Rationalization and Ritual Change by Jörg Rüpke (review)

Once an almost moribund field, the study of Roman religion has been one of the most lively areas of classical studies over the last twenty-five years. Jörg Rüpke has been a central figure in this transformation. His recent Fasti Sacerdotum (German ed., Stuttgart 2005; English ed., Oxford 2008) is now an essential research tool for any historian interested in the social basis of Roman religions. Religion in Republican Rome is a very different kind of book: a tightly argued but panoramic vision of the history of religion in republican Rome. Building on over a decade of publications in this area, this book provides a new picture of the relationship between religion and society in the period between the fourth century b.c.e. and the Augustan monarchy.

The book’s central argument is that change is the key to understanding religion in Republican Rome. Rüpke offers an image of almost constant innovation in ritual practice, religious norms, and discourse on the gods across a period of almost three centuries. The older view that Roman religion was an archaic relic, preserved by a characteristically Roman conservatism (especially ritual orthopraxy), is rejected. Instead, Rüpke suggests that we can understand the changes in religious ritual and discourse in the Republic as part of a meta-historical process of “rationalization,” understood in expressly Weberian terms. This can be defined as “the systematization—or attempted systematization—of practice” (2) through public rule-making and in written texts. Almost all of the chapters have been published already, at least in some form, but even those familiar with Rüpke’s work will want to read this book: many of these individual studies, now framed as part of a single argument about change and rationalization, take on new significance.

After a short introduction and a quick sketch of what we can and cannot know about archaic and early Republican religion, the argument proceeds in three movements, arranged broadly chronologically. Each of these movements is a set of short chapters, generally mixed between broad syntheses of developments in Roman Republican religion and society and more specific case studies that illustrate these developments. The first movement (chaps. 2–5) discusses the development of spectacular public rituals in the late fourth and third centuries b.c.e. In the context of the creation of the new plebeian-patrician nobility, Rüpke argues, the establishment of major religious spectacles in this period, notably the processions (pompae) associated with the ludi circenses, dramatic performances, and the triumph, provided opportunities for public communication and the creation of a Roman “public space.” Religion was integral to the creation of these new large-scale rituals: the gods were constantly present as actors, audiences, and as dramatic subject-matter in the spectacular public life of the mid-Republican city. For example, the reading (chap. 4) of the fragments of the tragedian Accius that touch on the gods and divination demonstrates how these ritual spectacles could be sites for public reflection on the problems of divinity. Given the obscurity of much of Roman history in the fourth and third centuries, some of the reconstructions in this part of the book are, inevitably, speculative. The claim that the development of the classical form of the triumph in the late fourth century is related to the contemporary concern with public statuary, for example, will not command universal assent (see Versnel’s response in Numen 53 [2006]:290–326, responding to an earlier version of chap. 5).

Public writing is the central theme of the second movement (chaps. 6–9). Rüpke discusses the connections between literacy and the rationalization of Roman public religion and religious institutions. The development of the calendar and the growing control of ritual action through legislation are the main topics for these chapters. The historical range in this section is extremely broad, from Cn. Flavius’ calendrical reforms at the end of the...