Customer Reviews

The Gods of Ancient Rome: Religion in Everyday Life from Archaic to Imperial Times

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The Roman Pagans were a deeply religious people. Turcan's book shows us a great deal about how they worshipped and what rituals they observed. And this book gives even a secular reader a chance to make some sense of it.

Unlike the monotheist god, Roman Goddesses and Gods are perfections of actual attributes. Romans hailed the Gods and Goddesses casually. But their rituals were often serious and complex, for they had to instill a sense of the importance of a vow to be worthy of a particular Goddess or God. And Turcan's book shows us some of these rituals in detail.

As Turcan mentions, when the Romans stopped worshipping the Gods and Goddesses, the Roman Empire quickly fell apart. I think the Christian religion that replaced the Pantheon with a nailed corpse gave Romans little reason to defend their Empire. The new religion was too nihilistic and atheistic. Turcan does not appear to agree with me about this, but he does cite Zosimus who did hold Constantine's failure to celebrate the Secular Games in 314 AD to be responsible for the ruin of the Empire. Turcan also explains that by celebrating the Secular Games, the Romans were in effect "taking out a new 'lease' with the gods."

This is a scholarly and interesting work. I recommend it to Pagans and non-Pagans alike.

Amaranth Books did an excellent job of keeping in contact with me, and responded to my order quicker than anyone I have ever bought from. The book arrived exactly as it was described and they even included a personalized message thanking me for ordering. I originally chose to order this book from Amaranth on a whim, but now I will always look to see if they have my book before I look anywhere else.

I recently used this book as part of a Summer-session university course on the Archaeology of Religion. Although it contains a healthy amount of information about little known facts concerning Roman religion, it is not for the average reader. Originally written in French, the translation is somewhat poor and confusing.

The majority of the class was at a loss due to the complexity of the book. Even my somewhat rudimentary knowledge of Roman religion was barely adequate to follow the writings. The book lacks adequate chapter breaks resulting in the reader being forced to read the entirety in order not to lose his place.

It says a lot when the professor privately told me that it was a poor choice for a textbook.

This book is so dry and scholarly it is almost boring. It put me to sleep on numerous occasions and yet I still enjoyed it because the subject matter is interesting and I trusted the information contained therein. This is one of those books I know I will be happy to have on my shelf as a solid reference text. I must say though that the author really does strip some of the life and fun out of Paganism. A different author could have used the same information and presented it in a much more engaging way.

I think one of the problems with the book is that is does not discuss each God (not even the major ones) in detail, nor the practices associated with a specific God (except re the mystery cults). It is very much an overview of Pagan practices in ancient Rome and the broad way in which the author deals with the subject probably accounts for the dryness of the text. It is probably directed more at academic types who wish to improve their understanding of the daily life and mentality ancient Romans (which is a noble subject in itself) more than really looking at the spiritual aspect of Pagan deities and practice.