[lit-ideas] Ancient Roman religion
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Mon, 2 Jun 2014 12:27:14 -0400 (EDT)
In a message dated 6/2/2014 12:04:43 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes in "Wilson and Wade on the nature of
European
religion": "In The Disenchantment of the World, a Political History of
Religion, Marcel Gauchet argues (among other arguments) that while
Christianity was
necessary to the creation of Western Europe, it is now superfluous in that
all of Christianities practical virtues have been incorporated into its
culture."
Well, I would argue about 'necessary'!
It seems that Roman philosophers, say, were very much into all that would
later be called Christian 'virtues', and I would not be surprised if part of
that was shared by the Ancient Greeks, too.
It may do to analyse Ancient Roman religion in terms of old Indo-European
(or "Indo-Germanic", or "Aryan", as was sometimes called), in terms of those
'virtues'.
Gauchet speaks of 'practical virtues', so I may need to doublecheck with
Gauchet.
The idea of 'virtue' itself, or the concept, seems Roman ('virtus') -- a
bad translation, admittedly, of Greek 'arete'. And I would not be surprised
if 'virtus' and 'arete' were the terms used by the "Fathers of the Church",
so-called, when describing the 'practical' "thingies" (yes, Geary hates
that) that Gauchet argues were NECESSARILY introduced with Christianity.
Of course, in the summary by L. Helm, I may be missing something. The
'necessary' being my focus of interest, and not that I'm a historian, or
anything -- since there's nothing 'necessary' in history, anyways [sic].
When Christianity reached Rome, it was deemed a 'superstitio', and the
Ancient Roman religion had a specific code, it seems, as to what counted as
'superstitious' and what not. I think I was reading that in Dione Cassio (Loeb
Classical Library) the other day: the cult of Bacco, for example, was
deemed 'superstitious' (the Bacchanalia deemed too gross) -- "unless", Dione
goes on, a private family could make a case that they needed to worship the
god, anyway.
And so on.
Cheers,
Speranza
----- Only today I received a notification on a forthcoming conference on
faith, etc., which had me thinking about L. Helm on Wade. I may repost if I
find it!
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