474 Jörg Rüpke
Indian variety of Jupiter (3.42, Belus, that is Baal). The existence of Egyptian variants of
divine genealogies was noted more frequently (3.54 ff.), but those were not accorded the
status of dangerous knowledge. Such genealogies were perceived as distant local variants,
gaining no importance beyond those localities. Hence, interest in Egyptian cults at Rome
was limited in that generation. Cicero’s Cotta did not take the trouble to comment upon
the removal of shrines to Isis from the Capitol during the 50s, the last of these pertaining
to the year 48BC(Cassius Dio 42.26; see Mora 1990: 75–87), hardly more than 3 years
before Cicero wrote the books (he finished the composition before the death of Caesar).
Marcus Terentius Varro (116–27BC), however, did report these conflicts—and we will
shortly analyze that text.
It was in this milieu, when pronouncing on religious matters in book 2 of “On Laws,”
that Cicero, albeit with some reticence, tried to stop private religious change that came
from such sources (Cic.leg. 2.19; Rüpke, 2011b: 44–5). However, reticence was not
always characteristic of the Roman response. When, in the aftermath of a sexual scandal,
inAD19, the senate was called upon to debate about the expulsion ofsacra Aegyptia
Iudaicaque, “Egyptian and Jewish cults” (Tac.Ann. 2.85.5; Suet.Tib. 36.1–2), the
senators thought they should fight foreign religious practices and ruled to destroy cultic
paraphernalia and expelled the followers by various means. The combination of mea-
sures and the wording of the reports suggest ethnic and hence political implications. The
religious dimension, however, must have been important; followers of the cult—similia
sectantes, said Suetonius—were expelled, regardless of their ethnic identity, or had to stop
profani ritus, “profane rites,” as Tacitus formulates it. This is confirmed by Seneca, who
adduces the information that the expulsion of alien cults (alienigena sacra) was legit-
imized by its classification assuperstitio, as revealed by (among other facts, not related by
Seneca) their abstention from certain animals (epist. 108.22).
Similar conceptual choices are visible in a religious context that was not polemical at
all. The Roman institution of the organized training of Etruscan diviners (haruspices)
was seen as fighting economic misuse of religion—secularization one might say—by
Cicero (Div. 1.92). For Tacitus (Ann. 11.15.1), however, the fact that “foreign super-
stitions” were gaining strength was one of the main reasons for a similar measure by
Claudius. The term “superstition” demonstrates that ethnic difference had to be com-
bined and strengthened by the suggestion of deviant or even criminal behavior (see Rüpke
2011b) in order to motivate harsh action. Juvenal’s often quotediampridemSyrusin
Tiberim defluxit Orontes, “the Syrian river Orontes has already flown into the Tiber for
a long time” (3.62), does not explicitly talk about religion, but about culture in gen-
eral, music and prostitution in particular. Unlike “superstition,” religion would point to
similar human and social traits, even across ethnic differences. Hence the technique of
the so-calledinterpretatio Romana. Roman names were given to “foreign” deities (Ando
2005), because they shared basic characteristics and were part of the same class of “gods”
(Rüpke 2012b). The phrase was coined by Caesar, who in his books on the war in Gaul
described Celtic and Germanic religions. Without problems, he could speak about the
Gallic cult of Mercury (6.17.1). This was more than a mere translation into Latin, an
interpretatio Latina. However, it was a translation that presupposed the principal univer-
sality of the phenomenon of religion and of the gods, even if it did not reflect it (Woolf
2011: 58). Differences could be acknowledged, easily acknowledged. The “Greek rite,”
too, was not second-class, by no means. Evidently, the gods liked it.