Greco-Roman religious architecture was absent in places such as Dura-Europos. The
fact that here temples often grew out of houses has led some to suggest that the
cults of the small town that was Dura-Europos were of a relatively private nature.
However, an alternative religious architecture does not automatically exclude pat-
terns of worship known from the Greco-Roman world. There is no reason to assume
that the groups of worshipers who assembled in the temples of a small town were
more exclusive or private than their counterparts in the grand cities of the Roman
east. Instead we are faced with a recurrent situation: towns filled with, and dom-
inated by, varieties of traditional, indigenous, and classical polytheistic cults.
Such was religious life in the eastern provinces of the Roman world. According
to the model that I have sketched, it was characterized by a general tolerance not
only on the part of Rome toward foreign, non-Roman religions, but above all on
the part of the various cults and forms of religion toward each other. This should
not surprise us. In a metropolis, a small and fanatical sect could have kept a low
profile. In a hamlet, there cannot have been too much religious variation amongst
the population anyway. In a middle-sized town, there was probably not that much
alternative to a religious attitude of live and let live.FURTHER READINGA comprehensive monograph on religion in the Roman east in general seems to be lacking.
The best overview of the pagan cults in the eastern part of the Roman world is Lane Fox
(1986: part one). On Asia Minor (present-day Turkey), see above all the second volume of
Mitchell (1993), placing the pagan evidence in the context of a growing Christianity. Dignas
(2002) is a detailed study of the financial affairs of temples in Hellenistic and Roman Asia
Minor, and of their relationship with cities, kings, and emperors. As regards Syria and the
Near East, a very accessible introduction to the religious world is now Butcher (2003: ch. 9),
and see also Sartre (2005: ch. 10) for a general overview. Millar (1993a) remains the start-
ing point for an exploration of the religious identities of the different sub-regions. The clas-
sic work on how the cults from the east spread through the Roman world is still Cumont
(1929), translated into many languages, and not surpassed by R. Turcan (1996). Teixidor
(1977) argues from a study of inscriptions that popular religion in the Near East remained
unaltered throughout the Roman period. Of great importance is a small book by Bowersock
(1990), which convincingly shows the vitality of pagan cults in the Roman east, and which
describes the impact of Greek culture on indigenous forms of worship. Palmyra, a city in Syria
whose abundant sources make it one of our best test cases for understanding religious life
in the Roman east, has received treatment of its patterns of worship by two recent books:
Dirven (1999), whose model of religious interaction is built upon a study of the behavior of
Palmyrene expatriates in Dura-Europos, and Kaizer (2002), a methodical re-evaluation of the
evidence for the city’s cults, rituals, priests, and worshipers. Lichtenberger (2003) provides
an overview of religious life in the cities of the Syrian Decapolis as a whole, based above all
on the numismatic evidence. Last but not least, Lightfoot (2003) is not just a superb com-
mentary on the enigmatic treatise On the Syrian Goddess, but simultaneously an in-depth study
of Levantine religion.456 Ted Kaizer