continued the positivism but with less of Mommsen’s influence (Z. Stewart 1972).
Likewise again, Robert Palmer made the very best possible case for an empirico-
positivist approach as he extracted seemingly every plausible meaning from a
panoply of recalcitrant evidence; his superb results should give pause to those who
consider that theoretical approaches constitute the only way to further advances in
the study of Roman religion (Palmer 1974). Gerhard Radke continued the earlier
emphasis on etymologies and origins in his Die Götter Altitaliens([1965] 1979) and
rather speculatively in Zur Entwicklung der Gottesvorstellung und der Gottesverehrung
in Rom(1987); we should remember that Weinstock considered it high praise that
in his view Latte knew linguistics even better than Wissowa (Weinstock 1961: 207).
The idiosyncratic continued with Dumézil’s La religion romaine archaïque(1966,
2nd edn 1974), which pushed comparative linguistics almost to the limit. Finally
there are the revisionists. Louise Adams Holland wedded empirico-positivism to
a respectful yet skeptical use of the earlier British anthropologists, consequently
demonstrating that the earlier theorizing should not be rashly dismissed (Holland
1961), while we have seen Weinstock’s use of Samter amidst his self-identification
with the Mommsen tradition. More frequently, though, the same scholar who dis-
misses theories and comparativism will not be above using them almost on the sly,
as it were; thus Kurt Latte dismissed Samter’s use of animism while approving of
the concept of sympathetic magic (Latte 1960: 94 n. 1, 69).
Recent years have also seen the expansion of an unfortunate tendency in literary
studies into studies of Roman religion. There has long existed a legion of literary
studies of, say, “myth in Propertius” or “ritual in Ovid” either standing alone or as
parts of a larger work. Too often those studies show scant familiarity with Roman
religion beyond misconceptions prevalent among the literary scholars, sometimes but-
tressed by handbook forays to cull that which seems to support the misconceptions.
Specialists in Roman religion have previously and profitably shunned such cacata
carta. But since Ovidians have turned to his Fasti, the situation becomes critical.
Their lack of attention to Roman religion now inevitably leads to the misrepres-
entation of a substantial poem on Roman religion and hence all Roman religion.
Symptomatic: a recent commentary on part of the Fasti, a commentary deficient
on Roman religion, received a positive review by a respected Latinist in a respected
journal, despite the review’s thunderous silence on any issue of Roman religion.
Writ large, as I have put it in a review (Phillips 1996: 285) of an excellent small
survey of Greek religion, equally applicable here by changing “myth” to “Roman
religion”:
because all classicists possess that necessary linguistic training, it follows that everyone
thinks he or she knows what myth is and is competent to pronounce on it... Put
differently, there exists as common knowledge in classical studies an enormous amount
of interpretational twaddle promulgated by those without any knowledge of Greco-Roman
religion beyond what they read in the ancient texts.Of course, literary studies have a fundamental contribution to make to Roman reli-
gion, and specialists in Roman religion have long, through inattention to literaryApproaching Roman Religion 25