that played the decisive role regarding religious matters that affected the Roman
people.
A similar procedure may be seen on matters of religious law: a religious college
might render an opinion, but the senate ultimately issued the order resolving the
case. The most complete record of a religious hearing in Rome bears out this con-
clusion. When Cicero sought to have his house restored to him after his return from
exile, on the grounds that the shrine erected there during his absence had not been
properly consecrated, the debate was held before the pontifical college (Cicero, De
domo sua). Even when the pontiffs ultimately rendered a decision in Cicero’s favor,
Cicero still needed the vote of the senate to restore the property to him (Cicero,
Ad Atticum 4.2). As in the case of prodigies, the senate almost always accepted the
recommendation of the priestly college, revealing again that essential element of the
Roman political, and hence religious, administrative system: the cooperation between
the senate and individual office-holders. The place of the senate in the religious
structure of Rome may be symbolized by the locations where the senate met: such
meetings always took place in a templum, a religiously consecrated space (though
not necessarily a temple in the modern sense of the word). This fact symbolizes the
relationship between the senate and religion; in a very real sense the senate was the
caretaker of the Romans’ relationship with the divine, just as it was the caretaker of
their relationship with other humans.Effects of Expansion
From the fourth through the second centuries bce, Rome developed from a small
city on the banks of the river Tiber to an empire that dominated the Mediterranean
basin. By 270 the Romans controlled all of peninsular Italy, and over the next
hundred years, they expanded their influence overseas to include Sicily, north Africa,
Spain, Greece, and Asia Minor; some areas, such as Sicily, they governed directly as
provinces, while others they oversaw from Rome and intervened when necessary. This
expansion wrought changes in every fabric of Roman society. At the most basic level,
and most obvious to the inhabitants of Rome, the population and size of the city
expanded, and the amount of wealth, both in the form of war booty and in the form
of trade, increased even more dramatically. The growth of Roman hegemony and the
increasing disparity in wealth between the elite and the populusbrought difficulties
to the political system, threatening the internal balances that kept Roman society
functioning smoothly. The influx of foreigners, and foreign cultural elements, posed
further challenges for the Romans. Roman society had always been open to foreign
influences; Roman foundation myths, including the arrival of Aeneas as a refugee
from Troy (Virg. Aen.) and the establishment by Romulus of an asylum on the
Capitoline (Livy 1.8), reveal the Romans’ understanding that their city had not begun
as a closed or exclusive circle. Rome’s domination of the Greek-speaking eastern part
of the Mediterranean, as well as north Africa and Spain, and the large numbers of
citizens serving overseas on military campaigns brought the city into much more direct
contact with these other cultures. Because of the close relationship between religion
Urban Religion in the Middle and Late Republic 61