192 THE ROMAN EMPIRE
where the Roman–native religious and cultural confrontation was played
out. The gods that disappeared in Roman Gaul include those connected
with sovereignty and war, prominent in the period of independence.^10
The Romans, however, did encounter cults and institutions that they
were unwilling to absorb. Strabo employs a rough three- fold distinction
among cults and practices between the politika , that is, those characteristic
of a polis , the savage and those in an intermediate grade (165). The fi rst are
praiseworthy, and the third could be tolerated. The second, however, are
disapproved of, and, says Strabo, have been suppressed where possible.
Sacrifi ces, divination and other practices involving human victims are in
question. Why were they suppressed? Strabo gives no reason beyond the
bland statement that they were un-Roman. After describing the Gallic
custom of nailing heads of enemies to the entrances of homes, he continues:
‘But the Romans put a stop to these customs, as well as all those connected
with the sacrifi ces and divinations that are opposed to our usages. They used
to strike a human being whom they had devoted to death in the back with a
sabre and then divine from his death struggle. But they would not sacrifi ce
without the Druids’ (198).
Writing a century after Strabo, Tacitus in his remarkably evenhanded
treatment of German religion in the Germania – giving credit where it was
due for piety, respect for tradition, devotion to divination, absence of
anthropomorphism – employs the religio– superstitio distinction to mark off
Roman from un-Roman elements. But the distinction, which could in any
case be turned against offi cial Roman religion itself, as by Varro and Seneca
(Augustine, de Civ.D. 6.10), is not applied rigorously and lacks explanatory
force.
Sheer moral repugnance, which surfaces more conspicuously in Tacitus
than in Strabo or Caesar, contributed to the decision to suppress. The
Romans moved against human sacrifi ce everywhere, in north Africa, where
it was associated with Saturn (Baal-Hammon), as well as in Gaul. But the
essential explanation is political. ‘But they would not sacrifi ce without the
Druids,’ says Strabo. Religious, social and political authority were
intermeshed in Celtic and German society. Suppression of Druids in Gaul
and Britain, and hostility toward the prophetesses of Germany, are
manifestations of the traditional Roman policy of stamping on those
elements of an indigenous religion that impeded the advance of their
empire.^11
Judaism was another ethnic religion whose autonomy was at risk, though
in quite different circumstances.^12 Again it is the political aspect of the
Jewish problem which should hold our attention. The origin of Rome’s
failure to coexist peaceably with the Jews does not lie in the incompatibility
of this exclusive, monotheistic religion with the offi cial religion, or in the
distaste felt for Jewish religious practices by members of the cultural elite
including Cicero, Tacitus and Strabo (who, however, has praise for the
Jewish religion and state in the time of Moses). Similarly, the earlier policy