CHAPTER TWENTY
Religious Actors in Daily Life:
Practices and Related Beliefs
Nicole Belayche
Religious practices offer us an echo of the place of religious matters in Roman daily
life. Most scholarly research either focuses on public cult practices or separately
investigates votive rituals and others – like superstitious or forbidden (“magical”)
practices – as if they refer to different conceptions of reality or satisfy different
religious needs. When they are scrutinized together, one may realize that the whole
range of ritual ways betrays a coherent conception of the world and answers similar
needs in day-to-day life, however diverse it may appear; but each ritual was performed
in a particular social context (Rüpke 2005a, English edn).“Humanity Born for Pains” (natum in curas
hominum genus) (Tibullus 3.4.9)
Three reasons might explain the academic partition within studies of Roman reli-
gious life. Daily homage paid to the gods was largely not spectacular; even blood
sacrifices used small animals in the main, as is demonstrated by the statistical data
available (M. Jameson 1988). Two late testimonies assume this fact. A law of 392
that forbids pagan practices lists them by the ways they were performed: “venerate
his Lar with fire, his Geniuswith wine, his Penates with fragrant odors; he shall
not burn lights to them, place incense before them, or suspend wreaths for them”
(CTh16.10.12.4 – 6). These gestures are depicted for an annual festival in Mamre,
Palestine (Sozomenus, HE2.4.5). Such modest offerings did not leave many traces.
The visibility of ritual practices to modern observers is thus related to devotees’ social
and economical status (Juvenal 12.10 –14). Attention is thus primarily focused on
public celebrations, for their remains are indeed more available. The rule admits excep-
tions, however: in 293 bce, at the most critical point of a battle, a general promised