did so only infrequently; and despite Weinstock’s long tenure at Oxford and regu-
lar lectures on Roman religion, the questions on Roman religion posed in the Oxford
“Greats” examinations in the 1960s were virtually identical to those posed in the
previous century. Compare “What do we gather from Tacitus respecting the wor-
ship of the numen of Augustus?” (1876) with “What conditions determined the
decision to deify Augustus in September, a.d.14?” (1964). The sorts of questions
posed in the Oxbridge exams did not rely so much on specialists’ research as on the
traditional views. That is, although specialist Oxford dons might write on Roman
religion in light of the latest evidence and theorizing, their influence on the exam-
inations was nil. This should not surprise when we consider, for example, that Stefan
Weinstock did no tutorial work, and of the three research students who began work
with him, only one (John North) completed his DPhil with him.
Many of the British anthropologist-classicists were religious skeptics. On their view,
“magic” and animism were almost co-extensive, the starting point for evolution to
science by way of religion. The less skeptical saw an evolution to religion by way of
science, but all agreed that “magic,” often equated with animism, lay at the evolu-
tionary base and thus constituted something different from religion. Although
“magic” and its synonyms had appeared in the ancient texts, in virtually all cases it
constituted a term of convenience with which to blacken one’s theological oppon-
ents. Now it was not only opposed to religion, but in light of the ethnographic
material a “primitive” mode of thought of “savage” peoples, and for “peoples” read
“those who were not Christian and not European” (Phillips 1986: 2711–32, Phillips
1991b). Despite those divisions, they shared a common language, and thus J. G.
Frazer’s commentary on Ovid’s Fasti(1929: 426) remarks of 2.520 (primitias Cereri
farra resecta dabant) “to eat of them was to partake of the body of a god, in other
words, it was a sacrifice or communion.” Hence the origin of today’s unfortunate
common parlance that Roman religion was of primitive origins which not even
later developments could eradicate. Hence too the unfortunate common use of
Christian-centric words such as “pagan orthodoxy” in studies of Roman religion.
As for Germany, the measured compliments of, for example, Warde Fowler
(supra) were not returned; comparative material and anthropology had acquired a
bad smell for German classicists. Since Niebuhr, German classicists had an import-
ant role in providing an intellectual and historical charter for the rise of Prussia;
many German ancient historians concerned themselves with the constitutional basis
of government along with law and imperialism. The rest, including Roman religion,
deemed peripheral to the study, was consigned to Privataltertümer. One might say
Roman religion lost in both countries. It lost in Britain as a primitive religion of
“magic” and animism. It lost in Germany as irrelevant to historical studies except
insofar as Reichsreligioncould be fractioned from it. It also lost because the unfor-
tunate circumstance of World War I resulted in the deaths of a number of young
scholars whose scholarly inclinations lay with the incorporation of the best of British
and German scholarship on Roman religion. Nevertheless, the fact remained that
there were issues and evidence in Roman religion, and so hardy classicists in both
countries kept the study alive in the face of such dispiriting and disparaging classi-
cist ideologies in both countries (A4, B3, C).
Approaching Roman Religion 23