The sacred and the solemn ?

[Quintus Pomponius Atticus]

Salvete omnes,

I just finished a chapter in R. Etienne's "Daily life in Pompeii" about the wall paintings recovered from the city, which often appear to be making fun of the gods. E.g., on the frieze in the bath-atriolium in the house of Menander, the gods are depicted as dwarfs with enormous heads making puppet-like gestures. Jupiter is portrayed with long, disheveled hairs and looks rather frightened at the prospect of being reprimanded by a jealous Juno for his promiscuous lifestyle and also of Venus who, disguised as a witch, asks Cupido to shoot his arrows at the him.

I was wondering, was it something common for the ancient Romans to mock their gods in such a way, to treat their religious life so lightly ? And if so, should we regard this as a sign of widespread scepticism and an ironical attitude about the gods, or only as an expression of the fact that they did not see a wide gap between the "immanent" and the "transcendent" world as in the Christian religion, that gods and humans were essentialy akin, apart from the fact that the gods were immortal and powerful, and humans mortal and frail ? I also wonder if the Romans knew the reverse attitude, something like religious fervour, a sort of puritan piety in their own religion (not talking about imported religions such as the Isis-cult) ?

Valete,

Atticus

[Horatius Piscinus]

Salve Attice

The Romans used comic paintings in their houses and such public places as the bath houses with a purpose in mind. They were intended to induce laughter as a way of chasing away evil spirits. Those sour, puritanical, evil spirits just can't stand mirth. It's a ploy that still works today I guess. My ithiphallic Tiki seems to frighten off my in-laws at least.

The Romans thought differently about the Gods than do Christian puritans. I don't think you can really say their behavior was sceptical or irreverent based on what Christians would think about their gods. The Romans had a great deal of respectful reverence for the Gods in Their special places, such as in the temples and sacred groves. Stories of the Gods, told by poets, were not taken as factual but as metaphorical. One of the criticisms made against Christians was that they were naive enough to think their myths were literally true. That seems to be a problem between Christians still today, arguing over how literal or metaphorical their myths should be taken. Philosophers argued over the symbolism of the Gods' attributes and myths. But no one took such stories to be literally true. At least Cicero said something in De Natura Deorum about "what old grandmother today actually believes there was such a creature as a chimera?" On the other hand you can read Livy on where Camillus had his soldiers withdraw an image of Juno from Veii and all the reverent awe they showed towards Her.

Central to the religio Roman are the culti geniale. "There was nothing more specifically Roman than domestic worship; it was what immediately distinguished Roman religion (Turcan, <i>The Gods of Ancient Rome</i>)." You can see the importance of family rites in the way that Cicero kept returning to them in his De Legibus where he addressed his ideal religion. The Gods were thought of in terms of being family. That colours the relationship that the Romans held towards their Gods. Varro says that "the religious man reveres (the Gods) as he would his parents," and there are similar expressions among other Roman authors. So they held their Gods with a familiarity that could be reverent, while irreverent at other times, even playfully disrespectful. But I do not think you can equate that with being sceptical about their Gods as they surely were not.