The Gods, the State, and the Individual - 9780812247664

The Gods, the State, and the IndividualReflections on Civic Religion in Rome\nAuthor(s): John Scheid, Clifford Ando, Clifford Ando\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: University of Pennsylvania Press, United States\nImprint: University of Pennsylvania Press\nISBN-13: 9780812247664, 978-0812247664\nSynopsis\nRoman religion has long presented a number of challenges to historians approaching the subject from a perspective framed by the three Abrahamic religions. The Romans had no sacred text that espoused its creed or offered a portrait of its foundational myth. They described relations with the divine using technical terms widely employed to describe relations with other humans. Indeed, there was not even a word in classical Latin that corresponds to the English word religion.\n In The Gods, the State, and the Individual, John Scheid confronts these and other challenges directly. If Roman religious practice has long been dismissed as a cynical or nave system of borrowed structures unmarked b.