Varro’s<i>Divine Antiquities</i>: Roman Religion as an Image of Truth

Nuffelen, Peter Van

doi:10.1086/651716

Cited by 29 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 21 publications

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“…It was more common than the philosophical approach, and today it is typically associated with Varro. 96 The antiquarian approach aimed to systematise religious practice by showing that the received practices were ancient, of great civic benefit, 97 and full of wisdom about the workings of the world. 98 Lactantius used his origin story to supplant antiquarian narratives of Roman religio.…”

Section: Religio Against Impietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of *Religio**

Alimi

2023

Journal of Religious History

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Scholars of religion sometimes argue that a distinctively modern conception of religion takes religion to be a trans‐cultural category, divisible into “true” and “false” versions, of which Christianity is the core type. Thus, according to the so‐called modern conception of religion, every culture has its own religion. Some are true (paradigmatically Christianity), some are false. This paper argues that these ideas were present in Lactantius's (c. 250–325) conception of religio. It shows this by presenting Lactantius's development of a theory of religio. This theory was the product of Lactantius combining one Ciceronian conception of religio and a Christian origin‐story about where religio comes from. Lactantius used this theory to analyse Christianity and what he took to be its competitors.

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Section: Religio Against Impietymentioning

confidence: 99%

Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of *Religio**

Alimi

2023

Journal of Religious History

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“…72 Varro was also exceptionally devoted to the rites: out of the fragments for his Divine Antiquities, five are dedicated to Samothrace, an extraordinary number in a work explicitly focused on Roman traditions. 73 Explaining his zeal, Varro states that religion and philosophy share the task of preserving the great truths of the world soul. Early kings knew these and put them into forms which would be comprehensible to the philosophically educated, but should remain opaque to the masses.…”

Section: Shining Twins On Samothrace: Varro and Nigidiusmentioning

confidence: 99%

Starry Twins and Mystery Rites: From Samothrace to Mithras

Blakely

2018

Acta Antiqua

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Summary Iconographic analogies between the Mithraic torchbearers, Cautes and Cautopates, and the Greek Dioscuri encourage a comparative analysis of these figures in context. Previous studies have emphasized the potential for the divine twins to be the origins of the torchbearers: a closer examination of the Dioscuri as they functioned within another mystery cult, the rites of the Great Gods of Samothrace, offers light on both the phenomenology of initiation and the cultural context common to both the Greek and the Roman rituals. Among the numerous visual and conceptual parallels, the strongest commonality between the two sets of youths is a cultural appetite for astral mysticism, which connects the late Republican Roman voices on Samothrace and the later world of the Mithraic caves. The two mysteries served, however, profoundly different functions with respect to Roman identity – a dynamic which the parallel presence of twinned, framing shining lights reveals.

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“… Véase Lehmann, 1997;Rüpke, 2014;Van Nuffelen, 2010, Bogdan 2021 Para un estudio sobre la llamativa elección de Varrón del templo de Telus, véase Brown 2019, pp. 317-351 5.…”

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Concepción de la naturaleza en la literatura latina

2024

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El libro que presentamos intenta abarcar el estudio de los diversos campos semánticos de la Naturaleza (natura) en la literatura romana a través de sus textos más relevantes. Se propone una indagación pormenorizada del corpus literario latino desde los comienzos de la República en una investigación sistemática que, tras una introducción, comprende trabajos sobre Plauto, Cicerón, Varrón, Lucrecio, Virgilio, Horacio, Ovidio, Séneca y autores de la tardoantigüedad y la Edad Media.

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Varro’sDivine Antiquities: Roman Religion as an Image of Truth

Cited by 29 publications

References 21 publications

Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of *Religio**

Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of *Religio**

Starry Twins and Mystery Rites: From Samothrace to Mithras

Concepción de la naturaleza en la literatura latina

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Varro’sDivine Antiquities: Roman Religion as an Image of Truth

Cited by 29 publications

References 21 publications

Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of Religio*

Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of Religio*

Starry Twins and Mystery Rites: From Samothrace to Mithras

Concepción de la naturaleza en la literatura latina

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About

Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of *Religio**

Lactantius's “Modern” Conception of *Religio**