The gods, the state, and the individual: reflections on civic religion in Rome

Roman 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.

In this book, John Scheid confronts these and other challenges directly.