Homepage Ralph Häussler |
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"Sucellos", Celtic for "The Good Striker" - the mallet/hammer god that was popular in Southern Gaul in Roman times, often called Silvanus... But who is he? The iconography is the result of a culture clash, resulting in a new form of representation for an indigenous divine concept... But the Roman-period representations would have hardly been recognised by a pre-Roman "Celt"...
1. "De-Romanization"?
What do I mean by "De-Romanisation"...?
This page is very much about the old debate about the term "Romanisation"... Even if we try to avoid the term "Romanisation" nowadays, the underlying understandings are often still present how people present and think about developments in the Roman Empire. And in some scholarly traditions they are still very strong. In a recent publication in French, for example, the reader was told that "Romanisation is a fact"...
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Nîmes, Maison Carrée: Temple of the Augustan period and visbile symbol for the "Roman-ness" of this important city in Southern Gaul which saw important investment under Augustus! But was this temple really at the heart of the religious life of this community...? Did it promote Roman-style cults, deities, rituals,...?
2. Municipalisation & Religion?
There is still a dominant academic discourse that suggests the "Romanisation" of "provincial religions", notably as a result of the urbanisation and municipalisation of "city states" in Greco-Roman form... (cf. publications, e.g. by W. van Andringa: Religion en Gaule romaine: piété et politique. Paris 2002).
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Jupitergigantenreiter ("Jupiter-Giant column"), typical for Eastern Gaul in Roman times. No, Roman Jupiters do not ride horses... A new image had developed to represent a local myth, a fight between a celestial and a chthonic deity (the latter is represented by the snake-like giant with human head). Greco-Roman iconography employed to represent a myth that has more similarities with pre-Roman "Celtic" coins
(musée Metz, photo by author R.H.).
3. More diversity, not less...!
The traditional, and unfortunately still predominant, discourses suggest that religious activities become increasingly "Roman " in nature... But why should they? The foundation or re-foundation of a Roman-style city does not mean that its inhabitants had to follow Roman religion... And Rome certainly had no "missionary" intentions or any Sendungsbewusstsein...
In fact, already Festus tell us in his definition of the so-called "municipal cults" (s.v. municipalia sacra, 146L): Municipalia sacra vocantur, quae ab initio habuerunt ante civitatem Romanam acceptam; quae observare eos voluerunt pontifices, et eo more facere, quo adsuessent antiquitus. "Those sacra are called municipalia that a people had from its origin, before receiving Roman citizenship, and which the pontifices (="high priests") wanted them to continue to observe and perform in the way in which they had been accustomed to perform them from antiquity.” If the Romans did not impose their cults, even on Roman-citizen communities, then we need to ask why change was happening, and often rather rapidly...:
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