The success and smooth functioning of the Roman Republic depended on a careful balancing of the interests of the individual and the interests of the commonwealth. In this study, Eric Orlin examines the process through which new temples were vowed, built, and dedicated as a way of examining key features of the interrelated political and religious systems of Republican Rome. Orlin questions previous scholarship on several points, suggesting that the Senate, and not just individual generals, played an active and significant role in the construction of new temples and emphasizing the high degree...

Religion is a particularly useful field within which to study Roman self-definition, for the Romans considered themselves to be the most religious of all peoples and ascribed their imperial success to their religiosity. This study builds on the observation that the Romans were remarkably open to outside influences to explore how installing foreign religious elements as part of their own religious system affected their notions of what it meant to be Roman. The inclusion of so many foreign elements posed difficulties for defining a sense of Romanness at the very moment when a territorial...