Examining the diverse religious texts and practices of the late Hellenistic and Roman periods, this collection of essays investigates the many meanings and functions of ritual sacrifice in the ancient world. The essays survey sacrificial acts, ancient theories, and literary as well as artistic depictions of sacrifice, showing that any attempt to identify a single underlying significance of sacrifice is futile. Sacrifice cannot be defined merely as a primal expression of violence, despite the frequent equation of sacrifice to religion and sacrifice to violence in many modern scholarly works;...

This book examines the connection between political and religious power in the pagan Roman Empire through a study of senatorial religion. Presenting a new collection of historical, epigraphic, prosopographic and material evidence, it argues that as Augustus turned to religion to legitimize his powers, senators in turn also came to negotiate their own power, as well as that of the emperor, partly in religious terms. In Rome, the body of the senate and priesthoods helped to maintain the religious power of the senate; across the Empire senators defined their magisterial powers by following the...