Roman Law and the Legal World of the Romans

20. Religious Law EEE

T here was no idea in Rome of the “separation of church and state.” During the earliest period of the Roman gov ernment, certain priesthoods were the guardians and arbiters of the law. Even after this period, many priesthoods remained state offices; there were many public rituals; and public money was spent on religious buildings and the like. And many have noted the markedly legal cast of Roman religion itself. Rituals, prayers, and responses to prodigies had to take prescribed forms. The “pontiffs” who had originally been guardians of the law in general remained less “priests” in the modern sense than religious lawyers. Hence it is not surprising that religious law was one of the major subcategories of public law in Rome. But other factors limited the reach of religious law. First, on the legal side of things, is the mere fact that divine law was, after that archaic period, a sub category of public law. The gods, apparently, did not have preferences in most mortal matters, and humans were left to their own devices in these areas. Second, on the divine side, religious authority was decentralized, and orthodoxy was not, in most respects, a Roman goal. Not even clearly religious activity in private homes, for instance, seems

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