Essay On Roman Religion

For the majority of human history, people have held a belief in gods or higher beings which control certain aspects of our lives. These beliefs have governed our lives and behaviour towards ourselves and others, especially to those who hold a different view from our own. For the ancient Romans and many people who lived before them, there was a belief in multiple gods, Polytheism. With each god having control over something different, there was for example one god for the sun and another for war, this meant that their gods did not have complete control over everything. This difference from Judaism and Christianity, which were growing in influence during the Roman Empire, as they had only one God who oversaw everything and had complete power.

Another reason for the hatred of Christians and Jews was that they refused to pray to or worship the Roman gods. Christianity was seen as a sub group of Judaism. This was seen as a great insult to the gods as well the Emperor as he was a god in human form. The worship of most deities was accepted as the Roman Empire encorpsed an large amount of different beliefs, although most of them were Romanised, Christianity was not accepted as it was seen as a threat to the Empire. The empire slowly started to be more accepting of Christianity and its beliefs, shown in 331 CE when the Emperor Galerius passed a law which recognised Christianity as a religion, stopping much of the persecution allowing Christians to practise their beliefs without fear. Then later in 395 CE emperor Constantine made Christianity the official religion in the Empire, as he had converted to Christianity himself. This then led to multiple anti-pagan laws and the tearing down of pagan temples. Anyone who did not worship the ‘one god’ was seen as a threat. This, in turn led to many pagan uprisings across the Empire, causing civil unrest leading to further