ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

Chapter 5: Religious Trends in Mid-Republican ColoniesI. IntroductionThe previous chapter demonstrated that each colony's pantheon was distinct and had itsown particular religious influences. In short, the religious system in each colonyreflected, and acted upon, the relationship between the Roman and Latin settlers and thepre-existing populations. In Northern Italy, these local populations included Etruscans,Gauls, and Ligurians. In South-Central Italy, the colonists interacted primarily with theVolscians, Samnites, Campanians, Lucanians, Daunians, and Greek settlers. 1Whatfollows is a discussion of the literary, epigraphic, and archaeological evidence for aselection of colonial cults in these regions in order to explore the various forms each deityor group of deities adopts according to the local influences. Thus, I have chosen toexamine gods and goddesses that could be argued to be Roman impositions in order todemonstrate the variety of ways each is worshipped throughout the colonies. The mainsections deal with the evidence for Juno, Diana, Minerva, Hercules, Mars, and Jupiter.The last section evaluates the Capitoline triad and its place in mid-Republicancolonization.Where there are cults to Roman conceptions of a deity, such as Juno Regina orJupiter, I argue that the impetus for their foundation did not come from the Roman senatepromulgating a policy of religious Romanization. Instead, these cults were introduced1 Certain colonies were isolated from the rest, and the local populations around these colonies belonged to adifferent ethnic group altogether. Sipontum is one such colony; the local Daunian culture is distinct fromany other examined in this work. Moreover not much is known about the cults of the Roman colony there.See the volume entitled Siponto Antica, Mazzei, ed. (1999). Buxentum is another isolated colony where notmuch is known about the colony yet. Cf. Trillmich (1988) (with response by Greco (1990)) andJohannowsky (1992). These colonies have been omitted from the following discussion of colonial cults.193