ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

Capodifiume for at least the first generation after the colony was founded.Livi alsoelucidates the continuity in the use of the rural sanctuaries around the colony ofMinturnae, although no longer using recognizably local forms of worship.Heretofore,such analysis of local shrines in the colonies has either focused on a single colony, withperhaps scattered comparanda mustered to support an observation about that colony, oron a geographically and temporally broad selection of colonies that bear a few similartraits. In Chapters 4 and 5,1 propose to narrow the observations on local shrines to thecolonies planted in Samnium, Campania, and Northern Italy. This may offer a morestatistically significant analysis that will illustrate a religious pattern for the middleRepublic.Roman Temples, Cults, and Rites in the ColoniesThe specifically 'Roman' temples, cults, and rites that the colonists deliberately importedto their new home have been the object of much more scrutiny, but also of impreciseassumptions. The first assumption is, as mentioned above, that the colonists were allRoman and thus the religious influence will be entirely Roman, including the impositionof some form of the Roman state cult. We have already seen that there was no formalRoman pantheon or rigid topographical plan with which the colonists could stamp theirnew home. Furthermore, studies of individual colonies suggest that the main gods of thecolony, even if also worshipped at Rome, are not the deities through which Rome defined127 Crawford (2006), pp. 64-65.128 Livi (2006), pp. 90 ff. Livi includes the Temple of Marica, the sanctuary at Pentelle, Ponte Ronaco, andMonte d'Argento in her study. These rural sanctuaries served as community centers for the local ruralpopulation in the archaic period, but no longer after the Roman colony was founded.38