Ancient Roman Temples
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Ancient Roman Temples
Ancient Roman temples were among the most important buildings in Roman culture, and some of the richest buildings in Roman architecture, though only a few survive in any sort of complete state. Today they remain "the most obvious symbol of Roman architecture".Summerson (1980), 25 Their construction and maintenance was a major part of ancient Roman religion, and all towns of any importance had at least one main temple, as well as smaller shrines. The main room ''(cella)'' housed the cult image of the deity to whom the temple was dedicated, and often a table for supplementary offerings or libations and a small altar for incense. Behind the cella was a room or rooms used by temple attendants for storage of equipment and offerings. The ordinary worshiper rarely entered the cella, and most public ceremonies were performed outside where the sacrificial altar was located, on the portico, with a crowd gathered in the temple precinct. The most common architectural plan had a recta ...
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Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post- Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterranean Sea in Europe, North Africa, and Western Asia, and was ruled by emperors. From the accession of Caesar Augustus as the first Roman emperor to the military anarchy of the 3rd century, it was a Principate with Italia as the metropole of its provinces and the city of Rome as its sole capital. The Empire was later ruled by multiple emperors who shared control over the Western Roman Empire and the Eastern Roman Empire. The city of Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts until AD 476 when the imperial insignia were sent to Constantinople following the capture of the Western capital of Ravenna by the Germanic barbarians. The adoption of Christianity as the state church of the Roman Empire in AD 380 and the fall of th ...
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Sacellum
In ancient Roman religion, a ''sacellum'' is a small shrine. The word is a diminutive from '' sacrum'' (neuter of ''sacer'', "belonging to a god"). The numerous ''sacella'' of ancient Rome included both shrines maintained on private properties by families, and public shrines. A ''sacellum'' might be square or round. Varro and Verrius Flaccus describe ''sacella'' in ways that at first seem contradictory, the former defining a ''sacellum'' in its entirety as equivalent to a ''cella'', which is specifically an enclosed space, and the latter insisting that a ''sacellum'' had no roof. "Enclosure," however, is the shared characteristic, roofed over or not. "The ''sacellum''," notes Jörg Rüpke, "was both less complex and less elaborately defined than a temple proper." The meaning can overlap with that of ''sacrarium'', a place where sacred objects ''(sacra)'' were stored or deposited for safekeeping. The ''sacella'' of the Argei, for instance, are also called ''sacraria''. In private ...
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Vitruvius
Vitruvius (; c. 80–70 BC – after c. 15 BC) was a Roman architect and engineer during the 1st century BC, known for his multi-volume work entitled '' De architectura''. He originated the idea that all buildings should have three attributes: , , and ("strength", "utility", and "beauty"). These principles were later widely adopted in Roman architecture. His discussion of perfect proportion in architecture and the human body led to the famous Renaissance drawing of the '' Vitruvian Man'' by Leonardo da Vinci. Little is known about Vitruvius' life, but by his own descriptionDe Arch. Book 1, preface. section 2. he served as an artilleryman, the third class of arms in the Roman military offices. He probably served as a senior officer of artillery in charge of ''doctores ballistarum'' (artillery experts) and ''libratores'' who actually operated the machines. As an army engineer he specialized in the construction of ''ballista'' and '' scorpio'' artillery war machines for si ...
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Glossary Of Ancient Roman Religion
The vocabulary of ancient Roman religion was highly specialized. Its study affords important information about the religion, traditions and beliefs of the ancient Romans. This legacy is conspicuous in European cultural history in its influence on later juridical and religious vocabulary in Europe, particularly of the Western Church. This glossary provides explanations of concepts as they were expressed in Latin pertaining to religious practices and beliefs, with links to articles on major topics such as priesthoods, forms of divination, and rituals. For theonyms, or the names and epithets of gods, see List of Roman deities. For public religious holidays, see Roman festivals. For temples see the List of Ancient Roman temples. Individual landmarks of religious topography in ancient Rome are not included in this list; see Roman temple. __NOTOC__ Glossary A abominari The verb ''abominari'' ("to avert an omen", from ''ab-'', "away, off," and ''ominari'', "to pronounce on ...
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Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the Roman Republic it became the dominant language in the Italian region and subsequently throughout the Roman Empire. Even after the fall of Western Rome, Latin remained the common language of international communication, science, scholarship and academia in Europe until well into the 18th century, when other regional vernaculars (including its own descendants, the Romance languages) supplanted it in common academic and political usage, and it eventually became a dead language in the modern linguistic definition. Latin is a highly inflected language, with three distinct genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), six or seven noun cases (nominative, accusative, genitive, dative, ablative, and vocative), five declensions, four ...
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Pantheon, Rome
The Pantheon (, ; la, Pantheum,Although the spelling ''Pantheon'' is standard in English, only ''Pantheum'' is found in classical Latin; see, for example, Pliny, '' Natural History'36.38 "Agrippas Pantheum decoravit Diogenes Atheniensis". See also ''Oxford Latin Dictionary'', s.v. "Pantheum"; ''Oxford English Dictionary'', s.v"Pantheon" "post-classical Latin ''pantheon'' a temple consecrated to all the gods (6th cent.; compare classical Latin ''pantheum'')". from Greek ''Pantheion'', " empleof all the gods") is a former Roman temple and, since 609 AD, a Catholic church (Basilica di Santa Maria ad Martyres or Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs) in Rome, Italy, on the site of an earlier temple commissioned by Marcus Agrippa during the reign of Augustus (27 BC – 14 AD). It was rebuilt by the emperor Hadrian and probably dedicated  126 AD. Its date of construction is uncertain, because Hadrian chose not to inscribe the new temple but rather to retain t ...
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Romulus
Romulus () was the legendary founder and first king of Rome. Various traditions attribute the establishment of many of Rome's oldest legal, political, religious, and social institutions to Romulus and his contemporaries. Although many of these traditions incorporate elements of folklore, and it is not clear to what extent a historical figure underlies the mythical Romulus, the events and institutions ascribed to him were central to the myths surrounding Rome's origins and cultural traditions. Traditional account The myths concerning Romulus involve several distinct episodes and figures, including the miraculous birth and youth of Romulus and his twin brother, Remus; Remus' murder and the founding of Rome; the Rape of the Sabine Women, and the subsequent war with the Sabines; a period of joint rule with Titus Tatius; the establishment of various Roman institutions; the death or apotheosis of Romulus, and the succession of Numa Pompilius. Romulus and Remus According to Roman my ...
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Roman Forum
The Roman Forum, also known by its Latin name Forum Romanum ( it, Foro Romano), is a rectangular Forum (Roman), forum (plaza) surrounded by the ruins of several important ancient government buildings at the center of the city of Rome. Citizens of the ancient city referred to this space, originally a marketplace, as the ', or simply the '. For centuries the Forum was the center of day-to-day life in Rome: the site of Roman triumph, triumphal processions and elections; the venue for public speeches, Roman litigation, criminal trials, and gladiator, gladiatorial matches; and the nucleus of commercial affairs. Here statues and monuments commemorated the city's great men. The teeming heart of ancient Rome, it has been called the most celebrated meeting place in the world, and in all history. Located in the small valley between the Palatine Hill, Palatine and Capitoline Hills, the Forum today is a sprawling ruin of architectural fragments and intermittent archaeological excavations a ...
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Santi Cosma E Damiano
The basilica of Santi Cosma e Damiano is a titular church in Rome, Italy. The lower portion of the building is accessible through the Roman Forum and incorporates original Roman buildings, but the entrance to the upper level is outside the Forum. The circular building located at the entrance of the Forum, which now houses a small archeological exhibit, was built in the early 4th century as a Roman temple. It is thought to have been dedicated to Valerius Romulus, deified son of the emperor Maxentius. The main building was perhaps the library of an imperial forum. It became a church in 527 and contains important but much restored early Christian art, especially in its mosaics. Today it is one of the ancient churches called ''tituli'', of which cardinals are patrons as cardinal-deacons. Since 28 November 2020 the title has been held by Cardinal Mario Grech. The basilica, devoted to the two Arabian Christian brothers, doctors, martyrs and saints Cosmas and Damian, is located in the ...
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Honorius (emperor)
Honorius (9 September 384 – 15 August 423) was Roman emperor from 393 to 423. He was the younger son of emperor Theodosius I and his first wife Aelia Flaccilla. After the death of Theodosius, Honorius ruled the western half of the empire while his brother Arcadius ruled the eastern half. In 410, during Honorius's reign over the Western Roman Empire, Rome was sacked for the first time in almost 800 years. Even by the standards of the Western Empire, Honorius's reign was precarious and chaotic. His early reign was supported by his principal general, Stilicho, who was successively Honorius's guardian (during his childhood) and his father-in-law (after the emperor became an adult). Family Honorius was born to Emperor Theodosius I and Empress Aelia Flaccilla on 9 September 384 in Constantinople. He was brother to Arcadius and Pulcheria. In 386, his mother died, and in 387, Theodosius married Galla who had taken a temporary refuge in Thessaloniki with her family, including he ...
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Decline Of Greco-Roman Polytheism
The growth of Christianity from its obscure origin 40 AD, with fewer than 1,000 followers, to being the majority religion of the entire Roman Empire by AD 350, has been examined through a wide variety of historiographical approaches. Until the last decades of the twentieth century, the primary theory was provided by Edward Gibbon in ''The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'', published in 1776. Gibbon theorized that paganism declined from the second century BC and was finally eliminated by the top-down imposition of Christianity by Constantine, the first Christian emperor, and his successors in the fourth century AD. For over 200 years, Gibbon's model and its expanded explanatory versions—the conflict model and the legislative model—have provided the major narrative. The conflict model asserts that Christianity rose in conflict with paganism, defeating it only after emperors became Christian and were willing to use their power to require conversion ...
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