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Divine Qualities
This book explores an aspect of how Romans thought about themselves. Its subject is 'divine qualities': qualities like Concord, Faith, Hope, Clemency, Fortune, Freedom, Piety, and Victory, which received public cult in Rome in the Republican period. Anna Clark draws on a wide range of evidence (literature, drama, coins, architecture, inscriptions and graffiti) to show that these qualities were not simply given cult because they were intrinsically important to 'Romans'. They rather became 'Roman' through claims, counter-claims, appropriations and explorations of them by different individuals. The resources brought into existence by cult (temples, altars, coin images, statues, passwords, votive inscriptions) were visible and accessible to a broad range of people. Divine qualities were relevant to a broader social spectrum than is usually recognized, and this has important consequences for our understanding of Roman society.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
376 pages, Hardcover
First published October 4, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
September 28, 2018
ACTUAL RATING: 3.5
Talk about a dense read. Even for someone who likes academic books, DIVINE QUALITIES was a challenge.
When most laypeople think of the Ancient Roman religion, they think of the Greek pantheon with different names. However, the Ancient Romans also had an entire system of "divine qualities;" ideas and concepts given shrines, cults, and worshipped alongside the deities. Divine qualities included concepts like "victory" (victoria), "safety" (salus), and "hope" (spes). Unlike the gods, with complicated familial relationships and personifications, the divine qualities of the Romans could be invoked and reinterpreted as the speaker desired. From theaters to temples, from battle passwords to Cicero's propaganda, divine qualities were frequently invoked and manipulated to promote social values or push an agenda to the general populace.
DIVINE QUALITIES by Anna J. Clark surveys all current (as of 2007) literature and research on divine qualities to paint a distinct picture of how divine qualities functioned in everyday Roman lives. A vast majority of the book contrasts and compares various expert opinions in the field, making it a difficult read for readers who may not be familiar with last decade's who's-who of Ancient Roman historians. While DIVINE QUALITIES begins strong with an analysis of surviving Roman plays and literature, the book often jumps around from narrow focus to narrow focus, often with little to tie multiple topics together, due to the vast nature of the topic in question.
Despite the "Cult and Community" subtitle, most of the focus is on how great playwrights and political speakers might have expected the general populace to react to their works. Part of the problem is, naturally, a side effect of limited source material. The author seems afraid to speculate too much; the riskiest claims she makes for most of the book is whether she agrees with one historian over the other. Interesting ideas, such as the relationships between divine qualities usage between Emperors and their subjects, are left to the all too short conclusion. Had more time been spent with Clark's own ideas and contributions, perhaps the book would have been an easier read.
Talk about a dense read. Even for someone who likes academic books, DIVINE QUALITIES was a challenge.
When most laypeople think of the Ancient Roman religion, they think of the Greek pantheon with different names. However, the Ancient Romans also had an entire system of "divine qualities;" ideas and concepts given shrines, cults, and worshipped alongside the deities. Divine qualities included concepts like "victory" (victoria), "safety" (salus), and "hope" (spes). Unlike the gods, with complicated familial relationships and personifications, the divine qualities of the Romans could be invoked and reinterpreted as the speaker desired. From theaters to temples, from battle passwords to Cicero's propaganda, divine qualities were frequently invoked and manipulated to promote social values or push an agenda to the general populace.
DIVINE QUALITIES by Anna J. Clark surveys all current (as of 2007) literature and research on divine qualities to paint a distinct picture of how divine qualities functioned in everyday Roman lives. A vast majority of the book contrasts and compares various expert opinions in the field, making it a difficult read for readers who may not be familiar with last decade's who's-who of Ancient Roman historians. While DIVINE QUALITIES begins strong with an analysis of surviving Roman plays and literature, the book often jumps around from narrow focus to narrow focus, often with little to tie multiple topics together, due to the vast nature of the topic in question.
Despite the "Cult and Community" subtitle, most of the focus is on how great playwrights and political speakers might have expected the general populace to react to their works. Part of the problem is, naturally, a side effect of limited source material. The author seems afraid to speculate too much; the riskiest claims she makes for most of the book is whether she agrees with one historian over the other. Interesting ideas, such as the relationships between divine qualities usage between Emperors and their subjects, are left to the all too short conclusion. Had more time been spent with Clark's own ideas and contributions, perhaps the book would have been an easier read.
June 30, 2024
"Ubi libertas cecidit, audet libere nemo loqui (‘where libertas has fallen, no one dares to speak freely’)"
- Where foolishness arises, everyone speaks stupidity and calumny freely, leading to the death of liberties.
In my humble opinion, deified qualities as virtus or arete (although these concepts are similar, there should be discernment) are the creme de la creme of the society that wants to permeate its finest values and associate itself with them, especially people whose governing public relations and political marketing requires that. From a theological perpectives it was the hypostasis of these ideas that took on personified form as crystallized ontological small deities, alike to bionic statues and magical technologies, and later developed into medieval allegories in much more blunt fashion in order to evoke them in imagination, flattening them down to philosophical-symbolic purviews. A virtue that becomes empty, a surrogated lie - always becomes a vice. Every quality is thus eternal, for it shared in Divinities, but it undergoes a dance macabre on Earth, when it becomes an empty, reified concept."Ovid supports the thesis of Divinity of these qualities, as perhaps individuated forms of Virtus" (p.164). Among listed qualities (in this list both Greek and Roman) are: Homonoia; Concordia; Eleos; Aidos, Pheme; Horms; Charis; Peitho; Penia; Amechania; Mater Matuta; Fortuna Muliebris; Valetude; Mens; Febris, even Vltio (Vengeance) that did not have her shrine. Caecilius Metellus Numidicus argued, that immortal Gods should approve virtue, not bestow it. Therefore it is the mortal gigantomachy that decides to coin and forge a virtue, or abandon it, that gives more adeterministic sense to qualities developed and raised in oneself, in a heroic affirmation and gratitude to the Divine nevertheless. In Plutarch we find how such qualities are necessary, they are emerging from the perceived wrongs: " ‘a work of mad discord makes [made] a temple of concordia’, therefore a commemoration of the evils brought by discord, a society memorizes and celebrated peace and accord in order to preserve it. All in all a useful book for insightful historians, metaphysicians, theologians and theurgists.
- Where foolishness arises, everyone speaks stupidity and calumny freely, leading to the death of liberties.
In my humble opinion, deified qualities as virtus or arete (although these concepts are similar, there should be discernment) are the creme de la creme of the society that wants to permeate its finest values and associate itself with them, especially people whose governing public relations and political marketing requires that. From a theological perpectives it was the hypostasis of these ideas that took on personified form as crystallized ontological small deities, alike to bionic statues and magical technologies, and later developed into medieval allegories in much more blunt fashion in order to evoke them in imagination, flattening them down to philosophical-symbolic purviews. A virtue that becomes empty, a surrogated lie - always becomes a vice. Every quality is thus eternal, for it shared in Divinities, but it undergoes a dance macabre on Earth, when it becomes an empty, reified concept."Ovid supports the thesis of Divinity of these qualities, as perhaps individuated forms of Virtus" (p.164). Among listed qualities (in this list both Greek and Roman) are: Homonoia; Concordia; Eleos; Aidos, Pheme; Horms; Charis; Peitho; Penia; Amechania; Mater Matuta; Fortuna Muliebris; Valetude; Mens; Febris, even Vltio (Vengeance) that did not have her shrine. Caecilius Metellus Numidicus argued, that immortal Gods should approve virtue, not bestow it. Therefore it is the mortal gigantomachy that decides to coin and forge a virtue, or abandon it, that gives more adeterministic sense to qualities developed and raised in oneself, in a heroic affirmation and gratitude to the Divine nevertheless. In Plutarch we find how such qualities are necessary, they are emerging from the perceived wrongs: " ‘a work of mad discord makes [made] a temple of concordia’, therefore a commemoration of the evils brought by discord, a society memorizes and celebrated peace and accord in order to preserve it. All in all a useful book for insightful historians, metaphysicians, theologians and theurgists.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews