Religion in the Roman Empire
According to Nico’s argument, the rule of Roman Empire not only affected Britain’s religious life style but also the culture and behavior of Britain natives. The rich religious culture of Romans also influenced Britain’s architecture, the way of life including thinking and more interesting the naming of the island geographical locations. The impact of Rome’s occupation of Britain in religious terms Roger in his detailed discussion, points out that, the act of worshiping many gods and inviting everybody to take part was a way of adopting the Britons into the roman culture making it for the Romans to overpower the Britain region. In addition, adopting of Italia language assisted the Romans to monitor and administer the region without difficulties because there was no language barrier. Notably, the Romans were out to convince Britons to believe in their many gods so as to interact with them without much resistance. To attain this goal they had to build temples in all towns which the Romans administered so as to act as meeting points to disseminate information to the public.
In Colchester for example, a huge temple was constructed for the purposes of worshiping roman gods to. The most Popular Roman gods which were introduced by the Romans included Jupiter which was referred to the Kin of the gods and the god of the sky, the Juno who was the Wife of Jupiter and goddess of women and mothers, the Mars who was god of War, the Ceres who was goddess of farming, the Venus who was goddess of love and beauty, the Minerva who was goddess of crafts and wisdom, the Neptune who was the god of the sea, the Bacchus who was the God of wine and the Apollo who was god of light as well as the Arts and music. Reasons why the native Celtic and the imported Greco-Roman religious elements mergedLike the Romans the native Britons believed and worshiped more than one god even though the theology was diverse from one place to the other. In addition, the natives were willing to adore and adopt the foreign gods. To succeed in the plan they had to adopt the ancient priests and use them to attract the interest of the Britain community since they were highly listened to. To what extent was the use of religion as a political tool to keep subjects loyal to the Romans? The Romans had to use its strong religion to control its big state.
It concentrated in religion matters so as to build morally upright nation. The belief that life was controlled by gods was an enough explanations why the citizen had to obey the unseen supernatural power. Thhus the Romans used that tool to make sense why the ruling authority needed to be obeyed. To achieve apolitical mileage, each household had a small altar and shrine where they worshiped their gods. In addition, the Romans had personal family gods and spirits called lares which were worshipped every by family members.
The shrine contained statues of the lares and the head of the household led family prayers around the shrine each day. Did native religious feeling sometimes function as a focus for opposition to Roman rule in the province?Roger putts the matter under discussion to light by pointing out that Romans allowed the natives to take part in their religion worships as well as any other. In this case, the romans disregarded religion which was against their policies. occasionally, Christians choose not to worship the emperor, and as a result they were brutally punished until Christianity came to be accepted by the Romans by the fourth century. In conclusion the Greco Romans were particularly extremely brutal to the natives because they practiced human and sacrifices so as to please their gods. In addition, Romans also practiced cult by to putting on cross political and religious opponents and had prisoners put to death by being eaten alive by wild beasts.
