Caesar on religio
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John North
Abstract
In the course of his famous account of the Gallic Wars, Julius Caesar breaks off and digresses for a few chapters (6.11−28) on the religious customs of the Gauls and the Germans. This paper argues that, while there may not be too much to be learned from the digression about its ostensible subjects, it gives us a unique opportunity to assess whether Caesar had a conception of a ‘religion’ as such, of an area of religious activities and ideas within different societies, which would have enabled him to write a comparison between Roman religious life, about which as pontifex maximus he knew a good deal, and those of these other societies about which he knew at least a little. The conclusion is that he has no such conception; that his account allows no sharp distinction between the religious and non-religious areas of Gallic, German or Roman life. Rather he reveals an evolutionary perspective in which the superiority of Rome over the Gauls, and of Gauls over Germans, provide the central message he succeeds, consciously or not, in conveying.
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co.
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Contents
- Dreams
- Introduction
- Dreams From Homer to Plato
- Plato and Divination
- The Afterlife of a Dream and the Ritual System of the Epidaurian Asklepieion
- Dreams in Cicero’s De Divinatione
- Philo of Alexandria’s Dream Classification
- The Stuff of Dream
- Narrative and Divination: Artemidorus and Aelius Aristides
- Dangerous Dreaming: The Christian Transformation of Dream Incubation
- The gods of the others
- The others’ god(s)
- Can we understand how the Persians perceived ‘other’ gods / ‘the gods of others’?
- The Jews and their God of Wine
- Caesar on religio
- Paulus in Philippi: Ethik und Theologie
- Miscellaneous
- Cicero’s Theology and the Concept of Fate
- Supplemental Persuasive Analogies in PGM V.70–95
- Habilitation, Ruf und Inflation
Articles in the same Issue
- Masthead
- Contents
- Dreams
- Introduction
- Dreams From Homer to Plato
- Plato and Divination
- The Afterlife of a Dream and the Ritual System of the Epidaurian Asklepieion
- Dreams in Cicero’s De Divinatione
- Philo of Alexandria’s Dream Classification
- The Stuff of Dream
- Narrative and Divination: Artemidorus and Aelius Aristides
- Dangerous Dreaming: The Christian Transformation of Dream Incubation
- The gods of the others
- The others’ god(s)
- Can we understand how the Persians perceived ‘other’ gods / ‘the gods of others’?
- The Jews and their God of Wine
- Caesar on religio
- Paulus in Philippi: Ethik und Theologie
- Miscellaneous
- Cicero’s Theology and the Concept of Fate
- Supplemental Persuasive Analogies in PGM V.70–95
- Habilitation, Ruf und Inflation
