Nickolas P. Roubekas: The Study of Greek and Roman Religions: Insularity and Assimilation (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), xiii +173 pp., ISBN 9781350102613, £76.50. DOI: 10.5040/9781350102804.

Nickolas Roubekas’ concise monograph on the study of Greek and Roman religions advocates for interdisciplinary collaboration in historical research, specifically between classics and the study of religion. Such collaboration is notoriously difficult. Since his previous calls for deeper interdisciplinary collaboration have received negative responses, Roubekas clarifies that his current volume is not intended as an attack on classicists (6). However, from the outset, the project is met with uncomfortable feelings and hostile animosity of reviewers and colleagues (xii and 1). Why are these fields so insular?

Some of the hostile responses may stem from Roubekas’ outspoken views on what the study of religion (not “religious studies”) entails and how classicists and ancient historians should engage with it. Even projects and publications that promote interdisciplinary approaches, such as the Lived Ancient Religion project in Erfurt, are weighed and found wanting. In Chapters 1 and 2, Roubekas meticulously demonstrates how little scholars of the ancient world engage with scholarship from the study of religion. His analysis of four popular “companion” genre handbooks dedicated to the study of Greek and Roman religion reveals a significant disciplinary chasm between classics and other disciplines related to the study of religion. Even in Rubina Raja and Jörg Rüpke’s Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World, he finds little real engagement with scholarship in the study of religion, except for in the introduction by Jörg Rüpke (28). Although his classification strategy may be questioned, as Jan Bremmer is counted as a classicist rather than a scholar of religion, Roubekas’ argument holds true. Particularizing research strategies combined with disciplinary institutional boundaries have frequently led to insular conversations.

A second reason for the negative reactions towards Roubekas’ work may be attributed to his strong aversion towards postmodern and postcolonial approaches to the study of religion. In Chapter 3, he challenges current scholarship that deconstructs the category of “religion” in the context of the ancient world. Specifically, he contends against the negative viewpoints of Nongbri, Barton, and Boyarin regarding the appropriateness of the term “religion” as a scholarly category and a valid translation for the Greek term thrēskeia, based on his analysis of Greek inscriptions. Despite the various meanings that the ancient terminology may have had, certain elements can still be deemed “religious” in the contemporary sense, based on an appropriate academic definition. Chapter 4 places significant emphasis on defining the concept of “religion”, taking issue with classicists who compare “Greek and Roman religions” with “Christianity” in an unbalanced manner that sidesteps the category of religion and its related implicit theories, especially when it maintains the former’s “specialness” and “uniqueness” (55).

Chapters 5 and 6 outline potential directions for the study of Greek and Roman religion. Roubekas highlights the lack of scholarly attention given to ancient gods, primarily because of a fear of being “crypto-theological,” an insult he reserves for scholars who imbue the category of “religion” with insider notions about sacredness and transcendence. “Theology”, he argues, refers not only to Christian theology, but also to ancient god-talk. In Chapter 5, Roubekas compares the works of classicist Albert Henrichs and scholar of religion Einar Thomassen, identifying four key features of Greek and Roman theology: anthropomorphism, communication, power, and immortality. He positively notes two edited volumes from classics, namely Esther Eidinow, Julia Kindt, and Robin Osborne’s Theologies of Ancient Greek Religion, and Jan Bremmer and Andrew Erskine’s The Gods of Ancient Greece: Identities and Transformations. Such examples show how scholars of the ancient world can play an essential role in reconsidering ancient ideas about orthodoxy, not merely orthopraxy.

In the final chapter, Roubekas expresses doubts about the feasibility of bridging the gap between classics and religious studies, citing the deconstructionist stance as a major hindrance (89). Nevertheless, he acknowledges that certain voices “perhaps offer some alternatives that may allow the study of Greek and Roman religions to proceed beyond the impasse imposed by primarily (and often exclusively) focusing on a genealogical examination of ‘religion’ or merely paying attention to how the term is inadequate, problematic, modern, and therefore ideally disposable” (94). The classicist Jennifer Larson’s Understanding Greek Religion is highlighted as an example of fruitful cross-fertilization of theory-heavy religious scholarship with a focus on primary sources. By drawing on cognitive studies of religion (CSR), Larson explores what it means to say that the Greeks believed in their gods. Another example of a productive way forward is the comparative study of modern Greek Orthodox practices that draw on folk practices and unreflected theologies. Classicist Henk Versnel is cited as the primary theorist of religious ambiguity and inconsistency.

The book concludes with three brief appendices. Appendix I responds to Naomi Goldenberg’s reading of Hesiod, which takes progressive politics as both a theoretical aim and background. Appendix II provides a list of scholarly literature on Greek and Roman “beliefs” in response to a review panel of Rüpke’s Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion. Finally, Appendix III responds to Alan Strathern’s binary typology of religion in immanentism and transcendentalism. Although Greek and Roman religions may appear to fall under the category of immanentism, they represent early amalgams in which intellectuals critically analyzed the immanentist qualities of gods that troubled them.

Overall, Roubekas’ book provides us with a strong position on the future of the study of Greek and Roman religion. His call for interdisciplinarity deserves to be heard, even by those who might (initially?) disagree.