Studying Roman Religion - brief history of research

Varro, the father of
the study of Roman
Religion

Georg Wissowa

The scientific study of Roman Religion is strict related to the history of religious studies itself (Religionswissenschaft). Studying "religion" was always a delicate topic, and nowadays there are a library full bibliography about it, using the same methods (historical, phenomenological, psichological, sociological, philosophical approach of the topic) as in the general study of religions (Pettazonni, Eliade, Bianchi, Hinnells) sometimes with interesting exceptions (Charachidze's contrastualism). 

This phenomenon begins in the ancient times: Greek, Etruscan and Roman auctors examined Roman religion as a socio- cultural or theological phenomenon (Varro, Hecataeus, Herodotos, Cicero, the mythographs etc.).

Franz Altheim

The scientific research begins in the XVIII. century with German theologists, such Johann Adam Hartung or Friedrich Scheiermacher. In the XIX. century the study of Religion - especially after the evolution of archaeology as science and the huge influence of Freud, Darwin and the translation of ancient Oriental literature - European conception about religion changed radically (Frazer, Taylor). In this period was written the basic work of Georg Wissowa about Roman religion (Religion und Kultus der Römer) which is even today highly circulated and became a modell for other major works such as of Kurt Latte or Franz Altheim. A great step in the history of religious studies was the activity of the patriarch of the Oriental Studies, Franz Cumont.  

John Scheid

Nowadays the research of Roman Religion became so sophisticated and highly elaborated, that it could be a separate science in the field of classical studies. His affiliation is also difficult: the methodological approach of a religious phenomena or object are in dispute of cognitive archaeology, historian of religions, art historians and classicists also. 

In the latest monograph about Roman Religion (Jörk Rüpke, A Companion to the Roman Religion, Blackwell 2007) we can see the main areas and chief personalities of research.

Marteen Vermaseren, Robert Turcan, Ramsey McMullen, Roger Beck, Richard Gordon, Manfred Clauss, Giulia Gasparro, John Sheid, John North, Jörg Rüpke, Mary Beard, Ando Clifford, Andreas Bendlin are just few of the most citated scholars of the field. 

As Robert Phillips III. (who is the chief researcher in the historiography of Roman Religion after H.J. Rose and R. Schilling) argued in his articles, there is still no unanimously accepted method in the study of Roman Religion, because of it's doubtful place between archaeology, history of religion and anthropology.