Actualities: The Religion of the Senators in the Roman Empire

The new book of the famous Hungarian born American scholar, Zsuzsanna Várhelyi , The Religion of  the Senators in the Roman Empire: power and the beyond,

• 270 pages, Cambridge University Press; 1 edition (June 7, 2010) is a great synthesis about the religion of Roman high society, the ordo senatorius. 
• In her book, Várhelyi analyses not only the role and the evolution of the senatorial order from Augustus to the end of the III. century in the mirror of power and state , but also in a theological context. 



Zsuzsanna Várhelyi

• About the book in Bryn Mawr: "This book examines the religious life of senators in the Roman empire from Augustus to Severus Alexander. Focusing on the nexus between social status, political authority, and what she calls “imperial religion,” Várhelyi shows that senators during this period were active participants in the construction of a new imperial order that was defined, at least in part, in religious terms, and suggests that it was largely through religious practice and its attendant discourses that senators forged a strong identity (both corporate and individual),expressed their own public power and authority, and engaged with problems of symbolic order and the meanings of life and death. Despite some analytical imprecision and the absence of a central thesis, this study makes a valuable contribution to the history of the senatorial order, religious practice and thought, and the political culture of the early Roman empire" (loc. cit.)

Presentation in the Classical Review's latest issue: HERE.
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