The Significance Of The Altars Of Republican Latium And The Materiality Of Roman Religion

Religion plays an important role in many people's everyday lives; this was no different thousands of years ago. While there are multiple different religions in the world, each has its own practices, beliefs, and rituals. There is evidence of religious practices that demonstrated that sacrifices were practiced as rituals before Rome was known as what it is today. This is evident in Claudia Moser’s The Altars of Republican Rome and Latium: Sacrifice and the Materiality of Roman Religion. Moser provides evidence throughout the book to emphasize the connection of archeological evidence found on sites to what is known about Roman Republic religious rituals. She explains the significance of the altars at these sanctuaries and how they provide a lot

In the opening paragraph, she states that “This chapter investigates the dialogic character of such layered interventions in the sacred places of the Roman region in the Republican period: the interactions among the natural topography, the surrounding built environment, the architectural constituents of the place, the infrastructure, and the ritual performance,” (Moser 14). In this section of the book, she focuses on the Sacred Area of the Republican Temples at Ostia as well as the Sanctuary of Fosso dell’Incastro located at Ardea (Moser 14). Moser begins by explaining how these sanctuaries differ from others from the Roman Republican era by emphasizing that their architectural layout is distinctive, indicating that these sanctuaries must have been used differently; she also discusses the possibility that these sanctuaries were used for multiple deities, a wide variety of worship practices, as well as a marketplace (Moser 15). Furthermore, Moser explains the significance of the interior and exterior borders of these sanctuaries in relation to how they provide evidence as to how people might have practiced their religious practices at these sanctuaries. Moser further explains the kinds of boundaries that might have been used during this period and even uses S. Omobono as an example of how the Tiber River acted as a

She then explains that in the second chapter “we move, materially, from background to foreground, examining how what is actually offered during a sacrifice function in determining both the individual and the communal experience of ritual,” (Moser 54). A communal experience is something important in terms of these sanctuaries. Moser explained that many of these sanctuaries also helped to push integration between social and political groups because the people that came to these places shared a common interest in their religious beliefs (57). She also explained how this interaction relates to the vote deposits because it means that these people with similar interests would possibly make similar offerings as well (Moser 57). Furthermore, Moser analyzes the altars at the temples of Largo Argentina; it is composed of four temples labelled A, B, C, and D (59). She remarks on the differences between the altars and their orientation, size, material and whether they are well preserved. When discussing temples B and D, she notes that these altars are not well documented, meaning that they had to base their examinations on temples A and C (Moser 63). Then, Moser begins to explain the different types of votives found at Largo Argentina by providing detail regarding their size and shape and the history behind them. For example, she describes “a