{"id":5430,"date":"2023-08-22T21:27:51","date_gmt":"2023-08-22T20:27:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/?p=5430"},"modified":"2023-08-22T21:30:40","modified_gmt":"2023-08-22T20:30:40","slug":"thinking-about-religion-in-roman-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/?p=5430","title":{"rendered":"Thinking about Religion in Roman Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Birgitta Hoffmann<\/p>\n<p>Time to look towards the Autumn lecture courses and I am beginning to review material for a course on the <a href=\"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/?page_id=5309\">Religious World of Roman Britain<\/a>. Sound like a clumsy title, but I am trying to introduce the students to the complexity that were the competing or coexisting belief systems in Roman Britain. And yes I will compare it occasionally with the very complex religious universe of the Indian subcontinent.<\/p>\n<p>One of the issues that interest me is the different levels at which some cult followers made decisions on how to be seen by the wider population.<br \/>\nThis is the Aesculapius stone from Maryport. It isn&#8217;t the only stone to Aesculapius in Britain and it isn&#8217;t the only Greek inscription from Britain either. But this one was found in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.senhousemuseum.co.uk\/\">Maryport<\/a>, not exactly a Roman place that you would associate with words like &#8216;multiethnic&#8217; beyond the Roman\/Iron Age divide (?) and certainly not a place you would expect to see a lot of Greek speakers&#8230;.and still Aulos Egnatios Pastor chose to use Greek on his dedication to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/10.7591\/j.cttq454j\">Aesculapios<\/a>. Did a Greek god give premium service to Greek speakers? Was this part of a small Greek-speaking group? Does that mean the language of the services was Greek?<br \/>\nAnd would everybody else feel excluded or welcomed to a mysterious cult that used special magic words and must therefore be powerful?<a href=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mancent.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Maryport-Aesulapius.jpeg?ssl=1\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-5431\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mancent.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Maryport-Aesulapius.jpeg?resize=603%2C453&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" width=\"603\" height=\"453\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mancent.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Maryport-Aesulapius.jpeg?resize=300%2C225&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mancent.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Maryport-Aesulapius.jpeg?resize=416%2C312&amp;ssl=1 416w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mancent.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Maryport-Aesulapius.jpeg?resize=1024%2C768&amp;ssl=1 1024w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mancent.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Maryport-Aesulapius.jpeg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mancent.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Maryport-Aesulapius.jpeg?resize=1536%2C1152&amp;ssl=1 1536w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mancent.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Maryport-Aesulapius.jpeg?resize=2048%2C1536&amp;ssl=1 2048w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mancent.org.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/Maryport-Aesulapius.jpeg?w=1960&amp;ssl=1 1960w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 603px) 100vw, 603px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Birgitta Hoffmann Time to look towards the Autumn lecture courses and I am beginning to review material for a course on the Religious World of Roman Britain. Sound like a clumsy title, but I am trying to introduce the students to the complexity that were the competing or coexisting belief systems in Roman Britain. And [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,6,15,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ancient-world","category-archaeology","category-religious-studies","category-roman-empire"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5430"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5434,"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5430\/revisions\/5434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mancent.org.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}