Tradition: the power of constraint

Abstract

To Valerius Maximus, the fawning author of Memorable Doings and Sayings , dedicated to the Roman emperor Tiberius sometime between 14–37 ce , it was self-evident that Roman religious practices were profoundly traditional. “Our ancestors ( Maiores ),” he states at the very beginning of his tract in his discussion of “On Religion” ( De religione ), decreed the very foundations and institutions of Roman religion. The “ancients” ( antiques ) zealously sought both to observe and to expand religion, and Valerius Maximus reports approvingly of several rituals and auguries that were performed “in the way of our ancestors,” the mos maiorum . It is generally not wise to rely on the testimony of Valerius Maximus, a man who, as one classical scholar writes, “possessed neither sharpness of intellect nor clarity of style.” In this case, however, Valerius Maximus accurately reflected not only the common Roman belief about their own religion but also a sentiment widely shared throughout the circum-Mediterranean and Near East. Piety, defined by Cicero (first century bce ) as “justice towards the gods,” meant in part honoring ancestral customs. One of the primary reasons that Romans looked askance at early Christians was that Christians rejected the customs of their ancestors. Nor were Romans alone in their insistence on preserving ancestral practices. In the face of immense social, economic, political, and religious challenges, Egyptians in late antiquity tenaciously held to traditional religious practices.