ROMAN RELIGION

It would be a truism to say that the subfield of Roman religion is not only vast but also multifaceted, complicated and more often than not problematic.The latter is primarily linked to certain questionswhich will also undoubtedly hinder my attempt to delineate the latest trends and developments within this field: which historical period of 'Roman religion' does one refer to?What constituted 'religion' for the Romans but also for the different peoples who found themselves under the former's rule?Can one speak of 'Roman religion' as a unified, homogeneous and distinct phenomenon effortlessly traceable through the vast textual, archaeological and material corpus?And, moreover, who is the ad hoc specialist when it comes to the study of Roman religion?These are not simple questions, and addressing them would require far more space and a number of collaborating scholars. 1Hence, in this survey I will succinctly delineate some of the most interesting and appealing trends in this subfield of Roman history and culture in the last few years, offering thereby a bird's-eye-view of where scholarship currently stands as well as its prospects and future developments. 2*** Contrary to early studies on Roman religion in the nineteenth and for the most part of the twentieth century, for many years supernatural or superhuman beingsgods, goddesses, heroeswere either downplayed or neglected in scholarly treatises, a choice linked to an interest in rituals, practices and orthopraxy vis--vis primarily belief and secondarily an alleged absence of orthodoxy.Recently, however, there seems to be a shift in this previous tendency and a return to the key agents of Roman religion, i.e. the divine beings.Both