The Roman Family

Paper Summary:

This essay outlines how the family shaped religion and politics in Roman civilization. The writer first spells out the outstanding importance of the family and the example of virtue set by the father figure. The writer then considers the influx of Greek culture. The writer maintains that Rome appears to adopt Greek religion and philosophy wholesale, but closer examination shows that the Roman institutions are still infused with traditional values. The writer concludes that though the Romans adopted many ideas, cultural elements and institutions from the Greeks, they infused them with native Roman values and made what they adopted thoroughly their own.

From the Paper:

"In time the hearth gods came to resemble Greek deities. Before the rise of Rome Italian life was predominantly rural, and the gods and goddesses were associated with natural locations, such as springs, rivers or hills. In the highly urban setting of Rome roots to the land were severed, and religious syncretism took hold, just as it had done in the Greek city states. The colorful Greek pantheon was indeed result of syncretism, when diverse religious traditions met and mingled in the Greek polis. To accommodate a similar environment in Rome the Romans adopted the Greek pantheon wholesale, but with Latinized nomenclature. The crucial consideration is that Greek syncretism was a step towards irreligion. The same urban forces that fostered it also promoted free-thinking and philosophy, which ultimately discredited the fundamental religion, and proceeded to replace it with philosophical disciplines such as Stoicism, Cynicism and Epicureanism. The same did not happen in Rome. Firstly, because philosophy was not the Roman bent, but more importantly because the core Roman values, based on the family, were too deeply ingrained."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Plutarch, John Dryden, Arthur Hugh Clough. The Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1932
• Plutarch and John Dryden. Plutarch's Lives. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1859.

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