Читать книгу Religion in the Roman Empire - Группа авторов - Страница 21

William Van Andringa

Of all the various social locales of religious action across the Roman world one stands out above all others: the city. The city was a place where resources were spent as nowhere else, a place where different social and often ethnic groups were drawn into the closest proximity. The city was a point of unparalleled visibility for ceremony and monumentality, and also a place that offered individuals some of the greatest range of options when it came to the divine. The city was the source of many of antiquity’s most striking religious innovations. Yet every city was its own world, its own unique landscape and its own changing community of gods and humans. This chapter explores these themes in relation to one of the best documented cities in the Roman world, the city of Pompeii in Campania in central Italy.