History of Roman history

[StephenGoranson]

rgprice, I may understand what you are proposing (a parallel), though, if I do understand, I can't say that I agree.
Your final sentence is clear.
Your penultimate sentence perhaps would be clearer if rewritten.

[StephenGoranson]

I did not save the original version of the penultimate sentence.
Now, revised, it reads:
"It strikes me that what Gmirkin proposes about the origins of the Jewish scriptures is very to the observed process of the development of Roman history by the Latins."
That still seems to lack a word: "similar" or "parallel"?
More importantly, for conversations' sake, taking your Roman description (which I do not endorse):
why--if my guesses of "similar" or "parallel" are close to your meaning--why?

[MrMacSon]

... Rome was actually founded by the Etruscans. The Latins rebelled against the Etruscans and took control of the city from them. The Greek stories about the settling of the hero Aeneas in Italy provided a way for the Romans to position themselves as heirs of an ancient hero and to take the founding of Rome away from the Etruscans. Rome's origins were not, then, indebted to the Etruscans whom they had vanquished, but rather to the bloodline of Trojan royalty, whom now all Latins could claim as their ancestors.

Etruscan civilization endured until it was assimilated into Roman society [starting] in the late 4th century BCE [early 300s BCE] as a result of the Roman–Etruscan Wars [completed in 265–264 BCE]; it accelerated with the grant of Roman citizenship in 90 BCE, and became complete in 27 BCE, when the Etruscans' territory was incorporated into the newly established Roman Empire. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etruscan_civilization

Ironically, the Trojan War is set in distant Troy, the ancient city located in the present-day Çanakkale District, eastern Turkey.

Troy was known as 'Ilium' and/or 'Ilion' in the ~8th century BCE epics, Iliad and the Odessey.

... the site [of ancient Troy] is divided into nine archaeological layers, each corresponding to a city built on the ruins of the previous. Archaeologists refer to these layers using Roman numerals, Troy I being the earliest and Troy IX being the latest.

... Among the early layers, Troy II is notable for its wealth and imposing architecture ... The final layers (Troy VIII-IX) were Greek and Roman cities which served as tourist attractions and religious centers because of their link to mythic tradition.

... [archaeological excavations show] the exact relationship between myth and reality remains unclear and there is no definitive evidence for a Greek attack on the city.

... remains of the Bronze Age city were destroyed by the Greeks' building projects, notably the peak of the citadel where the Troy VI palace is likely to have stood [1750 BC to 1300 BC]. By the classical era,^a the city had numerous temples, a theater, among other public buildings, and was once again expanding to the south of the citadel. Troy VIII was destroyed in 85 BCE [by the Roman commander Gaius Flavius Fimbria in the course of the First Mithridatic War; according to Appian, §53], and subsequently rebuilt as Troy IX. A series of earthquakes devastated the city around 500 AD, though finds from the Late Byzantine era attest to continued habitation at a small scale.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy
.

a The Classical Era is said to start in the 8th C. BCE and go to the 5th C. AD/CE, cf. Classical Greece which is usually defined as the 5th and 4th centuries BCE "marked by much of the eastern Aegean and northern regions of Greek culture (such as Ionia and Macedonia) gaining increased autonomy from the Persian Empire; the peak flourishing of democratic Athens; the First and Second Peloponnesian Wars; the Spartan and then Theban hegemonies; and the expansion of Macedonia under Philip II" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_Greece

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The earliest such known account is Naevius’ Latin epic Bellum Punicum. But the first account of Roman history is a work by Q. Fabius Pictor, who wrote a history of the Roman people, which, like Naevius', began with account of Aeneas' flight from Troy to the Italic peninsula. This was written in Greek, as most Roman works of scholarship during this time were all produced in Greek.

It is evident that both Naevius and Pictor made extensive use of Greek sources to fill in accounts of the early history of Rome and the Italic peninsula that were lacking in Latin sources. What all of these Roman accounts tend to have in common is that they rely heavily on Greek sources for accounts of Roman history prior to the 4rd century BCE, then switch to relying on Latin accounts and their own observations for the more recent history.

In the process, these Roman writers take Greek accounts that were not originally about the Latins and transform them into legends of the origins of the Latin peoples. The Greek accounts are blended with Latin legends, such as that of Romulus and Remus, but given Greek twists and aligned with Greek narrative patterns.
.

Roman mythology also draws directly on Greek mythology, potentially as early as Rome's protohistory, but primarily during the Hellenistic period of Greek influence and through the Roman conquest of Greece https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_mythology

In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Mediterranean history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE to the death of Cleopatra VII (30 BCE) followed by the emergence of the Roman Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenistic_period

In the history of Greece, the Roman era began with the Corinthian defeat in the Battle of Corinth in 146 BCE. However, before the Achaean War [ of 146 BCE], the Roman Republic had been steadily gaining control of mainland Greece by defeating the Kingdom of Macedon in a series of conflicts known as the Macedonian Wars. The Fourth Macedonian War ended at the Battle of Pydna in 148 BCE with the defeat of the Macedonian royal pretender Andriscus. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greece_in_the_Roman_era

Religion in ancient Rome consisted of varying imperial and provincial religious practices, which were followed both by the people of Rome as well as those who were brought under its rule.

The Romans thought of themselves as highly religious, and attributed their success as a world power to their collective piety (pietas) in maintaining good relations with the gods. Their polytheistic religion is known for having honored many deities.

The presence of Greeks on the Italian peninsula from the beginning of the historical period influenced Roman culture, introducing some religious practices that became fundamental, such as the cultus of Apollo. The Romans looked for common ground between their major gods and those of the Greeks (interpretatio graeca), adapting Greek myths and iconography for Latin literature and Roman art, as the Etruscans had. Etruscan religion was also a major influence, particularly on the practice of augury, used by the state to seek the will of the gods. According to legends, most of Rome's religious institutions could be traced to its founders, particularly Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome, who negotiated directly with the gods. This archaic religion was the foundation of the mos maiorum, "the way of the ancestors" or simply "tradition", viewed as central to Roman identity.

Roman religion was practical and contractual, based on the principle of 'do ut des', "I give that you might give". Religion depended on knowledge and the correct practice of prayer, rite, and sacrifice, not on faith or dogma, although Latin literature preserves learned speculation on the nature of the divine and its relation to human affairs. Even the most skeptical among Rome's intellectual elite, such as Cicero, who was an augur, saw religion as a source of social order ...*

For ordinary Romans, religion was a part of daily life. Each home had a household shrine at which prayers and libations to the family's domestic deities were offered. Neighborhood shrines and sacred places such as springs and groves dotted the city. The Roman calendar was structured around religious observances. Women, slaves, and children all participated in a range of religious activities. Some public rituals could be conducted only by women, and women formed what is perhaps Rome's most famous priesthood, the state-supported Vestals, who tended Rome's sacred hearth for centuries, until disbanded under Christian domination.

* As the Roman Empire expanded, migrants to the capital brought their local cults, many of which became popular among Italians. Christianity was eventually the most successful of these cults, and in 380 became the official state religion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_ancient_Rome

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It strikes me that what Gmirkin proposes about the origins of the Jewish scriptures is very [similar(?)] to the observed process of the development of Roman history by the Latins. Basically, it is widely agreed that the Latins did essentially what Gmirkin proposes that the Jews did.

And likely in the same time period ie. the mid-late 4th century BCE to the early-mid 3rd century BCE ie. ~340—260 BCE

[MrMacSon]

---

The earliest such known account is Naevius’ Latin epic Bellum Punicum. But the first account of Roman history is a work by Q. Fabius Pictor, who wrote a history of the Roman people, which, like Naevius', began with account of Aeneas' flight from Troy to the Italic peninsula. This was written in Greek, as most Roman works of scholarship during this time were all produced in Greek.

It is evident that both Naevius and Pictor made extensive use of Greek sources to fill in accounts of the early history of Rome and the Italic peninsula that were lacking in Latin sources. What all of these Roman accounts tend to have in common is that they rely heavily on Greek sources for accounts of Roman history prior to the 4rd century BCE, then switch to relying on Latin accounts and their own observations for the more recent history.

In the process, these Roman writers take Greek accounts that were not originally about the Latins and transform them into legends of the origins of the Latin peoples. The Greek accounts are blended with Latin legends, such as that of Romulus and Remus, but given Greek twists and aligned with Greek narrative patterns.
.

Roman mythology also draws directly on Greek mythology, potentially as early as Rome's protohistory,, primarily during the Hellenistic period of Greek influence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_mythology

Furthermore:

The Romans identified their own gods with those of the ancient Greeks—who were closely historically related in some cases, such as Zeus and Jupiter—and reinterpreted myths about Greek deities under the names of their Roman counterparts. Greek and Roman mythologies are therefore often classified together in the modern era as Greco-Roman mythology.

... The interpretations of Greek myths by the Romans often had a greater influence on narrative and pictorial representations of "Greco-Roman mythology" than Greek sources. In particular, the versions of Greek myths in Ovid's Metamorphoses, written during the reign of Augustus, came to be regarded as canonical.

Nature of Roman myth

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Because ritual played the central role in Roman religion that myth did for the Greeks, it is sometimes doubted that the Romans had much of a native mythology ... The Roman tradition is rich in historical myths, or legends, concerning the foundation and rise of the city. These narratives focus on human actors, with only occasional intervention from deities but a pervasive sense of divinely ordered destiny. In Rome's earliest period, history and myth have a mutual and complementary relationship ...

Major sources for Roman myth include the Aeneid of Virgil and the first few books of Livy's history as well as Dionysius's Roman Antiquities. Other important sources are the Fasti of Ovid, a six-book poem structured by the Roman religious calendar, and the fourth book of elegies by Propertius. Scenes from Roman myth also appear in Roman wall painting, coins, and sculpture, particularly reliefs.

Founding myths
...Main article: Founding of Rome
The Aeneid and Livy's early history are the best extant sources for Rome's founding myths. Material from Greek heroic legend was grafted onto this native stock at an early date. The Trojan prince Aeneas was cast as husband of Lavinia, daughter of King Latinus, patronymical ancestor of the Latini, and therefore, through a convoluted revisionist genealogy, as forebear of Romulus and Remus. By extension, the Trojans were adopted as the mythical ancestors of the Roman people.

Other myths
The characteristic myths of Rome are often political or moral, that is, they deal with the development of Roman government in accordance with divine law, as expressed by Roman religion, and with demonstrations of the individual's adherence to moral expectations (mos maiorum) or failures to do so.

• Rape of the Sabine women, explaining the importance of the Sabines in the formation of Roman culture, and the growth of Rome through conflict and alliance.
• Numa Pompilius, the Sabine second king of Rome who consorted with the nymph Egeria and established many of Rome's legal and religious institutions.
• Servius Tullius, the sixth king of Rome, whose mysterious origins were freely mythologized and who was said to have been the lover of the goddess Fortuna.
• The Tarpeian Rock, and why it was used for the execution of traitors.
• Lucretia, whose self-sacrifice prompted the overthrow of the early Roman monarchy and led to the establishment of the Republic.
• <..omitted..>
• Coriolanus, a story of politics and morality.
• The Etruscan city of Corythus as the "cradle" of Trojan and Italian civilization.
• The arrival of the Great Mother (Cybele) in Rome [Rome officially adopted her cult during the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BCE)]

Religion and myth

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Narratives of divine activity played a more important role in the system of Greek religious belief than among the Romans, for whom ritual and cult were primary. Although Roman religion did not have a basis in scriptures and exegesis, priestly literature was one of the earliest written forms of Latin prose. The books (libri) and commentaries (commentarii) of the College of Pontiffs and of the augurs contained religious procedures, prayers, and rulings and opinions on points of religious law. Although at least some of this archived material was available for consultation by the Roman senate, it was often occultum genus litterarum, an arcane form of literature to which by definition only priests had access.

Prophecies pertaining to world history and to Rome's destiny turn up fortuitously at critical junctures in history, discovered suddenly in the nebulous Sibylline books, which Tarquin the Proud (according to legend) purchased in the late 6th century BCE from the Cumaean Sibyl. Some aspects of archaic Roman religion survived in the lost theological works of the 1st-century BCE scholar Varro, known through other classical and Christian authors.

The earliest pantheon included, [beside] Janus [and] Vesta, a leading so-called Archaic Triad of Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus ... The Etruscan-influenced Capitoline [Hill Temples] Triad of Jupiter, Juno and Minerva later became central to official religion [particularly during the Augustan and Julio-Claudian periods], replacing the Archaic Triad – an unusual example within Indo-European religion of a supreme triad formed of two female deities and only one male.

Foreign Gods
The absorption of neighboring local gods took place as the Roman state conquered neighboring territories. The Romans commonly granted the local gods of a conquered territory the same honors as the earlier gods of the Roman state religion. In addition to Castor and Pollux, the conquered settlements in Italy seem to have contributed to the Roman pantheon Diana, Minerva, Hercules, Venus, and deities of lesser rank, some of whom were Italic divinities, others originally derived from the Greek culture of Magna Graecia. In 203 BCE, Rome imported the cult object embodying Cybele from Pessinus in Phrygia and welcomed its arrival with due ceremony. Both Lucretius and Catullus, poets contemporary in the mid-1st century BC, offer disapproving glimpses of Cybele's wildly ecstatic cult.

In some instances, deities of an enemy power were formally invited through the ritual of evocatio to take up their abode in new sanctuaries at Rome.

Communities of foreigners (peregrini) and former slaves (libertini) continued their own religious practices within the city. In this way Mithras came to Rome and his popularity within the Roman army spread his cult as far afield as Roman Britain. The important Roman deities were eventually identified with the more anthropomorphic Greek gods and goddesses, and assumed many of their attributes and myths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_mythology

[MrMacSon]

The arrival of the Great Mother (Cybele) in Rome [Rome officially adopted her cult during the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BCE)][/list]

Cybele

• Phrygian: Matar Kubileya/Kubeleya "Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother", perhaps "Mountain Mother";
• Lydian Kuvava;
• Greek: Κυβέλη Kybele, Κυβήβη Kybebe, Κύβελις Kybelis

Cybele was/is an Anatolian mother goddess ... She is Phrygia's only known goddess, and was probably its national deity. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the 6th century BC.

In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception ...

In Rome, Cybele became known as Magna Mater ("Great Mother"). The Roman state adopted and developed a particular form of her cult after the Sibylline oracle in 205 BC recommended her conscription as a key religious ally in Rome's second war against Carthage (218 to 201 BC). Roman mythographers reinvented her as a Trojan goddess, and thus an ancestral goddess of the Roman people by way of the Trojan prince Aeneas. As Rome eventually established hegemony over the Mediterranean world, Romanized forms of Cybele's cults spread throughout Rome's empire. Greek and Roman writers debated and disputed the meaning and morality of her cults and priesthoods ...

Greek Cybele

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From around the 6th century BCE, cults to the Anatolian mother-goddess were introduced from Phrygia into the ethnically Greek colonies of western Anatolia, mainland Greece, the Aegean islands and the westerly colonies of Magna Graecia [the coastal areas of Southern Italy extensively populated by Greek settlers: present day Calabria, Apulia, Basilicata, Campania and Sicily]. The Greeks called her Mātēr or Mētēr ("Mother"), or from the early 5th century Kubelē; in Pindar, she is "Mistress Cybele the Mother". In Homeric Hymn 14 she is "the Mother of all gods and all human beings." Cybele was readily assimilated with several Greek goddesses, especially Rhea, as Mētēr theōn ("Mother of the gods"), whose raucous, ecstatic rites she may have acquired. As an exemplar of devoted motherhood, she was partly assimilated to the grain-goddess Demeter, whose torchlight procession recalled her search for her lost daughter, Persephone; but she also continued to be identified as a foreign deity, with many of her traits reflecting Greek ideas about barbarians and the wilderness, as Mētēr oreia ("Mother of the Mountains") ...

Cybele and Attis
Cybele's major mythographic narratives attach to her relationship with Attis, who is described by ancient Greek and Roman sources and cults as her youthful consort, and as a Phrygian deity. In Phrygia, "Attis" was not a deity, but both a commonplace and priestly name, found alike in casual graffiti, the dedications of personal monuments, as well as at several of Cybele's Phrygian shrines and monuments. His divinity may therefore have begun as a Greek invention based on what was known of Cybele's Phrygian cult. His earliest certain image as deity appears on a 4th-century BC Greek stele from Piraeus, near Athens. It shows him as the Hellenised stereotype of a rustic, eastern barbarian; he sits at ease, sporting the Phrygian cap and shepherd's crook of his later Greek and Roman cults ... Later images of Attis show him as a shepherd ...

Roman Cybele

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Republican Era
Romans knew Cybele as Magna Mater ("Great Mother"), or as Magna Mater deorum Idaea ("great Idaean mother of the gods"), equivalent to the Greek title Meter Theon Idaia ("Mother of the Gods, from Mount Ida"). Rome officially adopted her cult during the Second Punic War (218 to 201 BCE), after dire prodigies, including a meteor shower, a failed harvest, and famine, seemed to warn of Rome's imminent defeat. The Roman Senate and its religious advisers consulted the Sibylline oracle and decided that Carthage might be defeated if Rome imported the Magna Mater ("Great Mother") of Phrygian Pessinos. As this cult object belonged to a Roman ally, the Kingdom of Pergamum, the Roman Senate sent ambassadors to seek the king's consent; en route, a consultation with the Greek oracle at Delphi confirmed that the goddess should be brought to Rome ...

Most modern scholarship agrees that Cybele's consort, Attis, and her [other] eunuch Phrygian priests (Galli) would have arrived with the goddess, along with at least some of the wild, ecstatic features of her Greek and Phrygian cults. The histories of her arrival deal with the piety, purity, and status of the Romans involved, the success of their religious stratagem, and power of the goddess herself; she has no consort or priesthood, and seems fully Romanised from the first ...

Romans believed that Cybele, considered a Phrygian outsider even within her Greek cults, was the mother-goddess of ancient Troy (Ilium). Some of Rome's leading patrician families claimed Trojan ancestry; so the "return" of the Mother of all Gods to her once-exiled people would have been particularly welcome, even if her spouse and priesthood were not; its accomplishment would have reflected well on the principals involved and, in turn, on their descendants ...

Imperial era
Augustan ideology identified Magna Mater with Imperial order and Rome's religious authority throughout the empire. Augustus claimed a Trojan ancestry through his adoption by Julius Caesar and the divine favour of Venus; in the iconography of Imperial cult, the empress Livia was Magna Mater's earthly equivalent, Rome's protector and symbolic "Great Mother"; the goddess is portrayed with Livia's face on cameos and statuary. By this time, Rome had absorbed the goddess's Greek and Phrygian homelands, and the Roman version of Cybele as Imperial Rome's protector was introduced there.

Imperial Magna Mater protected the empire's cities and agriculture — Ovid "stresses the barrenness of the earth before the Mother's arrival." Virgil's Aeneid (written between 29 and 19 BCE) embellishes her "Trojan" features; she is Berecyntian Cybele, mother of Jupiter himself, and protector of the Trojan prince Aeneas in his flight from the destruction of Troy. She gives the Trojans her sacred tree for shipbuilding, and begs Jupiter to make the ships indestructible. These ships become the means of escape for Aeneas and his men, guided toward Italy and a destiny as ancestors of the Roman people by Venus Genetrix. Once arrived in Italy, these ships, having served their purpose, were transformed into sea nymphs.

... The emperor Claudius claimed her among his ancestors. Claudius promoted Attis to the Roman pantheon and placed his cult under the supervision of the quindecimviri (one of Rome's priestly colleges).

Festivals and cults

'Holy week' in March

The Principate brought the development of an extended festival or "holy week" for Cybele and Attis in March (Latin Martius), from the Ides to nearly the end of the month ...

• March 15 (Ides): Canna intrat ("The Reed enters"), marking the birth of Attis and his exposure in the reeds along the Phrygian river Sangarius, where he was discovered—depending on the version—by either shepherds or Cybele herself ...

• March 22: Arbor intrat ("The Tree enters"), commemorating the death of Attis under a pine tree. The dendrophores ("tree bearers") cut down a tree, suspended from it an image of Attis, and carried it to the temple with lamentations. The day was formalized as part of the official Roman calendar under Claudius. A three-day period of mourning followed.

• March 25 (vernal equinox on the Roman calendar): Hilaria ("Rejoicing"), when Attis was reborn.

Scholars are divided as to whether the entire series was more or less put into place under Claudius, or whether the festival grew over time. The Phrygian character of the cult would have appealed to the Julio-Claudians as an expression of their claim to Trojan ancestry. It may be that Claudius established observances mourning the death of Attis, before he had acquired his full significance as a resurrected god of rebirth, expressed by rejoicing at the later Canna intrat and by the Hilaria. The full sequence at any rate is thought to have been official in the time of Antoninus Pius (reigned 138–161), but among extant fasti appears only in the Calendar of Philocalus (354 AD).

Priesthood

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In Rome, the Galli and their cult fell under the supreme authority of the pontifices, who were usually drawn from Rome's highest ranking, wealthiest citizens. The Galli themselves, although imported to serve the day-to-day workings of their goddess's cult on Rome's behalf, represented an inversion of Roman priestly traditions in which senior priests were citizens, expected to raise families, and personally responsible for the running costs of their temples, assistants, cults, and festivals. As eunuchs, incapable of reproduction, the Galli were forbidden Roman citizenship and rights of inheritance; like their eastern counterparts, they were technically mendicants whose living depended on the pious generosity of others. For a few days of the year, during the Megalesia, Cybele's laws allowed them to leave their quarters, located within the goddess' temple complex, and roam the streets to beg for money. They were outsiders, marked out as Galli by their regalia, and their notoriously effeminate dress and demeanour, but as priests of a state cult, they were sacred and inviolate. From the start, they were objects of Roman fascination, scorn, and religious awe. No Roman, not even a slave, could castrate himself "in honour of the Goddess" without penalty; in 101 BCE, a slave who had done so was exiled. Augustus selected priests from among his own freedmen to supervise Magna Mater's cult, and brought it under Imperial control. Claudius introduced the senior priestly office of Archigallus, who was not a eunuch and held full Roman citizenship.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybele#Roman_Cybele

[rgprice]

I did not save the original version of the penultimate sentence.
Now, revised, it reads:
"It strikes me that what Gmirkin proposes about the origins of the Jewish scriptures is very to the observed process of the development of Roman history by the Latins."
That still seems to lack a word: "similar" or "parallel"?
More importantly, for conversations' sake, taking your Roman description (which I do not endorse):
why--if my guesses of "similar" or "parallel" are close to your meaning--why?

Yeah, you're right. Should have similar.

[rgprice]

Right MrMacSon. What I'm saying is that while there are certainly differences between Judaism and Roman religion and literature, there are a lot of remarkable similarities. Aside from the Hasmonaean kingdom, Rome was one of the most theocratic civilizations in the region. The government was administered by a formalized priesthood with a particular focus on the law. The origin accounts of both the Romans and the Jews put significant emphasis on the establishment of the law. For the Romans at least, it is widely acknowledged that most of Roman history prior to the 4th century BCE is largely unknown and lost. Most of the accounts of Roman history prior to the 4th century BCE are highly mythologized and infused with Greek influences. The writers of Rome's early history relied heavily on Greek sources to fill in gaps in their own knowledge. And furthermore, by the 2nd century BCE such accounts were almost universally believed among Romans.

Surely in the 6th or 5th century BCE if you were to ask an average Roman on the street if they were a descendant of Aeneas they would have had no idea what you were talking about. Yet ask that same question in the 2nd century BCE and surely most Romans would have agreed that they were.

So what I'm saying is that when we talk about Judaism and how it may seem preposterous to think that somehow the history of the Jewish people could have essentially been reinvented in the 3rd century BCE, through the innovation of stories about figures like Noah, Moses, and Joshua who had not previously been a part of Jewish culture and how a new set of laws, etc. could have been introduced as an ancient legal code, all we need do it look at the Romans, where classicists widely agree that this is exactly what happened.

And much like the "Laws of Moses", the Twelve Tables aren't actually known until the 2nd century BCE. There are many legends about the early origins of the 12 Tables, but it would seem that the formal development of the 12 Tables occurred much later.

So if we are serious about trying to understand how these national histories were developed and influenced cultures in the Classical era, Roman civilization is the perfect model to study. And surely it cannot be objected that the very processes that are widely agreed to have taken place in the development of Roman religion and literature could not possibly have taken place among the Jews. And yes, it is true that no one was claiming that the works of Livy or Pictor themselves ancient, they were claiming that the works of the Sibyls were in fact ancient. And Sibylline literature, with its retrospective and prophetic narrations of history was considered the foundational religious scriptures of Rome. In fact, I suspect very strongly, though this is not confirmed because so much of Sibylline literature has been lost, that the idea that Aeneas played a role in Roman origins came from Sibylline works.

[StephenGoranson]

rgprice wrote above, in part, that Roman civilization is, for the study of history of Judaism and the "Laws of Moses," the "perfect model."
Oh?
Such extreme rhetoric*--another example: "exactly what happened"--is asserted rather than shown.

*should we compare Leopold von Ranke, "wie es eigentlich gewesen,"
and posts by Russell E. Gmirkin?

[MrMacSon]

Rome was one of the most theocratic civilizations in the region. The government was administered by a formalized priesthood with a particular focus on the law

• Yes, and with a significantly structured, layered priesthood and other related religious structures

What I'm saying is that, while there are certainly differences between Judaism and Roman religion and literature, there are a lot of remarkable similarities. Aside from the Hasmonaean kingdom, Rome was one of the most theocratic civilizations in the region.

• Yep, I got that.

The origin accounts of both the Romans and the Jews put significant emphasis on the establishment of the law. For the Romans at least, it is widely acknowledged that most of Roman history prior to the 4th century BCE is largely unknown and lost. Most of the accounts of Roman history prior to the 4th century BCE are highly mythologized and infused with Greek influences. The writers of Rome's early history relied heavily on Greek sources to fill in gaps in their own knowledge. And furthermore, by the 2nd century BCE such accounts were almost universally believed among Romans.

Surely in the 6th or 5th century BCE if you were to ask an average Roman on the street if they were a descendant of Aeneas they would have had no idea what you were talking about. Yet ask that same question in the 2nd century BCE and surely most Romans would have agreed that they were.

So what I'm saying is that, when we talk about Judaism and how it may seem preposterous to think that somehow the history of the Jewish people could have essentially been reinvented in the 3rd century BCE, through the innovation of stories about figures like Noah, Moses, and Joshua who had not previously been a part of Jewish culture and how a new set of laws, etc. could have been introduced as an ancient legal code, all we need do it look at the Romans, where classicists widely agree that this is exactly what happened.

And much like the "Laws of Moses", the Twelve Tables aren't actually known until the 2nd century BCE. There are many legends about the early origins of the 12 Tables, but it would seem that the formal development of the 12 Tables occurred much later.

So, if we are serious about trying to understand how these national histories were developed and influenced cultures in the Classical era, Roman civilization is the perfect model to study. And surely it cannot be objected that the very processes that are widely agreed to have taken place in the development of Roman religion and literature could not possibly have taken place among the Jews. And yes, it is true that no one was claiming that the works of Livy or Pictor themselves ancient, they were claiming that the works of the Sibyls were in fact ancient. And Sibylline literature, with its retrospective and prophetic narrations of history was considered the foundational religious scriptures of Rome. In fact, I suspect very strongly, though this is not confirmed because so much of Sibylline literature has been lost, that the idea that Aeneas played a role in Roman origins came from Sibylline works.

• There's indications that many new nations of the time embellished their previous history, including its supposed chronology and longevity, to give them better 'present status'

[MrMacSon]

The following is a reconfiguation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacchanal ... evelopment

The Bacchanalia were Roman festivals of Bacchus, the Greco-Roman god of wine, freedom, intoxication and ecstasy. They were based on the Greek Dionysia and the Dionysian Mysteries, and probably arrived in Rome c. 200 BCE via the Greek colonies in southern Italy, and from Etruria, Rome's northern neighbour. Tenney Frank suggests that some form of Dionysian worship may have been introduced to Rome by captives from the formerly Greek city of Tarentum in southern Italy, captured from the Carthaginians in 209 BCE. Like all mystery cults, the Bacchanalia were held in strict privacy, and initiates were bound to secrecy ...* [they] may have had mystery elements and public elements; religious dramas which were performed in public, and private rites performed by acolytes and priests of the deity.

* what little is known of the cult and its rites derives from Greek and Roman literature, plays, statuary and paintings. One of the earliest sources is Greek playwright Euripides's The Bacchae, which won the Athenian Dionysia competition in 405 BCE.

There is said to have been a scandal and crisis involving the Bacchanalia, but that perception is likely due to Livy's much later scandalized and extremely colourful account of the Bacchanalia, which the entire Wikipedia articles gives prominence to. Except for:

Senatorial legislation to reform the Bacchanalia in 186 BCE attempted to control their size, organisation, and priesthoods, under threat of the death penalty. This may have been motivated less by the kind of lurid and dramatic rumours that Livy describes than by the Senate's determination to assert its civil, moral and religious authority over Rome and its allies, after the prolonged social, political and military crisis of the Second Punic War (218–201 BCE).

and

The Legislation of 186 BCE survives in the form of an inscription. Known as the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, it brought the Bacchanalia under control of the Senate, and thus of the Roman pontifices. The existing cult chapters and colleges were dismantled. Congregations of mixed gender were permitted, but were limited to no more than two men and three women, and any Bacchanalia gathering must seek prior permission from the Senate. Men were forbidden Bacchus’s priesthood.

Despite their official suppression, illicit Bacchanals persisted covertly for many years, particularly in Southern Italy, their likely place of origin. The reformed, officially approved Bacchic cults would have borne little resemblance to the earlier crowded, ecstatic and uninhibited Bacchanalia.

and

The reformed Bacchanalia rites may have been merged with the Liberalia festival. Bacchus, Liber [an olde Roman god of viticulture and wine, male fertility and freedom] and Dionysus became virtually interchangeable from the late Republican era (133 BCE and onward), and their mystery cults persisted well into the Principate of Roman Imperial era.

Liber's cults...perceived or actual association with the Bacchanalia may be the reason that [the] Liberalia ludi [games] of 17 March were temporarily moved to Ceres' Cerealia of 12–19 April [the major festival celebrated for the grain goddess Ceres; the initiation of which is attributed to the semi-legendary King Numa]. They were restored when the ferocity of reaction eased, but in approved, much modified form.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacchanalia

Liber entered Rome's historical tradition soon after the overthrow of the Roman monarchy, the establishment of the Republic and the first of many threatened or actual plebeian secessions from Rome's patrician authority. According to Livy, the dictator A. Postumius vowed games (ludi) and a joint public temple to a Triad of Ceres, Liber and Libera on Rome's Aventine Hill, c.496 BCE. In 493 the vow was fulfilled: the new Aventine temple was dedicated and ludi scaenici (religious dramas) were held in honour of Liber, for the benefit of the Roman people. These early ludi scaenici have been suggested as the earliest of their kind in Rome, and may represent the earliest official festival to Liber, or an early form of his Liberalia festival. The formal, official development of the Aventine Triad may have encouraged the assimilation of its individual deities to Greek equivalents: Ceres to Demeter, Liber to Dionysus and Libera to Persephone or Kore.

Liber's patronage of Rome's largest, least powerful class of citizens (the plebs, or plebeian commoners) associates him with particular forms of plebeian disobedience to the civil and religious authority claimed by Rome's Republican patrician elite. The Aventine Triad has been described as parallel to the Capitoline Triad of Jupiter, Mars and Quirinus on the Capitoline Hill, within the city's sacred boundary (pomerium): and as its "copy and antithesis". The Aventine Triad was apparently installed at the behest of the Sibylline Books but Liber's position within it seems equivocal from the outset. He was a god of the grape and of wine; his early ludi scaenici virtually defined their genre thereafter as satirical, subversive theatre in a lawful religious context. Some aspects of his cults remained potentially un-Roman and offered a focus for civil disobedience. Liber asserted plebeian rights to ecstatic release, self-expression and free speech;* he was Liber Pater, the Free Father – a divine personification of liberty, father of plebeian wisdoms and plebeian augury.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber

* One would think that should say: 'Plebians used Liber to assert rights to ecstatic release, self-expression and free speech'

And, from the start of that paragraph, that:
'Plebians' used their patronage of Liber to conduct particular forms of [plebeian] disobedience to the civil and religious authority claimed by Rome's Republican patrician elite' ...

But the next section suggests that, like Dionysus, Liber had been "euhemerised" - ie. anthropomorphised - as a historical figure:

Liber, Bacchus and Dionysus
Liber's associations with wine, inebriation, uninhibited freedom and the subversion of the powerful made him a close equivalent to the Greek god Dionysus, who was Romanised as Bacchus. In Graeco-Roman culture, Dionysus was euhemerised as a historical figure, a heroic saviour, world-traveller and founder of cities; and conqueror of India, whence he had returned in the first ever triumph, drawn in a golden chariot by tigers, accompanied by a retinue of drunken satyrs and maenads. In some cults, and probably in the popular imagination, Liber was gradually assimilated to Bacchus and came to share his Romanised "Dionysian" iconography and myths. Pliny calls him "the first to establish the practice of buying and selling; he also invented the diadem, the emblem of royalty, and the triumphal procession." Roman mosaics and sarcophagi attest to various representations of this exotic triumphal procession. In Roman and Greek literary sources from the late Republic and Imperial era, several notable triumphs feature similar, distinctively "Bacchic" processional elements, recalling the supposedly historic "Triumph of Liber".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber#Lib ... d_Dionysus

For posterity, here's some of what the Liber Wikipedia article says about the so-called Bacchanalia Crisis:

Liber and the Bacchanalia of 186 BCE

Very little is known of Liber's official and unofficial cults during the early to middle Republican era. Their Dionysiac or Bacchic elements seem to have been regarded as tolerably ancient, home-grown and manageable by Roman authorities until 186 BCE, shortly after the end of the Second Punic War ...

The Bacchanalia cults may have offered challenge to Rome's traditional, official values and morality but they were practiced in Roman Italy as Dionysiac cults for several decades before their alleged disclosure, and were probably no more secretive than any other mystery cult. Nevertheless, their presence at the Aventine provoked an investigation. The consequent legislation against them – the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus of 186 BCE – was framed as if in response to a dire and unexpected national and religious emergency, and its execution was unprecedented in thoroughness, breadth and ferocity. Modern scholarship interprets this reaction as the senate's assertion of its own civil and religious authority throughout the Italian peninsula, following the recent Punic War and subsequent social and political instability.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber#Lib ... _of_186_BC

The following is noteworthy, to me, at least, wrt to old wine[skins], new wine, etc., in Christian tropes:

Festivals, cults and priesthoods

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The wine produced under Liber's patronage was his gift to humankind, and therefore fit for profane (non-religious) use: it could be mixed with old wine for the purposes of fermentation, and otherwise adulterated and diluted according to taste and circumstance. For religious purposes, it was ritually "impure" (vinum spurcum). Roman religious law required that the libations offered to the gods in their official cults should be vinum inferum, a strong wine of pure vintage, also known as temetum. It was made from the best of the crop, selected and pressed under the patronage of Rome's sovereign deity Jupiter and ritually purified by his flamen (senior priest). Liber's role in viniculture and wine-making was thus both complementary and subservient to Jupiter's.

Liber also personified male procreative power, which was ejaculated as the "soft seed" of human and animal semen. His temples held the image of a phallus; in Lavinium, this was the principal focus for his month-long festival, when according to St. Augustine, the "dishonourable member" was placed "on a little trolley" and taken in procession around the local crossroad shrines, then to the local forum for its crowning by an honourable matron. The rites ensured the growth of seeds and repelled any malicious enchantment (fascinatus) from fields.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber#Fes ... riesthoods

nb.
"Roman religious law required that the libations offered to the gods in their official cults should be vinum inferum, a strong wine of pure vintage"

And nota bene

Imperial era

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Augustus successfully courted the plebs, supported their patron deities and began the restoration of the Aventine Triad's temple; it was re-dedicated by his successor, Tiberius. Liber is found in some of the threefold, complementary deity-groupings of Imperial cult; a saviour figure, like Hercules and the Emperor himself. The reign and dynasty of the emperor Septimius Severus [r.193 to 211 CE] were inaugurated with games to honour Liber/Shadrafa and Hercules/Melqart, the Romanised founding hero-deities of his native town, Leptis Magna (North Africa). He built them a massive temple and arch in Rome. Later still, Liber Pater is of one of many deities served by the erudite, deeply religious senator Vettius Agorius Praetextatus (c. AD 315 – 384).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber#Imperial_era