New item in the Archive for Religion and Cognition:


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Author(s): Anders Lisdorf
Title: The conflict over Cicero\'s house: an analysis of the ritual element in
De Domo Sua
Category: published article
Length:
Keywords: Ritual, Roman Religion

Abstract: According to the Romans themselves ritual was at the heart of their
culture.
Strangely, this centrality of ritual has not been matched by a corresponding
sensitivity
to how ritual was to be interpreted. Ritual has most often been viewed as
an empty formalism devoid of any true belief. It is argued in this article that
this
view of ritual is an ethnocentric construct stemming from a Christian conception
of belief, which does not adequately account for the peculiarities of ritual
based
religions. Taking the seemingly obscure and little studied case of the conflict
over Cicero’s house as a case, it is argued that E. Thomas Lawson’s
and Robert
N. McCauley’s ritual theory might help to overcome this misconception of
ritual.
This enables us to see how Cicero explicates implicit beliefs entailed by the
ritual
actions. Ultimately the evidence seems to support the reverse interpretation:
that ritual was taken very seriously.

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