Roma (mythology)
In the Roman Empire , Roma was a deity who, as a personification, symbolized the Roman state or the city of Rome . Several temples and holy places were dedicated to her.
Roma becomes 269 BC First mentioned on As coins from Rome and 204 BC. On Roman coins from Locri in Calabria , from which it is concluded that the non-Roman population could also have religiously worshiped Roma. In fact, the first firmly documented cults for Roma can be found in the Greek world. In this context it fits that in Smyrna 195 BC you A temple was built. There are also reports of Roma cults on Ephesus , Sardis and Delos .
Roma was a goddess whose worship as " Princeps Civitatis " ("First among the cities") was made official by Augustus as part of a propaganda campaign in the west of the Roman Empire . He thereby conferred religious consecrations on the Roman concept of the state, had a number of temples of the Roma and Augustus built with his Res Gestae , and inscriptions were added to popularize the new goddess. In Lugdunum (now Lyon ), among others, a common altar was erected for him and Roma.
From 121 to 136, Roma was built under the emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius together with the goddess Venus on the Via Sacra in Rome with the Temple of Venus and Roma, the largest Roman temple to date. As a result, Roma became one of the Roman state gods.
literature
- E. di Filippo Balestrazzi: Roma . In: Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). Volume VIII, Zurich / Munich 1997, pp. 1048-1068.
- Simon RFPrice: Roma IV. In: The New Pauly (DNP). Volume 10, Metzler, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-476-01480-0 , Sp. 1106-1108.
- Franz Richter : Roma . In: Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hrsg.): Detailed lexicon of Greek and Roman mythology . Volume 4, Leipzig 1915, Sp. 130-164 ( digitized version ).
- Christian Habicht : The Augustan period and the first century after the birth of Christ. In: SRF Price (Ed.): Rituals and Power. The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1984, ISBN 0-521-31268-X , pp. 41-88.
