How Did Religion Influence Roman Government

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Rome in one form or another has been around for thousands of years and became one of the greatest empires in Western Civilization. According to S. C. Wells (2011), the Ancient city of Rome began as “as a conglomeration of small pastoral communities scattered across seven neighboring hills along the Tiber River of Italy” (“Berkshire Encyclopedia of World History”). Hundreds of years later the Empire of Rome will include all of the Mediterranean area and the British Isles. Throughout this time, Rome goes through many rises and falls. To make it through these peaks and valleys of power Roman government had to adapt. One of the main sources of power for the Roman government was religion. The religious views of Roman citizens changed vastly from the Greco-Roman gods with influences from lands conquered during the expansion eastward. The Government allowed the citizens to practice any religion they desired so long as the citizens also worshiped the state gods. The state gods were decided by the rulers during the time. Although religion evolved immensely throughout Roman history, the government successfully adapted and used religion to maintain control over the roman citizens. Some of these…show more content…
Flinging her into prison, Amulius ordered the babies to be thrown into the River Tiber; but Mars was looking after his own, and the basket in which his sons lay floated safely to the shore and ran aground beneath a fig tree… Here a she-wolf, coming down from the hills, heard the infants’ cries and suckled them, and a woodpecker fed them scraps of food. Both creatures were sacred to Mars. The royal shepherd, Faustulus, chanced by and saw the she-wolf tenderly licking the babies as if they were her own young. Guessing the boys’ royal parentage, he took them home, and he and his wife… adopted them and brought them up as their own (Romulus and Remus section, para.
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