Women, Freedpeople, Slaves : the Significance of the Capitoline Triad Outside of the Elite-Male Sphere

Abstract

Until fairly recently, scholarship had a tendency to diminish the state religious participation of social groups outside of the elite-male sphere in Rome. This commonly occurred with regard to the Capitoline Triad. From the end of the monarchy to the late principate, the Capitoline Triad was one of the central religious components of Roman religion. It was intimately associated with ideas of Romanitas, the mos maiorum and Roman expansion. The deities of the triad – Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Juno, and Minerva – were important both for their state religious function within the triad, and for their individual roles exterior to the triad. As such, they received much attention from across Roman society. Despite its importance to Roman society as a whole, modern scholars had a tendency to limit the participation of free women, freedpeople, and slaves in active forms of engagement with the triad. Where scholars addressed the engagement of these groups with the triad, they portrayed it as peripheral or auxiliary to the main actors, elite men. However, over the last fifty years, there has been an increased interest in those previously obscured by history. This has shifted the general tide of scholarship with regard to non-elite engagement with Roman state religion. This thesis continues this trend through an analysis of the engagement of underrepresented social groups with the Capitoline Triad. Through a survey of both the literary and epigraphical evidence of various forms of religious engagement, this thesis concludes that those outside of the elite-male sphere were of vital importance in the religio of the Capitoline Triad. While many of the main religious and civic roles directly related to the triad were filled by elite men, the various strata of society not only sought, but were also required, to engage with the triad in a variety of indispensable ways.