Stealing from the Gods
Temple Robbery in the Roman Imagination
Charts the narratives surrounding temple robbery in ancient Rome
Description
Stealing from the Gods investigates how authors writing between the first century BCE and second century CE addressed the issue of temple robbery or sacrilegium. As a self-proclaimed empire of pious people, the Romans viewed temple robbery as deeply un-Roman and among the worst of offenses. On the other hand, given the constant financial pressures of warfare and administration, it was inevitable that the Romans would make use of the riches stored in sanctuaries. In order to resolve this dilemma, the Romans distinguished sharply between acceptable and unacceptable removals of sacred property. When those who conducted themselves as proper Romans plundered the property of the gods, their actions were for the good of the state. In contrast, the temple robber was viewed as a stranger to the norms of Roman society and an enemy of the state.
Ancient authors including Cicero, Caesar, Livy, Appian, and Pausanias present isolated, grotesque individuals whose actions have no bearing on the conduct of Romans as a whole, rendering temple robbery not a matter of collective responsibility, but of individual moral failure. By revealing how narratives of temple robbery are constructed from a literary perspective and how they inform discourses about military conquest and imperial rule, Isabel K. Köster shines a new light on how the Romans coped with the more pernicious aspects of their empire.
Isabel K. Köster is Associate Professor of Classics at University of Colorado Boulder.
Reviews
“Stealing from the Gods will be a go-to on temple robbery and temple robbers, not only for those interested in Latin historiography or oratory but in Roman history and culture in general. This book is well-positioned to make a large impact on scholarship across a variety of disciplines.”
- Jonathan Master, Emory University
“Temple robbery in the Roman world was a problem, except when it wasn’t. Isabel Köster’s new book Stealing from the Gods expertly illuminates this problem, detailing how Roman authors exploited this ambiguity to level critiques of other Romans, and in the process to clarify moral and religious values for the Roman ruling class.”
- Eric Orlin, University of Puget Sound
“An extensive survey of the rhetorical arguments about ‘temple robbers’ in Ciceronian forensic oratory and Roman historiography (especially Livy and Caesar). Careful reading and literary analysis is framed by documentary material (e.g., inscribed ‘prayers for justice’ and second century CE ‘confession inscriptions’) that bring the religious background into popular, quotidian practice in historical time. For those who wonder about Roman religious belief, the book offers important evidence.”
- Roberta L. Stewart, Dartmouth College
“Stealing from the Gods reveals that the Romans were much like us in their richly imagined moral condemnation. Köster skillfully excavates the figure of the temple robber, a criminal stereotype every bit as fascinating and menacing to the Roman mind as the mafia don or drug kingpin is to us.”
- Trevor Luke, Florida State University
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