This book gathers eight papers devoted to specific aspects of Cicero's engagement with Roman
religion and seeks to make a wider contribution to the understanding of Cicero's work as
historical evidence. By engaging with religion as a fundamental factor of social cohesion and
political stability both in his theoretical works and his speeches Cicero shaped a
wide-ranging and ambitious discourse around themes and images that were firmly located in
first-century BCE Rome. His contribution also proved very influential in the centuries to come.
The volume focuses on the relationship between law religion and religious authority in Cicero
the interplay between divine images ritual contexts and the conceptualization of the divine
Cicero's construction of a Greek deity for a Roman audience the role of religious elements in
the shaping of a Roman political identity the tension between 'natural law' and Roman pietas
the problem of divine and human foresight the relationship between theoretical views of the
gods and late Republican public cult and the reception use and readaptation of Ciceronian
theology in the English Enlightenment.
