Religious Pluralism and Diversity in the Ancient World: Herodotus, the Roman Republic and Late Antiquity

The subject of religious pluralism and diversity is much debated today, but has attracted much less attention in discussions of ancient Greek and Roman religion. In my contribution, I first look at the genealogy of the term ‘religious pluralism’ and differentiate it from diversity as being more normative. Subsequently, I look at Herodotus’ view of Persian religion as an example of religious diversity. I note that this Greek author, himself from a multicultural background, would today be considered a relativist. In his time, though, there was not yet a specific term for religious deviancy, which, as noted, started to emerge in the later fourth century BC (§ 1). I continue by looking at the Roman Republic and the early Principate. From a quantitative analysis, it is clear that the Roman term religio becomes more important in the first century BC and also acquires the meaning of a system of religious observances that can be regulated, which is an important step towards its later meaning ‘religion’. At the same time, we note the rise of the concomitant term superstitio as the wrong religio. Still, the Roman elite tolerated a wide variety of new cults outside civic religion and basically practised diversity (§ 2). After this, I will turn to the demise of religious diversity and pluralism in Late Antiquity, where we start to see religious persecutions for the very first time (§ 3). I conclude with some final considerations on the necessity of dialogue in negotiating religious differences.