Craige Champion, associate professor of history at Syracuse University, will give a lecture, “To Believe or Not to Believe: Roman Senators and the State Religion,” on Monday, February 17, at 7 p.m., in Shiley Hall room 319. Champion will present the findings of his recently completed manuscript on ancient Roman religion (Pax Deorum: Elite Religious Practices in the Middle Roman Republic, Yale University Press). Countering an embedded, widely-held interpretation over two thousand years old, he argues that Roman governing elites did indeed believe in their gods, rather than being the skeptical and incredulous manipulators still perceived by most scholars on Roman religion. The argument should be of interest to anyone who is concerned with questions of the intersections between politics and religion, and elite/non-elite social relations in any historical society.
The lecture is sponsored by the history department with the support of the Distinguished Historian Fund, founded by Fr. James Connelly, C.S.C. For more information contact Brad Franco, history, at 7192 or franco@up.edu.