Naming the Gods between Immanence and Transcendence in Greco-Roman Polytheisms

Type:

Book Chapter

Author:

Philippe Borgeaud

Published:

2024

Naming the Gods between Immanence and Transcendence in Greco-Roman PolytheismsLivy spoke most often of the gods at work in history, not by distinguishing them from one another, but rather by designating them as a community of gods, as Jrg Rpke notes in this book. 1 The Roman historian thus reduced the divine plurality to a collectivity, occasionally signified by the use of the word numen and the expression magnum deorum numen (the great numen of the gods).Rpke proposes that we recognise the idea of a "religion" in Livy, not in the sense of the Latin word religio, but rather the sense in which we understand it today.This philosophical piety was addressed to the "gods" as a collective entity.It was not concerned with naming the gods.Rpke qualifies this last activity as "second order".It is, however, the one that the priestly business of the Roman magistrates deals with, in a very scrupulous way.Livy would thus have conceived of the power of the gods in the way the most ancient Pelasgians did, who Herodotus asserted named the gods () simply "gods" (), before they had their names. 2 The comparison of Livy and Herodotus may seem audacious, but it shows that thinkers, in Rome as in Greece, were able to reflect on what preceded the attribution of their names to the gods: in other words, what would be a religion before religions.This question deserves to be put in relation to those posed by other forms of polarity (between before and after), which appear in our studies and are roo…

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