Religion, Ritual, and the Urban Development of Ancient Rome

In Religion, Ritual, and the Urban Development of Ancient Rome, Jörg Rüpke explores how religious practices shaped the city's expansion from the third century BCE to the second century of the Christian era. Using the concept of 'urban religion,' his study looks beyond short-term adaptation to urban environments to track and understand long-term changes in religious practices and beliefs, and how they were urbanized. Bringing together religious, sociological, political, historical, epigraphical, and philological evidence, he makes the abstract notion of the city comprehensible as the interplay between different interests in and imagination of living in an urban environment. His study enables new insights into the temporal, spatial, moral orders, and mobilities that were at play in the development of Rome over several centuries. Rüpke's book thus demonstrates the critical role that religion played in the urbanization of Rome.