Temples, Priests and Sacrifice
Temples and Sacred Space
A Roman sanctuary was more than just a building. It included the temple itself, an open altar standing outside in front of it, and often a grove of sacred trees. The altar, not the inside of the temple, was where the actual sacrifice took place — priests and worshippers gathered outdoors to watch and take part.
Sacrifices were performed at the altar outside a temple, not inside it. The inside of the temple usually held only the cult statue of the god, and in some cases — like the Temple of Vesta — not even that.
Famous Temples and Altars
The Ara Pacis, the “Altar of Peace”, was voted by the senate to celebrate Augustus’s safe return from Spain and Gaul. Augustus himself recorded in his Res Gestae that the senate ordered magistrates, priests and the Vestal Virgins to make “annual sacrifice” at “an altar to Pax Augusta in the Campus Martius”. The altar’s carved reliefs show a religious procession, mixing politics and religion in a way typical of the Roman state.
The Pantheon in Rome carries an inscription across its portico: M. AGRIPPA. L. F. COS. TERTIUM. FECIT — Marcus Agrippa, son of Lucius, made this building when he was consul for the third time. The original Pantheon, built under Agrippa, was later rebuilt, but the inscription still credits the man who first commissioned it. Pliny the Elder records that its bronze capitals and Caryatid columns were considered masterpieces of design.
The Temple of Vesta in the Forum Romanum was unusual because it held no statue of the goddess at all. Ovid admits he was puzzled by this himself: “For long, I stupidly thought Vesta had statues; I soon learned that the rotunda has none.” Instead, the temple’s most sacred object was a fire that was never allowed to go out — a physical symbol of the goddess herself.
Rome and its empire were full of temples built to honour specific gods or the emperor. Here are a few more examples referred to in Roman civilisation sources:
- Maison Carrée, Nîmes — a well-preserved first-century AD Roman temple built for the worship of the emperor, known as the Imperial cult.
- Temple of Apollo, Pompeii — stood in the forum of Pompeii and was one of the city’s oldest religious buildings.
- Temple of Hercules Victor, Rome — a small round temple honouring Hercules as a bringer of victory.
- Temple of Portunus, Rome — dedicated to the god of harbours and river crossings, close to the River Tiber.
Priests, Priestesses and Religious Officials
The most senior priests at Rome were the sixteen pontifices, led by the Pontifex Maximus. According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus, the pontifices had authority over religious law, judged religious disputes, and acted as “explainers and interpreters” of the gods for ordinary citizens who did not understand ritual. Because religion and politics were so closely tied together, ambitious men competed for these posts: Julius Caesar served as Pontifex Maximus, and Cicero held the separate priesthood of augur.
Fifteen flamines each cared for the cult of one specific god. Livy credits King Numa with creating the office of flamen Dialis, the priest of Jupiter, because he feared that future kings — being more like the warlike Romulus than the peaceful Numa — would neglect the royal rituals while away at war. Numa marked the flamen’s status with special dress and a sella curulis, an official chair of state normally reserved for magistrates.
Augures read the will of the gods from signs such as the flight and feeding of birds, using a curved staff called a lituus. Ignoring the signs was considered extremely dangerous. Suetonius records that the commander Claudius Pulcher, told before a sea battle that the sacred chickens would not eat, threw them overboard, joking, “If they don’t want to eat, let them drink”. He then lost the battle — a story used to show what happened when a Roman scorned the gods.
A haruspex interpreted the gods’ will by examining the liver of a sacrificed animal, comparing any unusual marks against a model. Surviving bronze models of a liver, divided into labelled sections, show how carefully this reading was carried out.
Vestal Virgins were priestesses of Vesta, goddess of the hearth. Six served at any one time, and each vowed to remain unmarried for thirty years while tending Vesta’s sacred fire.
According to Aulus Gellius, a girl chosen as a Vestal had to be “no less than six and no more than 10 years old”, with both parents living and no physical disability. Once chosen, she left her father’s control and gained the right to make her own will — an unusual legal freedom for a Roman girl.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus explains that the Vestals had to remain “undefiled by marriage for the space of thirty years”, spending the first ten years learning their duties, the next ten performing them, and the final ten teaching new Vestals. If a Vestal let the sacred fire go out, or broke her vow of chastity, the pontifices punished her severely; the Romans believed a burning fire was essential to the safety of the city itself.
Performing a Sacrifice
A public sacrifice followed a set pattern. The animal was led to the altar, and two assistants called victimarii held it still while one stunned it with a hammer before it was killed with a knife. The presiding magistrate did not carry out the killing himself; his role was to oversee the ritual and speak the correct prayers, since a single mistake in the words could mean the sacrifice had to be repeated.
Different offerings suited different purposes. Pigs were common in sacrifices for purification, fertility, or when land was newly claimed. Cato the Elder gives a prayer used before clearing a sacred grove, instructing the farmer to “sacrifice a pig as a propitiatory offering” to whichever god or goddess owned that grove, asking for their goodwill before any trees were cut down.
The Vestal Virgins prepared mola salsa, a salted flour cake sprinkled over the victim’s head before it was killed. This shows how private ritual skill — work carried out by priestesses — fed directly into Rome’s public sacrifices.