Temples, Festivals and Symbols of Power

A house, not a church

A Greek or Roman temple was not a building people worshipped inside. It was the **house of the god**: it held the cult statue, and the treasures given to the deity. Worship happened **outside**, at an **altar** standing in front of the temple, in the open air. That is where animals were sacrificed and where the crowd gathered. Most ordinary people never went in at all. Picture a church and almost every question in this section goes wrong. Picture a grand house on a platform, with the real event happening on the steps outside, and they go right.

Label the temple front

Four parts of this temple front are marked. Drag the right name onto each. Two of the labels name things that are not part of the front at all.

Where did the sacrifice happen?

An ox is sacrificed at a major festival. Where does it take place, and who is there?

• At an altar outside the temple, in the open, with the crowd gathered around it
• Inside the temple, in front of the cult statue, with the congregation seated
• At each family's own house
• In the cella, which was built large enough to hold the city

Two ways to build a temple

Roman temples borrowed Greek columns and then used them very differently. The difference is about where you are meant to stand.

Match each building to what it is

Who ran the religion?

There was no priesthood as a separate profession. Religious office was part of public life.

True about religious office

Select the TWO statements that describe ancient religious office accurately.

• Religious office was usually part of public life rather than a separate profession, and could be held alongside political power
• Roman augurs read signs, such as the behaviour of birds, before public business could go ahead
• Priests trained for years in a seminary before taking office
• A priest's main duty was preaching to a congregation each week

Four festivals, four purposes

The specification names four, two Greek and two Roman. **City Dionysia** (Athens, spring): a festival of Dionysos with a great procession, and the competition at which tragedies and comedies were performed. **Great Panathenaia** (Athens, every four years): a procession up to the Acropolis to present a newly woven robe to Athena, with games and competitions. **Lupercalia** (Rome, February): the Luperci ran through the city striking bystanders with strips of goat hide, in a rite associated with purification and fertility. **Saturnalia** (Rome, December): feasting, gift-giving and a licensed turning upside down of the normal order, with masters waiting on their slaves.

Match each festival to what happened

Temples and festivals in a paragraph

A temple was the house of the god, so sacrifice took place at an _____ outside it. A Greek temple stood on a low stepped platform with columns all round, while a Roman one was usually raised on a high _____ and approached from the front. The _____ was the Athenian festival at which tragedies and comedies were performed, while at the Great _____ a new robe was carried up to Athena. At the Roman _____, masters waited on their slaves.

Why carve a battle on a temple?

The sculpture on these buildings is not decoration. The **Centauromachy** on the Parthenon shows Lapiths fighting centaurs; the **Amazonomachy** on the Bassae frieze shows Greeks fighting Amazons. Both are the same argument in stone: **order against disorder, and civilisation against what threatens it**. A city that has just survived invasion, carving that on its greatest temple, is saying something about itself. The Parthenon's continuous inner frieze is usually interpreted as the Panathenaic procession, which would put the citizens of Athens themselves on the building, alongside the gods.

What is the Centauromachy for?

Why would Athens choose a fight between Lapiths and centaurs for the metopes of its greatest temple?

• Because it stages order defeating disorder, letting Athens present its own recent survival as civilisation beating what threatened it
• Because it was a well-known story and the sculptors knew how to carve horses
• Because the Parthenon was dedicated to the centaurs
• Because temples had to be decorated and the subject did not matter

What Augustus put in stone

**"Explain how Augustus used art and architecture to support his position. (8 marks)"** "The Augustus of Prima Porta shows him in military dress with a decorated breastplate, one arm raised as if addressing troops, but standing barefoot in the way gods and heroes were shown, and with a small Cupid at his leg recalling his family's claimed descent from Venus. The statue therefore makes him commander, hero and descendant of a goddess at once. The Ara Pacis, the altar of Augustan Peace voted in 13 BC, does the other half of the work: its reliefs set the imperial family in a procession alongside images of fertility and abundance, so that peace and plenty appear to arrive with his family in particular." Both answers name a specific feature and say what it CLAIMS. A description of either monument without that second half is worth very little here.

Which details are political?

A description of the Augustus of Prima Porta. Tap the TWO details that make a claim about who Augustus is, rather than simply describing how he looks.

• The statue shows a man of about thirty,
• his right arm raised as if speaking to an army
• , wearing a decorated breastplate over a tunic. His hair is short and neat, and
• he stands barefoot, in the manner reserved for gods and heroes
• . The marble is finely finished and
• the figure stands slightly over life size
• .

A ruler commissions a monument

Work through how a monument does political work, using what you now know about the Ara Pacis.

• The Ara Pacis is an altar of PEACE, dedicated by a man who came to power through civil war. What does that choice of subject do?
• Its reliefs put his family in a procession beside images of fertility and abundance. Why place them together?
• What is the strongest way to write about a monument like this in an exam?

Your turn: what was religion for?

Explain how temples, festivals and public art each served the CITY as well as the gods, using named examples.

• Explain what a temple actually was, and where worship took place
• Use one named festival to show what it did for the city holding it
• Explain what the Centauromachy or the Amazonomachy claims
• Use one Augustan monument to show a ruler making the same kind of claim