Religion, Society, and the Divine from Augustus to Muhammad

(3 Credit Hours) · Undergraduate

The Roman Imperial period and the period of late antiquity following it saw radical changes in the ways in which men and women conceived their relationship to the divine. From the first to the seventh century, there were profound transformations in thinking about God or the Gods in philosophical discourses; the relationship between men and gods; the role of ritual and religion in everyday life, as well as in ethics, history, and their sense of community. This unit examines the evidence for these changes in the literature and material culture from the Mediterranean world, from the religious revival of Augustus, through the age of anxiety of the second and third centuries, to the triumph of Christianity, and finally to the rise of Islam.