Archive | 2021
WENDT, HEIDI. AT THE TEMPLE GATES: THE RELIGION OF FREELANCE EXPERTS IN THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 1ª ED. NOVA YORK: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2016. 262P. ISBN: 9780190267148
Abstract
In At the Temple Gates: The Religion of Freelance Experts in the Roman Empire (2016), the classicist Heidi Wendt bases her study in a variety of textual sources to analyze the existence and growth of what she considered a category of agents, the “autonomous religious experts”. She defined such category as “self-authorized actors whose practices directly enlisted gods and similar beings to a significant degree” (Wendt, 2016: 30). According to her, these individuals provided a particular class of religious activity attested in the first two centuries of the Roman Empire. They were therefore self-authorized priests, prophets, initiators of mysteries, magi, sacrificers, astrologers, preachers, apostles, among others. Although safeguarding specificities of performance, language, skills and services, they occupied the same social niche in the Roman world.