The Importance Of Religion In Ancient Athens And Ancient Rome

In the beginning of this course we were able to decide our groups, and with that we would be picking what area of research we will as a group study throughout the semester. I knew right away that I wanted to be apart of the group that studies religion. I chose this group because I personally am a very religious person, and the only thing I have ever learned about ancient Greece and ancient Rome was their mythology and religion. What I expected to find through my research was people being executed for not following religious traditions, individuals being put into exile for not following religious practices, and most importantly religion being used as evidence in cases. What I ended up finding was very far from what I expected. Religion was primarily used as a means to portray someone as being ethical or unethical. Throughout this essay I will show how religion was used in the courts of ancient Athens and ancient Rome to make a litigant seem immoral or moral for the jury to side in a particular direction, and how it was very …show more content…
Athens and Rome have shown through court cases very significant differences in how they viewed and punished all types of violence. Sadly we as a class were unable to have as much cases that had to violence for Rome as we did for Athens, but this may have been because Rome was a lot less strict against violence than Athens was. This difference in views on violence comes from the difference in the civilizations’ types of government. Ancient Athens was a radical democracy, and ancient Rome had many different type of government but primarily had a group of individuals in power. Throughout this essay I will explain how the differences in government between the two civilizations created a significant difference in their views on violence, and show examples of how violence was taken much more seriously in Athens than