Summary Of The Matter Of The Gods By Clifford Ando

Clifford Ando, author of The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire, is a professor of Classics, History, and Law at the University of Chicago. He specializes in topics relating to Roman law and religion. The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire is a collection of essays that Ando wrote in many journals. The book is broken into two parts. He begins with questioning the knowledge the Romans possessed about their Gods. In the next part of the book, he is finding connections between Roman religion and the laws. Ando’s goal is to explain how Romans valued the knowledge of religion and how it connected with Roman laws. He attempts to provide readers with adequate information that would support his deductions. Ando purpose becomes one that is clear as readers navigate their way through the book.
Part one “The Limits of Orthopraxy” is from Chapter two to four. He begins with chapter one titled, “Religion, Law, and Knowledge in Classical Rome” as a starting point of proving his point of Roman religion and law is connected. Clifford Ando states, “The central question before us might …show more content…
Throughout the book, his points would be incredible hard to understand what he was writing about without doing extra investigations on the subject. He also did not find a way to connect Roman laws to the religion of the Romans. Some points were briefly discussed and lacked a deeper explanation on his opinions.
The Matter of the Gods: Religion and the Roman Empire is a great book for anybody looking into exploring the Roman religion and law. Clifford Ando gave points and support to prove the connection of the Romans being knowledgeable about their religion and how it connected to the laws in place. Ando gave credible facts for every opinion that he stated in this book. It was truly a well written