SACRED TIME
Each god had a special festival day which was usually a public holiday. On this particular day, people would visit the temple for whichever god was being celebrated. At the temple, priests would sacrifice animals and offer them to the god. The Romans did not develop sacred stories about their gods, as the Greeks and Egyptians did. roman gods were functional and practical, not metaphors for complicated ideas. the Romans simply borrowed the gods and stories of the Greeks, and adapted them.
There was not a month in the Roman calendar which did not have its religious festivals.
The sacred space of the Romans was the Templum, a consecrated place, constructed along the cardinal points and plotted ritually, corresponding to a sacred space in the sky.
The templum was traced in the air by an Augur (a priest of Ancient Rome whose task it was to interpret the will of the gods) with a special rod, the lituus, which was used to carve out a sacred portion of the sky which was then oriented and apportioned in fas and nefas regions (i.e. appreciated or not appreciated by the deities) for the purpose of obtaining an omen from the flight of birds. On earth a similar space corresponded to this consecrated space that could either be temporarily (i.e. associated with the single divining ritual) or permanently assigned as a place for sacrifices and worship of the gods. In this case, the place would house a building of cult: an altar or an aedes, the actual dwelling of a divinity.
Still today, a multitude of ancient Roman temples are scattered around Rome, many of which are situated in the area of the Roman Forum. The most well-known and visited are certainly the Pantheon, the Temple of Jupiter and the Temple of Saturn.
-Pantheon, a place of worship
There was not a month in the Roman calendar which did not have its religious festivals.
The sacred space of the Romans was the Templum, a consecrated place, constructed along the cardinal points and plotted ritually, corresponding to a sacred space in the sky.
The templum was traced in the air by an Augur (a priest of Ancient Rome whose task it was to interpret the will of the gods) with a special rod, the lituus, which was used to carve out a sacred portion of the sky which was then oriented and apportioned in fas and nefas regions (i.e. appreciated or not appreciated by the deities) for the purpose of obtaining an omen from the flight of birds. On earth a similar space corresponded to this consecrated space that could either be temporarily (i.e. associated with the single divining ritual) or permanently assigned as a place for sacrifices and worship of the gods. In this case, the place would house a building of cult: an altar or an aedes, the actual dwelling of a divinity.
Still today, a multitude of ancient Roman temples are scattered around Rome, many of which are situated in the area of the Roman Forum. The most well-known and visited are certainly the Pantheon, the Temple of Jupiter and the Temple of Saturn.
-Pantheon, a place of worship
-Inside the Pantheon