The Ancient Worlds and Sacred Cosmologies- Interpretatio Romana

Interpretatio Romana: Empire, Syncretism, and the Sacred Gods of Gaul explores the meeting point between Rome and the Celtic world, where conquest, translation, and sacred memory reshaped the divine landscape of ancient Gaul.Beginning with Julius Caesar's account in The Gallic War, this volume examines how Roman observers identified unfamiliar Gallic deities through the names of Mercury, Apollo, Mars, Jupiter, and Minerva. These comparisons helped Rome describe conquered peoples, but they also obscured local identities, functions, and traditions.Beneath the imperial names endured older powers such as Lugus, Belenus, Lenus, Taranis, Sulis, and Cernunnos, together with gods associated with forests, springs, storms, healing, tribal protection, and ancestral memory.Drawing upon inscriptions, archaeology, sacred geography, mythology, and the study of cultural exchange, the book considers how Roman and Celtic traditions interacted in temples, dedications, images, and regional cults. It reveals a process that involved adaptation and survival as well as political domination.Interpretatio Romana is an accessible study of translation, syncretism, and cultural transformation, showing how empire renamed the divine without fully erasing the gods who continued to speak beneath the language of Rome.