A STUDY OF VARRO'S ACCOUNT OF ROMAN CIVIL THEOLOGY IN THE ANTIQUITATES RERUM DIVINARUM AND ITS RECEPTION BY AUGUSTINE AND MODERN READERS

Augustine and most scholars assume that Varro in the Antiquitates Rerum Divinarum, a work which offers a detailed account of Roman religion, considered civil theology not true but just politically expedient. Augustine argues that Varro believed not in the gods whom the Romans worshipped in private and public cults, but only in the one god whom he identified with the world soul. Though scholars usually dismiss Augustine's reception of the Antiquitates as distortive, their interpretation is much the same as the bishop's. Here I argue that for Varro the gods of civil theology were as true as the one god that for him was the world soul.