Cicero’s Religiology with the treatise “De Natura Deorum” as an example

Abstract

This article deals with a systematic description of the features of Cicero’s religiology which can be found in De natura deorum; no other works of Cicero are taken into consideration. It compares the etymology of the term religio proposed by the philosopher and his views on religion itself. The author of the article comes to the conclusion that the dualism in Cicero’s attitude to religion does not correlate with the etymology in question, due to which it seems to be non-constructive. While he states that religion is an integral part of the state system of the Roman Empire and tends to assign it a nature of cult, Cicero considers religion in the exact sense to be a domain of those who treat it in a rational way, thus coming into contradiction and, as a matter of fact, replacing religion with superstitions. The author of the article also considers E. Benveniste’s arguments in favour of Cicero’s etymology and pays attention to diffi culties in deriving religio from legere, noting that Lactantius’ etymology, which is seen by many as exclusively Christian, may have a broader context. Though one should not totally exclude the possibility of deriving the word religio from relegere as well as religare, the proposed arguments point to certain inconsistencies in Benveniste’s reasoning and, taking into account Cicero’s diff eretiation between religio and superstitio, demonstrate that the available prerequisites of considering Cicero’s etymology to be universally accepted might appear not very well-grounded.

Keywords

• religiology
• Cicero
• religion
• Lactantius
• relegere
• religare
• Benveniste
• etymology