![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() And it is immediately rendered precarious and contested due to the shifting of positions, of prestige, and even of the power produced by success. The high social and material investment involved in the construction of initially less plausible contemporaries (or ‘counterintuitive agents’ in the terminology of evolutionary theories of religion) and in the project of producing relevant communication with them seems to produce, time and again, a surplus of self-stabilisation, power, or the capacity to solve problems. How can religion be described from the individual’s perspective and as practiced by the individual? This fundamental question lies behind any approach to ancient Mediteraenean religion that deals with individual agency in religious contexts, from an elite’s self-styled sacra publica (‘rituals on behalf of the commonwealth’) to groupings centring on a god, secta dei (‘sect of the God’, as Tertullian says). ![]()
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