The Romans and the rational

: a cognitive approach to late Republican ritual infrastructure

Abstract

This project uses recent findings from cognitive scientific research, particularly in the fields of evolutionary, behavioural, and experimental psychology, to pursue new insights about religious ritual of the late Roman Republic. The primary goals of this thesis include identifying intuitive and rational motivations to engage in ritual practice based on circumstantial stimuli, evaluating perceived and ‘actual’ efficacy of ritual, and considering the suite of Roman rituals as a form of technology. Three chapters respectively consider Divination, Pollution, and Purification in terms of rational, non-fideistic reasons to rely on ritual practice. A concluding chapter synthesises the previous chapters’ arguments and offers an original model for a Ritual Immune System (RIS) to describe the infrastructure of procedures for threat detection, prevention, and mitigation. The overarching findings of this project relate to (Dis)Order, anxiolysis, perceived contamination threats, and viewing Roman state ritual as a system of meticulous, procedural technologies that could be ‘actually’ efficacious by creating cognitive and social benefits for its participants.

Date of Award	1 Jul 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of St Andrews
Supervisor	Thomas Biggs (Supervisor) & Michael Carroll (Supervisor)