Res Divina - The Res Divinae of Varro

The Res Divinae of Varro

The multivolume Antiquitates rerum humanarum et divinarum was one of the chief works of Varro (1st century BC), who was the major source on traditional Roman religion for the Church Fathers. It was a particular target of polemic for Augustine, who incidentally preserves much of what is known about its content and structure. Varro devoted 25 books of the Antiquitates to res humanae ("human affairs") and 16 to res divinae. His emphasis is deliberate; he treats cult and ritual as human constructs, and divides res divinae into three kinds:

• the mythic theology of the poets, or narrative elaboration;
• the natural theology of the philosophers, or theorizing on divinity (an elite activity to which ordinary people should not be exposed, lest they come to doubt the sacredness of social and religious institutions);
• the civil theology concerned with the relation of the state to the divine.

This schema is Stoic in origin, but Varro adapts it to the political and cultural concerns of his time.