This book offers a radical new survey of more than a thousand years of religious life at Rome, from the foundation of the city to its rise to world empire and its conversion to Christianity. It sets religion in its full cultural context, between the primitive hamlet of the eight century BC and the cosmopolitan, multicultural society of the first centuries of the Christian era. The companion volume, Religions of Rome 2: A Sourcebook, sets out a wide range of documents, richly illustrating the religious life in the Roman world.