“Veterum Hispaniae deorum Manes siue reliquiae: noticias del tratado de Rodrigo Caro sobre la religión antigua en Hispania”, Noua et uetera: Nuevos horizontes de la Filología Latina. Ed. A. Mª Aldama / M. F. del Barrio / A. Espigares (Madrid: Sociedad de Estudios Latinos, 2002),1049-1064.

This article describes the content and methodology of the treaty on the ancient Gods of Hispania by Rodrigo Caro (1573-1647). The autograph manuscript was written in 1628, but contains additions until 1641, when the author sent to Flanders a copy for printing, which eventually disappeared. Caro does not follow the allegorical method of traditional mythography, but rather the current criteria based on literary sources, ancient inscriptions and statues, coins and other archaeological remains. In addition he investigates the survival of pagan mythology at games, dances, parties and other cultural events, as well as in place names and Spanish words. He pays special attention to indigenous gods and to the Eastern divinities, and to the main places of worship, such as the Temple of Hercules in Cadiz, as well as to some fifty Greco-Latin divinities whose cult in Hispania was then attested. With this work, Rodrigo Caro stands as the founder of the modern studies on ancient religion in Spain, three centuries before the contemporary studies initiated with which a symposium on Roman religion in Hispania (Madrid, 1981), organized by the Institute of Archaeology "Rodrigo Caro" of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), named in honor of this father of Spanish Archeology, and the poet who better sang the archaeological remains and ancient ruins. The original manuscript of this work lies from the early nineteenth century in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, where it came from the library of Jacob Philip d 'Orville (1696-1751) in Amsterdam. It belonged to Gosvinus Vilenbroek until 1729, and before him to Juan Lucas Cortés (1624-1701). Cortes probably bought it around 1666 after the death of Juan de Córdoba Centurion, son of Adam Centurion, Marquis of Estepa, to whom it had been dedicated and offered by Caro in his last will in 1647.