Roman imperial cult
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The Roman imperial cult (
Augustus's reforms transformed Rome's Republican system of government to a de facto monarchy, couched in traditional Roman practices and Republican values. The princeps (emperor) was expected to balance the interests of the Roman military, Senate and people, and to maintain peace, security and prosperity throughout an ethnically diverse empire. The official offer of cultus to a living emperor acknowledged his office and rule as divinely approved and constitutional: his Principate should therefore demonstrate pious respect for traditional Republican deities and mores.
A deceased emperor held worthy of the honor could be voted a state divinity (
The imperial cult was inseparable from that of Rome's official deities, whose cult was essential to Rome's survival and whose neglect was therefore treasonous. Traditional cult was a focus of Imperial revivalist legislation under
Background
Roman
For five centuries, the Roman Republic did not give worship to any historic figure, or any living man, although surrounded by divine and semi-divine monarchies. Rome's legendary kings had been its masters; with their removal, Republican Romans could identify Romulus, the founder of the city, with the god Quirinus and still retain Republican liberty. Similarly, Rome's ancestor-hero Aeneas was worshipped as Jupiter Indiges.[1] The Romans worshipped several gods and demi-gods who had been human, and knew the theory that all the gods had originated as human beings, yet Republican traditions (mos maiorum) were staunchly conservative and anti-monarchic. The aristocrats who held almost all Roman magistracies, and thereby occupied almost all of the Senate, acknowledged no human as their inherent superior. No citizen, living or dead, was officially regarded as divine, but the honors[2] awarded by the state—crowns, garlands, statues, thrones, processions—were also suitable to the gods, and tinged with divinity; indeed, when the emperors were later given state worship, it was done by a decree of the Senate, phrased like any other honor.[3]
Among the highest of honors was the
In private life, however, tradition required that some human beings be treated as more or less divine; cult was due from familial inferiors to their superiors. Every
A prominent clan might claim divine influence and quasi-divine honors for its leader.
There are several cases of unofficial cult directed at men viewed as saviors, military or political. In
Greek
When the Romans began to dominate large parts of the Greek world, Rome's senior representatives there were given the same divine honours as were
The cities of
But it was Philip's son Alexander the Great who made the divinity of kings standard practice among the Greeks. The Egyptians accepted him as Pharaoh, and therefore divine, after he drove the Persians out of Egypt; other nations received him as their traditional divine or quasi-divine ruler as he acquired them. In 324 BC, he sent word to the Greek cities that they should also make him a god; they did so, with marked indifference,[18] which did not stop them from rebelling when they heard of his death next year.
His immediate successors, the
Euhemerus, a contemporary of Alexander, wrote a fictitious history of the world, which showed Zeus and the other established gods of Greece as mortal men, who had made themselves into gods in the same way; Ennius appears to have translated this into Latin some two centuries later, in Scipio Africanus' time.
The
Romans among the Greeks
The Roman magistrates who conquered the Greek world were fitted into this tradition; games were set up in honor of
When King Prusias I of Bithynia was granted an interview by the Roman Senate, he prostrated himself and addressed them as "Saviour Gods", which would have been etiquette at his own court; Livy was shocked by Polybius' account of this, and insists that there is no Roman source it ever happened.[20]
Worship and temples appear to have been routinely offered by Greeks to their Roman governors, with varied reactions.
Intermediate forms
The Romans and the Greeks gave religious reverence to and for human beings in ways that did not make the recipients gods; these made the first Greek apotheoses easier. Similar middle forms appeared as Augustus approached official divinity.
The Greeks did not consider the dead to be gods, but they did pay them homage and gave them sacrifices, using different rituals than those for the gods of Olympus. The Greeks called the extraordinary dead – founders of cities and the like – heroes; in the simplest form, Greek hero cult was the burial and the memorials which any respectable Greek family gave their dead, but paid for by their City in perpetuity.[22] Most heroes were the figures of ancient legend, but some were historical: the Athenians revered Harmodius and Aristogeiton as heroes, as saviours of Athens from tyranny; also, collectively, those who fell at the Battle of Marathon. Statesmen did not generally become heroes, but Sophocles was the hero Dexion ("the Receiver") – not as a playwright, nor a general, but because when the Athenians took Asclepius' cult during the Peloponnesian War, Sophocles housed an image of Asclepius until a shrine could be built. The Athenian leader Hagnon founded Amphipolis shortly before the Peloponnesian War; thirteen years later, while Hagnon was still alive, the Spartan general Brasidas liberated it from the Athenian Empire, and was fatally wounded in the process. The Amphipolitans buried him as a hero, declaring him the second founder of the city, and erased Hagnon's honors as much as they could.
The Greeks also honored founders of cities while they were still alive, like Hagnon. This could also be extended to men who did equally important things; during the period when Dion ruled in Syracuse, the Syracusans gave him "heroic honors" for suppressing the tyrants, and repeated this for Timoleon; these could also be described as worshipping his good spirit (agathos daimon, agathodaemon; every Greek had an agathodaemon, and the Greek equivalent of a toast was offered to one's agathodaemon).[23] Timoleon was called savior; he set up a shrine to Fortune (Automatia) in his house; and his birthday, the festival of his daimon, became a public holiday.[24]
Other men might claim divine favor by having a patron among the gods; so
It was not always easy to distinguish between heroic honors, veneration for a man's good spirit, worship of his patron deity, worship of the Fortune of a city he founded, and worship of the man himself. One might slide into another: In Egypt, there was a cult of Alexander as god and as founder of Alexandria; Ptolemy I Soter had a separate cult as founder of Ptolemais, which presumably worshipped his daimon and then gave him heroic honors, but in his son's reign, the priests of Alexander also worshipped Ptolemy and Berenice as the Savior Gods (theoi soteres).[28]
Finally, a man might, like Philip II, assume some prerogatives of godhood and not others. The first
End of the Republic
In the last decades of the Roman Republic, its leaders regularly assumed extra-constitutional powers. The mos majorum had required that magistrates hold office collectively, and for short periods; there were two
but these new leaders held power by themselves, and often for years.The same men were often given extraordinary honors. Triumphs grew ever more splendid;
Divus Julius
Caesar could claim personal ties to the gods, both by descent and by office. He was from the
When, however, he defeated his rivals in 45 BC and assumed full personal control of the Roman state, he asserted more. During the
During the Civil War, he had declared Venus his patron goddess: he vowed to erect a temple for Venus Victrix if she granted him the
When the news of his final victory, at the battle of Munda, reached Rome, the Parilia, the games commemorating the founding of the city, were to be held the next day; they were rededicated to Caesar, as if he were founder. Statues were set up to "Caesar's Liberty", and to Caesar himself, as "unconquered god."[37] He was accorded a house at public expense which was built like a temple; his image was paraded with those of the gods;[38] his portrait was put on the coins (the first time a living man had appeared on Roman coinage). Early in 44 BC, he was called parens patriae (father of the country);[39] legal oaths were taken by his Genius; his birthday was made a public festival; the month Quinctilis was renamed July, in his honor (as June was named for Juno). At last a special priest, a flamen, was ordained for him; the first was to be Mark Antony, Caesar's adjutant, then consul. To be served by a flamen would rank Caesar not only as divine, but as an equal of Quirinus, Jupiter, and Mars. In Cicero's hostile account, the living Caesar's honours in Rome were already and unambiguously those of a full-blown god (deus).[40]
Caesar's name as a living divinity – not as yet ratified by senatorial vote – was Divus Julius (or perhaps Jupiter Julius); divus, at that time, was a slightly archaic form of deus, suitable for poetry, implying some association with the bright heavens. A statue of him was erected next to the statues of Rome's ancient kings: with this, he seemed set to make himself King of Rome, in the Hellenistic style, as soon as he came back from the expedition to Parthia he was planning; but he was betrayed and killed in the Senate on 15 March 44 BC.[41][42][43][44]
An angry, grief-stricken crowd gathered in the
Caesar's heir
In 30–29 BC, the
In 29 BC Octavian dedicated the
Religion and Imperium under Augustus
Augustus appeared to claim nothing for himself, and innovate nothing: even the cult to the divus Julius had a respectable antecedent in the traditional cult to di parentes.[55] His unique – and still traditional – position within the Senate as princeps or primus inter pares (first among equals) offered a curb to the ambitions and rivalries that had led to the recent civil wars. As censor and pontifex maximus he was morally obliged to renew the mos maiores by the will of the gods and the "Senate and People of Rome" (Senatus Populusque Romanus). As tribune he encouraged generous public spending, and as princeps of the Senate he discouraged ambitious extravagance. He disbanded the remnants of the civil war armies to form new legions and a personal imperial guard (the Praetorian Guard): the patricians who still clung to the upper echelons of political, military and priestly power were gradually replaced from a vast, Empire-wide reserve of ambitious and talented equestrians. For the first time, senatorial status became heritable.[56]
Ordinary citizens could circumvent the complex, hierarchic bureaucracy of the State, and appeal directly to the emperor, as if to a private citizen. The emperor's name and image were ubiquitous – on state coinage and on the streets, within and upon the temples of the gods, and particularly in the courts and offices of the civil and military administration. Oaths were sworn in his name, with his image as witness. His official res gestae (achievements) included his repair of 82 temples in 28 BC alone, the founding or repair of 14 others in Rome during his lifetime and the overhauling or foundation of civic amenities including a new road, water supplies, Senate house and theatres.[57] Above all, his military pre-eminence had brought an enduring and sacred peace, which earned him the permanent title of imperator and made the triumph an Imperial privilege.[58] He seems to have managed all this within due process of law through a combination of personal brio, cheerfully veiled threats and self-deprecation as "just another senator".[59][60]
In Rome, it was enough that the office, munificence, auctoritas and gens of Augustus were identified with every possible legal, religious and social institution of the city. Should "foreigners" or private citizens wish to honour him as something more, that was their prerogative, within moderation; his acknowledgment of their loyalty demonstrated his own moral responsibility and generosity; "his" Imperial revenue funded temples, amphitheatres, theatres, baths, festivals and government. This unitary principle laid the foundations for what is now known as "imperial cult", which would be expressed in many different forms and emphases throughout the multicultural Empire.[citation needed]
Eastern provinces
In the Eastern provinces, cultural precedent ensured a rapid and geographically widespread dissemination of cult, extending as far as the Augustan military settlement at modern-day
The Eastern provinces offer some of the clearest material evidence for the imperial domus and familia as official models of divine virtue and moral propriety. Centres including Pergamum,
Western provinces
The Western provinces were only recently "Latinised" following Caesar's
The first known Western regional cults to Augustus were established with his permission around 19 BC in north-western ("Celtic") Spain and named arae sestianae after their military founder,
The first priest of the Ara (altar) at Lugdunum's great
Western provinces of Roman Africa
In the early Principate, an altar inscribed Marazgu Aug(usto) Sac(rum) ("Dedicated to Marazgu Augustus"), identifies a local Ancient Libyan (Berber) deity with the supreme power of Augustus. In the senatorial province of Africa Proconsularis, altars to the Dii Magifie Augusti attest (according to Potter) a deity who was simultaneously local and universal, rather than one whose local identity was subsumed or absorbed by an Imperial divus or deity.[75] Two temples are attested to Roma and the divus Augustus: one dedicated under Tiberius at
The Imperial succession
Julio-Claudian
Even as he prepared his adopted son Tiberius for the role of princeps and recommended him to the Senate as a worthy successor, Augustus seems to have doubted the propriety of dynastic imperium; this, however, was probably his only feasible course.[78] When Augustus died, he was voted a divus by the Senate, and his body was cremated in a sumptuous funeral; his soul was said to have ascended to the heavens, to join his adoptive father among the Olympians; his ashes were deposited in the Imperial Mausoleum, which tactfully identified him (and later, his descendants) by his Imperial names, rather than as divus.[79] After Augustus, the only new cults to Roman officials are those connected to the Imperial household.[80][81][82] On his death, the Senate debated and passed a lex de imperio which voted Tiberius princeps through his "proven merit in office", and awarded him the honorific Augustus as name and title.[83]
Tiberius accepted his position and title as emperor with apparent reluctance. Though he proved a capable and efficient administrator, he could not match his predecessor's extraordinary energy and charisma. Roman historians described him as morose and mistrustful. With a self-deprecation that may have been entirely genuine, he encouraged the cult to his father, and discouraged his own.[84] After much wrangling, he allowed a single temple in Smyrna to himself and the genius of the Senate in 26 AD; eleven cities had competed – with some vehemence and even violence – for the honour.[85] His lack of personal auctoritas allowed increasing praetorian influence over the Imperial house, the Senate and through it, the state.[86] In 31 AD, his praetorian prefect Sejanus – by now a virtual co-ruler – was implicated in the death of Tiberius' son and heir apparent Drusus, and was executed as a public enemy. In Umbria, the imperial cult priest (sevir Augustalis) memorialised "the providence of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, born for the eternity of the Roman name, upon the removal of that most pernicious enemy of the Roman people". In Crete, thanks were given to "the numen and foresight of Tiberius Caesar Augustus and the Senate" in foiling the conspiracy, but at his death the Senate and his heir Caligula chose not to officially deify him.[87]
It has been assumed that he allowed a single temple for his cult in
Claudius died in 54 AD and was deified by his adopted son and successor Nero.[100] After an apparently magnificent funeral, the divus Claudius was given a temple on Rome's disreputable Caelian Hill.[101] Fishwick remarks that "the malicious humour of the site can hardly have been lost by those in the know... the location of Claudius' temple in Britain (the occasion for his "pathetic triumph") may be more of the same".[102]
Once in power, Nero allowed Claudius' cult to lapse, built his Domus Aurea over the unfinished temple, indulged his sybaritic and artistic inclinations and allowed the cult of his own genius as pater familias of the Roman people.[103] Senatorial attitudes to him appear to have been largely negative. He was overthrown in a military coup, and his institutions of cult to his dead wife Poppaea and infant daughter Claudia Augusta were abandoned. Otherwise, he seems to have been a popular emperor, particularly in the Eastern provinces. Tacitus reports a senatorial proposal to dedicate a temple to Nero as a living divus, taken as ominous because "divine honours are not paid to an emperor till he has ceased to live among men".[104]
Flavian
Nero's death saw the end of imperial tenure as a privilege of ancient Roman (patrician and senatorial) families. In a single chaotic year, power passed violently from one to another of
Within two weeks of accession, Domitian had restored the cult of the ruling emperor's genius.[113] He remains a controversial figure, described as one of the very few emperors to scandalously style himself a living divus, as evidenced by the use of "master and god" (dominus et deus) in imperial documents. However, there are no records of Domitian's personal use of the title, its use in official address or cult to him, its presence on his coinage or in the Arval Acts relating to his state cult. It occurs only in his later reign and was almost certainly initiated and used by his own procurators (who in the Claudian tradition were also his freedmen).[114] Like any other pater familias and patron, Domitian was "master and god" to his extended familia, including his slaves, freedmen and clients. Pliny's descriptions of sacrifice to Domitian on the Capitol are consistent with the entirely unremarkable "private and informal" rites accorded to living emperors. Domitian was a traditionalist, severe and repressive but respected by the military and the general populace. He admired Augustus and may have sought to emulate him but made the same tactless error as Caligula in treating the Senate as clients and inferiors, rather than as the fictive equals required by Augustan ideology. His assassination was planned and implemented from within his court, and his name officially but rather unsystematically erased from inscriptions.[115]
Nervan-Antonine
The Senate chose the elderly, childless and apparently reluctant Nerva as emperor. Nerva had long-standing family and consular connections with the Julio-Claudian and Flavian families but proved a dangerously mild and indecisive princeps: he was persuaded to abdicate in favour of Trajan. Pliny the Younger's panegyric of 100 AD claims the visible restoration of senatorial authority and dignity throughout the empire under Trajan, but while he praises the emperor's modesty, Pliny does not disguise the precarious nature of this autocratic gift.[116] Under Trajan's very capable civil and military leadership, the office of emperor was increasingly interpreted as an earthly viceregency of the divine order. He would prove an enduring model for Roman imperial virtues.[117][118]
The emperor Hadrian's Hispano-Roman origins and marked pro-Hellenism changed the focus of imperial cult. His standard coinage still identifies with the genius populi Romani, but other issues stress his identification with Hercules Gaditanus (Hercules of Gades), and Rome's imperial protection of Greek civilisation.[119] Commemorative coinage shows him "raising up" provincial deities (thus elevating and "restoring" the provinces); he promoted Sagalassos in Greek Pisidia as the Empire's leading imperial cult centre and in 131–2 AD he sponsored the exclusively Greek Panhellenion.[120] He was said to have "wept like a woman" at the death of his young lover Antinous, and arranged his apotheosis. Dio claims that Hadrian was held to ridicule for this emotional indulgence, particularly as he had delayed the apotheosis of his own sister Paulina after her death.[121]
The cult of Antinous would prove one of remarkable longevity and devotion, particularly in the Eastern provinces. Bithynia, as his birthplace, featured his image on coinage as late as the reign of Caracalla (r. 211–217). His popular cult appears to have thrived well into the 4th century, when he became the "whipping boy of pagan worship" in Christian polemic. Vout (2007) remarks his humble origins, untimely death and "resurrection" as theos, and his identification – and sometimes misidentification by later scholarship – with the images and religious functions of Apollo, Dionysius/Bacchus, and later, Osiris.[122] In Rome itself he was also theos on two of three surviving inscriptions but was more closely associated with hero-cult, which allowed direct appeals for his intercession with "higher gods".[123][124] Hadrian imposed the imperial cult to himself and Jupiter on Judaea following the Bar Kokhba revolt. He was predeceased by his wife Vibia Sabina. Both were deified but Hadrian's case had to be pleaded by his successor Antoninus Pius.[125]
Marcus Aurelius' tutor Fronto offers the best evidence of imperial portraiture as a near-ubiquitous feature of private and public life.[126] Though evidence for private emperor worship is as sparse in this era as in all others, Fronto's letters imply the genius cult of the living emperor as an official, domestic and personal practice, probably more common than cult to the divi in this and other periods.[127]
Marcus' son Commodus succumbed to the lures of self-indulgence, easy populism and rule by favourites.[128][129] He described his reign as a "golden age", and himself as a new Romulus and "re-founder" of Rome, but was deeply antagonistic toward the Senate – he reversed the standard "Republican" imperial formula to populus senatusque romanus (the people and senate of Rome). He increasingly identified himself with the demigod Hercules in statuary, temples and in the arena, where he liked to entertain as a bestiarius in the morning and a gladiator in the afternoon. In the last year of his life he was voted the official title Romanus Hercules; the state cult to Hercules acknowledged him as heroic, a divinity or semi-divinity (but not a divus) who had once been mortal.[130] Commodus may have intended declaring himself as a living god some time before his murder on the last day of 192 AD.[131]
The Nervan-Antonine dynasty ended in chaos. The Senate declared
Severan
"Sit divus dum non sit vivus" (let him be a divus as long as he is not alive). Attributed to Caracalla, before murdering his co-emperor and brother Geta.[136]
In 193 AD, Septimius Severus triumphally entered Rome and gave apotheosis to Pertinax. He cancelled the Senate's damnatio memoriae of Commodus, deified him as a frater (brother) and thereby adopted Marcus Aurelius as his own ancestor through an act of filial piety.[137] Severan coin images further re-enforced Severus' association with prestigious Antonine dynasts and the genius populi Romani.[138][139]
Severus' reign represents a watershed in relations between Senate, emperors, and the military.
By 212 AD, Caracalla had murdered Geta, pronounced his damnatio memoriae and issued the Constitutio Antoniniana: this gave full Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire.[145] and was couched as a generous invitation to celebrate the "victory of the Roman people" in foiling Geta's "conspiracy". In reality, Caracalla was faced by an endemic shortfall of cash and recruits. His "gift" was a far from popular move, as most of its recipients were humiliores of peasant status and occupation – approximately 90% of the total population. Humiliores they remained, but now liable to pay taxes, serve in the legions and adopt the name of their "liberator". Where other emperors had employed the mos maiorum of family obligation at the largely symbolic level of genius cult, Caracalla literally identified his personal survival with the state and "his" citizens.[146] Caracalla inherited the devotion of his father's soldiery but his new citizens were not inclined to celebrate and his attempts to court popularity in Commodan style seem to have misfired.[147] In Philostratus' estimation, his embrace of Empire foundered on his grudging, parochial mindset. He was assassinated in 217 AD, with the possible collusion of his praetorian prefect Macrinus.[148]
The military hailed Macrinus as imperator, and he arranged for the apotheosis of Caracalla. Aware of the impropriety of his unprecedented leap through the traditional cursus honorum from equestrian to emperor, he respectfully sought senatorial approval for his "self-nomination". It was granted – the new emperor had a lawyer's approach to imperium,[149] but his foreign policy proved too cautious and placatory for the military.[150] After little more than a year, he was murdered in a coup and replaced with an emperor of Syrian background and Severan descent, Varius Avitus Bassianus, more usually known by the Latinised name of his god and his priesthood, Elagabalus.[151]
The 14-year-old emperor brought his solar-mountain deity from his native
Imperial crisis and the Dominate
The end of the Severan dynasty marked the breakdown of central imperium. Against a background of economic hyperinflation and latterly, endemic plague, rival provincial claimants fought for supremacy and failing this, set up their own provincial Empires. Most emperors seldom even saw Rome, and had only notional relationships with their senates. In the absence of coordinated Imperial military response, foreign peoples seized the opportunity for invasion and plunder.
Maximinus Thrax (reigned 235–8 AD) sequestered the resources of state temples in Rome to pay his armies. The temples of the divi were first in line. It was an unwise move for his own posterity, as the grant or withholding of apotheosis remained an official judgment of Imperial worthiness, but the stripping of the temples of state gods caused far greater offense. Maximinus's actions more likely show need in extreme crisis than impiety, as he had his wife deified on her death,[154] but in a rare display of defiance the Senate deified his murdered predecessor, then openly rebelled.[155] His replacement, Gordian I, reigned briefly but successfully and was made a divus on his death. A succession of short-lived soldier-emperors followed. Further development in imperial cult appears to have stalled until Philip the Arab, who dedicated a statue to his father as divine in his home town of Philippopolis and brought the body of his young predecessor Gordian III to Rome for apotheosis. Coins of Philip show him in the radiate crown (suggestive of solar cult or a Hellenised form of imperial monarchy), with Rome's temple to Venus and dea Roma on the reverse.[156]
In 249 AD, Philip was succeeded (or murdered and usurped) by his praetorian prefect Decius, a traditionalist ex-consul and governor. After an accession of doubtful validity, Decius justified himself as rightful "restorer and saviour" of Empire and its religio: early in his reign he issued a coin series of imperial divi in radiate (solar) crowns.[157] Philip, the three Gordians, Pertinax and Claudius were omitted, presumably because Decius thought them unworthy of the honour.[158][159] In the wake of religious riots in Egypt, he decreed that all subjects of the Empire must actively seek to benefit the state through witnessed and certified sacrifice to "ancestral gods" or suffer a penalty: sacrifice on Rome's behalf by loyal subjects would define them and their gods as Roman.[160] Only Jews were exempt from this obligation.[161] The Decian edict required that refusal of sacrifice be tried and punished at proconsular level. Apostasy was sought, rather than capital punishment.[162] A year after its due deadline, the edict was allowed to expire and shortly after this, Decius himself died.[163]
These policies and preoccupations culminated in
Under Diocletian's expanded imperial collegia, imperial honours distinguished both Augusti from their Caesares, and Diocletian (as senior Augustus) from his colleague Maximian.[172] While the division of Empire and imperium seemed to offer the possibility of a peaceful and well-prepared succession, its unity required the highest investiture of power and status in one man. An elaborate choreography of etiquette surrounded the approach to the imperial person and imperial progressions. The senior Augustus in particular was made a separate and unique being, accessible only through those closest to him.[173]
Diocletian's avowed conservatism almost certainly precludes a systematic design toward personal elevation as a "divine monarch". Rather, he formally elaborated imperial ceremony as a manifestation of the divine order of Empire and elevated emperorship as the supreme instrument of the divine will. The idea was Augustan, or earlier, expressed most clearly in
Context and precedents
The Augustan settlement was promoted by its contemporary apologists as restorative and conservative rather than revolutionary.[176] Official cult to the genius of the living princeps as "first among equals" recognised his exceptional powers, his capacity for self-restraint, and his pious respect for Republican traditions. "Good" emperors rejected offers of official cult as a living deity, and accepted the more modest honour of genius cult. Claims that later emperors sought and obtained divine honours in Rome reflect their bad relationship with their senates: in Tertullian's day, it was still "a curse to name the emperor a god before his death". On the other hand, to judge from the domestic ubiquity of the emperor's image, private cults to living emperors are as likely in Rome as elsewhere. As Gradel observes, no Roman was ever prosecuted for sacrificing to his emperor.[177][178]
Divus, deus and the numen
The divi had some form of precedent in the di parentes, divine ancestors who received ancestral rites as manes (gods of the underworld) during the Parentalia and other important domestic festivals. Their powers were limited; deceased mortals did not normally possess the divine power (numen) of the higher gods.[179][180] Deceased emperors did not automatically become divi; they must be nominated for the privilege. Their case was discussed by the Senate, then put to the vote.[181][182] As long as the correct rituals and sacrifice were offered, the divus would be received by the heavenly gods as a coelicola (a dweller in heaven), a lesser being than themselves.[183] Popular belief held that the divus Augustus would be personally welcomed by Jupiter. In Seneca's Apocolocyntosis, on the other hand, the unexpected arrival of the divinised Claudius creates a problem for the Olympians, who have no idea who or what he is; and when they find out, they cannot think what to do with him. Seneca's sarcastic wit, an unacceptable impiety towards a deus, freely portrays the divus Claudius as just a dead, ridiculous and possibly quite bad emperor.[184] Though their images were sacrosanct and their rites definitively divine[185] divi could be created, unmade, reinstated or simply forgotten.[186] Augustus and Trajan appear to have remained the ideals for longer than any, and cult to "good" divi appears to have lasted well into the late Imperial dominate.
The immense power of living emperors, on the other hand, was mediated through the encompassing agency of the state. Once acknowledged as pater familias to an empire, a princeps was naturally entitled to genius cult from Imperial subjects of all classes. Cult to a living emperor's numen was quite another matter and might be interpreted as no less than a statement of divine monarchy. Imperial responses to the first overtures of cult to the August numen were therefore extremely cautious.[187] Only much later, probably in consequence of the hyperinflation of honours to living emperors, could a living emperor be openly, formally addressed as numen praesens (the numinous presence).[188]
The obscure relationship between
Sacrificium
Sacred offerings (
In Julio-Claudian Rome, the Arval priesthood sacrificed to Roman state gods at various temples for the continued welfare of the Imperial family on their birthdays, accession anniversaries and to mark extraordinary events such as the quashing of conspiracy or revolt. On 3 January they consecrated the annual vows: sacrifice promised in the previous year was paid, as long as the gods had kept the Imperial family safe for the contracted time. If not, it could be withheld, as it was in the annual vow following the death of Trajan.[193] In Pompeii, the genius of the living emperor was offered a bull: presumably a standard practice in imperial cult at this time, though lesser offerings of wine, cakes and incense were also given, especially in the later Imperial era. The divi and genii were offered the same kind of sacrifice as the state gods, but cult officials seem to have offered Christians the possibility of sacrifice to emperors as the lesser act.[194][195]
Augury, ira deorum and pax deorum
By ancient tradition, presiding magistrates sought divine opinion of proposed actions through an augur, who read the divine will through the observation of natural signs in the sacred space (templum) of sacrifice.[196] Magistrates could use their right of augury (ius augurum) to adjourn and overturn the process of law, but were obliged to base their decision on the augur's observations and advice. For Cicero, this made the augur the most powerful authority in the Late Republic.[197][198]
In the later Republic augury came under the supervision of the college of Octavian's honorific title of Augustus indicated his achievements as expressions of divine will: where the impiety of the Late Republic had provoked heavenly disorder and wrath (ira deorum), his obedience to divine ordinance brought divine peace (pax deorum).
Genius and household cults
The
Genius (pl. genii) was the essential spirit and generative power – depicted as a serpent or as a perennial youth, often winged – within an individual and their clan (gens, pl. gentes), such as the Julli (Julians) of Julius Caesar. A pater familias could confer his name, a measure of his genius and a role in his household rites, obligations and honours upon those he adopted. As Caesar's adopted heir, Octavian stood to inherit the genius, heritable property and honours of his adoptive father in addition to those obtained through his own birth gens and efforts.[203] The exceptionally potent genius of living emperors expressed the will of the gods through Imperial actions.[204] In 30 BC, libation-offerings to the genius of Octavian (later Augustus) became a duty at public and private banquets, and from 12 BC, state oaths were sworn by the genius of the living emperor.[205]
The Roman pater familias offered daily cult to his lares and penates, and to his di parentes/divi parentes, in domestic shrines and in the fires of the household hearth.[206] As goddess of all hearths, including the ritual hearth of the State, Vesta connected the "public" and "private" duties of citizens. Her official cults were supervised by the pontifex maximus from a state-owned house near the temple of Vesta. When Augustus became pontifex maximus in 12 BC he gave the Vestals his own house on the Palatine. His penates remained there as its domestic deities and were soon joined by his lares. His gift therefore tied his domestic cult to the sanctified Vestals and Rome's sacred hearth and symbolically extended his domus to the state and its inhabitants. He also co-opted and promoted the traditional and predominantly plebeian Compitalia shrines and extended their festivals, whose lares were known thereafter as Augusti.[207][208][209][210][211]
Role in the military
Rome's citizen legionaries appear to have maintained their Marian traditions. They gave cult to Jupiter for the emperor's well-being and regular cult to State, local and personal divinities. Cult to the Imperial person and familia was generally offered on Imperial accessions, anniversaries and renewal of annual vows: a bust of the ruling emperor was kept in the legionary insignia shrine for the purpose, attended by a designated military
Altars, temples and priesthoods
An imperial cult temple was known as a caesareum (Latin) or sebasteion (Greek). In Fishwick's analysis, cult to Roman state divi was associated with temples, and the genius cult to the living emperor with his altar. The emperor's image, and its siting within the temple complex, focused attention on his person and attributes, and his position in the divine and human hierarchies. Expenditure on the physical expression of imperial cult was vast and was only curbed by the Imperial crisis of the 3rd century. As far as is known, no new temples to state divi were built after the reign of Marcus Aurelius.[215]
The Imperial divi and living genii appear to have been served by separate ceremonies and priesthoods. Emperors themselves could be priests of state gods, the divi and their own genius cult images. The latter practice illustrates the Imperial genius as innate to its holder but separable from him as a focus of respect and cult, formally consistent with cult to the personification of ideas and ideals such as Fortune (
As part of his religious reforms, Augustus revived, subsidised and expanded the Compitalia games and priesthoods, dedicated to the Lares of the vici (neighbourhoods), to include cult to his own Lares (or to his genius as a popular benefactor). Thereafter, the Lares Compitales were known as Lares Augusti. Tiberius created a specialised priesthood, the Sodales Augustales, dedicated to the cult of the deceased, deified Augustus. This priestly office, and the connections between the Compitalia cults and the Imperial household, appear to have lasted for as long as the imperial cult itself.[217]
Saviours and monotheists
Greek philosophies had significant influence in the development of imperial cult. Stoic cosmologists saw history as an endless cycle of destruction and renewal, driven by
The imperial cult tolerated and later included specific forms of pluralistic monism. For imperial cult apologists, monotheists had no rational grounds for refusal, but imposition of cult was counter productive. Jews presented a special case. Long before the civil war, Judaism had been tolerated in Rome by diplomatic treaty with Graeco-Judaean rulers. It was brought to prominence and scrutiny after Judaea's enrollment as a client kingdom in 63 BC.[220][221] The following Jewish diaspora helped disperse early "Judaic" Christianity. Early Christians appear to have been regarded as a sub-sect of Judaism and as such were sporadically tolerated.[222]
Jewish sources on emperors, polytheistic cult and the meaning of Empire are fraught with interpretive difficulties. In Caligula's reign, Jews resisted the placing of Caligula's statue in their Temple and pleaded that their offerings and prayers to Yahweh on his behalf amounted to compliance with his request for worship.[223] According to Philo, Caligula was unimpressed because the offering was not made directly to him (whether to his genius or his numen is never made clear) but the statue was never installed. Philo does not challenge the imperial cult itself: he commends the god-like honours given Augustus as "the first and the greatest and the common benefactor" but Caligula shames the Imperial tradition by acting "like an Egyptian".[224] However, Philo is clearly pro-Roman: a major feature of the First Jewish Revolt (AD 66) was the ending of Jewish sacrifices to Rome and the emperor and the defacement of imperial images.[225]
The imperial cult and Christianity
To pagan Romans a simple act of sacrifice, whether to ancestral gods under Decius or state gods under Diocletian, represented adherence to Roman tradition and loyalty to the pluralistic unity of the Empire. Refusal to adhere to the cult was treason. Christians, however, identified "Hellenistic honours" as parodies of true worship.[226][227] Under the reign of Nero or Domitian, according to Momigliano, the author of the Book of Revelation represented Rome as the "Beast from the sea", Judaeo-Roman elites as the "Beast from the land" and the charagma (official Roman stamp) as a sign of the Beast.[228] Some Christian thinkers perceived divine providence in the timing of Christ's birth, at the very beginning of the Empire that brought peace and laid paths for the spread of the Gospels; Rome's destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple was interpreted as divine punishment of the Jews for their refusal of the Christ.[229] With the abatement of persecution Jerome could acknowledge Empire as a bulwark against evil but insist that "imperial honours" were contrary to Christian teaching.[230]
As pontifex maximus
it is contrary to the divine law... that we should overlook such quarrels and contentions, whereby the Highest Divinity may perhaps be roused not only against the human race but also against myself, to whose care he has by his celestial will committed the government of all earthly things. Official letter from Constantine, dated AD 314.[231]
In this change of Imperial formula Constantine acknowledged his responsibility to an earthly realm whose discord and conflict might arouse the ira deorum; he also recognised the power of the new Christian priestly hierarchy in determining what was auspicious or orthodox. Though unbaptised, Constantine had triumphed under the signum of the Christ (probably some form of Labarum as an adapted or re-interpreted legionary standard). He may have officially ended – or attempted to end – blood sacrifices to the genius of living emperors but his Imperial iconography and court ceremonial elevated him to superhuman status. Constantine's permission for a new cult temple to himself and his family in Umbria is extant: the cult "should not be polluted by the deception of any contagious superstition".[232] At the First Council of Nicaea Constantine united and re-founded the empire under an absolute head of state by divine dispensation and was honoured as the first Christian Imperial divus. On his death he was venerated and was held to have ascended to heaven. Philostorgius later criticised Christians who offered sacrifice at statues of the divus Constantine.[232] His three sons re-divided their Imperial inheritance: Constantius II was an Arian – his brothers were Nicene.
Constantine's nephew
The last Western divus was probably Libius Severus, who died in 465 AD.[238] Very little is known about him. His Imperium was not recognised by his Eastern counterpart and he may have been a puppet-emperor of the Germanic general Ricimer. In the west, imperial authority was partly replaced by the spiritual supremacy and political influence of the Roman Catholic Church.
In the Eastern Empire, sworn adherence to Christian orthodoxy became a prerequisite of Imperial accession –
Historical evaluations
The Roman imperial cult is sometimes considered a deviation from Rome's traditional Republican values, a religiously insincere cult of personality which served Imperial propaganda.[240][241] It drew its power and effect, however, from both religious traditions deeply engrained in Roman culture, such as the veneration of the genius of each individual and of the ancestral dead, and on forms of the Hellenistic ruler cult developed in the eastern provinces of the Empire.
The nature and function of imperial cult remain contentious, not least because its Roman historians employed it equally as a topos for Imperial worth and Imperial hubris. It has been interpreted as an essentially foreign, Graeco-Eastern institution, imposed cautiously and with some difficulty upon a Latin-Western Roman culture in which the deification of rulers was constitutionally alien, if not obnoxious.
Very few modern historians would now support this point of view. Some – among them Beard et al. – find no distinct category of imperial cult within the religio-political life of Empire: the Romans themselves used no such enveloping term. Cult to living or dead emperors was inseparable from Imperial state religion, which was inextricably interwoven with Roman identity and whose beliefs and practices were founded within the ancient commonality of Rome's social and domestic mos maiorum. Descriptions of cult to emperors as a tool of "Imperial propaganda" or the less pejorative "civil religion" emerge from modern political thought and are of doubtful value: in Republican Rome, cult could be given to state gods, personal gods, triumphal generals, magnates, benefactors, patrons and the ordinary paterfamilias – living or dead. Cult to mortals was not an alien practise: it acknowledged their power, status and their bestowal of benefits. The Augustan settlement appealed directly to the Republican mos maiorum and under the principate, cult to emperors defined them as emperors.[246]
With rare exceptions, the earliest institution of cult to emperors succeeded in providing a common focus of identity for Empire. It celebrated the charisma of Roman Imperial power and the meaning of Empire according to local interpretations of romanitas,[247] firstly an agency of transformation, then of stability. Cult to Imperial deities was associated with commonplace public ceremonies, celebrations of extraordinary splendour and unnumbered acts of private and personal devotion. The political usefulness of such an institution implies neither mechanical insincerity nor lack of questioning about its meaning and propriety: an Empire-wide, unifying cult would necessarily be open to a multitude of personal interpretations but its significance to ordinary Romans is almost entirely lost in the critical interpretations of a small number of philosophically literate, skeptical or antagonistic Romans and Greeks, whether Christian or Hellene.[248][249] The decline of prosperity, security and unity of Empire was clearly accompanied by loss of faith in Rome's traditional gods and – at least in the West – in Roman emperors. For some Romans, this was caused by the neglect of traditional religious practices. For others – equally Roman – breakdown of empire was God's judgment on faithless or heretical Christians and hardened pagans alike.
As Roman society evolved, so did cult to emperors: both proved remarkably resilient and adaptable. Until its confrontation by fully developed Christian orthodoxy, "imperial cult" needed no systematic or coherent theology. Its part in Rome's continued success was probably sufficient to justify, sanctify and "explain" it to most Romans.[250][251] Confronted with crisis in Empire, Constantine matched the Augustan achievement by absorbing Christian monotheism into the Imperial hierarchy. Cult to emperors was not so much abolished or abandoned as transformed out of recognition.[252]
See also
- Ara Pacis – Ancient Roman religious monument in Rome, Italy
- Cult of personality – Idolization of a leader
- Divine right of kings – Political and religious doctrine of the legitimacy of monarchs
- Imperial cult – Form of state religion
- Mandate of Heaven – Political doctrine of divine legitimacy in China
Notes
- ^ It is unclear whether the worship of Aeneas as Jupiter Indiges was an official (and thus, state sponsored) cult.
- ^ As opposed to offices
- ^ Gradel, pp. 32–52, as is much of this section.
- ^ A summary of disparate viewpoints regarding the status of the triumphator (and thus the meaning of the Triumph) can be found in Versnel, 56–93: limited preview via Books.Google.com
- ^ Beard, 272-5: the very few accounts of a public slave (or other figure) who stands behind or near the triumphator to remind him that he "is but mortal" or prompts him to "look behind" are open to a variety of interpretations; moreover, they are post-Republican. Nevertheless, they imply a tradition that the triumphator, whatever his kingly appearance, temporary godlike status or divine associations, was publicly reminded of his mortal nature. There is no reason to assume this an innovation of Empire.
- ^ Taylor, p.67
- corona civicabegan as an acknowledgement by A.A. that N.N. had saved his life – as a god might – by crowning N.N. with the leaves of Jupiter's tree.
- ^ a b Taylor, p. 55
- ^ Walbank, 120-37. Books.Google.co.uk, Convenience link
- ^ most likely an aide-de-camp of Metellus, and not a provincial official.
- ^ Taylor, p.48; she cites Macrobius, Saturnalia, 3.13.9, which is largely an otherwise unknown quotation from Sallust; quasi deo supplicabatur is from Sallust. The year is uncertain, possibly 77 BC, after a battle at Saguntum.
- ^ This incident is also mentioned by Valerius Maximus, Facta et dicta memorabilia 9.1.5
- ^ Vout, 119: citing Plutarch, Gaius Gracchus, 10, 18.2. Loeb edition available at Thayer: Penelope.Uchicago.edu
- ^ Taylor, p.48, citing Plutarch's Marius, 27
- ^ Gradel, 51, citing Cicero, De officiis, 3.80: Stoics.com (accessed 2 August 2009).
- ^ When the messengers of Thasos announced to him that the city had declared him a god, he told them that if they could make men into gods, they should make themselves into gods; he would then believe that they could make him into one. Taylor, p. 12, citing Plutarch, Moralia, 210d.
- ^ Taylor, pp. 12–13
- ^ The Spartan decree was "Since Alexander wishes to be a god, let him be a god"; at Athens, Demades argued against provoking Alexander over this: don't protect Heaven and lose the earth; Demosthenes said "Let him be the son of Zeus – and Poseidon too, if he likes."
- ^ Athenaeus, 6.63 Books.Google.com
- ^ Taylor, pp. 40–41, citing Polybius 30.16, Livy, 45.44; also, as a parallel case, CIL VI 374, from the Laodiceans to the Roman people.
- ^ In general, see Price, 48; Fishwick, Vol 1, 1, 6–20; for details, Taylor, Chapter 2 and 3, passim. Attested statuary of Roman magistrates in Rome may well have been largely commissioned by Greek allies, unaware of the potential for controversy aroused by public display of "Hellenised" images of the Roman military aristocracy. See Christopher Hallett, The Roman Nude, Oxford University Press, 2005. (limited preview available) Books.Google.co.uk, citing descriptions in Plutarch, Lives, Flamininus, & Cicero, Rabiurus Postumus, 10.26
- ^ Taylor, p. 8
- ^ Taylor, Appendix II, citing Athenaeus, Book 10, passim.
- Diodorus, 16.20; Cornelius Nepos, Timoleon 5, Plutarch, Moralia 542 E, Dion 46 and Timoleon 36,39; Timoleon is the first Greek whose birthday is recorded.
- ^ Mark H. Munn, The School of History: Athens in the Age of Socrates, pp. 11,172
- ^ Chiefly Zeus, as identified with Ammon, and his ancestors Achilles and Hercules.
- ^ Taylor, Appendix 2; this was the ritual in which Callisthenes declined to take part, one of the offenses for which Alexander killed him.
- ^ Taylor, 31-2. A papyrus survives which has a man swearing by the daimones of Ptolemy II and his queen.
- ^ Taylor, p. 33
- ^ Taylor, p. 57
- ^ Taylor, p.57, citing Cicero, To Atticus, 1.18.6; Velleius Paterculus, 2.40.4. He only exercised the privilege once, and was attacked for it.
- ISBN 978-1603846134.
- ^ Taylor, 58–60
- ^ And Nicomedes IV of Bithynia was intimately familiar with Caesar, or so rumor sang about the streets of Rome. Suetonius, Divus Julius 49
- ^ Isaac, B., (2006), "The invention of racism in Classical antiquity", Princeton University Press, p. 304 Books.Google.co.uk,
- ^ This statue showed him standing on the globe: the dedication is offered by Cassius Dio in Greek: hēmitheos (demigod), Dio 43.14.6 & 21.2. This may be Dio's late, anachronistic and approximate equivalent of divus. Gradel, 61–69 reconstructs the original Latin inscription as Senatus populusque Romanus Divo Caesaris but Taylor suggests Dio's form as an accurate rendition, with no strict Latin equivalent.
- ^ Taylor, p.65; this was in the temple of Quirinus.
- circus.
- ^ An honorific also granted Cicero during his consulship and comparable to Romulus' title as parens urbis Romanae (parent of the Roman city)
- ^ Price, in Cannadine and Price, 71, 85: in particular Cicero's speech to the Senate some months after Caesar's death: "...couch, image, pediment, priest" refer to Caesar's divine honours while living. Cicero, Philippic ii.110.
- ^ Dio 43.45.3: Brutus and his party saw Caesar's "kingly" statue as confirmation of despotic intent which justified his assassination.
- ^ Stefan Weinstock, Divus Julius, Oxford 1971, 297; Alexander Del Mar, The Worship of Augustus Caesar, 1899, p. 305 sq.
- ^ Weinstock, 324 finds the evidence for the living Caesar's aspirations and divine status equivocal in some details, but Fishwick, vol 1, 1, 68–9, argues that acceptance of divine honours while living seems to herald some form of divine monarchy.
- ^ Perseus.tufts.edu, Cicero, Atticus 8.16.1: Latin text at Tufts University
- ^ Fishwick, Vol. 1, 1, 65, 73.
- ^ a b Fishwick, Vol I, 108.
- ^ The imperial cult in Roman Britain-Google docs
- ^ Fishwick, Vol 3, part 1, 3: citing Cassius Dio, 51, 20, 6–7.
- ^ Suetonius, Lives, Augustus, 52: Tacitus, Annals, 4, 37.
- ^ Fishwick, Vol 1, book 1, 77 & 126–30.
- ^ Nevertheless, cult offered to divus Julius implies loyalty to his adopted son and heir. See Friesen, 21. Books.Google.co.uk
- ^ That is, through the manifest numen of his adoptive father the divus Julius.
- ^ Rosenstein, 57-8.
- ^ In Florus' epitome, the name Augustus signaled Octavian's divine status outright. Apparently, "Romulus" had also been considered and turned down: see Florus, 2, 34, 66 at Thayer's website – Penelope.Uchicago.edu (accessed 27 July 2009). For most of Augustus' contemporaries, however, the name would have been a quite obscure and somewhat modest synonym for divinus (divine).
- ^ Fishwick, vol 1, 1, 51: .
- ^ Books.Google.co.uk, Weidemann, 131-2: limited preview available at Google Books
- ^ Howgego, in Howgego et al., 4–6: coinage celebrating state deities conspicuously features the restorer of their temples. Ibid 53: Imperial themes, including the Imperial family, dominate Roman coin issues from Augustus to Claudius.
- ^ See Ando, 46 ff, for discussion of Augustan ideology.
- ^ Beard et al, Vol. 1, 196–7.
- ^ Ando, 163, gives 82 temples in the city of Rome: limited preview available at Google Books Books.Google.co.uk
- caesareumat Najaran (in what is now south-west Saudi Arabia) was possibly later known as the "Kaaba of Najran": جواد علي, المفصل في تاريخ العرب قبل الإسلام (Jawad Ali, Al-Mufassal fi Tarikh Al-'Arab Qabl Al-Islam; "Commentary on the History of the Arabs Before Islam"), Baghdad, 1955–1983
- ^ Harland, 2003, 91–103, finds among these examples a privately funded local, traditional Graeco-Asian civil association offering cult to Demeter and the emperor as a form of mystery cult: contra Price, 1986, 7–11, who believes that emperors lacked the requisite fully divine status.
- ^ See also Harland, 1996.
- ^ Llewelyn, S.R. (Editor), New documents illustrating early Christianity: Volume 9, A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1986–87, Macquarie University, 2002, pp.28 – 30. [1]
- ^ Books.Google.co.uk, Severy, 114-5. Limited preview available at Google Books
- ^ "Chapel of Imperial Cult". Madain Project. Archived from the original on 8 November 2020. Retrieved 8 November 2020.
- ^ Polybius, The Histories, 10.10.10: written circa 150 BC. The honorand is named as Aletes, who supposedly discovered the silver mines there. One of the hills of the city is named after him. Others are named after Aesculapius, Vulcan and Saturn. English version (Loeb) available from Thayer Penelope.Uchicago.edu
- ^ Taylor, 56: See Macrobius 3.13.6–9 – "ultra mortalium morem".
- ^ Fishwick, Vol 1, 1, 92–3. In the reign of Tiberius, Tarraco requested permission for cult to Augustus but this is one of only two known Western provincial initiatives to inaugurate the imperial cult – both were Iberian, and had long-standing ties with Rome. See also Tacitus, Annals, 1.78. Posc.mu.edu
- ^ Fishwick, vol 3, 1, pp7 & 230.
- ^ Fishwick, vol 3, 1, 7: see also Pliny the Elder, Historia Naturalis, 4.111; Ptolemy, Geographia, 2.6.3; Pomponeus Mela, 3.13.
- ^ Fishwick, vol 1,1, 97–149.)
- ordobeyond his term of office. Female cult divinities were served by priestesses, who may have been the wives of the cult priests.
- ^ Tacitus, Annals, 1.57.
- ^ Potter, 26-7.
- ^ Mellor, 1003.
- ^ Mohamed Yacoub, Le musée du Bardo : Départements antiques, Tunis, Agence nationale du patrimoine, 1993, p.111
- ^ Ando, 31–33, provides the constitutional and personal background to this dilemma.
- ^ Price, in Cannadine and Price, 70.
- ^ Beard et al, 360-63
- ^ Potter, 6–7.
- ^ See also Tacitus, Annals, 1.9–10 for appraisals of compuAugustus' motives in his rise to power, his opaque complexity of character, evaluation of his success and the exchange of constitutional freedoms for peace and prosperity during and after his reign.
- ISBN 1-58477-142-9. Preview from googlebooks; [2]
- ^ Tacitus interprets Tiberius' repeated refusal of provincial cult as a shirking of his moral responsibilities to empire, and therefore a dishonour to his high office and Rome.
- ^ Gradel, 15: the collective genius of the Senate was usually personified as a bearded, elderly man – this is an exceptional genius type. Most individual genii are portrayed as youthful.
- ^ Klose, in Howgego et al, 127.
- ^ Ando, 170-1: see also 170, note 187.
- ^ cf Caesar's "kingly" regalia, though as princeps Caligula was also "permanent triumphator".
- ^ Suetonius, Life of Caligula
- ^ Neither Josephus nor Philo imply Caligula's elevation as a state deity in Jerusalem.
- ^ Gradel, 142–158.
- ^ Cassius Dio, (in John Xiphilinus' epitome), 59, 26, 3. Both Suetonius and Philo offer Caligula as a suspiciously perfect example of how not to be emperor. The Senate remains a vague figure of superior values and morality, against which Caligula's offenses are meticulously detailed.
- ^ Cassius Dio, LX.3.5–6
- ^ A cult dedication to Livia as diva Augusta appears in Lusitania, dated to 48 AD.
- ^ Gradel proposes that had Claudius employed those of higher rank within his domus, it would have imputed their clientage as his servants. He may have underestimated the complexity of the problems inherent in his own status as princeps.
- ^ This surmise is based on a combination of Seneca's satirical Apocolocyntosis, Suetonius' sneering "Life" and Tacitus's sharp observations of Julio-Claudian failings.
- ^ Tacitus, Annals, 13, 3.
- Lyons Tabletand Claudius' modesty (or fear of seeming arrogant).
- ^ Fishwick, 81-9.
- ^ Fishwick, Vol. 3, 1, 54–9.
- ^ Mons Caelus had "ambiguous Etruscan connections" (Claudius had a historian's interest in Etruscan culture and language). It was also notorious for its brothels and meat-market. Claudius had a reputed liking for "low company", and butchers and prostitutes were classified as infames. Suetonius has Claudius add an extra day to the festival of Saturnalia – for Seneca he is a Lord of Misrule, at whose demise it can be said: "I told you the Saturnalia could not last forever" (Apocolocyntosis 12).
- ^ Fishwick, Vol. 3, 1, 88–9.
- ^ Claudius' Caelian temple was later rebuilt and some of it survives through incorporation in later building. Nero's cult may have been justified as a "revival" of Claudius' entitlement to genius cult as pater patriae.
- ^ Tacitus, Annals, XV.74.
- ^ Potter, 68.
- ^ Kenneth Scott, The Imperial Cult Under the Flavians, New York 1975
- ^ Chabrečková, Barbora. The Imperial Cult During the Reign of Domitian. Masaryk University, Department of Archaeology and Museology. 2017.
- ^ Tacitus, Histories, 4.40.2
- ^ Some still thought the head resembled Nero's. Others were reminded of Titus, Vespasian's son: see also Cassius Dio, 65.15.1.
- ^ A dedication of the Colossus to the sun god is consistent with Neronian iconography – any resemblance to Nero would be appropriate to his imperial representation as the "second sun" of the pax Romana in Stoic and Cynic cosmology. Subsequent alterations or remodeling of a recognisable figure – assuming they happened at all – and rededication were standard responses to an original subject's damnatio memoriae. On the other hand, the heads of some Imperial statues appear to have been recut or replaced as a matter of economy, rather than of legal or moral insult or effacement.
- ^ Marlowe, E. (2006), "Framing the sun: the Arch of Constantine and the Roman cityscape." The Art Bulletin
- ^ Smallwood, 345.
- ^ The practice of a genius cult towards Domitian is shown in the Arval Acts.
- ^ Gradel, 159-61: Suetonius' claims for Domitian's personal use of the title – or its use by his procurators at his behest – are unverified. He is clear that Domitian's freedmen were the first to use it.
- ^ Gradel, 159-61.
- ^ Ando, 167: Pliny panegyric 75.1–3: Pliny refers to the publication of the senatorial voice in proceedings: Trajan's respect for the Senate can only be good for the "dignity" of the state.
- ^ Gradel, 190-2.
- ^ Sage, (in discussion of Tacitean themes) in Haase & Temporini (eds), 950: Books.Google.co.uk
- ^ Gradel, 194-5.
- ^ Howgego, in Howgego et al, 6, 10.
- ^ Hadrian's "Hellenic" emotionalism finds a culturally sympathetic echo in the Homeric Achilles' mourning for his friend Patroclus: see Vout, 52–135.
- ^ Dio – or his epitomist – insists that Antinous died not through drowning, as Hadrian claimed, but as the emperor's willing sacrificial victim as part of a bid for immortality – though whose is not clear.
- ^ Vout, 118-9, contra Price, 68, who does not regard Antinous as receiving full cult honours of apotheosis in Rome itself. Both agree that Antinous was unlikely to have had official parity with other imperial divi in Rome.
- Athanasius, and its capacity to fascinate – and sometimes mislead – the modern imagination. Limited preview available: Books.Google.co.uk
- ^ Vout, 111. His piety lay in his unrelenting yet personally modest plea to the Senate for the deification of his predecessor Hadrian: morally comparable with the filial devotion of Metellus Pius during the Republican era.
- ^ Gradel, 200, citing Fronto, Epistulae ad M. Caesar (letters to M. Aurelius), 4, 12, 6.
- The context and precedents for Imperial Cult. Relative to the living emperor, the divi probably have little or no personal power, unless of divine intercession.
- ^ Potter, 78-9.
- ^ Dio's assessment is blunt but not entirely unsympathetic – Commodus was lazy, gullible and stupid. See Potter, 85-6: citing Cassius Dio, Penelope.Uchicago.edu, epitome of book 73. Marius Maximus thought him fundamentally wicked and cruel.
- ^ On 1 January 193 AD, the legions unwittingly renewed their annual vows of loyalty to a dead Emperor: Potter, 92-6. see also Dio ibid.
- ^ This is based on a statement in the Historia Augusta, which claims he planned to have his own flamen while still living. Cassius Dio, in an otherwise detailed account, makes no mention of this. See Gradel, 160-1.
- ^ Potter, 93-6.
- ^ Potter, 75-9.
- ^ Potter, 96–99.
- ^ Potter, 103.
- ^ Gradel, 265, citing the unreliable Historia Augusta, Antoninus Geta Aeli Spartiani, II, 8: (Latin version online at thelatinlibrary – TheLatinLibrary.com (accessed 18 August 2009). At the very least, the attribution confirms the later devaluation of divus as a divine category.
- ^ Dio, Ibid. 77.9.4: (Loeb) – "When the emperor was enrolled in the family of Marcus, Auspex said: "I congratulate you, Caesar, upon finding a father," implying that up to that time he had been fatherless by reason of his obscure birth."
- ^ Gradel, 194.
- ^ Potter, 107-12: for coinage of Antonine dynasts, see 111.
- ^ Potter, 110.
- ^ Another name for the Imperial divi, which indicates their elevation to "August" status. "Caesar Augustus" is reserved for living emperors: See Gradel, 88.
- ^ Fishwick, vol. 3, 1, 199.
- ^ Potter, 113-20.
- ^ Cassius Dio, 77.15.2 Penelope.Uchicago.edu.
- ^ Potter, 133-5: dediticii (those who had surrendered to Rome in war) and a specific class of freedmen were excluded.
- ^ Potter, 138-9: slaves formally adopted the name of the master who freed them.
- ^ Like Commodus, he participated in chariot races and beast-fights, with minimal risk to himself.
- ^ Potter, 142-6: citing Philostratus, V. Soph, 626.
- ^ Days of careful negotiation had preceded his "spontaneous" acclamation as imperator by the military
- ^ Dio disapproves of Macrinus' equestrian status, but not his integrity or manner of government.
- ^ Potter, 146-8: Avitus took the Imperial name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.
- ^ Potter, 148-9:
- ^ Potter, 152-7.
- ^ Meckler, in De Imperatoribus Romanis, online roman-emperors.org (accessed 7 August 2009)
- ^ Gradel, 356-62: citing Herodian for the removal of temple wealth and reactions to it.
- ^ Potter, 237-8, citing Zosimus, 1.19.1–2.
- ^ Howgego, in Howgego et al., 5.
- ^ Potter, 244-8.
- ^ Ando, 209.
- ^ Beard et al, Vol. 1, 241.
- ^ Potter, 241-3: see 242 for Decian "libellus" (certificate) of oath and sacrifice on papyrus, dated to 250 AD.
- ^ Books.Google.co.uk, Rees, 60. Limited preview available at Google Books
- ^ Bowman et al, 622-33. Books.Google.co.uk, Limited preview available at Google Books
- ^ a b Rees, 60.
- ^ Beard et al, 241.
- ^ Drinkwater, in Bowman et al. (eds), 46: Under Gallienus, any remaining senatorial rights to military leadership were virtually at an end. The bitterness of the senatorial class towards him on this account almost certainly distorts their histories. See, for example, Aurelius Victor, De Caesaribus (epitome), 33–34, in Banchich's translation online at roman-emperors.org (accessed 7 August 2009.) See also Weigel, at www.roman-emperors.org roman-emperors.org (accessed 7 August 2009.)
- ^ Cascio, in Bowman et al. (eds), 171: citing .
- ^ See also (with due caveat) Historia Augusta, Vita Taciti, XIII 1–2.
- ^ Vout, 118-9.
- ^ Lactantius, II.6.10.1–4
- ^ Eusebius, II.8.1.8.
- ^ Bowman et al, 170-3.
- ^ Rees, 46–56.
- ^ Rees, 51–56 (ideology) & 73-4 (coin image interpretation).
- ^ MacCormack, 722, & note 8.
- ^ Brent, 49–51. See also Augustus, Res Gestae, c.4.2.
- ^ Fishwick, Vol. 3, 1, 5.
- ^ Gradel, 263-8: citing Tertullian.
- ^ Gradel, 7: numen "can also be synonymous with deus".
- ^ Fishwick, Vol 3, 1, 42: see also Plutarch (based on Varro, Quaestionaes Romanae, 14).
- ^ The apotheosed ("deified") Julius Caesar was "translated by the senate and people of Rome into the company of the gods (dei)" and became the divus Julius: Price, in Cannadine and Price, 1992, 77–8: the cited, translated inscription is from Inscriptiones Latinae Selectae, ed H, Dessau, 3 vols, Berlin, 1892–1916, 140. 7–24 (Pisa).
- ^ Price, in Cannadine and Price, 82–102, for the changing roles of senate and emperors in the granting of apotheosis.
- ^ Javier Arce, in Theuws and Nelson, pp.116 – 117.
- ^ Price, 115.
- ^ Books.Google.co.uk, Price, 175–202, 209: later Roman divi range from "dead but not guilty emperor" to "emperor of fond memory".
- ^ Holland's 1606 English language version of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars (Claudius) translates Claudius as "canonised... a saint in heaven". Holland's interpretation is consistent with the later use of divus under Christian emperors: saints function as intercessors but some have also been demoted or quietly lapsed from their religious calendars. See Suetonius, History of the twelve Caesars, trans. Philemon Holland, 1606, for Holland's English rendition of divus Claudius, Archive.org
- Narboin 12 BC, imply it as a property of the emperor, a "divinised abstraction", not identical with his person.
- ^ Fishwick, Vol.3, 1, 198, referring to the Severan emperor Caracalla.
- ^ Beard et al, vol 1, 140–9.
- ^ Gradel, 3, 15.
- ^ Livy, 25.16.1–4 & 6.1.12: Livy wrote at a time of extreme civil strife, during the era of Rome's transformation from Republic to Principate. See also Rosenstein, 58–60
- ^ Beard et al, Vol 1, 32–6.
- ^ Gradel, 21.
- ^ Gradel, 78, 93
- ^ Price, 209, 221.
- ^ Beard et al, Vol 1, 12–20: haruspicy was also used. The haruspex read the divine will in the sacrificial entrails. This was regarded as an ethnically Etruscan "outsider" practise, whose priesthood was separate from Rome's internal priestly hierarchy. The augur's interpretation of all these signs informed the magistrate's course of action. The magistrate could repeat the sacrifice until favourable signs were seen, abandon the project or seek further consultation with colleagues of his augural college.
- ^ Brent, 17–20: citing Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 2.4.
- ^ Beard et al, Vol 1, 17–21: most magistracies ran for only a year. Priesthoods were for life, which offered evident advantages in maintaining a high public and political profile.
- ^ Brent, 21–25.
- ^ Brent, 59: citing Suetonius, Augustus 31.1–2. cf official reactions to "foreign cult" during the Punic crises, above.
- ^ Gradel, 36-8: the paterfamilias held – in theory at least, and through ancient right – powers of life and death over every member of his extended familia, including children, slaves and freedmen. In practice, the extreme form of this right was seldom exercised, and was eventually limited by law.
- ^ See also Severy, 9–10 for interpretation of the social, economic and religious role of the paterfamilias within the immediate and extended family and the broader community.
- ^ Beard et al, vol 1, 67–8.
- ^ Gradel, 5, 8.
- ^ Brent, 61: Dio Cassius, 51.19.7.
- ^ Brent, 62-3.
- ^ Beard et al, Vol. 1, 193–4: under Augustus' programme of "renewal" the Vestals had high status seating at games and theatres, and became priestesses to the cult of the deified Livia (wife of Augustus).
- ^ Gradel, 38.
- ^ Brent, 61.
- ^ Severy, 99–100, Books.Google.co.uk
- ^ Lott, 14–15, 115 & 230 (note 127).
- ^ Brent, 268-9.
- ^ Books.Google.co.uk, Le Bohec, 249: limited preview available via Google Books
- ^ Books.Google.co.uk, Dixon, 78: limited preview available from Google Books
- ^ Gradel, 364.
- ^ Gradel, 78–98.
- ^ Lott, 81 – 106; for discussion of Lares Augusti see 107 – 117. Lott rejects the replacement of neighbourhood Lares with Augustus' own as politically indelicate. The Lares Augusti can be understood as August Lares – a joint honorific with unmistakable and flattering connections to the princeps himself, rather than the direct claim of princeps as patron: contra Lilly Ross Taylor, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor, American Philological Association, 1931. Taylor understand the institution of Lares Augusti as the extension of Augustus' domus and its deities to Rome's neighbourhood cults. Lott acknowledges Taylor's view as generally accepted.
- ^ Rehak & Younger, 93.
- ^ Brent, 17–18, 53–54.
- ^ Smallwood, 2–3, 4–6: the presence of practicing Jews in Rome is attested at least a century before this. The more overt and "characteristically Jewish" beliefs, rites and customs were butts of misinformed scorn and mockery. Legislation by Caesar recognised the synagogues in Rome as legitimate collegia. Augustus maintained their status. Smallwood describes the preamble to events of 63 BC as the Hellenising of ruling Jewish dynasties, their claims to kingly messianism and their popular, traditionalist rejection in the Maccabaean revolt. Books.Google.co.uk Ibid, 120–143 for a very detailed account of Roman responses to Judaistic practice in Rome under Caesar and the early Principate.
- ^ Smallwood's application of religio licita (licensed religion) to Judaism in this and possibly any period is disputed by Rajack in: Tessa Rajack, "Was there a Roman Charter for the Jews?" Journal of Roman Studies, 74, (1984) 107–23. Rajack finds no evidence for an early "charter": Josephus seems to have inferred a charter from local, ad hoc attempts to deal with anti-Jewish acts. Religio licita is first found in Tertullian. Cicero, pro Flacco, 66, refers to Judaism as superstitio, not religio but a later change in Roman policy is possible.
- ^ Potter, 36.
- ^ Fishwick, vol. 1, 1, 36.
- ^ Niehoff, 45–137: in particular, 75–81 and footnote 25. Limited preview available at Google Books Books.Google.co.uk (accessed 14 August 2009.
- ^ Brent, 221.
- ^ Price, 10–11.
- ^ Potter, 37.
- ^ Collins, 125: citing Revelation, 13, 7–8 & 16–17; 14, 9–11; 16, 2.
- ^ Momigliano, 142–158: Books.Google.co.uk See particularly p146, (commentary on Dio, 52).
- ^ Jerome's interpretations of Imperial ceremonial are heavily reliant on Eusebius' polemical ecclesiastical-Imperial history. Price, 203 : limited preview available at Google Books Books.Google.co.uk
- ^ cited in Beard et al, Vol 1, 370.
- ^ a b Momigliano, 104.
- ^ A summary of relevant legislation – FourthCentury.com (accessed 30 August 2009)
- ^ Internet Medieval Sourcebook: Letter of St. Ambrose, trans. H. De Romestin, 1896., Fordham.edu (accessed 29 August 2009)
- ^ Books.Google.co.uk, Williams & Friell, 65–67. Limited preview at googlebooks
- Latinus Pacata Drepanius, Panegyric of Theodosius (389) with commentary and context.
- ^ MacCormack, 721-52.
- ^ His status as divus is surmised from cons. = consecratio: his. cons. defunctus est Imp. Severus Romae XVIII kal. Septembris (Mommsen) in: Scharf, R., Zu einigen daten der Kaiser Libius Severus und Maiorian, Heidelberg University (pdf), p182. [3] (accessed 1 September 2009)
- Iconodules and Iconoclasm).
- ^ Price, 13–17, includes historians of opposing political views among those who interpret the imperial cult as the domination of "a servile world" through politically driven "charade". Eduard Meyer, "Alexander der Grosse und die Absolute Monarchie", (1905) in Kleine Schriften, 1, 1924, 265, and Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939. 256, reach essentially the same conclusions about the nature and purpose of the imperial cult, despite their opposing political alignments. Price, 13, note 31, refers to Demandt's analysis of Meyer's position, in A. Demandt, "Politische Aspekte im Alexander-bild der Neuzeit," Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 54, 1972, 325ff at p.355.
- ^ See also Harland, P. A., "Honours and Worship: Emperors, Imperial Cults and Associations at Ephesus (First to Third Centuries C.E.)", Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 25 (1996) 319–334.
- ^ Tacitus' reference to the graeca adulatio (greek adulation or flattery) of benefactor-cult was set within the Graeco-Eastern context of the Roman civil war and referred to Theophanes of Mytilene, whose god-like honours were occasioned by no merit other than his friendship and influence with Pompey: Tacitus, Annals, 6.8: cited and explicated in Gradel, 8.
- ^ Roman (and Greek) justifications of Rome's hegemony insisted on Rome's moral superiority over its allies and subject peoples. The same commentators deplored Empire for the demoralising effects of its "foreign" influences. See Sallust, Catalina, 11.5: Livy, 1.11: Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 7.130
- ^ Price, 10–20: citing evaluations of the imperial cult as insincere or "mechanical" in Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Bury edn, 1,75-7; Ferguson, CAH, VII (1928), 17; Eduard Meyer, "Alexander der Grosse und die Absolute Monarchie", (1905) in Kleine Schriften, 1, 1924, 265; Ronald Syme, The Roman Revolution, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939.
- ^ Harland, 85, cites among others M. P. Nilsson, Greek Piety (Oxford 1948) 177–178, and early work by D. Fishwick, The Development of Provincial Ruler Worship in the Western Roman Empire, ANRW II.16.2 (1978) 1201–1253, for similar evaluations.
- ^ Brent, 17.
- ^ Beard, North, Price, (1998), 318: see also 208-10, 252–3, 359–61.
- ^ Price, 6–20, 116.
- ^ Gradel, 3–8.
- ^ Price, 11.
- ^ Gradel, 23.
- ^ Price, 20.
References and further reading
- Ando, Clifford (2000). Imperial ideology and provincial loyalty in the Roman Empire (Illustrated ed.). ISBN 0-520-22067-6.
- Beard, M., Price, S., North, J., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, a History, illustrated, ISBN 0-521-31682-0
- Beard, M., Price, S., North, J., Religions of Rome: Volume 2, a sourcebook, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0-521-45646-0
- Beard, Mary: The Roman Triumph, The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., and London, England, 2007. ISBN 978-0-674-02613-1
- Bowersock, G., Brown, P. R .L., Graba, O., (eds), Late Antiquity: A Guide to the Postclassical World, ISBN 978-0-674-51173-6
- Bowman, A., Cameron, A., Garnsey, P., (eds) The Cambridge Ancient History: Volume 12, The Crisis of Empire, AD 193–337, 2nd Edn., Cambridge University Press, 2005. ISBN 0-521-30199-8
- Brent, A., The imperial cult and the development of church order: concepts and images of authority in paganism and early Christianity before the Age of Cyprian, illustrated, ISBN 90-04-11420-3
- Cannadine, D., and Price, S., (eds) Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, reprint, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0-521-42891-2
- Chow, John K., Patronage and power: a study of social networks in Corinth, ISBN 1-85075-370-9
- Collins, Adela Yarbro, Crisis and catharsis: the power of the Apocalypse, Westminster John Knox Press, 1984. ISBN 0-664-24521-8
- Elsner, J., "Cult and Sculpture; Sacrifice in the Ara Pacis Augustae", in the Journal of Roman Studies, 81, 1991, 50–60.
- Ferguson, Everett, Backgrounds of early Christianity, 3rd edition, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2003. ISBN 0-8028-2221-5
- Fishwick, Duncan, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire, volume 1, Brill Publishers, 1991. ISBN 90-04-07179-2
- Fishwick, Duncan, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire, volume 3, Brill Publishers, 2002. ISBN 90-04-12536-1
- Fishwick, Duncan, "Numen Augustum," Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik, Bd. 160 (2007), pp. 247–255, Dr. Rudolf Habelt GmbH, Bonn (Germany).
- Freisen, S. J., Imperial cults and the Apocalypse of John: reading Revelation in the ruins, ISBN 978-0-19-513153-6
- Gradel, Ittai, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-19-815275-2
- Haase, W., Temporini, H., (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, de Gruyter, 1991. ISBN 3-11-010389-3
- Harland, P., "Honours and Worship: Emperors, Imperial Cults and Associations at Ephesus (First to Third Centuries C.E.)", originally published in Studies in Religion/Sciences religieuses 25, 1996. Online in same pagination: Philipharland.com
- Harland, P., "Imperial Cults within Local Cultural Life: Associations in Roman Asia", originally published in Ancient History Bulletin / Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 17, 2003. Online in same pagination: Philipharland.com
- Howgego, C., Heuchert, V., Burnett, A., (eds), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces, Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 978-0-19-926526-8
- Lee, A.D., Pagans and Christians in late antiquity: a sourcebook, illustrated, Routledge, 2000. ISBN 0-415-13892-2
- Lott, John. B., The Neighborhoods of Augustan Rome, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004. ISBN 0-521-82827-9
- MacCormack, Sabine, Change and Continuity in Late Antiquity: the ceremony of "Adventus", Historia, 21, 4, 1972, pp 721–52.
- Martin, Dale B., Inventing superstition: from the Hippocratics to the Christians, ISBN 0-674-01534-7
- Momigliano, Arnaldo, On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, reprint, ISBN 0-8195-6218-1
- Niehoff, Maren R., Philo on Jewish identity and culture, Mohr Siebeck, English trans GW/Coronet Books, 2001. ISBN 978-3-16-147611-2
- Nixon, C.E.V., and Rodgers, Barbara S., In Praise of Later Roman Emperors: The Panegyric Latini, University Presses of California, Columbia and Princeton, 1995. ISBN 978-0-520-08326-4
- Potter, David S., The Roman Empire at Bay, AD 180–395, Routledge, 2004. ISBN 978-0-415-10057-1
- Price, S.R.F. Rituals and power: the Roman imperial cult in Asia Minor, (reprint, illustrated). Cambridge University Press, 1986. ISBN 0-521-31268-X
- Rees, Roger (2004). Diocletian and the Tetrarchy. Edinburgh, UK: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748616602.
- Rehak, Paul, and Younger, John Grimes, Imperium and cosmos: Augustus and the northern Campus Martius, illustrated, ISBN 0-299-22010-9
- Rosenstein, Nathan S., Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocratic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Ark.CDlib.org
- ISBN 978-1-4051-2943-5
- Severy, Beth, Augustus and the family at the birth of the Roman Empire, Routledge, 2003. ISBN 0-415-30959-X
- Smallwood, E., Mary, The Jews under Roman rule: from Pompey to Diocletian: a study in political relations, illustrated, Brill Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0-391-04155-X
- Taylor, Lily Ross, The Divinity of the Roman Emperor, American Philological Association, 1931; repr. Arno Press, 1975.
- Theuws, Frans, and Nelson, Janet L., Rituals of power: from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, Brill Publishers, 2000. ISBN 90-04-10902-1
- Versnel, H S: Triumphus: An Inquiry into the Origin, Development and Meaning of the Roman Triumph, Leiden, 1970.
- Vout, Caroline, Power and eroticism in Imperial Rome, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-521-86739-8
- Walbank, Frank W., Selected Papers: Studies in Greek and Roman History and Historiography, Cambridge University Press, 1986 (pp 120–137). ISBN 978-0-521-30752-9
- Weinstock, Stefan. Divus Iulius. Oxford (Clarendon Press/OUP). 1971.
- Wiedemann, Thomas. Adults and Children in the Roman Empire, Taylor & Francis Ltd., 1989. ISBN 978-0-415-00336-0
- Williams, S., and Friell, J.G.P., Theodosius: The Empire at Bay, Taylor & Francis Ltd., 1994. ISBN 978-0-7134-6691-1