Imperial cult (ancient Rome)

The Roman Imperial cult identified emperors and some members of their families with the divinely sanctioned authority of the Roman State. The framework for Imperial cult was formulated during the early Principate of Augustus, and was rapidly established throughout the Empire and its provinces, with marked local variations in its reception and expression. Emperors were expected to actively uphold the traditional values of Rome and its diverse provinces, in order to maintain the peace, security and prosperity of the Empire. A deceased Emperor voted worthy by the senate could be made a state divus (divinity) in an act of apotheosis by his successor. Apotheosis therefore served religious, political and moral judgment on Imperial rulers and allowed living Emperors to associate themselves with a well regarded lineage of Imperial divinities from which unpopular or unworthy predecessors were excluded.

This proved a useful instrument to Vespasian in his establishment of the Flavian imperial dynasty following the death of Nero and civil war, and to Septimius in his consolidation of the Severan dynasty under similar circumstances following the assassination of Commodus. From Diocletian onwards, Emperors increasingly claimed the status and honours accorded to living divi by Eastern monarchic tradition.

The "Imperial cult" was a focus of Roman revivalist legislation under Decius and Julian: Christian apologists and martyrologists identified it as an instrument of "pagan" persecution.^[1] It therefore became a focus of theological and political debate during the ascendancy of Christianity under Constantine I. With the adoption of Christianity as Rome's State religion under Theodosius I "Imperial cult" was officially abandoned but many of its rites, practices and status distinctions were perpetuated in the Christian theology and politics of Empire.

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.^[2][3] Many modern historians disagree with this interpretation, and regard the Imperial cult as a well-integrated unifying feature of the Principate. Its ritual, organisational and ideological frameworks can be found as distinctive features of later institutions, especially those of Western monarchies and Roman Catholicism.

Contents 1 The Roman background 2 The divus Julius 3 Religion and Imperium under Augustus 3.1 Eastern provinces 3.2 Western provinces 3.3 Western provinces of Roman Africa 4 The Imperial succession 4.1 Julio-Claudian 4.2 Flavian 4.3 Nervan-Antonine 4.4 Severan 5 Imperial crisis and the Dominate 5.1 Eastern and Western Imperium 6 The context and precedents for Imperial Cult 6.1 Res divinae, res humanae and religio 6.2 Sacrificium 6.3 Augury, pax deorum and ira deorum 6.4 Family, ancestral and "household" cults 6.5 Divus, deus and the numen 6.6 Messianism 7 The Imperial cult and Christianity 8 Legacy 9 References 10 References and further reading

The Roman background

The institution of the Roman Imperial cult was part of Rome's wider constitutional and religious revolution, born of a need for political settlement after a prolonged period of extreme instability and strife.^[4] Its innovations were promoted by its contemporary apologists as restorative and conservative rather than revolutionary. Its proponents and practices thus referred to traditional Roman antecedents.^[5]

Republican tradition was deeply anti-monarchic but by at least the mid-1st century BC, Rome’s foundation-myth was embellished by the apotheosis of Romulus, co-founder and first King of Rome, and by his conflation with the god Quirinus as a god of the Roman state. Fishwick attributes the apotheosis of Romulus to his merit as founder and sustainer of Rome.^[6] Romulus was also made a son of Mars, which connected his romanitas to the highest martial virtues. Likewise Aeneas, a descendant of the goddess Venus in Vergil’s epic, received apotheosis through his merit and virtue as ancestor of the Roman people, then ascended into heaven with Romulus.^[7] Vergil drew on material in circulation some time before his poetic reinvention - in 69 BCE, Julius Caesar had claimed descent from ancient Roman kings (Marcii Reges) and Venus Genetrix, in a public eulogy at the funeral of his aunt Julia.

Despite the strictures of the senate, the unofficial cult of benefactors was displayed in Republican Rome in the late 2nd century BCE. Plutarch describes the spontaneous and unofficial "consecration" of the places where the populist land reformers Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus were murdered by their opponents. Their supporters - mostly the landless and dispossessed casualties of senatorial ambition - "fell down" and offered daily sacrifice at the statues of the Gracchi "as though they were visiting the shrines of the gods".^[8]

As Rome extended its control over the Eastern Mediterranean it conquered or absorbed new provinces in which living monarchs, successful military commanders, statesmen or other exceptional benefactors were traditionally offered isotheoi timai (god-like honours).^[9]Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic dynasties descended from his generals, the Ptolemies of Egypt and the Selucids, had perpetuated the custom.^[10] Victorious Roman generals in the East from Sulla to Pompey the Great, Mark Anthony and Julius Caesar, were honoured as theos (θεός) and sôter (saviour) by various poleis and koinon (civic assemblies) over a period that extended into the civil wars.

The divus Julius

In the East, Julius Caesar's first victories in the civil war brought him cult honours as theos and sôter. In 48 BC, at the great temple of Zeus-Amun in Graeco-Egyptian Alexandria, he was honoured as Caesar Epibaterios. This identified him with the sun-god Apollo, given cult by Greek seafarers for safe voyages.^[11] In Rome, rumour had it that Caesar's new-found appetites for Eastern worship and Graeco-Egyptian Cleopatra presaged his despotic and wholesale removal of power and wealth eastwards, perhaps to Alexandria or Ilium (Troy).^[12][13] For Roman commentators, the deistic excesses of Easterners were tolerable if they remained in the East but Caesar appeared to have brought them to Rome itself, where he seemed to be testing the water for his declaration as rex and divus.^[14][15] in 49 BC Caesar crossed the Rubicon and - in Cicero's hostile account - was greeted by the Romans as a god (deus).^[16]

Caesar now held sole effective authority in Rome. Its senate was swollen by his equestrian appointees and his armies were on its doorstep. In 46 BC he was voted a statue which showed him standing on the globe. It was inscribed hẽmítheos - a title he later erased, according to Dio. ^[17] The following year, a statue of Caesar was raised in the temple of Quirinus and inscribed deo invicto ("to the unconquered god"). Another was erected next to the statues of Rome's ancient kings.^[18] In the same year, Caesar was titled pater patriae - literally, Father of the fatherland - an honorific also granted Cicero during his consulship and comparable to Romulus as parens urbis Romanae (parent of the Roman city).

In 44 BC Caesar was made dictator in perpetuity and on March 15 of the same year he was murdered in the Senate house. In a funeral oration before a grief-stricken crowd in the Roman Forum, his colleague and supporter Mark Antony declared him divine. An unofficial, popular cult of the divus Julius seems to have followed, led by the Pseudo-Marius Amatius. It was rapidly and forcefully suppressed but the senate soon succumbed to Caesarian pressure and voted Caesar the divus Julius. A comet interpreted as Caesar's soul in heaven was named the "Julian star" (sidus Iulium). Caesar's official apotheosis took place in 42 BCE^[19] In 40 BCE Mark Antony was appointed the first priest (flamen) of the divus Julius. Provincial cult centres (caesarea) to the divus Julius were founded in Caesarian colonies such as Corinth.^[20]

In 31 BCE, Octavian defeated Anthony's forces at Actium and ended the civil war. Two years later he dedicated the temple of the divus Julius at the site of Caesar's cremation. He announced that he "had come into being" through the Julian star (or by extension, through the numen of his adoptive father the divus Julius) and was therefore the divi filius (son of the divinity). In 27 BCE he took the name "Augustus".^[21]

Religion and Imperium under Augustus

Augustan legislation claimed to curb the personal ambitions and rivalries that had led to the recent civil wars and to renew traditional Roman values and virtues by the will of the gods and the "senate and people of Rome" (senatus populusque romanus). As tribune of the people and princeps of the senate, Augustus encouraged his senatorial colleagues to be generous to Rome and its people. He simultaneously limited their public spending and disbanded or re-organised what remained of their armies to form new legions and a personal Imperial guard (praetorian guard). The state ludi, munera and Triumph came under Imperial control, and the patricians who clung to the upper echelons of political, military and priestly power were gradually replaced from a vast, Empire-wide pool of ambitious and talented equestrians. As his new senatorial order gained momentum, he safeguarded its rights, status and office. Senatorial status could now be inherited but carried greater obligations and could be lost for moral and civil offences.^[22]

Augustus prescribed the seating arrangements at theatres and games, revised and enforced sumptuary law and took measures to "restore" the traditional dignity and morality of family life. In theory, and occasionally in practise, personal appeals and petitions to his authority and magnanimity allowed ordinary citizens to circumvent the complex, hierarchic bureaucracy that mediated their relationship with the State. His 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.^[23] He was flattered in art and literature. Philosophers speculated and explored the phenomenon of his rule and person.^[24] By the end of his reign, the official res gestae (achievements) of Augustus included his repair of 82 temples in 28 BCE 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.^[25] Above all, he had brought enduring peace: under the princeps, all were equal.^[26] He seems to have managed all this with a combination of personal brio, veiled threats and self-deprecation as "just another senator".^[27][28]

The office, munificence, auctoritas and gens of the princeps were identified with every possible legal, religious and social institution of Rome. 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.^[29][30][31]

Eastern provinces

According to Cassius Dio, the lawful provincial cult of the living emperor was formulated and sanctioned by Octavian in 30/29BC, in response to initiatives from the koina of Asia and Bithynia to worship his living person as their "deliverer" or "saviour".^[32] Octavian stipulated that provincial cult honours to him must be jointly offered to dea Dia, at cult centres to be built at Pergamum and Nicomedia. Provincials who were also Roman citizens were not to worship the living emperor, but might worship dea Roma and the divus Julius at precincts in Ephesus and Nicaea.^[33][34] This prescriptive distinction between Roman and non-Roman cult valued provincial alliance, respected the nature and intent of Hellenic honours and avoided the identification of Octavian in Rome as a monarchic-deistic aspirant.

Eastern traditions offered expressions of loyalty and personal honour that in Rome itself would have undermined the necessary illusion of Augustus as the senator primus inter pares (first among equals) who had "saved and renewed" the Republic and all it stood for, including government by consensus. The tradition he saved and renewed did not include a deified monarchy but now must somehow accommodate him as paterfamilias (head of family) to the Roman people, bringer of salus and the pax deorum, pontifex maximus and holder of the true ius augurium by his merit, fortune and "divine" ancestry. As to the apparent contradiction of the institution of the divus cult at Rome, Fishwick points out that although the first request to offer cult emanated from the Greek provinces, the cult institution and regulations were framed by Rome and had a respectable antecedent in the Roman ancestor cult of the di parentes.^[35] 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 Najran.^[36]

The Eastern provinces offer some of the clearest material evidence for the Imperial domus and familia as official models of virtue and propriety. Centres including Pergamum, Lesbos and Cyprus offered cult honours to Augustus and the Empress Livia: the Cypriot Calendar honoured the entire Augustan familia by dedicating a month each (and presumably cult practise) to Imperial family members, their ancestral deities and some of the major gods of the Romano-Greek pantheon. Coin evidence links the identity of Thea Livia with Hera and Demeter, and of Julia with Venus Genetrix and Aphrodite. In Athens, Livia and Julia shared cult honour with Hestia (equivalent to Vesta), and the name of Gaius was linked to Ares (Mars).^[37]

Western provinces

In the Western provinces - most of them only recently "Latinised" following Caesar's Gallic Wars - Rome encountered a range of "radically different" socio-political contexts. Polybius mentions a past benefactor of New Carthage in Republican Iberia "said to have been offered divine honours".^[38] This apart, the West offered few if any ready-made establishments (such as monarchic divinity and the greek koina) which might absorb the Imperial cult as a Romanising agency.^[39]

The earliest forms of official Western cult were parceled into the establishment of military-administrative centres, strategically located within the unstable, "barbarian" Western provinces of the new Principate and inaugurated by military commanders who were - in all but one instance - members of the Imperial family.^[40]. The Western provincial concilia emerged as direct creations of the Imperial cult, which recruited existing local military, political and religious traditions to a Roman model. This required only the willingness of barbarian elites to "Romanise" themselves and their communities.^[41]

The first known Western cults to Augustus were established with his permission around 19 BCE in north-western (or "Celtic") Spain and named arae sestianae after their military founder, L. Sestius Quirinalis Albinianus.^[42] Soon afterwards, in either 12 BCE or 10 BCE, the first official Imperial cult centre in the West was founded at Lugdunum by Drusus as a focus for his new tripartite administrative division of Gallia Comata.

Long before the formal extension of Roman citizenship to all provinces and free-born provincials under Caracalla (a process begun under Hadrian) the Imperial cult provided provincial access to the privileges of Roman citizenship via its elected priesthoods. The first priest of the Ara (altar) at Lugdunum's great Imperial cult complex at Lugdunum was Caius Julius Vercondaridubnus, a Gaul of the provincial elite, given Roman citizenship and entitled by his priestly office to participate in the local government of his provincial concilium. Though not leading to senatorial status, and almost certainly an annually elected office (unlike the traditional lifetime priesthoods of Roman flamines), provincial priesthood in Imperial provinces thus offered a provincial equivalent to the traditional Roman cursus honorum.^[43]

Western provinces of Roman Africa

In the early Principate, an altar inscribed Marazgu Aug(usto) Sac(rum) ("Dedicated to Marazgu Augustus"), identifies a local Libyan (Berber) deity with the supreme power of Augustus. In the Senatorial province of Africa, 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.^[44] Two temples are attested to Roma and the divus Augustus - one dedicated under Tiberius at Leptis Magna, and another (Julio-Claudian) at Mactar.^[45]

The Imperial succession

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Julio-Claudian

In 18BCE, a year after the death of Augustus, his own cult was inaugurated by his son, Tiberius. An oracle pronounced that ludi saeculares should be held in celebration of the "new golden age". Coinage from Asia Minor shows Augustus wearing the laurel crown of Apollo.^[46]

The accession of Tiberius was a dynastic settlement of the constitutional crisis caused by the death of Augustus. Despite opposition Tiberius accepted the Principate. He matched his apparent self-deprecation and allowed a single temple in Smyrna to himself and "the senate" in 26 CE - eleven cities had competed for the honour.^[47] In Rome itself his lack of auctoritas was marked by a rise in praetorian influence within the Imperial domus and through it, the state. In 31 CE, the praetorian prefect Sejanus was implicated in the death of Tiberius' heir apparent, Drusus, and 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.^[48]

Caligula was said by commentators to have instigated the building of several temples and statues dedicated to himself, all of which were destroyed immediately after his death.^{[citation needed]}

Claudius was chosen as Emperor by Caligula's palace guard, and his appointment ratified after negotiation with the senate. He seems to have approached his own cult with caution and followed the precedent of Tiberius. He allowed a single temple in his honour, this time in Britain following his conquest there. It was sited at the colonia-capital of the Iceni under their client king, Prasutagus.^{[citation needed]}

Nero blamed Christians for the Great Fire of Rome in CE 64. His response was condemned for its personal cruelty. In his reign, the British "Temple of Claudius" was targeted and destroyed by Boudicca and her allies.

Tacitus reports a senatorial proposal to dedicate a temple to Nero as a living divus^[49] Pliny the Elder remarked that the head of Nero's Colossus was very like the Emperor's own.^[50]

Flavian

Nero's assassination and damnatio memoriae saw the end of Imperial tenure as a privilege of ancient Roman (senatorial) families. Following his assumption of Imperial power during the Year of the Four Emperors, Vespasian - son of an auctioneer from Reate - renewed the Imperial cult of Divus Iulius, and secured his Flavian dynasty.^[51][52] He may have had the head of Nero's Colossus replaced or recut for its dedication (or rededication) to the sun god in 75CE.^[53][54][55] Despite the exemption of the Jewish religion as (possibly) a "religio licita", or at least a tolerated superstitio Vespasian imposed the didrachmon ("Temple Tax" paid to Jupiter Capitolinus as victor over the Jews) on any who wished to avoid the paying of Imperial cult honours and thus remain part of their Jewish communities.^[56] According to Suetonius, the last words of Vespasian were puto deus fio ("I think I'm turning into a god")

Pliny the younger's panegyric of 100 CE claims the visible restoration of senatorial authority and dignity throughout the empire under Trajan, but does not disguise the precarious nature of this autocratic gift.^[57][58]

Nervan-Antonine

The Emperor Hadrian's Hispano-Roman origins and marked pro-Hellenism changed the focus of Imperial cult. Contemporary coin issues identify him with Hercules Gaditanus, and with Rome's Imperial protection of Greek civilisation. Commemorative coinage shows him "raising up" provincial deities (thus elevating and "restoring" the provinces). In 131-2 CE he sponsored the exclusively Greek Panhellenion.^[59] He was said to have "wept like a woman" at the death of Antinous, and arranged his apotheosis.^[60]

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. 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. 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".^{[61] [62]}

Hadrian was predeceased by his wife Vibia Sabina. Both were deified.^[63]

Commodus succumbed to the lures of self-indulgence, easy populism and rule by favourites.^[64] Dio's assessment is blunt but not entirely unsympathetic - Commodus was lazy, gullible and stupid.^[65][66] 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 demi-god Hercules in statuary, temples and the arena, where - to the horror of the senate and (probably) the delight of the plebs - he liked to perform as a bestiarius in the morning and a gladiator in the afternoon. He may have been contemplating his declaration as a living god some time before his murder on the last day of 192 CE.^[67]

The Nervan-Antonine dynasty ended chaotically, with the damnatio memoriae of Commodus by the senate and the de facto election of Pertinax as Emperor by the praetorian guard in return for the promise of very large donatives.^[68] Pertinax had risen through equestrian ranks by virtue of military talent and administrative efficiency , to become senator, consul and finally - and very briefly - Emperor.^[69] His attempts to reduce the excesses of the Imperial household and praetorians led his murder by the latter, and his replacement by Didius Julianus.^[70] Julianus had promised cash to the praetorians and restoration of power to the senate, but his reign began with an ill-judged appeal to the memory of Commodus, a much resented attempt to bribe the populace en masse and the use of praetorian force against them. In defiance of this Imperial "natural order" the urban crowd occupied the senatorial seats at the circus maximus.^[71] Against a background of civil war in the provinces, Septimius Severus emerged as a likely victor and soon afterwards, the senate voted for the death of Julianius, the deification of Pertinax and the elevation of Septimius as Emperor.^[72]

Severan

In 193 CE Septimius Severus made a triumphal entry into Rome and attended the apotheosis of Pertinax. He cancelled the senatorial damnatio memoriae imposed on Commodus and arranged for his deification as a frater (brother). Septimius thereby adopted Marcus Aurelius, the father of Commodus, as his own ancestor through an act of filial piety and Imperial authority.^[73] Severan coin images further re-enforced Septimius' association with prestigious Antonine dynasts.^[74]

The apotheosis of Commodus represents a watershed in relations between senate and Emperors.^[75] Senatorial procedure - no matter how manipulated - defined divine imperium as a Republican institution for the benefit of the Roman people, and apotheosis as a senatorial prerogative. Septimius was essentially a military man whose autocratic inclinations were tempered by diplomatic talent. He spent little time in Rome itself, and gave personal attention to the provinces as potential sources of revenue, military manpower and unrest. Septimius emphasised the cult of Melquart/Hercules and Liber/Bacchus, who as patron deities of his native town took pride of place with the emperor and his two sons at the Saecular games of 204 CE. His praetorian prefect Plautianus (related by bloodline and marriage), was included in the annual oath of loyalty to the Imperial house until his alleged treason and summary execution (according to Dio at the behest of Septimius' younger son, Caracalla).^{[76] [77]} Septimius died of natural causes in 211 CE at Eboracum (modern York) while on campaign in Britannia. He left the Empire equally to Caracalla and his older brother Geta, along with advice to "be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men."^[78] Shortly thereafter, Caracalla murdered Geta and a swathe of his supporters.^[79]

Caracalla pronounced Geta's damnatio memoriae. In 212 CE, faced with a shortfall in Imperial cash and military recruitment, he issued the Constitutio Antoniniana, which gave "full Roman citizenship" to all free inhabitants of the Empire.^[80] This increased the taxable population at a stroke - a far from popular move, as most of these new citizens were humiliores (roughly, those of peasant status and occupation - approximately 90% of the total population).^[81] Whatever the practical value of Caracalla's "gift" of citizenship, it was broadcast as a generous invitation to celebrate the "victory of the Roman people" in foiling Geta's "conspiracy". This identified Caracalla's personal survival - not merely his office - with that of the Roman state. These newly "liberated" citizens would have formally adopted Caracalla's name as their paterfamilas.^[82] Such complete identification of the Emperor's person with the state and its people was unprecedented.

The devotion of Caracalla's soldiery seems to have been based on his commitment to them and their respect for his father. His attempts to court popularity in Rome misfired.^[83] His efforts to embrace the provincial diversity of Empire foundered on his arrogance, impatience, and grudging, parochial mindset. He was assassinated in 217 CE, with the possible collusion of his praetorian prefect Macrinus, a well-educated provincial equestrian of Berber descent.^[84]

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.^[85] His foreign policy proved too cautious and placatory for the military.^[86] After little more than a year he was murdered in a coup which replaced him with a 14 year-old boy-priest of Syrian background and Severan descent, Varius Avitus Bassianus. Avitus took the Imperial name Marcus Aurelius Antoninus but is more usually known by the Latinised name of his god and his priesthood, Elagabalus.^[87]

Antoninus brought his solar-mountain deity from his native Emesa to Rome and into official Imperial cult.^[88] In Syria, the cult of Elagabalus was popular and well established. In Rome, it was an intrusive, decadent and (according to some ancient sources) disgusting Eastern novelty, but in 220 CE the priest Elagabalus/Emperor Antoninus replaced Jupiter with the god Elagabalus as sol invictus (the unconquered Sun). Thereafter he increasingly ignored his Imperial role as pontifex maximus. Antoninus also breached the traditional status values of the Roman administration and - according to Marius Maximus - ruled from his degenerate domus through its staff, handing prefectural authority to (among others) a charioteer, a locksmith, a barber, and a cook. He promoted others of doubtful talent and worth to equestrian or senatorial rank - though in reality, the bureaucracy of Empire had long been the business of the equestrian orders, or those promoted to their ranks on the basis of talent, merit (perceived or actual) and sometimes wealth.^[89] At the very least, he appears to have been regarded as an unacceptably effete eccentric by the populace and military alike. He was assassinated at the age of 18, and subjected to the fullest indignities of damnatio memoriae. His replacement (and cousin) Alexander Severus, reigned for only two years until killed in a mutiny. He was the last "Severan" Emperor.

Imperial crisis and the Dominate

This section provides an overview of developments most relevant to cult: for a full listing of Emperors by name and date, see List of Roman Emperors.

Eastern and Western Imperium

The death of Alexander Severus marked the almost complete identification of personal Imperium with overwhelming military power. Alexander's killer and replacement, Maximinus, prioritised the needs of his armies and reduced the subsidy of the Imperial cult of deified emperors in Rome - an unwise move for his own posterity, as the grant or withholding of apotheosis remained a judgement of Imperial worthiness. A rapid succession of soldier-Emperors followed his policy.

In his home town of Philipopolis, Philip the Arab dedicated a statue to his father as "divine". He also brought back to Rome the body of his young predecessor Gordian III, who died of uncertain causes. In Rome, Gordian was made divus.^[90]

In 249 CE, Philip lost his Imperial throne to ex-consul and governor Decius, under circumstances variously described as usurpation and reluctant accession. Decius was a traditionalist of provincial, senatorial stock. He adopted the name of Trajan to identify himself with (or to honour) one of the most universally admired of all emperors.^[91] Decius issued an unprecedented decree: all subjects of the Empire must actively seek to benefit the state through witnessed and certified sacrifice to "ancestral gods" or suffer a penalty.^[92] This edict appealed to a need for Empire-wide uniformity and common identity, though no "ancestral gods" were specified by name. It may be that Decius needed to identify himself as "restorer and saviour" of Empire and its religio. Early in his reign he identified the deified Emperors he thought worthy of the honour in a coin series of Imperial divi in radiate (solar) crowns.^[93] The issue omitted Philip, the three Gordians, Pertinax and Claudius - in effect, Decius censored the divi of the state^[94]

The development of the Tetrarchy under Diocletian observed in practise (though never in law) the cultural and linguistic division between Latin West and Greek East. Games were held in honour of Antinous at Diocletian's accession in 284 CE.^[95]

The context and precedents for Imperial Cult

Res divinae, res humanae and religio

Main article: Res divina.

In the Late Republican era, Cicero speculated in Stoic terms on a distinction between res divina ("divine matters"), which were spiritual and godly, and res humanae ("human affairs"), which were material and temporal. Balancing intellectual skepticism with his role as augur and senator, Cicero concludes that it is better to honour the gods, even if there is no incontrovertible evidence of their existence. Religio was a matter of transactional reciprocity (do ut des, "I give, that you may give"), and piety was a system of offering honors and receiving benefactions. State religion provided a bridge between the divine will and the ordering of human affairs, with the city as earthly home to the gods and the center of Roman order. Public religion at Rome incorporated local and regional cults from the earliest period; as the empire expanded, gods and cults of both allies and the conquered were imported. The simultaneous preservation and subordination of others' religions facilitated unity under Rome rule and fostered mutual religious tolerance within the hierarchy.^[96]

Sacrificium

"Sacred offerings" (sacrificium) formed the contract of public and private religio, from oaths of office, treaty and loyalty to business contracts and marriage. Participation in sacrificium acknowledged personal commitment to the community and its values.^[97] Religious law focused on the sacrificial requirements of particular deities on specific occasions.^[98] For example, Jupiter Capitolinus required two perfect white oxen in the annual vows of the ruling consul and in the triumphal rite, but in one of the many crises of the Second Punic war, he was offered every animal born that year, in return for five more years of protection from Hannibal and his allies.^[99] In the late 3rd century CE, Aelian applauded the pious "wisdom of barbarians" who practiced "pure and unpolluted" rites.^[100][101]

Augury, pax deorum and ira deorum

Main article: Augur.

Obedience to divine ordinance brought divine peace (pax deorum). Impiety provoked heavenly disorder and wrath (ira deorum). 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.^[102] The augur's reading of signs informed the magistrate's course of action.^[103]Magistrates could use their right of augury (ius augurum) to adjourn and overturn the process of law, but were obliged to base their decision of the observations and advice of the auger. For Cicero, this made the the augur the most powerful authority in the Late Republic.^[104][105] Livy believed that military and civil disasters were the consequence of error (vitium) in augury, neglect of due and proper sacrifice and the impious proliferation of "foreign" cults.^[106][107]

In the later Republic, augury came under the supervision of the college of pontifices, a priestly-magistral office whose powers were increasingly woven into the cursus honorum. The office of pontifex maximus eventually became a de facto consular office.^[108] When the consul Lepidus died, his office as pontifex maximus passed to Augustus, who took priestly control over the State oracles (including the Sibylline books), and used his powers as censor to suppress unapproved oracles.^[109]The ius augurum of Augustus was self-evident - he alone had restored the pax deorum and re-founded Rome through "August augury".^[110]

Family, ancestral and "household" cults

Private rites were those funded by an individual for themselves, their family (including their ancestors) or their household.^[111] In Vergil's Aeneid, Aeneas brought the cult of the lares and penates (often approximately translated as "household gods") from Troy, along with the Palladium which was later installed in the temple of Vesta.^[112] While the major gods of the later Roman pantheon found Greek, Egyptian and Celtic counterparts - suggesting their perceived commonality, if not universality - many "lesser" Roman deities were seen as distinctively Roman ab origine. Daily offerings were made to the lares and penates as "domestic" shades of the departed, and to the di parentes/divi parentes, in the fires of the household hearth, sacred to Vesta. During the 1st century BCE, these "minor" guardian shades or semi-divinities were increasingly personalised and venerated.^[113] The association between the "public" Vestals and "private" household cults was exploited by Augustus on or soon after his appointment as pontifex maximus in 12 BCE. One of his duties as pontifex maximus was the supervision of the Vestals, which traditionally required residence in a state-owned house near the temple of Vesta. Instead, Augustus gave the Vestals his own house on the Palatine. His penates, as domestic deities, remained in the house now occupied by the Vestals, to whom he also gave his lares. The domestic gods, lineage and family of Augustus would now be associated with the sanctified Vestals and the sacred Vestal hearth of the Rome state - this was one of the ways in which Augustus "renewed" Vestal prestige.^{[114][115][116]}

Roman families traced their ancestry, traditions and social identity through their gens (pl. gentes), a clan or group of families which shared a common name, such as the Julli ("Julians") of Julius Caesar and - by adoption - of Augustus.^[117] The "guiding spirit" that inhabited a gens and the "generative power" that sustained it was embodied in the gens as a whole and in each of its members as genius. In keeping with Roman conceptions of deity, men and gods alike possessed a genius which was simultaneously personal and heritable. The genius of emperors - whether living or dead - expressed the will of the gods through Imperial actions.^[118] In 30 BCE, libation-offerings to the genius of Octavian (later Augustus) became a duty at public and private banquets, and from 12 BCE, state oaths were sworn by the genius of the living emperor.^[119]

Responsibility for the regulation of the household (domus) and family affairs - including the morality of the household and the sacrifices to lares and penates - devolved upon the paterfamilias ("the father of the family"). The hierarchical relationships within the familia were defined by ancient custom, law and religious ties to it's ancestry, and its "public" status by the reputation of the familia as a whole, including its slaves and freedmen or freedwomen. Social relationships and dynastic strength were re-inforced by individual achievements, and by the alliances forged through marriage, inheritance and adoption. The traditional familia structure and rites of adoption would be central to the development and justification of Imperial cult throughout the Imperial Roman period, despite often violent changes of dynasty. The affairs of the Imperial domus were accounted in senatorial deliberations for and against apotheosis - the domus was also a place of potential sexual immorality, disloyalty, unhealthy role-reversal (such as the "henpecked" paterfamilias or disobedient children), and outright conspiracy.^{[120][121][122]}

Divus, deus and the numen

The central organisation and "theology" of the Imperial cult derived from an ancient Roman tradition, in which deceased parentes (usually male) were "elevated to godhead" by their sons and accorded the rites of "ancestor worship".^[123] Yet this presents problems of interpretation - a mortal did not possess the divine power (numen), which according to Gradel "can also be synonymous with deus"^[124] Departed ancestors, no matter how honoured, were manes of the underworld. Numen was not a quality within traditional Roman ancestor cult, yet in fully developed Imperial cult, the numen of the Emperor was honoured.^[125]

For Beard et al, a practicable and universal Roman cult of deified emperors and others of the Imperial house hinges on the paradox that a mortal might - like the semi-divine "heroic" divus figures of Hercules, Aeneas and Romulus - possess sufficient measure of numen to rise above their mortal condition and be in the company of the gods, yet remain mortal in the eyes of Roman traditionalists.^[126] In Rome itself, the Imperial Mausoleum identified Augustus, his family (and later, his descendants) by name only, not as divi.^[127]

The differences and connections between divus ("the divine/deified one") and deus (god) are central to interpretation of the cult. Divus must refer simultaneously to a measure of numen, to the gens and to an individual genius. Price prefers divus as a category within deus: 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.^[128] Divus is not the same as deus, and cult to Emperors is not the same as "worship". Holland's 1606 translation of Suetonius' Lives of the Caesars (Claudius) equates divus to posthumous canonisation and thus to the sainthood of a Christian divine hierarchy.^[129]

Messianism

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 fortuna, fatum and logos. The same forces inevitably produced a sôter (saviour) who would transform the destructive and "unnatural disorder" of chaos and strife to pax, fortuna and salus, and is thus identified with solar cults such as Apollo and Sol Invictus. Livy (in the early to mid 1st century BCE), and Lucan (in the 1st century CE) interpreted the crises of the late Republic as a destructive phase which led to religious and constitutional "renewal" by Augustus and his restoration of "good fortune", safety and peace. Augustus was therefore a "messianic" figure who personally and rationally instigated a "golden age" - the pax Augusta.^[130] Augustus was officially identified with a range of solar deities as patron, priest and protege.^[131]

From the Eastern alliances (later Provinces) came the exclusive mysteries of Isis and Mithras, the latter a solar-messianic cult whose exclusive status hierarchies held particular appeal for the Roman military. More relevant to later developments was the equally exclusive monotheism of Judaism, tolerated in Rome through diplomatic treaties with Graeco-Judaean rulers long before the civil war. Jews were an everyday sight in Rome, but their religion was brought into new prominence by the enrollment of Judea as a client kingdom following Pompey's siege of Jerusalem in 63 BCE.^[132][133] The diaspora that followed may have laid pathways for the later dispersal of early "Judaic" Christianity. In the second half of the 1st century CE, Judaism's highly developed textual tradition would offer a model for the propagation of Pauline Christianity's distinctively "non-Jewish" literary-religious narrative.^[134]

The Imperial cult and Christianity

"Give unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is God’s" (Matthew.22.19)^[135]

Christianity emerged from Judaism and a myriad of "foreign cults" to become a dominant force in East and West. Its eventual hegemony grew from its agenda of mission, predicated on a universal capacity for true Christian belief, feeling and salvation ("religio animi"), regardless of social identity, as fulfillment of its Messianic testaments.^[136] The first official Roman accounts of Christianity describe it as an obscure, bizarre and even godless Judaic superstitio. Pliny the Younger's report on Christian practice in Pontus (Asia Minor) described is as "a degenerate superstitio carried to extravagant lengths", but otherwise - to his apparent surprise - inoffensive to law and public morality.^[137] Tacitus' grudging respect for the antiquity (though not the "absurdities") of the Jewish religion did not extend to Christianity, which he thought should be suppressed by severe and exemplary punishment. In his account of its rise, he described how the lawful execution of Christ gave only temporary pause to the spread of this evil superstitio from its birthplace in Judaea to Rome itself. ^[138] Christian evangelists made subversive appeals to women and slaves (the potentially unstable heart of the domus), landless labourers, and the urban poor (the populus mobile) - marginalised, dissatisfied persons easily tempted into "conspiracy". Christianity was seen by Roman authority as a secretive religio hidden within - and yet perversely outside - the traditional Roman hierarchies.^[139]

Encounters between Roman cult officials and early Christian thinkers suggest both mutual incomprehensibility and antipathy. The single oath and sacrifice required of all citizens represented their loyalty to the broad polytheistic sweep of Roman tradition and the diverse unity of its Empire. Refusal was treasonous. Christians identified the "Hellenistic honours" accorded to human beings and divinities in the Graeco-Roman world as empty parodies of true "worship". Those who swore by false gods would not be saved.^[140][141] Collins remarks that Revelation represents Rome as the "Beast from the sea", Judaeo-Roman elites as the "Beast from the land" and the use of the charagma (official Roman stamp) as a sign of the Beast.^[142] Christian cult and doctrine deliberately or unconsciously employed the same terminology as "Imperial" cult in theological and philosophical responses to the enveloping apparatus of Roman Imperium.^[143] In comparison, "pagan Imperial theology" remained relatively static and undeveloped. The existence of Empire allowed the rapid spread of a religion that opposed its values.^[144][145]

Temporary accommodations were reached between Christianity and traditional Roman religion. Christians and Jews offer could "prayer" (as sacrificium) for the Emperor and the well-being of the Roman state. It was a fundamentally unsatifactory compromise. In Caligula's reign, Jews had pleaded their compliance with his cult through offerings and prayer to Yahweh. The Emperor was not impressed. The offering was to the wrong deity, who was in any case a foreigner.^[146]

The emperor Constantine I, as pontifex maximus, selectively intervened in early Christian theological and hiearachical disputes, favouring the ""Catholic Church of the Christians" because it was "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".^[147] This was a change of Imperial formula, in which Constantine officially recognised his responsibilities to an earthly realm, whose discord and conflict might arouse the ira deorum, but recognised the power of the new Christian priestly hierarchy in determining what was (in traditional Roman terms) auspicious.

Legacy

The Roman Imperial cult 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 alien, if not obnoxious. In this viewpoint, the essentially servile and "un-Roman" Imperial cult, best characterised by Tacitus as graeca adulatio (Greek flattery), was established at the expense of the traditional Roman ethics which had sustained the Republic. In the long term, the cult thereby degraded and weakened the institutions it was meant to sustain, and represented the ultimate spiritual and moral bankruptcy of paganism, which led to the triumph of Christianity as the Roman state religion.^[148][149] Very few modern historians would now support this point of view. The reference by Tacitus to graeca adulatio (greek adulation or flattery) was set within the Graeco-Eastern context of the Roman civil war. Tacitus - a senator of strong republic sympathies who under Domitian would have had good reason to reject the "servile" elevation of the Imperial house - referred the phrase to the absurd elevation of the unworthy - namely, Theophanes of Mytilene, whose achievements for Mytilene were occasioned by no merit other than his friendship and influence with Pompey.^[150][151]

Some historians - among them Beard et al, Gradel and Price - reject "Imperial cult" as a category. Its recognition as a Greek - and essentially alien - import is partly based on the ubiquity of evidence for its practice in the Eastern provinces, and the scarcity of evidence for its presence in Rome and the Western provinces. Historic over-reliance on contemporary Roman, Greek and Christian interpretations may also have distorted the meaning and significance of the cult in Roman life.^[152] Difficulties in interpreting and understanding its development have been compounded partly by its almost complete lack of overt theology, and even more by the inappropriate application of a broadly Judaeo-Christian framework to non-Christian cult practice.^[153][154] The developments in Roman mythology in which Imperialcult are anticipated occurred during the later years of the Republic, when Rome’s ancient “native” ritual and unsystematised mythology were increasingly subjected to the speculative analysis of Greek systems of thought, and of Greek philosophy in particular. Gradel notes that philosophical and theological speculations had no demonstrable impact on the substance or performance of traditional ritual or cult, and strongly repudiates any attempt to infer a “theology” or “religious meaning” that might or "must" have informed Roman rituals, most of which were already obscure by Cicero’s time. Roman ritual and cult was embedded in Roman history, politics and daily life. This made it an appropriate and worthy subject of contemporary inquiry, through which philosophical conclusions might be drawn, but it needed no theology, in the modern sense. Rather, Rome's ritual informed such theology as its early religion possessed.^[155] Its ritual was already there, and had been since time immemorial.^[156] Its part in Rome's success was sufficient to justify, sanctify and "explain" it to most Romans.^[157][158]

With notable exceptions, the Western provincial cult was actively and successfully fostered by Imperial authorities to legitimise their rule in times of instability, rather than foist on a culturally unsympathetic populace.^[159] The provincial cults were - like Rome's - founded within existing local traditions and focused on the Emperor according to their own interpretations of romanitas and local government.^[160][161] Archaeological and literary sources have left traces of variable features, institutions and attitudes within the Eastern Imperial Cult inherited by early Christian church.^[162] The traditional religious cults which preceded and then included the Imperial cult also laid the political and administrative foundations for later Christian institutions.^[163]

In its missionary practice, Christianity made significant accommodations to "pagan" traditions. In turn, it absorbed some of the strongest and most enduring features of pre-Christian religious traditions and Imperial Roman politico-religious institutions.

References

References and further reading

• Ando, Clifford, Imperial ideology and provincial loyalty in the Roman Empire, illustrated, University of California Press, 2000. ISBN 0520220676
• Beard, M., Price, S., North, J., Religions of Rome: Volume 1, a History, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0521316820
• Beard, M., Price, S., North, J., Religions of Rome: Volume 2, a sourcebook, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1998. ISBN 0521456460
• 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, 1999, illustrated, BRILL, ISBN 9004114203
• Cannadine, D., and Price, S., (eds) Rituals of Royalty: Power and Ceremonial in Traditional Societies, reprint, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 1992. ISBN 0521428912
• Chow, John K., Patronage and power: a study of social networks in Corinth, Continuum International Publishing Group, 1992. ISBN 1850753709
• Collins, Adela Yarbro, Crisis and catharsis: the power of the Apocalypse, Westminster John Knox Press, 1984. ISBN 0664245218
• 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 0802822215
• Fishwick , Duncan. The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire, volume 1, 1991, BRILL. ISBN 9004071792
• Fishwick , Duncan. The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire, volume 3, 2002, BRILL. ISBN 9004125361
• Gradel, Ittai. Emperor Worship and Roman Religion, Oxford (Oxford University Press), 2002. ISBN 0198152752
• Haase, W., Temporini, H., (eds), Aufstieg und Niedergang der romischen Welt, de Gruyter, 1991. ISBN 3110103893
• 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:[21]
• 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: [22]
• Howgego, C., Heuchert, V., Burnett, A., (eds), Coinage and Identity in the Roman Provinces, Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN 9780199265268
• Lee, A.D., Pagans and Christians in late antiquity: a sourcebook, illustrated, Routledge, 2000. ISBN 0415138922
• Martin, Dale B., Inventing superstition: from the Hippocratics to the Christians, Harvard University Press, 2004. ISBN 0674015347
• Morton, Jamie, The role of the physical environment in ancient Greek seafaring, 2001, illustrated, BRILL. ISBN 9004117172
• Price, S.R.F. Rituals and power: the Roman imperial cult in Asia Minor, 1986, (reprint, illustrated). Cambridge University Press. ISBN 052131268X
• Rehak, Paul, and Younger, John Grimes, Imperium and cosmos: Augustus and the northern Campus Martius, illustrated, University of Wisconsin Press, 2006. ISBN 0299220109
• Rosenstein, Nathan S., Imperatores Victi: Military Defeat and Aristocractic Competition in the Middle and Late Republic. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. [23]
• Momigliano, Arnaldo, On Pagans, Jews, and Christians, reprint, Wesleyan University Press, 1987. ISBN 0819562181
• Severy, Beth, Augustus and the family at the birth of the Roman Empire, 2003, Routledge. ISBN 041530959X
• Smallwood,E. Mary, The Jews under Roman rule: from Pompey to Diocletian : a study in political relations, 2001, illustrated, BRILL. ISBN 039104155X
• Theuws, Frans, and Nelson, Janet L., Rituals of power: from late antiquity to the early Middle Ages, 2000, BRILL. ISBN 9004109021
• Vout, Caroline, Power and eroticism in Imperial Rome, illustrated, Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 0521867398
• Weinstock, Stefan. Divus Iulius. Oxford (Clarendon Press/OUP). 1971.
• Wiedemann, Thomas. Adults and Children in the Roman Empire, Taylor & Francis Ltd. ISBN 9780415003360

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