The Nature of the Gods: Absolute vs. Relative Divinity in Roman Emperor Worship (original) (raw)
Related papers
Roman Emperors: Gods, Men, Something Between Or An Unnecessary Dilemma?
For a very long time the contentious issue whether Roman emperors were gods or not has negatively influenced the study of the Roman imperial cult. The majority of scholars is inclined to think that Roman emperors were either (1) mere men and their cult was an ex-pression of political honors or (2) persons closely related with gods but never entirely as-similated to them, even though they sometimes let themselves to be depicted with divine at-tributes and tried to use this kinship politically. These two attitudes, however, do not take into account sufficiently that every concept of divinity is culturally derived and thus only exceptionally applicable in other, sometimes pro-foundly different cultures. The situation is further complicated by the obvious inability of scholars of religion to propose a universally accepted definition of divinity. One of the con-founding factors is probably a superfluous accentuation of ontological divinity, which is un-questionably decisive in monotheistic religious traditions but largely inappropriate in cul-tures with polytheistic religious systems. A promising way how to avoid these difficulties seems to be a concept of relative divinity introduced by Ittai Gradel. According to Gradel, the divinity of Roman emperors was not based on their ontological uniqueness but rather on an enormous difference in relative so-cial status between emperors and their subjects. But even this laudable adjustment is not able to put aside all existing problems. It is quite evident that the concept of ontological divinity played some role even in the Graeco-Roman world (e.g. Jews and Christians refused to par-ticipate in imperial worship because they rejected the notion of emperors being gods) and some people or communities could simply believe that emperors were real gods (Manfred Clauss). Rather than running into often problematic discussions about the divine status of Roman emperors it seems to be more productive and rewarding to concentrate on a thoroughgoing study of ritual elements of the Roman imperial worship and an analysis of roles and mean-ings this religious phenomenon could play and fulfill during the Roman Empire. The ques-tion of the divinine status of Roman emperors should be abandoned because the search for answers probably cannot lead to any substantial improvement in our knowledge of the late antique religious world.
How Did Roman Emperors Become Gods? Various Concepts of Imperial Apotheosis
his article surveys various concepts of imperial deification and its historical evolution. Three stages are identified. In the first stage, an eyewitness of the apotheosis is attested and a senatorial decree awarding divine honours is issued after the funeral. In the second stage, a senatorial decree is routinely issued before the funeral and an apotheosis is performed symbolically, by the release of an eagle from the funeral pyre. In the third stage, Roman emperors are often buried in a double funeral, although the exact motives of this practice are still disputed.
Electrum, 2023
There are abundant examples of negative assessments of cultic honors to Roman emperors by nineteenth-and twentieth-century researchers. In the minds of historians raised in modern societies, in which monotheistic Abrahamic religions usually reign supreme, this is a completely understandable a priori approach; nevertheless, it hinders a correct understanding of Roman society in antiquity. This paper examines the need to provide a complex answer to the question of whether the inhabitants of the Roman world really believed in the divinity of their rulers. A complex answer to the question can only emerge from a historical contextualization of the phenomenon under analysis, an examination of the imperial cult within the wider changes that were taking place in Roman religion at the time, and application of the necessary empathetic approach.
Introduction: Roman Emperors and the Divine: Shifts and Downshifts
2016
In the course of history, the divine sphere has frequently been harnessed to serve the needs of political leaders. Political power has thus been legitimized as authorized by divine forces. In pre-modern societies, and especially in the Roman Empire, phenomena that people today call religion and politics were closely intertwined, even inseparable.1 This can be perceived most clearly in the relationship of the Roman emperors to the divine – in their support of different deities, in their role as the mediators between the divine and humankind, and in their policies towards the many different cults and religious groups across a vast Empire. The manifestation of proximity to the divine was one of the most important ways of legitimating imperial power. The articles of the present volume Emperors and the Divine analyse the various means by which imperial power was justified. Emperors supported cults of various deities, representing themselves as the guardians of the cosmic order, whether t...
Roman gods : a conceptual approach
2009
This work is published by Koninklijke Brill nv. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. Koninklijke Brill nv reserves the right to protect the publication against unauthorized use and to authorize dissemination by means of offprints, legitimate photocopies, microform editions, reprints, translations, and secondary information sources, such as abstracting and indexing services including databases. Requests for commercial re-use, use of parts of the publication, and/or translations must be addressed to Koninklijke Brill nv. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner. This is an open access title distributed under the terms of the cc-by-nc License, which permits any non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited. An electronic version of this book is freely available, thanks to the support of libraries working with Knowledge Unlatched. More information about the initiative can be found at www.knowledgeunlatched.org. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lipka, Michael. Roman gods : a conceptual approach / by Michael Lipka. p. cm.-(Religions in the Graeco-Roman world ; v. 167) Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index.
This article examines what the historians have called the “imperial cult” to describe a wide variety of homages celebrated for the emperor and the members of his family in the imperial era. The established cults and honours have indeed participated in a moving dialectic of power. The emperor and his subjects finally adapted to a monarchy that from an institutional point of view was not, and to an empire consisting of autonomous cities. A new religious language was thus organized around the imperial person on the rhetorical basis of isotheoi timai, of honours equal to those made to the gods. This type of amplified tribute, set up from Actium and exploiting the Caesarian heritage (divus Julius), founded the institutional architecture of the Principate, giving the Emperor a necessarily prominent position. This policy of reverence framed the power relations in the imperial era and often took the form of cults and rituals intending to raise the emperor to divine equivalence, which however fooled no one. Even when dead, the emperor was consecrated as divus, not as deus. The emperors were in a way and from an institutional point of view, gods without being gods, just as they were monarchs without being monarchs, since the powers shaping the imperial office simply made emperors official representatives of the Republic. This fact which belongs to the rhetoric of power explains the great ambiguity of religious language developed around the imperial figure; it also explains the maintenance of the institution with Constantine and the Christian emperors, who kept the essential meaning of the “imperial cult” based on an admittedly ambiguous ritual arsenal, but adapted to the celebration of the highest honours that shaped the imperial function. Therefore, to find a precise meaning for the varied terms used by Roman people to honour the emperor is just as difficult as solving the necessary ambiguities of political rhetoric.then, in a calculated graduation that literally, year after year and according to the decrees passed by the Senate, shaped the exceptional position of the emperor to make him an ubiquitous figure in public religious events. Key words : Imperial Cult, Roman Religion, language of power, divine honours, public sacrifices, religion in the Roman provinces. Political rhetoric often uses shortcuts and ambiguities of language, which inevitably give rise to controversies, contradictions and endless debates. The Augustan regime is not an exception: it left us apparently contradictory literary and epigraphic testimonies on the cults delivered to the living emperor, while the Roman religious rules made any deification of the prince unthinkable, especially in the context asserted by the new political power of a restoration of the Republic and its traditional cults. This supposed contradiction of our sources is at the origin of a very abundant modern literature, produced on what the historians baptized the ‘imperial cult’. This term is of course a reducing concept in the sense that the term often recover a large number of honours and rites celebrated for the emperor in its representative’s role of the Roman Republic and thus of the State . Another element, which does not hold in light of the documentation, is the strict separation which we make today between politics and religion, while in Roman times, both domains overlapped: in the city state, where the gods lived together with men, any political expression or social ritual necessarily conveyed a religious dimension . In this particular case, imperial power could not exist without a specific religious expression or, to put it in another way, power had necessarily a place in the public religion . In Rome, the political action is deified in its structuring role of the community. But that does not mean that the emperor is a god even after his death, when he becomes not a god, deus, but a kind of hero, a divus.
Arys (Antigüedad, Religiones y Sociedades), 2018
In the Greek world Roman emperors were often linked with traditional gods. Verbal and iconographical assimilations on inscriptions, coins and statues, integration into pre-existing sacred structures and festivals, and joint priesthoods were three different means of establishing a relationship between the old gods of the Greek pantheon and the new divinized masters of the Empire. The ideological valency of this proceeding was strong, as it permitted the Greek elites both to establish a subtle hierarchy between emperors and gods and to cope with the new imperial power through traditional tools (and according to Greeks’ cultural horizon). As is generally the case with the “imperial cult” as a whole, however, the assimilation of emperors to the traditional Greek gods had also significant cultic implications, since ritual ceremonies were performed for the emperors. In this context priests of the imperial cult played an important role. The present paper deals with these aspects in the cities of mainland Greece.
The present contribution provides an examination of the relationship between the emperor and the divine sphere in Latin panegyric poetry of the fifth and sixth centuries. Following the path magisterially set forth by Claudian, poets like Sidonius Apollinaris and, later on, Corippus employs the same literary genre to praise the newly-come Germanic kings or the Eastern Emperor. They have, however, to face a profoundly transformed historical and political realm, not to mention a different approach towards religion. Whereas Panegyrici Latini and Claudian could make wide use of mythological similes to celebrate Rome, her grandeur and the deeds of the emperor, his successors deal with the ancient gods in quite a clear-cut or, so to say, crystallized way. They show a conservative (and, to some extent, nostalgic) attitude and still believe in the endurance of Rome, which is fated to last eternally. The sacralization of Rome (with the concurring ideas of a Christian providence and the literary cliché of pagan aeternitas) is integrated within the frame of an empire that has become totally Christianized and, especially in the East, finds in political theology a privileged terrain to establish its roots. In particular the link between Christianity and the emperor as vicar of God is well outlined by the symbolism of court ceremonial and gesture, which panegyrics describe in great detail.