ABSTRACT
Worship of the Roman emperor featured some of the most politicized rituals performed both in a religious context and in public space in general. By offering to living emperors rituals similar to those once performed in honour of the Olympic gods, the participants underlined not only their loyalty and acceptance of the emperor’s right to unlimited powers, they also subscribed to the idea that the princeps was superhuman. Cults to the emperors were inaugurated across the Empire and the cult is often, and rightly, perceived as a forum or a space where the Empire’s population underlined its loyalty and devotion. Traditionally, there has been a tendency to view emperor worship as a predominantly Greek phenomenon, which Rome incorporated under the dictatorship of Caesar, and later in a modifi ed and more regulated form in the reign of Augustus. Another dominant assumption among modern scholars is that Augustus was reluctant to allow the consecration of his own personal cults and that the worship of the emperors was divided, at least initially, between a cult to the living emperor, which the non-Roman part of the provincial population attended, and a cult to the deceased emperor, sanctioned by the senate, where Roman citizens were expected to pay their honours. 1
In this chapter, I argue that worship of the living emperor was a matter for the entire imperial population, Romans and non-Romans alike. ‘Roman’ in this context is defi ned broadly as individuals from Italy and the city of Rome itself as well as individuals from a provincial background who had either inherited Roman status or obtained Roman rights through their participation in local civic administration, via military service or from favours obtained from the emperors or their representatives. The worship of the living emperor did not, I shall argue, depend on legal status or cultural origin but on the location in which the worship took place. Roman citizens in the provinces performed the same rituals and swore the same oaths of loyalty to the emperors in the same religious contexts and settings as the non-Roman part of the population. 2 In Italy, where, at the beginning of the reign of Augustus, most Italians were Roman citizens, worship of living emperors was organized at the civic level and represented the entire community. 3 In Rome, the lack of state cult to the living emperor meant that no one, whether Roman or foreign, could be asked to worship the living emperor in any offi cial capacity. However, a number of deceased emperors, who had been deifi ed formally by the senate, were honoured with formal state cults such as, for instance,
the offi cial cult to Divus Augustus , which was supported by Tiberius and Livia according to historian Cassius Dio, or the cult of Divus Claudius , promoted by Nero and his mother. 4
As we shall see below, there was never a divide within emperor worship between cults where Roman citizens worshipped the deceased ruler, and cults where the non-Roman part of the population, as a token of their submission and loyalty, worshipped the reigning emperor, not even during the early phase of the imperial cult. Cults to the deceased emperors were still active all over the Empire, both in Rome and in the provinces. But except in the city in Rome, worship of the living emperor too was, and continued to be, a matter of great concern to all of the Empire’s inhabitants, no matter what legal status they possessed. This testifi es to a form of religious practice that brought the Empire’s population together in common prayers or vows. In the following, I shall argue that worship of the emperors offered a forum or a religious space in which the Empire’s inhabitants were, at least to some extent, expected to gather across legal divides and underline their loyalty and submission and renew their contract with the ruling emperor and his family. As the emperor’s subjects, both Romans and non-Romans were equals, both in their relation to the emperor and in a religious sense, which means that the entire population without contradiction could and did worship the emperor in the same cults. The only exception was at Rome, where Augustus and later emperors never allowed personal cults to be inaugurated in any offi cial capacity.
