Human beings have often tried to represent themselves as beings far superior to the animal kingdom. The following article describes focuses on kingship and emperor deification as yet another attempt at distantation from nature...

But Jesus said to them, The kings of the Gentiles are deified by them and exercise lordship (ruling as emperor-gods) over them; and those in authority over them are called benefactors and well-doers... but this is not to be so with you...

Luke 22:25 - 26 (Amplified Version)

SACRAL KINGSHIP AND DIVINE ELECTION

The notion of sacral kingship was widespread in pre-industrial states.  The Pharaohs of Egypt were divine kings who were represented as incarnations of, or otherwise sons of, their gods.  Allied to this notion is the related belief in divine election: while sacral kingship implies that the ruler is divine, divine election implies divine appointment: the ruler is appointed by god(s) to be their vicegerent on earth.  The Chinese emperors, for example, ruled by the >Mandate of Heaven,= thus exercising their power as divine representatives.  Darius of Persia stated, ABy the grace of Auramazda I am king.@^[1]  In Persia, public worship focussed  on the spirit, the fravashi, ^[2] of the ruler.  In Rome, where a cult of emperor worship developed, the distinctions between claims of divinity and divine election blurred at times, although the latter was far more common.

In Greece, as we have outlined, the deification of living men had begun to gain ground; the evidence suggests a growing loss of faith in the incorporeal gods of the Olympian pantheon.  For example, in Athens the public sought the help of the Macedonian Demetrius Poliorcetes (337 - 283 BC) against Aetolia with the words,

The other gods are non-existent or far-off; either they do not hear or they pay no heed; but you, you are here, and we can see you, not in wood nor in stone, but in very truth.^[3]

The conquests of Alexander the Great, too, gave added impetus to the belief in the divinity of living men.  His worship was taken seriously in Persia, known for its early tradition of sacral kingship.  The Greek states finally acceded in 324 BC (although somewhat tentatively in some quarters), to Alexander=s demand that they recognise his divinity.  The great divine titles were Saviour and Benefactor.^[4]

THE ROMAN SITUATION

According to Lily Taylor, Roman emperor worship has its genesis in ancient beliefs where the worship of either a divine spirit or a guardian double of a ruler was commonplace.  Roman belief,  not unlike the Greeks, incorporated the notion of spiritual powers.  Agathos daimon and agathe tyche were the two spirits guiding men=s destiny: the former man=s guiding spirit, and the latter a personal deity shadowing every human being,^[5] and these were worshipped.  The belief in such divine guardianship >paved the way for the worship of the superman not simply as a daimon but as a god.=^[6]  According to Joseph Campbell, the Romans commonly used two words to indicate divine presences or powers: deus, generally translated as >god,= and numem, which literally means >nod,= although the word gained the connotation of >command= or >will=, hence >divine will or power, divine sway.=  Originally the numen of the procreative power of the male was known as his genius, to be complemented by the conceiving and bearing power of the female, juno;^[7]  both expired with the individual at death.  More generally, genius denotes the guardian deity, or even the spirit, of the individual. In Rome, spiritual powers infused all aspects of life and were worshipped; they were present in the world of commerce, the home, the state, in the heart of various virtues, right through to the manifestations of nature.

From the beginning, however, Roman religion differed from its Greek counterpart in certain respects.  Initially, the Romans believed their gods to be functional powers rather than personifications; not until the time of Augustus did the nation accept the Greek conception.  Accordingly the gods were impersonal forces, and if at all personified, nebulously so; their religion was substantially materialistic and the stress lay more on purposes and ends than morality, despite much rhetoric.  The Roman focus in religion lay in duty, law, and patriotism, in secular, rather business-like transactions conceived to placate the gods and allay the anxieties of man.  Even when personification developed to a greater degree, the most common form of prayer was the vow, Do ut des, >I give in hope of return from you,= comprising the twin elements of nuncupatio, sacrifice and solutio, payment. With such stress on purpose and pragmatism, the Greek divinities, subsumed by Rome, would acquire a rather different disposition.  A hidden agenda lay behind such beliefs in regard to the preservation of law and order: the following words from a play of Critias are relevant, particularly so in the context of Imperial Rome, for there, as in Greece, secular and religious power were not separate entities:

There was a time when the life of man was unruly, savage, and at the mercy of force... Then it was, I think, that men devised laws to chastise the sinner so that justice might hold sway over all alike and keep violence in check.  So the wrong-doer was punished.  But later on it was seen that the laws reached only open violence, while hidden crime escaped.  Then it was that some man intelligent beyond his fellows invented fear of the gods, in order that men should dread the consequences even of their secret deeds, words and thoughts.  Religion was born.  It taught that there exists a supernatural Being, immortal, gifted with the power to perceive all that is said and done.  Even a deed planned in secret is known to him.  This fiction was received with delight, and its author went on to fix the abode of the gods in the sky, whence men expect blessings and disasters to descend... With such fear did our discoverer beset mankind, choosing a conspicuous dwelling for the god of his brilliant imagining, crushing lawlessness by laws.^[8]

Despite the negative memories of their early kingship, elements of sacral kingship were adopted by the Romans in the late republic. The first Roman worshipped in such a manner was Titus Quinctius Flaminius, who released the Greeks from Macedonian domination in 197 BC.  The Romans had no reason to reject such worship from the provinces, but ironically, as the empire developed, it, too, would employ the idea for its own purposes.

JULIUS CAESAR

Julius Caesar would be the first to establish himself as an absolute ruler, a man of divine descent.  As a quaestor in Spain he gazed enviously on a statue of Alexander the Great in the Temple of Hercules; the following night he had a dream of raping his own mother.  Astute soothsayers encouraged him by interpreting it to mean that he was destined to conquer the earth, the universal mother.^[9]

Julius Caesar would claim that he had descended from both Mars and Venus.  A decree of the senate pronounced him a demigod; by 45 BC, it was followed by the statue with the inscription in the temple of Quirinius which read, >To the unconquered God.=^[10]  Shortly afterwards, coins appeared bearing his portrait, an innovative occurrence, for formerly they usually carried images of the gods.  More honours followed: to the office of Pontifex Maximus (literally, Greatest Priest) was added that of parens patriae (Father of the Country).  People were required to swear by the genius (ie., the guardian deity, the spirit, originally the procreative power, in Campbell=s definition of the word^[11]) of Caesar.  Holidays were declared and sacrifices were to be made in his name.  Suetonius notes that Caesar accepted >excessive honours,=  including dictatorship for life; the forename Imperator, the surname of Father of his Country - these and others were honours were >too great for mortal man.= He had his golden throne, temples, altars and statues beside those of the gods, and the calling of the seventh month by his name.^[12]  But he baulked at the title of King, well aware of the resentment against the title Rex which bore the connotation of a tyrant or despot, for the memory of the early rulership of Rome, dissolved in 510 BC, continued to evoke bitterness.  And yet at the time of his death a dispute took place as to whether he should be made king: a Sibylline prophecy declared that the Parthians could only be conquered by a king.  His murder shortly afterwards brought the matter to a sudden end.  Nevertheless, later in the year 44 BC he was >numbered among the gods, not only by formal decree, but also in the conviction of the vulgar.=^[13]  Rumour spread that at the first of the games held in honour of his apotheosis by his heir Octavian, a comet shone over the scene for seven successive nights.

AUGUSTUS       

Following the ensuing struggle for power, Octavian (later, in 27 BC, to be named Augustus ), victor at Actium, would in turn be venerated and known as Divi Filius, the Son of the Deified Julius.  By 29 BC the senate declared that his name should be included in the people=s hymns on an equal basis with the gods.  Tacitus relates how the heir of Julius, a shrewd politician,

won over the soldiers with gifts, the populace with cheap corn, and all men with the sweets of repose, and so grew greater by degrees, while he concentrated in himself the functions of the Senate, the magistrates, and the laws.  He was wholly unopposed...^[14]

Opposition was slight. Tacitus argued that those who could oppose such rule had fallen in battle, while the remaining nobles, >the readier they were to be slaves, were raised the higher by wealth and promotion= preferring >the safety of the present to the dangerous past.=^[15]

In 27 BC, the senate, eager to ply their ruler with further honours, proposed many titles, including a new name. Caesar had a liking for Romulus, >but when he perceived that this caused him to be suspected of desiring the kingship, he desisted from his efforts to obtain it, and took the title of AAugustus,@ signifying that he was more than human; for all the most precious and sacred objects are termed augusta.=^[16]

Dio maintains that Caesar took counsel from Agrippa and Maecenas regarding the question of whether he should entrust the management of the state to the senate and the people or accept the monarchy.  While Agrippa favoured a return to a republic, Maecenas argued to the contrary, completing a long speech with the advice:

If you prefer the monarchy in fact but fear the title of >king= as being accursed, you have but to decline this title and still be sole ruler under the appellation of >Caesar.= And if you require still other epithets, your people will give you the title of >imperator= as they gave it to your father; and they will pay reverence to your August position by still another form of address, so that you will enjoy fully the reality of the kingship, without the odium which attaches to the name of >king.=^[17]

Caesar, as history attests, warmed to the counsel of Maecenas.

Dio informs us that (in 24 BC) the senate decreed that Augustus should be freed from the compulsion of the laws, >that he might be in reality independent and supreme over both himself and the laws and so might do everything he wished and refrain from doing anything he did not wish.=^[18]  The so-called dyarchy, joint rule of senate and emperor, was even then a facade.

Augustus did not permit himself to be worshipped as a god in Rome, where the worship of living men was not yet the rule. During his lifetime, notwithstanding, he allowed himself to be deified in Egypt; he realised the practical advantage of being worshipped as a Pharaoh.  His Greek subjects, too, in accordance with their symbolic practices, proclaimed him a god, and in certain provinces, following petition, he allowed himself to be venerated on the condition that temples were not be raised him alone but in association with the goddess Roma.

Dio seems puzzled by the establishment of the monarchy: >The name of monarchy, to be sure, the Romans so detested that they called their emperors neither dictators nor kings nor anything of the sort; yet since the final authority for the government devolves upon them, they must needs be kings.=^[19]  But as Maecenas diplomatically suggested, the name imperator would displace the title >king= or >dictator.=  Imperator, emperor or king, the hold on power by Augustus, although shrouded in republican rhetoric, grew to be unshakeable.  Such power would, through his successors, endure for well over three hundred years in the West.

Why did the Romans, fully aware of the despotism of earlier kings, accept the cult of the emperor?  The death of Julius Caesar gave impetus to the tradition. After his murder, Nilsson notes, rather than expressing joy at their >liberation,= a >paralysing terror fell upon the population of Rome.  The streets were deserted.  People shut themselves up and barricaded their houses.=^[20]  Later, in indignation at the assassination, they rioted; the action gave little heart to the republicans.  After the destructive civil war that followed, and the death of the leading conspirators, power lay firmly in the hands of Augustus and his army.  Naturally, those events precipitated psychological insecurity among the populace; conflict among the ruling elite would have precipitated a sense of confused national identity in the average citizen.  In prevailing chaos, the search for stability leads to an identity crisis which is often resolved by a general regression back to familiar certainties. The tutelage of a divine father-god, a saviour-benefactor, had its comforts.  In such a figure the masses could identify with something connoting substance, security and unified power, despite the distant memories of an old despotism.  Such a rule, couched in new rhetoric, would have appeared to be sanctioned by divine power.  Freud has described how, especially in acute stress, people may regress to infantilism, readily accepting a parental figure.^[21] As time went on, stable government maintained and dissenting voices placated or suppressed, peaceful subjection would have seemed preferable to renewed division or anarchy.  Beyond this, Augustus had artfully preserved the appearance, at least, of democracy.  He promoted a moral and religious revival, a return to time honoured religious values, entrenching, in the process, a series of rituals which would legitimise his power: in the terminology of Ellul, ^[22] he employed both vertical and integrative propaganda^[23], that is, directing from above while yet consolidating old traditions.  The civil war had ended, and peace had come.  And the Augustan peace, the pax deorum, was presented as a divine reward from the gods.

Following the death of Augustus in 14 AD, the senator Numerius Atticus declared under oath to have witnessed the bodily ascension of the emperor, after cremation;^[24] in any case, just prior to that claim, an eagle, as a symbol of this apotheosis, was released from his funeral pyre, setting a precedent for the deified emperors who would follow.  The soul of Augustus was to ascend to heaven, not return to earth with his mortal remains.  A meeting of the purged senate formally enrolled Augustus in state cult as a divinity; he was given the title of Divus.  A temple would be erected to his worship, and as well, >the senate instituted a sacred college of the noblest senators, the sodales Augustales, to devote itself to his worship,=^[25] and a festival, the Augustalia, would commemorate him. The general acceptance of these proposals gathered strength - the groundwork of emperor worship had been laid.  Institutionalised ritual and laudatory literature had already begun to entrench the seeds of habit that would last for centuries; through such repetitive propaganda a process of >naturalisation= or >normalisation= was well underway.

As Ferguson notes, with the death of Augustus >the pattern was set, and the saner emperors followed it, though from time to time a megalomaniac with an inferiority complex would appear and demand worship in his lifetime, Caligula, Nero, Domitian, Commodus.=^[26] As we will discover, certain rulers would climb the celestial ladder of divinity and power until they were at least equals of the gods: they would eventually no longer regard themselves as merely first among the citizenry: under Trajan, Jupiter would abdicate, surrendering his thunderbolt to the emperor himself,^[27] and Diocletian, striving to manage a sprawling empire in crisis, would rule like a remote Eastern potentate, thus extend the process of the identification of ruler with god.

Symbols, Omens, Portents, Rituals 

>The sun,= says Balbus in Cicero=s The Nature of the Gods, is >the emperor of the stars.=^[28]  After explaining how the god Apollo is identified with the sun, he ventures to interpret the meaning of the symbol, which may have been named >from Asolus@ (alone), >either because he is Aalone@ in his great size among the stars, or because he blots out all the others when he rises so that he >alone= is visible.=^[29] The sun, shining over all the regions of the earth, would come to symbolise both the universal king as well as the centralised, autocratic rule, and over time Sol would ascend through the heavenly hierarchy to rank in importance with Zeus/Jupiter, the sky-god, and under some rulerships, outshine him.  Apart from the well known example of the Egyptian pharaohs, identification of the ruler with the sun can be found in many ancient cultures around the world, including Mexico and Bengal.  Evidence of such worship can be found in Greek panegyrics to Alexander.  By the time of Augustus, writes Fears, such eulogising was commonplace, indeed, >so hackneyed that Horace demurred to use it.=^[30] although he employed it in later writing, alternatively returning, as the muse carried him, to the notion of Augustus as Jove=s vicegerent.  The sun symbolism appears in Ptolemaic astrological texts; to this day, the astrological sun symbolises the ruler or emperor, associated with the sign Leo and the month of August.^[31]  In that regard, the sun and its sign represent the projection of impressive ego power, something that may be pertinent to a study of Augustus= Res Gestae, the achievements of the divine Augustus, written by Augustus to be inscribed on bronze tablets and set up in front of his mausoleum. 

In the functional world of Rome, qualities that manifest great power were named as gods, whether Faith, Reason, Wealth, Salvation, Liberty or Victory.^[32]  Idealised men would follow. Wrote Cicero, >the common custom of our human life has also brought it about that men who have conferred outstanding benefits upon mankind have been deified out of gratitude.  Hence the deification of Hercules, of Castor and Pollux...=^[33]  He added (not long before his execution at the hands of agents of the second triumvirate), >divine honours... promote the manly virtues and... make men more willing to face danger bravely in the service of the state.=^[34]  In his Republic and Laws he argued that the state be ordered and controlled through religious observances and priesthoods. Victory in war, especially, was seen as a manifestation of divine favour, suggesting that divinity itself was inclined to militancy, and hence Augustus, following Actium, would have been seen as a leading contender.  In fact, apart from hereditary privilege, deification most often required the qualification of impressive skill in the leadership of military conquest rather than a display of virtue or sanctity.  >However, the Augustan writers went beyond the view of Octavian as a divinely favoured charismatic leader and explicitly formulated a monarchical theory of divine election.  For Virgil, long before the foundation of Rome, Jupiter had predestined the reign of Augustus.=^[35] And the signs and portents of greatness, as with his predecessor, Julius, were many.  One story describes how Apollo^[36] entered Augustus=s mother Atia disguised as a serpent.^[37]  An Egyptian writer associated Augustus with the sun-god.  The Roman astrologer Nigidius Figulus reportedly told Augustus= father that his son would be the ruler of the world.^[38]  Other signs from other sources were said to be given by frogs, fishes, and eagles.^[39]  Hence divine sanction, indicated by dreams, omens, astrological indicators, miracles and augury would legitimise imperial rule.

The new cult of the Emperor would be reinforced by officially sanctioned ritual and the authority of augurs, both coupled to Roman polytheism.  Exchange of gifts accompanied by transactions ensuring mutual security were commonplace in relations with the provinces, especially with the so-called >client kings.=  One decree from Mytilene, after expressing obsequious gratitude at the Emperor=s benefactions, concludes, > the city will not fail in anything that can further deify  him= (my italics).^[40] As the Greek historian Polybius wrote prophetically in the matter of emperor worship in the second century BC. >Superstition,= he said, >... has been introduced by the Romans into all aspects of their private and public life, with every artifice to awe the imagination, in a degree which could not be improved upon... my view is that it has been done to impress the masses.=^[41]  Augustus, appointed Pontifex Maximus in 12 BC, following the death of Lepidus, would control the calender and state sacrifices.  The Festival of Saeculum (the Festival of the Century), held in 17 BC prior to this,^[42] serves to illustrate the importance of those rites.  It required the participation of the populace (excluding slaves^[43]), and lasted for three days.  Following a great number of animal sacrifices and offerings which requested in return the eternal protection of the state, and the bestowal of grace on its people, the army, and Augustus and his household, a choir sang an ode by Horace, stage plays were performed, and chariot races held together with other entertainments.  Finally, at the conclusion, >the festival of Death of the old Saeculum had transformed  itself into the New; and the Emperor of a joyous populace appeared in the role of the Saviour of the Dawning Era, bathed in the glory of Apollo=s light.=^[44] 

Such integrative rituals were effective instruments to aid  >normalising= the cult of emperor worship in Rome.  In the provinces, communities often asked permission to establish rituals and cults and artefacts in honour of the emperor, couched in the language of diplomacy.   Stones in Laconia commemorating Augustus, Tiberius and Livia include the text of a letter from Tiberius imply that such arrangements were found to be advantageous to both parties:

The envoy Decimus Turranius Nicanor, who was sent to you to me and my mother, gave me your letter, to which were appended the provisions made by you for the worship of my father and for our honour.  I applaud your intentions and think that all men in general and your city in particular ought to reserve special honours suited to the greatness of my father=s service to the whole universe; for myself I am concerned with more modest and human honours.  However, my mother will give you an answer when she knows about the honours to be paid to her.^[45]

In regard to the impact of Roman conquest on distant provinces, S.  R.  F.  Price notes:

Many societies have the problem of making sense of an otherwise incomprehensible intrusion of authority into their world... They attempted to evoke an answer by focussing the problem in ritual.  Using their traditional symbolic systems they represented the emperor to themselves in the familiar terms of divine power.  The imperial cult, like the cults of the traditional gods, created a relationship of power between subject and ruler... the cult was a major part of the web of power that formed the fabric of society.^[46] 

The influence of those provincial customs would not leave Rome unaffected.  Ambassadors from the provinces carried reports of sacral worship and exotic religious practices to Rome, and where appropriate, these were integrated into the religious system.  Cultural artefacts, such as painting, sculpture and the coinage, would begin to change in accordance with the cult of emperor worship, associating the ruler with Jupiter or Apollo, developing later, as the imperial dynasty went on, to Sol.  Through such representations the image of the ruler would subtly change; on many coins dating from the time of Augustus, the emperor=s visage began to transmute into the traditional resemblances of the gods themselves.^[47]  Not only would the emperor be eulogised in literature, but perhaps more significantly, through the visual arts - images of the ruler were displayed in every public place, repeated in miniature in every home.^[48]

The Res Gestae of Augustus

The catalogue of achievements of Augustus were entrusted to the Vestal Virgins for safekeeping.  Augustus requested they were to be inscribed on bronze tablets.  The work was later discovered chiselled on the walls of the temple of Rome and Augustus at Ancyra; the height of the inscription is 2.70 metres on each wall.  Fragments of the text have been discovered at Apollonia and Antioch, although no doubt over the years many other copies have been lost; the original was said to have been engraved on two bronze pillars at Rome.  The document is an extension of the custom of delivering funeral elogia after the death of great men.  But here Augustus delivers his elogia in the first person.

The Res Gestae begins with Augustus= statement:

At the age of nineteen on my own responsibility and at my own expense I raised an army, with which I successfully championed the liberty of the republic when it was oppressed by the tyranny of a faction.^[49]

Continuing, he outlines his military conquests, his mercy shown to the vanquished, his generosity to his soldiers.  He proceeds to list his honours, including some he refused. But >I am Pontifex maximus, augur, quindecimvir sacris faciundus, septemvir epulonum...=  He adds, >My name was inserted in the hymn of the Sali by a decree of the senate, and it was enacted in law that my person should be inviolable for ever and that I should hold the tribunicial power for the duration of my life.= He lists examples of his largesse to the citizens of Rome, followed by a list of temples built and restored, the gladiatorial games held in his name or in the names of his children for the masses.  Furthermore, >I added Egypt to the Empire of the Roman people.= He lists further victories under his auspices, referring to the embassies of kings sent to him: >The following kings sought refuge with me as suppliants: Tiridates, King of Parthia, and later Phraates, son of King Phraates; Artavasdes, King of the Medes; Artaxares, King of the Adiabeni; Dumnobellaunus and Tincommius, Kings of the Britons; Maelo, King of the Sugambri....=  He concludes with a list of further honours, including the title >Father of my Country.=

Although written in a cryptic style, a catalogue of achievements rather than a bombastic eulogy to self which could suggest hubris, it may be observed that great changes had taken place in the Greco-Roman world since the time of Homer, when the individual was no more than a mirror of the opinions of his peers and the spirit no more than a feeble breath.  In this extraordinary curriculum vitae, the central theme reiterates the achievements of the ego, and the implied attempt to maintain its memory, its substance over time, beyond death.  It remains unclear whether the document is solely addressed to the mass of the Roman people, a statement of credit and debit, as some scholars assume ^[50] - or, is it, at least as well, submitted with an eye to deification, which required the sanction of the senate?  Did not the son of the divine Julius wish to ascend to the gods himself?  For, as Taylor remarks regarding Octavian, >On earth he is not a god, but he looks forward after death to a divine status won by virtue... (he) was the son of a god descended from a long line of divine forbears; his life of virtue and benefaction to his fellow men would ensure to him the same divinity that his father was enjoying.=^[51] We may note that in the Res Gestae no mention of the names of his antagonists are given, nor for that matter, his wife, Livia, although he mentions a number of consuls, his sons, and foreign kings by name.  Honours, awards, acts of altruism, honourable deeds, these are listed in full, veiled thinly at times with acts of self effacement.  There are no moral injunctions, no polemics, no religious or philosophical maxims.  The emphasis remains firmly on the attempt to enshrine a singular identity, represented in terms of heroic and administrative deeds and received honours, and to sustain that image beyond the grave.

The Development of the Divine Aura, or Nimbus

Augustus= eyes were clear and bright, and he liked to believe that they shone with a sort of divine radiance: it gave him profound pleasure if anyone at whom he glanced keenly dropped his head as though dazzled by looking into the sun.^[52]

Velleius Paterculus, in an eye-witness account of a campaign under Tiberius in Germany, describes how they were approached by a >barbarian= who asked to see Caesar. When permission was granted, he beached his canoe, and

 after gazing upon Caesar for a long time in silence, exclaimed: AOur young men are insane, for though they worship you as divine when absent, when you are present they fear your armies instead of trusting to your protection.  But I... have today seen the gods of whom I merely used to hear; and in my life I have never hoped for or experienced a happier day.@^[53]

Gaius (Caligula), perhaps prophetically anticipating later emperors, demanded worship as a god during his short lived reign .  As he reputedly addressed an embassy of Alexandrian Jews, >Are you the god-haters who do not believe me to be a god, a god acknowledged by all the other nations but not to be named by you?=^[54] He sent for the most famous statues of the Greek deities to have their heads replaced by his own.^[55] Despite a return to relative moderation with Claudius, Nero, his successor, renewed the egomaniacal pattern. Portraits of Nero on coins of the time show the emperor wearing the radiate crown of the sun.  In Greece, in a display of mutual admiration, he was >honoured... in one place as Athe new Sun-god shining on the Greeks@, and his statue placed in the temples of Zeus Eleutherios and Apollo Ptoos.=^[56] On his return to Rome, he wore a Greek mantle spangled with stars over a purple robe, not an original idea, for it was something that Demetrius Poliorcetes has planned to do many years before.^[57]  The accession of the Flavians after a short period of military rule found Vespasian on the throne.  Unable, because of his family background, he was unable to claim lineage from the gods, his association with divine was justified by the plethora of omens, dreams and divinations that foretold his coming power.  The story of his miraculous healing powers further strengthened his auctoritatus.  Vespasian, like Augustus, let himself be worshipped in Greece, but his background, which he in no way tried to hide, precluded worship in Rome.  But he, like his successor, Titus, came to be deified.  By this time the power of the senate had diminished still further.  The last known popular law was passed in 96 - 98 AD.^[58]  Domitian, not known for his moderation, moved closer to the stars: he was credited with having a strange power in his eyes, and flattering poets of the time considered him invincible (invictus), and >better than Nature and more powerful=.^[59]

By the third and forth centuries the imperial line had moved, albeit erratically, even closer to an association with the divine.  No longer did Caesar generally reign under the protection of Jupiter; he was perceived by his more admiring subjects to be a god himself.  Price quotes a panegyric of 291AD:

When you (Maximian) crossed the Alps your divine aura shone forth over all Italy and everyone gathered in astonishment... People invoked, not the god familiar from hearsay, but a Jupiter close at hand, visible and present, they adored a Hercules who was not a stranger but the emperor.^[60]

In the period between Augustus and Constantine >thirty-six of the sixty emperors... and twenty seven members of their families were apotheosised and received the title of divus (divine).=^[61]  As we have stated, the ascent through time into quasi-divine kingship was not smooth trajectory, and various belief systems influenced successive emperors and those who held power, advancing, retarding or modifying the idea of divine kingship.  Epicureanism, which certainly would not support such a notion, appeared to have been popular among the ruling circle - Trajan=s consort, Plotina followed the faith.  But it was suppressed - its scepticism about the state gods, state politics, and its refusal to acknowledge an after-life did not sit well with the dominant ideological climate.  Marcus Aurelius followed a form of Stoicism, pantheistic at base.  With an emphasis on detachment and self control Stoicism had already proved popular, in particular with the upper classes. The influence of the mystery religions, for example, the cult of Isis from Egypt, made an impression on certain emperors - Commodus, for example.  Such exotic beliefs were popular, too, with the masses, as was the practice of astrology, augury, and for less elevated sensibilities, a belief in witchcraft, ghosts, and a nightmarish hell. The cult of the Persian god Mithras became popular in the second Century, particularly in the army.  Perhaps significantly, it contained some elements common to the new religion of Christianity: for example, baptism by water, a banquet at which initiates partook of bread, water and wine, as did Mithraism with its legend of shepherds present at the divine birth.  In any case, when Christianity did later gain greater momentum, the >shock of the new= had been mitigated by such faiths: the state, for years, had already affirmed that resurrection was a real possibility.  After all, the bodily ascension of Augustus, and probably Claudius, had been witnessed by members of the senate.

But in the area of imperial ideology, heliolatrous cults eventually >led to the official assumption by the Roman emperor of the titles felix and invictus. ^[62]  The >sun disk of Akhenaten, the nimbus of the deified Roman emperor, and the halo of the Christian saint all belong to the same line of thought: it is the theory that what is divine and kingly is fringed, so to speak, with an aura of sanctity.=^[63]  That each emperor developed a particular devotion to a specific deity according to his background and inclination to find powerful cosmic allies to assist him in his military endeavours - Trajan and particularly Commodus with Hercules, for example - should not obscure the general course of events - the emperors became, as the empire began to loss faith in itself, increasingly remote and autocratic.  By the time of Diocletian the personal freedom of the Roman citizen was much reduced: he became a subject, no longer a citizen.  Diocletian changed the title of the emperor from Princeps (first citizen) to Dominus (Lord).   Caracella called himself Lord, the Universe=s Saviour and the World=s Creator.^[64] He lived like an oriental monarch, in remote splendour.  Aurelian, in 274,  set up a state cult to Sol Invictus.  And finally, Constantine, too, prior to his conversion to the growing power of Christianity, associated himself with Sol Invictus (The Invincible Sun).  The increasingly centralised power and role of the ruler would allow him to justify the oppression of the people, cloaking it in a religious veneer.  It >stamped subjectivity as resignation to the will of God.=^[65]  And it appears to synchronise with a movement toward monotheism.

The gods of  pagan Rome, as it would come to be known, were worshipped, by and large, in terms of the functional, material aspirations of that society.  And yet spirit or gods were perceived to inform the world, the sky, the earth, sensory and erotic experience, as well as law and industry.  The Greek influence was altogether dominant: in their conception of man, they, too believed that spirit, entombed in the body, was the body=s guardian.  Despite the appropriation of such beliefs for ruling propaganda, the Romans of the second Century

knew they had been knit, by the cunning of the gods, to the animal world.  They felt pulsing in their own bodies the same fiery spirit that covered the hills every year with new-born lambs and that ripened the crops, in seasonal love-play, as the spring winds embraced the fertile ears... their bodies, and their sexual drives, shared directly in the unshakeable perpetuity of an immense universe through which the gods played exuberantly.^[66]

The coming change would see a radical change from that conception of the world.  Many had sought relief, in the growing conditions of hardship and insecurity of the third century, in new realms of the spiritual and the invisible, or, as some would have it, superstition.  The reliance which had persisted in visual and earthly referents would give way, for many, to a far greater reliance on invisible, unearthly referents: visions, beliefs, faith, an ideal, a promise.  In adopting such beliefs they had been well schooled by the propaganda surrounding the divine emperors. Rome, once a central symbol of identification for its population, not only as city but an eternal power, a god, was fragmenting, ceasing to be a reliable focal point, and thus a new crisis of consciousness came into being, an identity vacuum. The new faith that arose centred itself not in an earthly kingdom, but on the city of God, and it would focus, not on the phenomena of this world or the expansion of secular society, but the promise of a glorious existence after death.  People still believed in the gods but in time they would be demoted to evil spirits.

The new perspective would maintain the tradition of the politics of power, despite the teachings of its founder. Following the persecution of Christianity by Diocletian (284-305) came the persecution of paganism by Theodosius (379-395): animal sacrifices would be outlawed, but the suppression of human beings who did not conform to the belief system of the ruler would continue.  The new era demanded devotion to one God, and with the initial incentive of tax concessions and courtly promotion, it seemed a prudent course to follow for those who wished to remain in the corridors of power.  If we are to believe Jerome and others, the moral behaviour of the new >Christianised= ruling classes reportedly showed little improvement (if not a deterioration).  But celibacy would be championed, a movement away from the sensuous, at least as an ideal.  Later, with the destruction of the temples, and the threat of the confiscation of property of unbelievers, the idea of a world >full of gods= would be suppressed. 

Constantine=s conversion - his vision of a sign imposed on the sun, comprising the monogram of the letters CH and R and the words In hoc signo vinces, >In this sign shalt thou conquer,= however, marked the end of an era.  He would be entombed, not beside the images of the twelve Olympian deities, but the twelve apostles of Christ.  December 25 would cease to be Aurelian=s day of the Sun. The imperial notion of divine election would be subsumed by the Christian religion.  The Roman emperor would be hailed as the vicegerent of Christ on earth, elected by god for the benefit of mankind.  Many pagan emperors had been elevated to divine status, and their titles would pass on their Christian successors.  Constantine, acting on his authority as Pontifex Maximus, would convene the Council of Nicaea.

The apex of this tradition of glorification of the ruler was reached with Justinian (527 - 565) in the Eastern Empire.  The church of San Vitale in Ravenna contains images of Christ and the emperor.  Justinian, haloed,  appears below Christ, and to the side.  Christ is titled Pantocrator, ruler of everything.  Justinian is Cosmocrator, Ruler of the Universe. As Rufus Fears notes, >The forms and ceremonies of pagan imperial ideology were passed down to the papacy and the rulers of Byzantium and to the kingdoms of medieval Eastern and Western Europe.=^[67]  Caesarism would find rebirth, too, in the rule of Czars and Kaisers.

The Roman emperors, thus deified, were elevated far above the common man in the representations of their respective places the great chain of being.  Christianity purportedly spoke for the common man, although little changed in the notion of rulers and subjects. The time had not yet come for the common man to seek to internalise his divine aspirations.

27 July, 1998