Imperial Cult

Simon Price attempts to discover why the Roman Emperor was treated like a god.

This article surveys the range of ancient literary sources and modern scholarly debates on how individuals became gods in the Roman world and the practices classified under the modern collective heading ‘imperial cult’.

Recent studies have re-assessed Emperor worship as a genuinely religious response to the metaphysics of social order. Brent argues that Augustus' revolution represented a genuinely religious reformation of Republican religion that had failed in its metaphysical objectives. Against this backcloth, Luke, John the Seer, Clement, Ignatius and the Apologists refashioned Christian theology as an alternative answer to that metaphysical failure. Callistus and Pseudo-Hippolytus gave different responses to Severan images of imperial power. The early, Monarchian theology of the Trinity was thus to become a reflection of imperial culture and its justification that was later to be articulated both in Neo-Platonism, and in Cyprian's view of episcopal Order. Contra-cultural theory is employed as a sociological model to examine the interaction between developing Pagan and Christian social order.

Preliminary material -- GENIUS AND NUMEN -- NUMINA AUGUSTORUM -- THE IMPERIAL NVMEN IN ROMAN BRITAIN -- DOMUS DIVINA -- AUGUSTO UT DEO -- AUGUSTAN GODS -- AUGUSTAN BLESSINGS AND VIRTUES -- LITURGY AND CEREMONIAL -- DATED INSCRIPTIONS AND THE FERIALE DURANUM -- THE AUGUSTALES AND THE IMPERIAL CULT -- ADDENDA TO VOLUME II, 1 -- LIST OF PLATES -- Plates LXXIV-CXIII.

This volume analyzes the priesthood of the provincial cult in every province of the Latin West where evidence has survived in the period from Augustus down to the mid-third century. Particular attention is paid to the epigraphic record, notably the Testimony of honorific statues.

What was imperial honor and how did it sustain the British Raj? If "No man may harm me with impunity" was an ancient theme of the European aristocracy, British imperialists of almost all classes in India possessed a similar vision of themselves as overlords belonging to an honorable race, so that ideals of honor condoned and sanctified their rituals, connecting them with status, power, and authority. Honor, most broadly, legitimated imperial rule, since imperialists ostensibly kept India safe from outside threats. Yet at the individual level, honor kept the "white herd" together, providing the protocols and etiquette for the imperialist, who had to conform to the strict notions of proper and improper behavior in a society that was always obsessed with maintaining its dominance over India and Indians.Examining imperial society through the prism of honor therefore opens up a new methodology for the study of British India.