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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 April 2016
This paper considers Cassius Dio's account of the early worship of Augustus. Its main focus is the number of cults consecrated to the worship of Rome's new undisputed leader and his father, the now deceased and deified Divus Iulius, after the triumvir, on his way back from Alexandria in 29 b.c.e., wintered in Asia Minor. In his account of how the first official worship of Augustus was organized, Dio describes how Augustus let two separate cults inaugurate: a joint cult to the worship of Divus Iulius and the goddess Thea Roma—a Greek deity, which since the second century served as a personification of Roman rule or Roman power—and a personal cult to the worship of the victorious triumvir (51.20.6-8).
1 R. Mellor, ΤΗΕΑ RΟΜΑ: The Worship of the Goddess Roma in the Greek World (Göttingen, 1975), 13–16, 201; D. Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West: Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire (Leiden, 1987), 50–1; Whittaker, H., ‘Two notes on Octavian and the cult to Divus Iulius’, SO 71 (1996), 87–99 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 95–6. M. Koortbojian, The Divinization of Caesar and Augustus: Precedents, Consequences, Implications (Cambridge, 2013), 227–30.
2 Whittaker (n. 1), 97; D. Friesen, Imperial Cults and the Apocalypse of John: Reading Revelation in the Ruins (Oxford, 2001), 25–30.
3 The temple or the cult to Roma and Augustus in Pergamum is mentioned on several coins, e.g. BMCRE 705-6 dated to 19-18 b.c.e. See also BMC 237-8. The cult to Augustus and Roma in Pergamum is also mentioned in Tac. Ann. 4.37.4, 4.56 and in Suet. Aug. 52. See also B. Burrell, Neokoroi: Greek Cities and the Roman Emperors (Boston, 2004), 19. Coins form the reign of Hadrian are, apart from Dio 51.20.6-8, the first evidence of the Roma and Augustus cult in Nicomedia: see e.g. BMCRE 1097.
4 For the worship of the living Augustus and not Augustus' genius in Italy, see I. Gradel, Emperor Worship and Roman Religion (Oxford, 2002), 77–84. Interestingly, Gradel maintains (75-7) that Dio is misunderstood and not mistaken or misleading. Dio's claim that no emperors were ever worshipped in Italy refers not to civic cults in Italy but to official state cult, which never seems to have been consecrated in either Rome or Italy. For a different angle on the same issue, see C. Lange, Triumphs in the Age of Civil War: The Late Republic and the Adaptability of Triumphal Tradition (forthcoming).
5 E.g. Mellor (n. 1), 80 n. 346; S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1984), 76–7, 254; H. Hänlein-Schäfer, Veneratio Augusti: Eine Studie zu den Tempeln des ersten römischen Kaisers (Rome, 1985), 264–5; Whittaker (n. 1), 96–8; M. Reinhold, From Republic to Principate: An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dio's Roman History Books 49–52 (36–29 B.C.) (Atlanta, 1988), 154–5; M. Beard, J. North and S. Price, Religions of Rome: A History (Cambridge, 1998), 1.353; Burrell (n. 3), 17–19 and 147–8.
6 For a general remark of Augustus' decision to receive worship together with Dea Roma, see Tac. Ann. 4.37.4 and Suet. Aug. 52.
7 For Augustus' introduction of monarchy as an end to free political competition, see Dio 56.43.4-56.44. For Augustus as the princeps who sought the senators' advice, see Dio 53.21.4 and Dio 55.4.
8 For Augustus as Dio's model emperor, see J. Rich, The Augustan Settlement (Roman History 53-55.9) (Warminster, 1990), 17.
9 Price (n. 5), 76–7.
10 I.Ephesus 7.2, 4324; Price (n. 5), 76–7. For the translation of hieromnēmonē, see particularly 76 n. 92. For further comments, see M.H. Crawford (ed.), Roman Statutes (BICS Suppl. 64) (London, 1996), 1.493-5. I.Ephesus 7.2, 4324; Price (n. 5), 76–7. For the translation of hieromnēmonē, see particularly 76 n. 92. hieromnēmōn is glossed as pontifex by LSG II2B, citing Dion. Hal. 8.55.3, 10.57.6, Strabo 5.3.2; there is no entry for the feminine form hieromnēmonē, which is perhaps best understood as an abstract noun, denoting the office or magistracy of the pontifex or flamen. For further comments, see M.H. Crawford (ed.), Roman Statutes (BICS Suppl. 64) (London, 1996), 1.493-5.
11 S. Weinstock, Divus Julius (Oxford, 1975), 402–4.
12 J.A. North, ‘“Praesens Divus”, review of Weinstock’, JRS 65 (1975), 171–7, at 176.
13 W. Alzinger, RE Suppl. XII, 1648–9; Price (n. 5), 254; Hänlein-Schäfer (n. 5), 264–5; P. Scherrer, ‘The city of Ephesos from the Roman period to Late Antiquity’, in H. Koester (ed.), Ephesos Metropolis of Asia (Valley Forge, Pa, 1995), 1–25, at 4–5.
14 S. Mitchell, Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor (Oxford, 1993), 102–3.
15 On Roma worship as a way to display Roman identity, see Mitchell (n. 14), 103.
16 Mellor (n. 1), 201; Beard, North and Price (n. 5), 257–8; Dio 69.4.3.
17 For the Iulius-Roma cult, see S. Sahin, Bithynische Studien / Bithynia incelemeleri (Bonn, 1978), 24–5.
18 For a neôkoros to Hadrian, see Burrell (n. 3), 164.
19 T. Bekker-Nielsen, Urban Life and Local Politics in Roman Bithynia: The Small World of Dion Chrysostomos (Aarhus, 2008), 47–8.
20 Whittaker (n. 1), 95–6.
21 Burrell (n. 3), 61–2. S.J. Friesen, Twice Neokoros: Ephesos, Asia and the Cult of the Flavian Imperial Family (Leiden, 1993), 49.
22 I.Nikaia 9.25-8; I.Nikaia 9.51.
23 I.Nikaia 9.25. Bekker-Nielsen (n. 19), 112.
24 Price (n. 5), 76; Fishwick (n. 1), 130; Gradel (n. 4), 74.
25 Burrell (n. 3), 17.
26 Whittaker (n. 1), 97–8; White, P., ‘Julius Caesar in Augustan Rome’, Phoenix 42 (1988), 334–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 354–5.
27 Tac. Ann. 4.36; Dio 57.24.6; Friesen (n. 21), 55.
28 Whittaker (n. 1), 97. Tac. Ann. 4.37.4.
29 For the Roma-Augustus cult in Italy, see Gradel (n. 4), 81–3.
30 Knoche, U., ‘Die augusteische Ausprägung der dea Roma’, Gymnasium 59 (1952), 324–49Google Scholar, at 337–8; Fishwick (n. 1), 127.
31 G. Frija, Les Prêtres des empereurs: Le culte imperial civique dans la province romaine d'Asie (Rennes, 2012), 27–8.
32 Fishwick (n. 1), 125.
33 For Neapolis as part of the eparchy of Pontus, see T. Bekker-Nielsen, ‘To be or not to be Paphlagonian? A question of identity’, in T. Bekker-Nielsen (ed.), Space, Place and Identity in Northern Anatolia (Stuttgart, 2014), 63–74, at 74.
34 Translation by Sørensen, S.L., ‘A re-examination of the imperial oath from Vezirköprü’, Philia 1 (2015), 14–32 Google Scholar, at 17. On the imperial oath, see also R.K. Sherk, The Roman Empire: Augustus to Hadrian (Cambridge, 1988), 15; P. Herrmann, Der römische Kaisereid: Untersuchungen zu seiner Herkunft und Entwicklung (Göttingen, 1968), 96–8, 123–4.
35 For the view that Romans as well as non-Romans were all Augustus' subjects, see F.G.B. Millar, ‘State and subject: the impact of monarchy’, in F.G.B. Millar and E. Segal (edd.), Caesar Augustus: Seven Aspects (Oxford, 1984), 37–60, at 56–8.
36 For a full discussion of the question of genius Augusti and genius coloniae, see Gradel (n. 4), 81; for evidence of priests and temples to the living Augustus in Italy, see Gradel (n. 4), 85–91 and 80–4 respectively.
37 K. Galinsky, ‘The cult of the Roman emperor: uniter or divider?’, in J. Brodd and J.L. Reed (edd.), Rome and Religion: A Cross-Disciplinary Dialogue on the Imperial Cult (Atlanta, 2011), 1–21, at 3, 16.
38 G. Bowersock, ‘Greek intellectuals and the imperial cult in the second century a.d.’, in W. den Boer (ed.), Le culte des souverains dans l'empire romain (Vandoeuvres/Geneva, 1973), 179–206, at 205–6; Burrell (n. 3), 18.
39 Whitehorne, J.E.G., ‘Golden statues in Greek and Latin literature’, G&R 22 (1975), 109–19Google Scholar, at 117–19.
40 For a numismatic study that questions Dio's claim that Elagabal replaced Jupiter as the head of the Roman pantheon, see C. Rowan, Under Divine Auspices: Divine Ideology and the Visualisation of Imperial Power in the Severan Period (Cambridge, 2012), 207, 248.
41 On the planning of the deification of Augustus, see Dio 56.46.
42 Fishwick, D., ‘Dio and Maecenas: the emperor and the ruler cult’, Phoenix 44 (1990), 267–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 272; Galinsky (n. 37), 3.
43 Hänlein-Schäfer (n. 5), 141; Gradel (n. 4), 82.
44 I am grateful to Rhiannon Ash, Tønnes Bekker-Nielsen, Carsten Hjort Lange, Josiah Osgood and Greg Woolf for many valuable comments and suggestions and to Roger Rees for his valuable help not least with the English translations of Greek and Latin text. Every error is of course my own.