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VESPASIAN'S APOTHEOSIS
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 March 2019
Extract
In the study of the divinization of Roman emperors, a great deal depends upon the sequence of events. According to the model of consecratio proposed by Bickermann, apotheosis was supposed to be accomplished during the deceased emperor's public funeral, after which the Senate acknowledged what had transpired by decreeing appropriate honours for the new diuus. Contradictory evidence has turned up in the Fasti Ostienses, however, which seem to indicate that both Marciana and Faustina were declared diuae before their funerals took place. This suggests a shift away from the Augustan precedent, whereby the testimony of a (well-compensated) witness had been required to establish divinity (Suet. Aug. 100.4, Dio Cass. 56.46.2, 59.11.4; cf. Sen. Apocol. 1.2–3), to a procedure in which the senators were able to jump ahead to the politically foreordained conclusion and bestow the honour at once. Careful re-examination of the evidence in Tacitus (Ann. 12.69.3, 13.2.3) and Suetonius (Ner. 9) has made it possible to assign this development to the year 54, with the consecration of Claudius.
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References
1 Bickermann, E., ‘Die römische Kaiserapotheosie’, in Wlosok, A. (ed.), Römischer Kaiserkult (Darmstadt, 1978), 82–121, at 100–6Google Scholar (= Archiv für Religionswissenschaft 27 [1929], 1–31, at 15–19Google Scholar); id., ‘Consecratio’, in den Boer, W. (ed.), Le culte des souverains dans l'empire romain (Entretiens Hardt 19) (Geneva, 1973), 1–37, at 13–25Google Scholar.
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6 RIC II2 205–13 nos. 96–255.
7 RIC II2 205 nos. 96–9; RIC II2 214–19 nos. 265–355.
8 CIL 16.158 = AE 1948.56; cf. RGZM 4. Not discussed by Buttrey (n. 5 [1976]), 452, who cites the records of the Arval brethren for 29 May as the earliest datable testimony (CIL 6.2059 = Scheid, CFA 48).
9 CIL 6.1246 = ILS 98c. Buttrey (n. 5 [1976]), 456–7 suggests that this inscription may not have been set up until 80, after the restoration project it refers to was completed. Why the emperor's filiation would have been updated but not his official titles remains unclear, however. Buttrey (n. 5 [1976]), 450–2 is clearly right to discount CIL 3.6732 (an editorial slip: see T.B. Mitford, ‘New inscriptions from Roman Cyprus’, Opuscula Archaeologica 6 [1950], 1–95, at 85–7) and AE 1957.169 = RIB 3.3123 (unreliably reconstructed) as evidence for apotheosis in 79, but is perhaps too hasty in his dismissal of two inscriptions from Laodicea (IGR 4.845–6 = IK 49.15 and 9), which name Titus as ὕπατος τὸ ζʹ and Αὐτοκράτορος θεοῦ Οὐεσπασιανοῦ / [Αὐτοκρά]τορος Καίσαρος [Οὐε]σπασιανοῦ Σεβαστοῦ θεοῦ υἱός.
10 CIL 16.24 = AE 1927.96; cf. RGZM 3. Buttrey (n. 5 [1976]), 452 also calls attention to AE 1962.288 (dated 7 September).
11 Inscr. Ital. 13.2.25 = CIL 9.4192, p. 402; Inscr. Ital. 13.1.31 = CIL 10.6638, p. 664.
12 CIL 2.4905 = ILS 152; RIC I2 93 nos. 1–2.
13 RIC I2 150 nos. 1–3; IGR 4.1124 (a.d. 54); CIL 2.4719 = ILS 225 (a.d. 55). Unlike Tiberius, Nero would eventually abandon this emphasis on divine filiation: RIC I2 153–85 nos. 44–606; cf. Suet. Ner. 33.1; Dio Cass. 60.35.2–4; Hekster, O., Emperors and Ancestors (Oxford, 2015), 51–2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
14 AE 1990.131c, e = CIL 10.6820, 6824, 6826; CIL 2.4685, 12.4341, 16.42; AE 1949.42 (Trajan, a.d. 98). IGR 4.349 (Hadrian, a.d. 117); also CIL 2.429; IG 12.3.175–6 (a.d. 118). AE 1914.174; CIL 2.4057; CIL 9.697 = ILS 332; CIL 6.999 = ILS 333; CIL 14.4357 (Pius, a.d. 138—perhaps predating Hadrian's official consecration? Cf. n. 24 below). CIL 6.31554 = ILS 5933; CIL 3.208, 3744, 6.40867–8, 10.1647 (M. Aurelius and L. Verus, a.d. 161). CIL 8.23828; AE 1938.131 (Commodus, a.d. 181). See, in general, Hammond, M., The Antonine Monarchy (Rome, 1959), 203–7Google Scholar.
15 It was during this period that ‘consecration’ series commemorating the deification of members of the emperor's family become common: RIC II1 299–301 nos. 743–64; 390–1 nos. 418–27; 479 nos. 1051–2; RIC III 69–76 nos. 343–407; 161–9 nos. 1099–1200; 247 nos. 429–42; 441 nos. 654–64. Titus’ undated DIVVS AVGVSTVS VESPASIANVS coins (RIC II2 219–21 nos. 356–84) may be regarded as a precursor of this development.
16 RIC II1 338–40 nos. 2–16.
17 Suet. Vesp. 23.4; cf. Dio Cass. 66.17.2–3. The precise dating of this comet is preserved in the Samguk Sagi, a medieval Korean chronicle: see Kim, P. (transl. Shultz, E.J. and Kang, H.W.), The Silla Annals of the Samguk Sagi (Seongnam, 2012), 43Google Scholar; Ramsey, J.T., A Descriptive Catalogue of Greco-Roman Comets from 500 b.c. to a.d. 400 (Iowa City, 2006), 161–3Google Scholar.
18 Suet. Vesp. 23.4 (‘alas, I think I am becoming a god’); Fishwick, D., ‘Vae puto deus fio’, CQ 15 (1965), 155–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; pace Schmidt, M.G., ‘Claudius und Vespasian: eine neue Interpretation des Wortes “vae, puto, deus fio” (Suet. Vesp. 23, 4)’, Chiron 18 (1988), 83–9Google Scholar. Note also Pliny the Elder's prediction (HN 2.18) that the eternal glory of divinity awaited Vespasian as a reward for his services to humanity.
19 RIC II2 219–21 nos. 356–84 (undated).
20 See Bauman, R.A., Impietas in Principem: A Study of Treason against the Roman Emperor with Special Reference to the First Century a.d. (Munich, 1974), 16–17, 71–82Google Scholar.
21 Tacitus presents Tiberius as initially reluctant to pursue treason charges stemming from insults to Augustus’ divinity, paraphrasing a letter to the consuls in which he warned: ‘the heavens had not been decreed for his father so that this honour could be turned into a civil menace’ (non ideo decretum patri suo caelum, ut in perniciem ciuium is honor uerteretur, Ann. 1.73.3). As with so much in the historian's account of this emperor, however, Tiberius’ resistance is presented to the reader as a ruse, prefaced by a caveat that this initial impediment did nothing to prevent the charge from catching fire and eventually overwhelming everything (quanta Tiberii arte grauissimum exitium inrepserit, dein repressum sit, postremo arserit cunctaque corripuerit, 1.73.1). The issue of Claudius’ divinity under Nero is considerably more complicated: see Griffin, M., ‘Claudius in the judgement of the next half-century’, in Strocka, V.M. (ed), Die Regierungszeit des Kaisers Claudius (41–54 n. Chr.): Umbruch oder Episode? (Mainz, 1994), 307–16Google Scholar; Osgood, J., Claudius Caesar: Image and Power in the Early Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2011), 245–56Google Scholar.
22 Cf. Suet. Tit. 9.1: periturum se potius quam perditurum adiurans (‘swearing he would rather perish than destroy’); Birley, A.R., ‘The oath not to put senators to death’, CR 12 (1962), 197–9Google Scholar; Bauman (n. 20), 214–17; also Levick (n. 5), 198. Subsequent vows: Dio Cass. 68.2.3, 68.5.2, 69.4.4, 73.5.2, 74.2.1: οἷα καὶ οἱ πρῴην ἀγαθοὶ αὐτοκράτορες. See especially P. Garnsey, Social Status and Legal Privilege in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 1970), 44–9.
23 Suet. Tit. 6.1–2; Dio Cass. 66.16.3–4. Murison, C.L., ‘The Emperor Titus’, in Zissos, A. (ed.), A Companion to the Flavian Age of Imperial Rome (Malden, MA, 2016), 76–91, at 86–7Google Scholar.
24 Dio Cass. 69.23.3; SHA Hadr. 27.2, Ant. Pius 2.5; Aur. Vict. Caes. 14.13–14. A delay of at least a year is suggested by the titulature in Hadrian's epitaph, CIL 6.984 = ILS 322 (but cf. n. 14 above): Chastagnol, A., ‘Un chapitre négligé de l'épigraphie latine: la titulature des empereurs morts’, REL 62 (1984), 275–87, at 285Google Scholar. On the significance of the Senate's role, see Price (n. 3), 82–91; Bonamente, G., ‘Il Senato e l'apoteosi degli imperatori da Augusto a Teodosio il grande’, in Rosen, K. (ed.) Macht und Kultur im Rom der Kaiserzeit (Bonn, 1994), 137–64Google Scholar. Note also Dio Cass. 59.3.7 on the Senate's ambivalent response to Gaius’ request for posthumous honours for Tiberius.