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Once Again Claudius and the Temple at Colchester

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 November 2011

C.J. Simpson
C.J. Simpson
Affiliation:
Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, Canada
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Extract

In this journal (1972, 1973) and in a collection of studies (1987), Duncan Fishwick, calling on almost overwhelming Wissenschaft, has shown himself to be very firmly set against a temple in Britain at which the living emperor Claudius was revered. Essentially, he believes that Seneca's statement at Apocolocyntosis VIII. 3 concerning a temple to Claudius (‘parum est quod templum in Britannia habet…’) refers to a situation that obtained after Claudius' death and consecration rather than to a time before those events. In 1988, S.R.F. Price disputed Fishwick's claim, stating his opinion that in ‘the barbarian provinces of the west cults of the living emperor had been established under Augustus; Britain was just another barbarian area which was expected to show extreme deference to Rome.’ Fishwick countered in 1991, again in this journal.

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Articles
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Britannia , Volume 24 , November 1993 , pp. 1 - 6
Copyright
Copyright © C.J. Simpson 1993. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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References

1 Fishwick, D., ‘Templum Divo Claudio Constitutum’, Britannia iii (1972), 164–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, ‘Tacitean usage and the temple of divus Claudius’, Britannia iv (1973), 264–5; idem, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West. Studies in the Ruler Cult of the Western Provinces of the Roman Empire, 1.2 (1987), 195–218; cf. idem, ANRW 11.16.2 (1978), 1201–53, at 1215–19. See also note 2 and generally Price, S.R.F., Rituals and Power. The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (1984), passim, 114Google Scholar; Hänlein-Schäfer, H., Veneratio Augusti. Eine Studie zu den Tempeln des ersten römischen Kaisers, Archaeologia xxxix (1985)Google Scholar, passim. I thank Dr Fishwick and Lauren Walker for reading earlier drafts of this article.

2 Above note Price, I.S.R.F., Phoenix xlii (1988), 371–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 373. The review by Price is of Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1987); Fishwick, D., ‘Seneca and the Temple of Divus Claudius’, Britannia xxii (1991), 137–41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 cf. B. Levick, Claudius (1990), 186 for the post-Fishwick standard view. Seneca here probably means templum as aedes rather than merely ‘sanctuary.’ On templum cf., inter alia, Stambaugh, J.E., ‘The Functions of Roman Temples’, ANRW 11.16.1 (1978), 554–608, at 557 and 562; Hänlein-Schäfer, op. cit. (note 1), 5–10.Google Scholar

4 R. Roncali (ed.), L. Annaei Senecae APOKOLOKYNTOSIS (1990), 12 and 30. Generally, see Wolf, S., Die Augustusrede in Senecas Apocolocyntosis. Ein Beitrag zum Augustusbild der frühen Kaiserzeit, Beiträge zur klassischen Philologie 170 (1986), 89–94.Google Scholar

5 For the translation, P.T. Eden, Seneca: Apocolocyntosis (1984), 43–5. There is no question necessary in the Latin. On the substitution ‘fool’/’god’, Fishwick, op. cit. (note 2, 1991), 140f.

6 For the deity: Price, op. cit. (note 2), 373; Fishwick, op. cit. (note 2, 1991), 137. For the chronology: idem, 138ff. For the date of death, see below note 8.

7 cf., inter alia, Eden, op. cit. (note 5), 4f.: ‘But topicality is a transient thing. It would have been moribund if the work was not composed soon after the events it describes.’ Here I accept Eden and the conventional view. Cf. Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1987), 201f.

8 For the death of Claudius on 13 October, see inter alia H. Smilda, C. Suetonii Tranquilli Vita Divi Claudii (1896), 173; M.T. Griffin, Nero. The End of a Dynasty (1984), 32f.

9 cf. Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1987), 195, n. 4; Drury, P.J., ‘The Temple of Claudius at Colchester reconsidered’, Britannia xv (1984), 7–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 For such divus status and what it may have entailed, see now Mann, J.C., ‘Numinibus Aug.’, Britannia xxii (1991), 173–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 176. ‘In other words the divi Augusti were not real gods…’ Also Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1991), 140 and n. 24ff. Cf. CJ. Simpson, ‘Real gods’, below pp. 264–5.

11 Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1973), 264: ‘…Nero was never officially deified…’ (My emphasis; why ‘officially'?) Nevertheless, he had flamines at Pompeii during his lifetime: CIL iv. 3882, 3884. For flamen as a priestly title appropriate to a pre-Trajanic ruler cult, see, for example, Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1987), 268.

12 ‘Ut deum’ may be intrusive. See the apparatus criticus in Roncali, op. cit. (note 4), 12; Eden, op. cit. (note 5), 105; Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1991), 140, n. 24. Cf. D. Fishwick, The Imperial Cult in the Latin West, II.I (1990), 436.

13 Fishwick, op. cit. (note 2, 1991), 140, denies that living emperors received cult but holds that divi did. Cf. Mann, op. cit. (note 9), 176; Simpson, op. cit. (note 10).

14 Fishwick, op. cit. (note 2, 1991), 140.

15 The Senate was the competent body at Rome. Cf. Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1): (1972), 178; (1987), 209f. and 212f.; (1991), 137 and n. 4; Price, op. cit. (note 1), 66; Simpson, CJ., ‘The cult of the emperor Gaius’, Latomus xl (1981), 489–511, n. 46Google Scholar; idem, ‘Livia and the constitution of the aedes Concordiae’, Historiaxl (1991), 449–55, at n. 2; Tac., Ann. 11. 37. Tiberius rejected a motion deifying Livia (Tac, Ann. III. 64). Gaius seemed to call for ‘real’ senatorial competence only when that body did not vote him honours that were more than those which were appropriate for mortals (Cassius Dio LIX. 25). Nero evidently rejected Anicius Cerialis’ proposal in the Senate that there be erected at Rome a temple ‘divo Neroni’ (Tac, Ann. xv. 74).

16 ‘…Ut deum orant MOROU EUILATOU TUCHEIN’ (Sen., Apoc. VIII. 3). This, if not intrusive (note 12), is exactly what one would have expected in relation to Seneca's allegation that Claudius anticipated a senatorial decision. Cf. Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1991), 140f.

17 These contemporaries had before them the example of a temple begun in Rome by Agrippina and abandoned by Nero. T. Platner and S.B. Ashby, A Topographical Dictionary of Ancient Rome (1929), 120f. It is unlikely that the British temple was begun at the same time after Claudius' death, but, unlike the Rome temple, was completed to the extent that it could be used.

18 H. Furneaux, The Annals of Tacitus (1907), II, 273; K. Wellesley (ed.), Cornelius Tacitus I.2: Annales Xl–XVI (1986), 84; Koestermann, E., Cornelius Tacitus Annalen, iv (1968), 87.Google Scholar ‘More than this, the temple raised to the deified Claudius continually met the view, like the citadel of an eternal tyranny; while the priests, chosen for its service, were bound under the pretext of religion to pour out their fortunes like water.’ For the translation, Jackson, J., Tacitus iv (1937), 159.Google Scholar

19 Fishwick, op. cit. (note I, 1972), 178. TLL iv. 510–25, at 512. 64. Cf. Fishwick, op. cit. (note I, 1973).

20 cf. Simpson, op. cit. (note 15), 451, n. 7.

21 The title divus may well have been properly used by Tacitus at the time of writing, insofar as it was the well-accepted term for referring to a dead emperor who had been the subject of a senatorial decree. Cf. Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1973), 264f.

22 Platner and Ashby, op. cit. (note 17), 209f.

23 OLD, 185,4a.

24 For me, certainly. See Fishwick, D., ‘The date of dedication of the temple of Mars Ultor’, JRS lxvii (1977), 91–4, at 93; Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1991), 449Google Scholar, n. 2; idem, ‘A shrine of Mars Ultor re-visited’, RBPH lxxii (1993), forthcoming, n. 4ff.

25 Fishwick, op. cit. (note I): (1973), 264; (1987), 203–13.

26 Apart from the basic understanding that they were both cults directed to Roman objects of worship. It is not my intention to analyse the cult at Lyon. See the ancient literary sources in Hänlein-Schäfer, op. cit. (note 1), 246; the modern authorities cited in Simpson, CJ., ‘The birth of Claudius and the date of dedication of the altar “Romae et Augusto” at Lyon’, Latomus xlvi (1987), 586–92, 587, n 5.Google Scholar

27 Livy, Per. 139; Cassius Dio LIV. 32; Simpson, op. cit. (note 26), 590. The altar was dedicated in 10 B.C. See also Turcan, R., ‘L'Autel de Rome et d'Auguste “Ad Confluentem’’, ANRW 11.12.1 (1982), 607–44, esp. 608.Google Scholar

28 I accept the most obvious reading of the passage and believe that the natives found holding the priesthood onerous. See above note 18. Cf. Fumeaux, op. cit. (note 18), II, 273, n. 8; Koestermann, op. cit. (note 18), 87. For the word delecti, see among others Jones, G.D.B., ‘Invasion and Response in Roman Britain’, in Burnham, B.C. and Johnson, H.B. (eds), Invasion and Response. The Case of Roman Britain, BAR British Series 73 (1979), 57–79, esp. 59.Google Scholar

29 On the existence of an altar, a dual cult, and a hierarchy, see Drury, op. cit. (note 9), 24; Levick, op. cit. (note 3), 145 and 186, where she has evidently accepted a reading of arae or ara in Tac, Ann. xiv. 31. Cf. Fumeaux, op. cit. (note 18), 11, 273, note 7; Wellesley, op. cit (note 18), 84.

30 Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1): (1987), 200; (1991), 141, n. 35.

31 ‘Meanwhile, for no apparent reason, the statue of Victory at Camulodunum fell, with its back turned as if in retreat from the enemy,’ Jackson, op. cit. (note 18), 159.

32 cf., inter alia, Audin, A. and Quoniam, P., ‘Victoires et colonnes de 1'autel fédéral de Trois Gaules: données nouvelles’, Gallia xx (1962), 103–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For Claudian coins commemorating the altar at Lyon – there were no such issues for Colchester – Mattingly, H., BMCRE 1 (1923), No. 237f., 196Google Scholar, pl. 37.10; Audin and Quoniam, 108f.

33 Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1991), 141.

34 Suet., Aug. 52; Mann, op. cit. (note 10), 175.

35 Hänlein-Schäfer, op. cit. (note 1), 79f. Admittedly most of these sites are in the East, where different norms than those in the West are conventionally thought to have applied. The Caesareum at Benevento (cf. Fishwick, op. cit. (note 12), 439), however, and the shrine at Fano (cf. Price, op. cit. (note 1), 143, n. 27) were clearly intended for Romans. I am not as certain as Fishwick that such shrines were really to the emperor in his ‘menschliche Wesenheit’, but do not wish to become embroiled in here defining ‘numen’. It is known that Augustus approved the erection of an altar on the Palatine c. A.D. 6 – ‘ara numinis Augusti.’

36 Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1991), 137. An interesting juxtaposition: Augustus/Roma…Tiberius/Senate. In fact in Tac, Ann. iv. 15 Roma is not mentioned and in Tac, Ann. iv. 37 the Senate stands more as an example of Tiberian (republican?) sentiment than as a body ‘replacing Roma.’

37 On 24 January A.D. 41, according to Cassius Dio, Gaius ‘learned that he was not a god.’ See, inter alia, Suet, Gaius 22. 3; Cassius Dio LIX. 29; A.A. Barrett, Caligula. The Corruption of Power (1989), 140–53; Wardle, D., ‘When did Gaius Caligula die?’, Acta Classica xxxiv (1991), 158–65, at 162.Google Scholar

38 M. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Gaius, Claudius and Nero (1967), 15, No. 14. 8. Cf. Scribonius Largus, Praef. 60; Seneca, Consol. ad Polyb. 12. 3, 13. 2; Simpson, op. cit. (note 15), 508ff., n. 65; Barrett, op. cit. (note 37), 149, n. 46; R.J.A. Talbert, The Senate of Imperial Rome (1984), 359.

39 For the Alexandrian offer, see Smallwood, op. cit. (note 38), 99–102, No. 370. For Seneca as financier, Cassius Dio LXII. 2.

40 Simpson, op. cit. (note 15), 509; Barrett, op. cit. (note 37), 152.

41 On this and the present tense in Suet., Aug. 5. Cf. Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1, 1972), 177.

42 There is the possibility that this was a ‘municipal/private’ temple built to Claudius alone, perhaps with Ostorius Scapula as the person ‘ultimately responsible’: S.S. Frere, Britannia (1967), 324. If the temple was erected at such ‘private/imperial’ initiative, there would have been no need for approval by the Senate in Rome. Stambaugh, op. cit. (note 3), 559 and (Pliny at Tifemum) 566f.; Hänlein-Schäfer, op. cit. (note 1), 80. For statues at ‘private’ expense even in Rome, cf. Cassius Dio LIV. 30.

43 Fishwick, op. cit. (note 1): (1987), 1.2,199; (1991), 141 and n. 33.