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The Psychology of the Roman Imperial Cult
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 July 2024
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By its method of posing problems successively, the curiosity of modern historians towards antiquity may sometimes give the impression of snobism or of complaisance towards a “fashion,” even when it is actually following a logical bent : just before the last war the multiplication of works on the “imperial cult,” or the “imperial mystique” of the first centuries of our era, presented dangerous temptations for exploitation in interpretations favorable to the rule of personal authority. Notably in Germany, the most serious and objective study of the notion of “principat” among the first Caesars found itself compromised even by the vocabulary with which the Latin words were translated: how many dissertations of articles appeared at that time on ancient “Fuehrertum”!
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- Copyright © 1961 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
1 The text of this article corresponds, essentially, with that of a lecture given under the same title at the Collège Philosophique in March 1959.
2 See, p. ex., the recently published volume in the "Bibliothèque de Théologie" of Louvain, Series III, Vol. 5, by L. Cerfaux and J. Tondriau, Un concurrent du christianisme: le culte des souverains dans la civilisation gréco-romaine (1956), which has a very complete bibliography.
3 Vom Werden und Wesen des Prinzipats, Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akad. der Wissensch., 1937, 15. Several aspects of the problem have been taken up again since then: see notably the series of articles by A. Alföldi in the Museum Helveticum of 1952, pp. 204-241, of 1953, pp. 101-124, and of 1954, pp. 133-139; and our essay on "Les Clientèles triomphales de la République romaine," in the Revue historique, Vol. CCXVIII, 1957.
4 There were, however, some signs in this direction: p. ex. in the rule, applied strictly to the obsequies even of Agrippa, that Augustus should neither touch nor even see a dead person; or in the precaution to postpone any capital punishment while he was in Rome. In spite of the coincidence with the flaminial taboos, it is probable that these abstentions were derived from the August quality of the prince (more or less "blessed"), who not only had to be defended from all profanation but probably also could only retain the power of transmitting the blessing of the gods to Rome at this price.
5 The intermediary position will be represented, if you like, by that of a Julian, in the fourth century, adoring Helios Basileus the Sun King as his god, acting as his priest rather than as his temporal vicar, and dreaming of an apotheosis in which he joins his Mithras in the Beyond (see the end of his Banquet of the Caesars).
6 Aired since Renan, the problem was recently taken up by St. Giet, l'Apo calypse et l'histoire, the argument of which has at least made probable the im portance and reality of the outrageous provocations of the imperial cult at the time of the Flavians (according to the author, already in the time of Vespasian) for the origin of the Johannic allegories concerning the Beast.
7 The studies of H. L'Orange, his articles in the Symbolae Osloenses and his recent Studies on the Iconography of Cosmic Kingship in the Ancient World (Oslo, 1953), have usefully completed on this subject the authoritative restitution of the "Théologie solaire du Paganisme romain" done by Fr. Cumont. The Sol comes (Augusti) of the coins of the Illyrian emperors, in the last third of the third century, is not conceived exactly like the Master or the transcendant image of the emperor, but as his "battle companion," as is shown by the expression. It does not seem impossible to me that this conception owes something through official transcription, as throughout the solar cult in the empire at this time, to the representation of the divine companionship of Mithras and the Sun. Fr. Cumont has shown that this would be proper both for the theology and for the canonic imagery of the religion of Mithras.
8 Gilbert Ch. Picard determined its history in his recent work on Les Trophées Romains (Bibl. des Ecoles d'Athènes et de Rome), in pushing to its limits (see our remarks in the Journal des Savants, July-September 1958) the cor respondence between the themes of iconography and those of the imperial mystique.
9 This horoscope is ideally that of a cosmocrator in the Egyptian astrological style; thereby it is confounded with that of Alexander the Macedonian, as vulgarized under the Roman empire by popular versions of the Roman d'Alexandre.
10 This problem is related to a known question in the history of literature: that of a possible role, at the origin of the tradition of the mediaeval chansons de geste, of the "cantilenas" of the Late Empire—such as the biography of Aurelian in the Histoire Auguste has preserved for us. Certainly, there is nothing homeric in these primitive military songs, which use a poor language and mediocre repetitions. Whether or not they originated with the barbarians, the fact is that they served as retorts for the soldiers of the empire—themselves barbarized—in brutal campaigns. But I do not believe that one can disassociate their study from that of the military style of the emperors at the same period.
11 "L'Hercule impérial et l'amazonisme de Rome," in the Revue d'histoire et de philosophie religieuses, Strasbourg, 1954.
12 We know the favorite color of some first-century emperors (that is, in Byzantine terms, the "faction" or "deme") through Suetonius; and the Chronicle of Malalas of Antioch is full of information for the following reigns, albeit not necessarily reliable. This problem is still insufficiently explored.
13 We know that the formula for the seats of senators is cited by Dion Cassius, LXXII, 20, who attended this occasion personally. It is, to tell the truth, a problem still discussed by specialists, to determine the exact meaning of the title Amazonius, thus used. One would rather have expected Amazonicus, designating a " defeater of Amazons"—and certain scholars have thought that Commodius was comparing himself rather with the son of the Amazon, Hippolytus. I think that in any case the word evoked the presence in Commodius of the androgynous power unique to the emperor, and that this presence was thought to have resulted, in the case of Hercules, in his victory over the warrior queen—victories that are each time a conquest or acquisition of magical powers.
14 The contamination of these notions was such that I see no other way of explaining the use, in the Hippodrome of Constantinople, of a formula of accla mations (preserved by Constantine Porphyrogenetos) which openly considers the victories of charioteers as coming from the emperors, or promising them the equivalent. Although this liturgy is entirely christianized, and moreover contains curiously preserved Latin words such as toumbikas for tu vincas in its Greek formulas. I believe it possible to prove that the principle, and even most of the expressions, are already clearly visible in the Circus Maximus of Rome in the third and fourth centuries—for example at the moment when Constantine replaces Maxence in Rome (cf. Rev. d'hist. et de phil. relig. 1933).
15 The origins and development of the phenomenon are well expounded in the work of J. Aymard, Essai sur les chasses romaines (Bibl. des Ecoles d'Athènes et de Rome), 1951.
16 We still have good bas-reliefs of the Antonines sacrificing before altars or great temples, and the triad of the three Severii is still represented in sacrificial action on the backs of coins. Then the scene becomes, ever rarer; and, in parallel, the series of coins permit us to follow the significant evolution of the theme of the emperor concluding a pact with a god (p. ex. Hadrian with Serapis) : the preponderance of the figure of the prince tends to succeed a simple equality of the two figures.
17 See the note of the essay on "L'Empereur romain et les rois," in the Revue historique, April-June 1959.
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