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Pietas and Victoria: the Emperor and the Citizen1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 September 2012

M. P. Charlesworth
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Extract

In dealing with so wide-ranging a subject, a remark of an American scholar, Mr. Hoey, on the intimate connection between the titles pius, felix, and invictus provides a convenient starting-point.

The first observation I would make is to call your attention to the consecutive (and almost causal) connection of these adjectives : because the Emperor is pius the gods will render him felix (for felicitas is their gift to their favourites) and his felicitas is best demonstrated in his being invictus. Nearly every nation of antiquity believed and hoped that its gods would bring it success : the Roman People, with seven centuries of expansion and increasing power to look back on, were convinced that their scrupulous attention to the due performance of the proper rites had won them this success, that their pietas had secured to them victoria; if the Emperor could be termed pius felix invictus, it was because he summed up and incarnated there the Roman People.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Roman Studies , Volume 33 , Issue 1-2 , November 1943 , pp. 1 - 10
Copyright
Copyright ©M. P. Charlesworth 1943. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies

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Footnotes

1

This paper, originally composed as a lecture for the Joint Hellenic and Roman Societies Meeting in Oxford, 1942, is here reproduced as it was spoken. I have not had time to alter it to a form more suitable for reading, but I have added references.

References

2 Nero and Greece; Dirtenberger, Syll.3 no. 814 : for Caracalla see P. Giessen 40, and a recent restoration by Heichelheim, F. in JEA xxvi, 1940, 10Google Scholar.

3 Examples are conveniently collected in T. Ulrich, Pietas … Breslau, 1930, 41 ff. We may compare such regimental titles as the ‘Loyal North Lancashires’.

4 Ulrich, ibid. 39.

5 Augustus, Res Gestae 25, 10, and 35.

6 For example, see CIL iv, 171, 183, 221, 222, 234, 316, 317, 319, and 3848; dignum rei publicae 220, 232, and 6613.

7 Apocolocyntosis 9.

8 Suetonius, Div. Aug. 56.

9 Suetonius, Nero 10; SHA, Hadr. 49: M. Ant. Phil. 296: Pert. 69.

10 Pliny, Paneg. 354.

11 This paragraph is based on my lecture ‘The Virtues of a Roman Emperor’, Brit. Acad. Proc. xxiii, 1937Google Scholar, and on H. Markowski, ‘De quattuor virtutibus Augusti’ …, Eos, 1936, 109, and Ensslin, W., ‘Zu dem Res Gestae divi Augusti’ …,Rhein. Mus. lxxxi, 1932, 362Google Scholar.

12 Tac. Hist. iii, 6g, and Suet. Vit. 15; cf. Vitellius' coins with the legend CONCORDIA.

13 Aelian, de nat. anim. v, 10. Aelian is a second-rate writer and thinker, and the idea must have been current coin in his time.

14 For the idea see the Arch of Septimius, ‘ob r.p. restitutam imperiumque p. R. propagatum insignibus virtutibus,’ ILS 425: for the title see CIL xiv, 106, and Ephem. Epig. v, 898 and 902, and vii, 390, and consult Berlinger, L., Beiträge zur inoffiziellen Titulatur der römischen Kaiser, Breslau 1935, 67–70Google Scholar.

15 See especially Gagé, J., ‘La théologie de la victoire impériale,’ Rev. Hist. clxxi, 1933, 1Google Scholar.

16 See, for example, Wytzes, J., Der Streit um den Altar der Viktoria, Amsterdam, 1936Google Scholar.

17 Cato, frag. 161 (Malcovati, Orat. Rom. Fragm. i, 191) = SHA, Hadr. 53.

18 Mattingly, H., Coins of the RE in the BM iii, p. cxxxivGoogle Scholar, and Downey, G., ‘The Pilgrim's Progress of the Byzantine Emperor’ (Church History ix, 1940), 207CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Ethical Themes in the Antioch Mosaics (ibid. x, 1941) 3, and Grabar, A., L'Empereur dans l'Art Byzantin, Paris, 1936, 57–62Google Scholar (La Chasse).

19 Chrysostom, Dio, περὶβασιλείαϛ iii, 125Google Scholar.

20 Pliny, Epp. i, 6.

21 Suet. Nero, 25; Tac. Ann. xiv, 15. These claqueurs may have been modelled on the applause-gangs who were hired for literary recitations; see Pliny, Epp. ii, 145, and Orlando, F., Le Letture Pubbliche in Roma imperiale, Faenza, 1907, 125Google Scholar. But they may also have owed something to Alexandria, as Paul Maas (citing Suet. Nero, 20) suggested in an article in Byz. Zeitschr. xxi, 1912, 28Google Scholar.

22 Dio Cassius lxii (lxi), 205; lxii (lxiii), 205.

23 For the reception of Tiridates see Dio Cassius lxiii, 1–6, and Suet. Nero 13. Cf. Cumont, F., in Riv. Fil. xi, 1933, 145Google Scholar.

24 Dio Cassius lxxii, 202.

25 Tertullian, de spectaculis 25. Cf. the acclamations of the Arval Brethren; CIL vi, 2086, l. 17, and 2104, l. 29; we find ‘O te felicem’ as late as Cassiodorus, Orat. fragm. 476.

26 Those who know the admirable Εἶϛ Θεόϛ of Erik Peterson (Forsch. zur Relig. u. Lit. des Alt. u. N. Testaments Heft 24, 1926) will recognise how much I have drawn upon him here, esp. pp. 168–174. For these acclamations see P. Oxy. i, 41; OGIS 515, ll. 55/6; Head, Hist. Numm. 2 733 (Tarsus).

27 Suet. Nero 57; and see Pascal, C., Nerone (Milan, 1923), 273–286Google Scholar (Il ritorno di Nerone e l'Anticristo).

28 The Acraephiae inscription, Dittenberger, Syll. 3 814, l. 40. For Titus as agonothetes of the Sebasta at Naples see IG xiv, 719, and cf. Geer, R. M. in Trans. Amer. Phil. Assoc. lxvi, 1935, 208Google Scholar.

29 The words are quoted from an inscription in honour of the pancratiast Callicrates (Lebas-Waddington, 1620) discussed by L. Robert in Anatolian Studies presented to W. H. Buckler (Manchester, 1939), 236. Cf. also Firmicus Maternus (ed. Kroll and Skutsch) i, 192, ‘athletas qui ceteris virtutis merito praeferantur.’

30 Vettius Valens (ed.Kroll) 46, 18; Ptolemy, Tetrab. (Bâle, 1553) 179, 9 ( = iv, 4, 4; Boll-Boer, p. 180, 15; Robbins, p. 384, 13). I owe these references to Cumont, F., L'Égypte des astrologues (Brussels, 1937), 76Google Scholar, n. 3.

31 Dio Chrysostom, Isthmiaca (ix) 10–13.

32 Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. vi, 294.

33 Socrates, Hist. Eccl. iv, 30.

34 See Pliny, NH ii, 19, ‘hic est vetustissimus referendi bene merentibus gratiam mos ut tales numinibus adscribant,’ and see my remarks on this passage in Harv. Theol. Rev. xxviii, 1935, 5Google Scholar (esp. p. 42). Attention was first called to this passage in Pliny by A. D. Nock.

35 See Bilabel, F. in Philologus lxxx, 1925, 339Google Scholar.

36 V. Chapot, La province rom. proc. d'Asie 434 ff.; A. N. Sherwin-White, The Roman Citizenship 239 f.

37 Sherwin-White o.c. 249 f. For Vesta Augusta see CIL ii, 1166, 3378.

38 As Professor Nock has remarked, Σύνναοϛ Θεόϛ (Harvard Studies in Classical Philology xli, 1930) 59Google Scholar.

39 H. Mattingly, Coins of the RE in the BM, i, p. cxcix.

40 Edited by Fink, R. O., Hoey, A. S., and Snyder, W. F., The Feriale Duranum (Yale Class. Stud. vii, 1940), esp. pp. 202Google Scholar ff.

41 See especially Baynes, N. H., ‘Constantine the Great and the Christian Church,’ Brit. Acad. Proc. xv, 1939, esp. pp. 10Google Scholar f. and 21 f.

42 H. Swoboda, Griech. Volksbeschlüsse 218.

43 J. Gagé, La théologie … (cited in n. 15 above) and also Σταυρὸϛ νικοποιόϛ, Rev. d'hist. et de phil. relig. xiii, 1933, 370 ffGoogle Scholar.

44 See the section on ἄξιοϛ in E. Peterson's Εἶϛ Θεόϛ.

45 Eraclius : Migne, PL xxxiii, col. 967 f. Cf. St. Augustine, Epp. 110, and Georg. Alexand. Vita Chrysostomi ii, 20, “Revera dignus es hoc sacerdotio, o apostolorum tertie decime !’ Cf. too Constantine Porphyrogenitus, Liber de Ceremoniis (ed. Vogt, A. iii, 1939) i, 47Google Scholar. Those who disapproved of an election could shout ‘Ἀνάξιόϛ’:-Philostorgius ix, 10.

46 Cf. the quadrifaria virtus (iustitia, prudentia, fortitudo, temperantia) of Cassiodorus, Varia 177, the articles by G. Downey cited in n. 18 above, and Born, L. K., ‘The Perfect Prince according to Latin Panegyrists,’ A.J. Phil. lv, 1934, 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

47 I am thinking mainly of Tibullus and Vergil: see some good remarks by J. Carcopino in La vie quotidienne à Rome 1939, 148 ff., though to my mind they apply only to the educated classes.

48 McKenna, S., Paganism and Pagan Survivals in Spain …, Washington, D.C. 1938, esp. pp. 88–107Google Scholar. Cf. the worship of Diana in the Ardennes found still persisting by St. Walfroy; Gregory of Tours, Hist. Franc. viii, 15.

49 Schramm, P. E., Das Herrscherbild in der Kunst des frühen Mittelalters, Leipzig, 1922–1923, 154 ff.Google Scholar; A. Grabar, o.c. 46 f. and 04 f.; Downey, G., ‘Justinian as Achilles,’ Trans. Amer. Phil. Assoc. lxxi, 1940, 68–77Google Scholar.

50 Zosimus, Historic Nova iv, 78.

51 Zosimus, ibid. v, 5, 5–7. A possible sign of the interest in Achilles (as hero par excellence) may be seen, as Dr. A. B. Cook suggests to me, in the long interview which the sage Apollonius claimed to have had with him in a vision, Philostratus, Vita Apollonii iv, 11 and 16 ff. Note also the dream of Basilina: Zonaras xiii, 10, 2.