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Religion as a factor in the history of Empires1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 September 2012
Extract
The part played by religious sentiment and worship in the public life of the ancient world was generally underestimated by historians of the older school. Persons of imagination and taste appreciated the poetical aspects of the ancient mythologies, while the grosser and more cruel superstitions were dwelt upon by those who compared the worships and faiths of Greece, Rome, Syria and Egypt with Christianity and Islam. But comparatively few writers saw, as we see now, how important a factor religious sentiment was, and indeed could not but be, in the political sphere. There are two respects in which it was then and always has been a force of immense though uncertain potency.
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- Copyright © Viscount Bryce 1915. Exclusive Licence to Publish: The Society for the Promotion of Roman Studies
References
page 3 note 1 The temple-states of Asia Minor furnish instructive examples.
page 4 note 1 Upon the continued sanctity of the same seats of worship in succeeding ages under different religions, see SirRamsay, W. M., The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 466Google Scholar.
page 4 note 2 Acts xix, 27.
page 4 note 3 Tac. Annals, xiv 30Google Scholar.
page 4 note 4 Suet. Vita Claud. 25; cf. Plin. Hist. Nat. xxx, 4Google Scholar.
page 5 note 1 Plut. Flamin. c. xviGoogle Scholar.
page 5 note 2 Ad Att. xii. 18 f.
page 5 note 3 ‘Non solum vocibus decernentium sed etiam persuasione vulgi.’ Sueton. Vita Iulii Caesaris.
page 6 note 1 Tacitus, Ann. iv, 56Google Scholar, where an interesting account is given of the rival claims of Smyrna and Sardis to be allowed to erect a temple to Tiberius, the senate ultimately deciding for the former.
In the paragraphs dealing with the worship of the emperors I have derived much assistance from Boissier, Religion romaine, ch. i, ‘l'Apothéose impériale.’
page 6 note 2 Georg. i, 24-42; cf. Ecl. v. 65.
page 7 note 1 Prof. Haverfield tells me that there is epigraphic evidence of shrines and priests of Augustus in ten or twelve Italian cities which were in some way specially associated with him as their founder or protector.
page 7 note 2 As to the importance of Pergamos and the reference to its great temple in the Book of Revelation ii, v. 13, see SirRamsay, W. M., The Church in the Roman Empire, p. 297Google Scholar, and as to the province of Asia and imperial worship there see Chapot, La Province romaine d'Asie.
page 7 note 3 These plates represent the temple of Rome and Augustus at Pola in Istria, and the temple to the same dedication at Ancyra, on whose walls is inscribed the famous Monumentum Ancyranum, which recounts the achievements of Augustus.
page 8 note 1 Tac. Ann. xiv, 31Google Scholar.
page 8 note 2 See Prof.Reid's, Municipalities of the Roman Empire, pp. 184–186Google Scholar.
page 8 note 3 Especially in Italy, where the freedmen were the trading class. As to these Augustales see Municipalities of the Roman Empire, pp. 508–510.
page 8 note 4 Apolog. c. xxviii.
page 9 note 1 Acts xviii, 12–17.
page 9 note 2 Acts xix, 24.
page 10 note 1 Boissier notes a trace of the old deification in a sermon of St. Ambrose, where he represents Theodosius, assumed to be already in heaven, welcoming Gratian thither; but is this anything more than the assumption in the English pulpit after 1660 that king Charles I was among the saints, and the like sanguine assumption of the French pulpit regarding Louis XIV ?
page 11 note 1 Georg. iv, 561.
page 11 note 2 Though of course the gods are, both in Greece (Iliad, iii, 276–280) and at Rome, to some extent the guardians of moral duty. They punish breach of faith and perjury, they protect suppliants. So among the heathen Celts, the Sun and the Wind smote Loigaire king of Erin who had broken his oath to the men of Leinster.
page 14 note 1 In Paraguay the Jesuits were for many years the actual rulers of the country, though de iure it was part of the Spanish dominions.
page 14 note 2 There was really only one formidable rising, that which broke out in Peru in 1780.
page 16 note 1 The Tsar's power is largely exerted through an important lay official called the Procurator of the Holy Synod.
page 20 note 1 Thuc. viii, 109.