Roman Emperor Worship

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Column of Antoninus Pius

Emperor worship was a key part of Rome state religion. Generally referred to as the imperial cult, it regarded emperors and members of their families as gods. Starting with Caesar and Augustus emperors that considered themselves gods ruled the Roman Empire. The Roman emperors seemed to believe in their divinity and they demanded that their subjects worship them. Marcellus was honored with a festival. Flaminius was made a priest for three hundred years. Ephesus had a shrine for Serilius Isauricus. Antony and Cleopatra referred to themselves as Dionysus and Osiris and named their children Sun and Moon. Caligula and Nero demanded to be worshiped like gods in their lifetime. And Vespasian said on his deathbed "Oh dear, I'm afraid I'm becoming a God."

Dr Nigel Pollard of Swansea University wrote for the BBC: “On his death, Julius Caesar was officially recognised as a god, the Divine ('Divus') Julius, by the Roman state. And in 29 B.C. Caesar's adopted son, the first Roman emperor Augustus, allowed the culturally Greek cities of Asia Minor to set up temples to him. This was really the first manifestation of Roman emperor-worship. [Source: Dr Nigel Pollard of Swansea University, BBC, March 29, 2011 |::|]

“While worship of a living emperor was culturally acceptable in some parts of the empire, in Rome itself and in Italy it was not. There an emperor was usually declared a 'divus' only on his death, and was subsequently worshipped (especially on anniversaries, like that of his accession) with sacrifice like any other gods. |::|

The cult of Roman provincial governors disappeared with Augustus, to the exclusive benefit of the emperor and his family. When he did not directly encourage the ruler cult, the emperor still had to approve, limit, and occasionally refuse it. Although he had to be worshiped, he also had to remain a man in order to live on social terms with the Roman aristocracy, of which he was supposed to be the princeps. It was a delicate balancing act. It is probably fair to say that during his lifetime the emperor was a god more in proportion to his remoteness than his proximity, and that the success (for success it was) of the imperial cult in the provinces was due to the presence it endowed to an absent and alien sovereign. His statues, his temples, and his priests, as well as the games, sacrifices, and other ceremonial acts, helped make the emperor present; they also helped people to express their interest in the preservation of the world in which they lived.

Miracles and Jokes Related to Deified Roman Emperors

A handful or Roman Emperors were said to have performed miracles and magic. Candida Moss and Joel Baden wrote in Daily Beast: Jesus's miracles (if you believe he performed any) weren’t that unusual. Emperors could do those too, and there were plenty of travelling doctors, minor deities, and semi-official magicians touting miracle cures. A number of Roman historians tell us that the Emperor Vespasian could cure blindness, restore a “withered hand,” and even assisted in a case involving a damaged leg (all things Jesus is supposed to have done). The Emperor Augustus were said to have healed “pestilences.” [Source: Candida Moss, Daily Beast, November 1, 2020; Candida Moss, Joel Baden, Daily Beast, October 5, 2014]

Mary Beard wrote in The New Yorker: One of the funniest works of Roman literature to survive — and the only one that has ever made me laugh out loud — is a skit, written by the philosopher Seneca, about the Emperor Claudius’ adventures on his way to Mt. Olympus after his death. Titled “Apocolocyntosis Divi Claudii” (“The ‘Pumpkinification’ of the Deified Claudius”), it recounts how the Roman Senate declared that the dead Emperor was now a god, complete with his own temple, priests, and official rites of worship. The deification of emperors was fairly standard practice at the time, and the spoof claimed to lift the lid on what really happened during the process. [Source: Mary Beard, The New Yorker, July 3, 2023]

It was an inside joke. Seneca was the tutor of Nero, who was Claudius’ successor and his stepson. The idea is that the befuddled old Emperor — who was rumored to have been finished off with some poisoned mushrooms by his wife, Agrippina — is not really fit to be divine. As Claudius climbs up Mt. Olympus, word comes to the “real” gods that a stranger has arrived, and that he is muttering incomprehensibly. But, when Hercules is sent to investigate, the two of them swap a few lines of Homer’s poetry. (“Thank goodness there are some scholars in Heaven,” Claudius enthuses.)

The gods meet in private to decide whether to allow Claudius to join their ranks. “Opinions were mixed, but were coming down generally in Claudius’ favor,” Seneca writes, until the Emperor Augustus, who was deified forty years earlier, swings the vote decisively against him. Claudius, one of his successors, has been such a monster, Augustus points out, that he shouldn’t be allowed to become a god. “He may look as if he couldn’t startle a fly, but he used to kill people as easily as a dog has a shit,” Augustus says. So, despite the vote of the human Senate, the gods agree to send Claudius packing. In the skit, he will spend eternity in the underworld, as the legal secretary to one of the Emperor Caligula’s ex-slaves.

Imperial Cult in Ancient Rome

Marcus Aurelius making a sacrifice

Dr Neil Faulkner wrote for the BBC: “This concept, of a tough but essentially benevolent imperial power, was embodied in the person of the emperor. His presence was felt everywhere. His statues dominated public places. He was worshipped alongside Jupiter and the military standards in frontier forts, and in the sanctuaries of the imperial cult in provincial towns. His image was stamped on every coin, and thus reached the most remote corners of his domain - for there is hardly a Roman site, however rude, where archaeologists do not find coins. The message was clear: thanks to the leadership of the emperor we can all go safely about our business and prosper. [Source: Dr Neil Faulkner, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“How did the spin-doctors of ancient Rome represent the great leader to his people? Sometimes, wearing cuirass and a face of grim determination, he was depicted as a warrior and a general; an intimidating implicit reference to global conquest and military dictatorship. At other times, he wore the toga of a Roman gentleman, as if being seen in the law-courts, making sacrifice at the temple, or receiving guests at a grand dinner party at home. In this guise, he was the paternalistic 'father of his country', the benevolent statesman, the great protector. |::|

The cult of the emperors developed naturally enough from the time of the deification of Julius Caesar. The movement for this deification was of Oriental origin. The Genius of the emperor was worshiped as the Genius of the father had been worshiped in the household. The cult, beginning in the East, was then established in the western provinces and finally in Italy. It was under the care of the seviri Augustales in the municipalities. The worship of the emperor in his lifetime was not permitted at Rome, but spread through the provinces, taking the place of the old state religion. It was this that caused the opposition to Christianity, for the refusal of the Christians to take part was treasonable. Their offense was political, not religious. [Source: “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932)]

A sculpted relief from the base of the column of the emperor Antoninus Pius, dated to A.D. 161, shows the apotheosis (transformation into gods) of Antoninus Pius and his wife Faustina. “They are shown by the portrait busts at the top of the frame, flanked by eagles - associated with imperial power and Jupiter - and were typically released during imperial funerals to represent the spirits of the deceased. Antoninus and Faustina are being carried into the heavens by a winged, heroically nude figure. The armoured female figure on the right is the goddess Roma, a divine personification of Rome, and the reclining figure to the left - with the obelisk - is probably a personification of the Field of Mars in Rome, where imperial funerals took place. [Source: BBC]

Roman Emperors That Became Gods

Mary Beard wrote in The New Yorker: Between the reigns of Julius Caesar (who was assassinated in 44 B.C.) and Alexander Severus (who was assassinated in 235 A.D. and deified three years later), thirty-three members of the imperial family became gods or goddesses, and were titled divus or diva accordingly. Seventeen were emperors (counting Julius Caesar); the rest were wives, sisters, children, and, in the case of the Emperor Trajan’s family, a father and a niece. A few of these — what we might perhaps call vanity deifications — made hardly any impact on Roman religious worship. Nero’s baby daughter, Claudia, who died in 63 A.D., at the age of just four months, was made a goddess, and seems to have been forgotten almost immediately. And although Roman writers list the divine honors given to Caligula’s dead sister, diva Drusilla (including twenty priests and an annual festival), there is hardly a trace of her status as a goddess in any other sources we have. [Source: Mary Beard, The New Yorker, July 3, 2023]

We do, however, find strong hints that there was a line of demarcation between ex-emperors (divi) and the “immortal” gods proper. The difference between divus and deus (the standard Latin for “god”) suggests that divine emperors were not so much gods as god-like. Seneca’s joke, that divus Augustus had never once opened his mouth in the divine Senate until the would-be divus Claudius turned up, points in that direction also. Compared with the other residents of Mt. Olympus, Augustus was of a distinctly subordinate status.

Whether a dead emperor was made a god depended not so much on his worthiness as on how useful his deification was to the man who came after him. For many rulers, the phrase “son of a god” (divi filius) after one’s name was a welcome badge of power. The title was an important part of the “signature” of the first emperor, Augustus, referring back to his adoptive father, Julius Caesar. And the reason that the Emperor Tiberius was not made a divus upon his death, in 37 A.D., was presumably that it held no particular advantage for his successor and great-nephew Caligula, who traced his own right to rule, through his father and mother, back to Augustus.

It is likely that hardheaded cynicism and political calculation played some part in emperors and their advisers presenting imperial power in divine terms. But it was not quite as simple as that. The imperial cult makes more sense, or at least looks less manipulative or absurd, if we put it back into the context of the principles that governed Roman religion more generally. Some of the aspects of the worship of emperors that make it most difficult for us to take it seriously — in particular, the preposterous idea that someone could be a regular mortal one week and immortal a couple of weeks later — fit much more comfortably into traditional Roman assumptions of what gods were and how their power worked in the world.

For a start, Roman religion typically welcomed new gods. In all its different versions — and there was never a single orthodoxy across the Roman world — it was polytheist. New gods were recognized all the time, while others might be quietly forgotten. (Scholars in ancient Rome enjoyed digging up weird time-expired deities, such as Paventia, the goddess who stopped children from being afraid, or Cinxia, one of many who presided over sexual intercourse.) Most helpfully for would-be divine emperors, some gods were said to have originally been human beings. Hercules, for example, after a life as a mortal strongman, was deified on his funeral pyre. And Romulus was also said to have become a god after his death.

In other words, for the Romans, the boundary between the human and the divine was crossable. Some mortals were thought to have had gods among their direct ancestors. Julius Caesar’s family famously traced itself back to the mythical Trojan hero Aeneas and, through him, to the goddess Venus, his mother. (It’s no coincidence that, when Caesar built a new temple to Venus in Rome, he gave it the name Genetrix — “the ancestor.”) Then, there was Suetonius’ claim that one short-ruling emperor, Galba, paraded Jupiter as his ancestor on his father’s side, and (perhaps ill-advisedly) the divine Pasiphaë — who gave birth in Crete to the monstrous half-bull, half-human Minotaur — on his mother’s.

Outside the world of myth, extraordinary human power and success in Rome was often presented in divine terms. The clearest example of this is the costume of Jupiter, through which Roman generals, by wearing it in their triumphal processions, could suggest that at the height of their success they became gods — even if only for a day.

Caesar Worship

Caesar deification

David Silverman of Reed College wrote: “Some moderns do accept that Caesar in his last years encouraged the worship of himself as a god at Rome (following Dio 44.6.5-6, Appian BC 2.106); but this may be a distortion of the indisputable fact that a temple had been erected to clemency or to his clemency. Naturally, being acclaimed as a god by the people of the east (as Caesar was) was seen at Rome as matter of small import. It is true that the Senate declared Caesar to have been a god upon his death, and the popular belief was that a comet seen shortly after his assassination marked his assumption into the heavenly realm (a tale lovingly fostered by Augustus). In short, although there are some distortions, even the most ardent defenders of Caesar must admit that at the end he seems to have become drunk with power and the endless stream of honors heaped upon him by the Senate, and that he ended by making a mockery of Republican practices. [Source: David Silverman, Reed College, Classics 373 ~ History 393 Class]

Suetonius wrote: “To an insult which so plainly showed his contempt for the Senate he added an act of even greater insolence; for at the Latin Festival, as he was returning to the city, amid the extravagant and unprecedented demonstrations of the populace, someone in the press placed on his statue a laurel wreath with a white fillet tied to it [an emblem of royalty]; and when Epidius Marullus and Caesetius Flavus, tribunes of the plebeians, gave orders that the ribbon be removed from the wreath and the man taken off to prison, Caesar sharply rebuked and deposed them, either offended that the hint at regal power had been received with so little favor, or, as he asserted, that he had been robbed of the glory of refusing it. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.): “De Vita Caesarum, Divus Iulius” (“The Lives of the Caesars, The Deified Julius”), written A.D. c. 110, Suetonius, 2 vols., translated by J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Henemann, 1920), Vol. I, pp. 3-119]

“But from that time on he could not rid himself of the odium of having aspired to the title of monarch, although he replied to the plebeians, when they hailed him as king, "I am Caesar and no king" [with a pun on rex ('king') as a Roman name], and at the Lupercalia, when the consul Marcus Antonius several times attempted to place a crown upon his head as he spoke from the rostra, he put it aside and at last sent it to the Capitol, to be offered to Jupiter Optimus Maximus. Nay, more, the report had spread in various quarters that he intended to move to Ilium or Alexandria, taking with him the resources of the state, draining Italia by levies, and leaving the charge of the city to his friends; also that at the next meeting of the Senate Lucius Cotta would announce as the decision of the Fifteen [the quindecimviri sacris faciundis ('college of fifteen priests') in charge of the Sybilline books], that inasmuch as it was written in the books of fate that the Parthians could be conquered only by a king, Caesar should be given that title.”

Augustus Worship and Religion Under Augustus

Augustus held strong beliefs in traditional Roman religion. He restored over 80 temples and passed strict moral laws that mirrored older Roman values. With his encouragement of art and literature Augustus also tried to improve the religious and moral condition of the people. The old religion was falling into decay. With the restoration of the old temples, he hoped to bring the people back to the worship of the ancient gods. The worship of Juno, which had been neglected, was restored, and assigned to the care of his wife, Livia, as the representative of the matrons of Rome. Augustus tried to purify the Roman religion by discouraging the introduction of the foreign deities whose worship was corrupt. He believed that even a great Roman had better be worshiped than the degenerate gods and goddesses of Syria and Egypt; and so the Divine Julius was added to the number of the Roman gods. He did not favor the Jewish religion; and Christianity had not yet been preached at Rome. [Source: “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) \~]

Nina C. Coppolino wrote: “ Roman religion consisted of cult ritual, whose regular and traditional performance had a cohesive role in the state. The prestige of religious things had been dampened by neglect during the civil war years, but now religion was restored and promoted by Augustus for stability and for his own position in the state. Julius Caesar had traced the divine ancestry of his family to Venus and Mars, and when he was deified in 42 B.C., Augustus early in his career became the son of a god; in 29 B.C. he dedicated the Temple of the Divine Julius in the Roman Forum. Augustus's defeat of Antony and Cleopatra was portrayed as a victory of Roman over Egyptian gods; in 28 B.C. Augustus dedicated a temple to 'Actian Apollo' on Rome's Palatine Hill, where Augustus himself lived. Apollo was represented in a cult statue and in reliefs as both the god of vengeance against sacrilege like Antony's, and also as a bringer of peace. Augustus undertook the restoration of existing temples in the city, and he claims to have rebuilt eighty-two. (Res Gestae, 20.4) [Source: Nina C. Coppolino, Roman Emperors]

“After Actium Augustus was venerated as a divine king in Egypt, and the provinces in the east were allowed to erect temples to him in association with the goddess Roma. At Rome the senate made the traditional vows and prayers for his safety, and included him in annual prayers at the beginning of the year; even at Rome, however, the process of divination was begun. His name was included in the ancient Salian hymn to Mars or Quirinus. In 27 B.C. the cult of the Genius of Augustus was established, in which it was decreed that a libation should be poured to his guardian spirit at public and private banquets. The senate authorized a tribute to his moral leadership by setting up in the senate-house a golden shield celebrating his military virtue, clemency, justice, and social and religious responsibility; this shield was associated with the goddess Victoria and therefore implied god-given rule. Laurel trees sacred to Apollo were set up on either side of Augustus's house, and for rescuing citizens he was awarded the corona civica, made of oak leaves from the tree sacred to Jupiter. On coins of the period Jupiter's eagle, a symbol of apotheosis, was depicted with the civic crown and laurel branches.

How the Roman Emperors Became Gods

Apotheosis, decided by the Senate, was the only official form of deification valid for everyone in the Empire and was occasionally extended to female members of the imperial family (Drusilla, the sister of Gaius, who received apotheosis in A.D. 38. was the first such honor). It had its precedent, of course, in the apotheosis of Romulus. Ultimately, the cult of the living emperor mattered more. It was the result of a mixture of spontaneous initiative by provincial and local councils (and even by private individuals) and promptings from provincial governors and the emperor himself. It had precedents not only in the Hellenistic ruler cult but also in the more or less spontaneous worship of Roman generals and governors, especially in the Hellenized East. Though it is unlikely that temples were built to provincial governors, Cicero had to decline such worship when he was governor of Cilicia ( A.D. Atticum 5.21.7).

An eagle, which was often included in the imperial funeral pyre, was thought to take the emperor’s soul to the gods on Mt. Olympus Mary Beard wrote in The New Yorker: Most Romans thought the dead resided in a shadowy limbo, and, for emperors who hoped to transcend this fate, the Senate was the only path to deification. Turning dead emperors into immortal gods by a vote now seems like one of the most baffling aspects of politics during the first centuries of one-man rule in Rome. The tradition began with the deification of Julius Caesar, in 42 B.C., and petered out only with the arrival of a series of Christian emperors in the fourth century A.D. Can the senators really have been serious about the granting of immortality, and the panoply of temples, special priests, and religious rituals that this entailed? Was it all just a crude political stunt? Seneca’s takedown of the process seems to reflect some of his contemporaries’ skepticism. One emperor even thought that it was worth a deathbed joke. According to the biographer Suetonius, Vespasian supposedly quipped at the end of his life, “Blimey, I think I am becoming a god.” The slightly archaic vae of the Latin is often translated as “alas” or “woe,” but to my ear “blimey” captures the hint of comedy better. [Source: Mary Beard, The New Yorker, July 3, 2023]

Cremation — whether of the emperor’s actual body or of his waxwork — was an important part of the funerary ritual. But it also played a key role in the process by which some Roman emperors became gods. What happened on the imperial pyre was crucial to the emperor’s apotheosis. Herodian, writing in the early third century A.D., describes a huge multilayered structure built around a wooden frame, with dry sticks inside to get the fire going, and decorative items, such as paintings, ivory carvings, and gold-embroidered textiles, placed around the outside. At the last minute, an eagle would be released from the pyre, presumably glad to escape the flames. The eagle was meant to soar up to the sky, as if it were taking the soul of the emperor to join the gods. This scene is pictured rather awkwardly on the ceremonial arch of the Emperor Titus, which was built after Titus’ death, in 81 A.D., and is still standing near the Roman Forum: the Emperor appears to be clinging perilously to the bird’s back. In trying to capture the scene in marble, the sculptor succeeded in illustrating an even more important point — how impossible it was to make such a scene convincing.

According to Cassius Dio, an eagle also played a role during the cremation of Augustus. It gave Robert Graves, in his novel “I, Claudius,” an irresistible opportunity for satire. In imagining the scene, Graves writes that the grieving widow, Livia, had hidden an eagle in a cage at the top of the pyre, to be freed by a string pulled at the right moment. But it didn’t work. So “the officer who was in charge,” rather than letting the poor bird burn to death, was forced to climb up the blazing pyre and open the cage by hand — capturing the bathos rather than the solemnity of the occasion. Other aspects of this kind of “apotheosis” raised ancient eyebrows, too. There were sometimes witnesses who were prepared to swear an oath that they had actually seen the late emperor’s soul ascending to Heaven. It was one way to get rich: Livia was said to have paid a small fortune to a man who claimed to have witnessed the ascent of Augustus.

Role of the Funeral in Roman Emperor Deification

Mary Beard wrote in The New Yorker: Inevitably, the style of an emperor’s funeral varied according to the circumstances of his death, and whether it was in anyone’s interest to give him a splendid sendoff. Imperial victims of assassination might be quickly cremated and buried by whatever friends and staff had not yet changed sides; in Caracalla’s case, his ashes were put into an urn and delivered to his mother, Julia Domna, in Antioch (modern Antakya, in Turkey) — which may have driven her to suicide. But, for the most part, there was a standard format for imperial funerals in Rome, first established for the last rites of Augustus, in 14 A.D., and based on the distinctive funerary traditions of the old republican élite. These included, among other things, a eulogy for the dead man and a public display, in the Forum, of his corpse, which was sometimes rather ghoulishly propped up to make it look as if it were standing. Members of the family would usually march in a procession, wearing portrait masks of their distinguished ancestors, as if the ancestors, too, were among the mourners. [Source: Mary Beard, The New Yorker, July 3, 2023]

In the funeral procession, a model of Augustus was dressed in the costume of the god Jupiter, as was customary for Roman generals in their victory celebration, or “triumph.” Another image of the dead Emperor was displayed in a chariot. And the Senate decreed that the route of the cortège — from the Forum to the Campus Martius, just over a mile to the north, where the cremation would take place — should follow that of triumphal processions, though the direction was reversed. This was funeral as victory parade.

The staging of Augustus’ funeral procession placed the Emperor at the center of the Roman world, and of the whole sweep of Roman history. Following tradition, the parade featured people wearing masks of Augustus’ forebears. But the images on display were not just of direct ancestors but of all Romans “who had been distinguished in any way” (as the historian Cassius Dio put it), going back to the city’s founder, Romulus. Even an image of Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar’s adversary, was included — as if any enemies of one-man rule could retrospectively be conscripted into Augustus’ illustrious lineage. The Emperor’s body was carried not by family members but by élite Romans and senatorial officeholders, while a period of mourning was imposed on all citizens (one year for women, and only a few days for men). One of Augustus’ honorific titles had been Father of His Country (pater patriae): the funeral suggested that all Roman heroes counted among his ancestors, and all citizens were part of his family. [Source: Mary Beard, The New Yorker, July 3, 2023]

Caligula

Two hundred years later, the historian Herodian described the funeral, in Rome, of Septimius Severus, in 211 A.D. Not much had changed. Herodian refers to a procession from the Forum to the place of cremation. He describes people, now in chariots instead of on foot, wearing masks representing Roman generals and emperors of the past. But in his account the wax image of the Emperor plays an even more prominent role. Septimius Severus died in York, in northern England, and was cremated there; his ashes were then brought back to Rome. There was no body whatsoever at this funeral, not even a decomposing one. According to Herodian, the waxwork was displayed for a week on a couch at the entrance to the palace, “looking like a sick man,” with the whole Senate in attendance. Every day, doctors would come and pretend to examine the model Emperor and agree that his condition was deteriorating, until they eventually pronounced him dead, at which point the waxwork was taken to the Forum. A similar wax model, dressed in imperial costume, had been used in the official funeral celebrations of the Emperor Pertinax, in 193 A.D., which were held three months after he was assassinated and buried. On this occasion, a “handsome boy” — in the words of Cassius Dio — was assigned to the waxwork, and stood “swatting the flies off it with peacock feathers, as if it really was somebody sleeping.”

Caligula's Self-Deification

Caligula built a bridge from the Palatine hill, where he resided, to the Capitoline, that he might be “next door neighbor to Jupiter” and He threatened to set up his own image in the temple at Jerusalem and to compel the Jews to worship it.

Suetonius wrote: “Chancing to overhear some kings, who had come to Rome to pay their respects to him, disputing at dinner about the nobility of their descent, he cried: "Let there be one Lord, one King." And he came near assuming a crown at once and changing the semblance of a principate into the form of a monarchy. But on being reminded that he had risen above the elevation both of princes and kings, he began from that time on to lay claim to divine majesty; for after giving orders that such statues of the gods as were especially famous for their sanctity or their artistic merit, including that of Jupiter of Olympia, should be brought from Greece, in order to remove their heads and put his own in their place, he built out a part of the Palace as far as the Forum, and making the temple of Castor and Pollux its vestibule, he often took his place between the divine brethren, and exhibited himself there to be worshipped by those who presented themselves; and some hailed him as Jupiter Latiaris. [Source: Suetonius (c.69-after 122 A.D.) “De Vita Caesarum: Caius Caligula” (“The Lives of the Caesars: Caius Caligula”) written in A.D. 110, 2 Vols., translated by J. C. Rolfe, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, and London: William Henemann, 1920), Vol. I, pp. 405-497, modernized by J. S. Arkenberg, Dept. of History, Cal. State Fullerton]

“He also set up a special temple to his own godhead, with priests and with victims of the choicest kind. In this temple was a life-sized statue of the emperor in gold, which was dressed each day in clothing such as he wore himself, The richest citizens used all their influence to secure the priesthoods of his cult and bid high for the honor. The victims were flamingoes, peacocks, black grouse, guinea-hens a and pheasants, offered day by day each after its own kind. At night he used constantly to invite the full and radiant moon to his embraces and his bed, while in the daytime he would talk confidentially with Jupiter Capitolinus, now whispering and then in turn putting his ear to the mouth of the god, now in louder and even angry language; for he was heard to make the threat: "Lift me up, or I'll lift you." But finally won by entreaties, as he reported, and even invited to live with the god, he built a bridge over the temple of the Deified Augustus, and thus joined his Palace to the Capitol. Presently, to be nearer yet, he laid the foundations of a new house in the court of the Capitol.

Deification of Emperor Septimius Severus in A.D. 211

Describing the deification of Emperor Septimius Severus in A.D. 211, the Greek historian Herodian wrote: "It is a Roman custom to give divine status to those emperors who die with heirs to succeed them. This ceremony is called deification. Public mourning, with a mixture of festive and religious ritual, is proclaimed throughout the city, and the body of the dead is buried in the normal way with a costly funeral.

"Then they make an exact wax replica of the man, which they put on a huge ivory bed strewn with gold-threaded coverings, raised high up in the entrance to the palace. This image, in the deathly palace, rests there like a sick man...the whole Senate sitting on the left, dressed in black, while on the right are all women who can claim special honors...This continues for seven days, during each of which doctors came and approach the bed, take a look at the supposed invalid and announce a daily deterioration in his condition."

“When at last the news is given that he is dead, the end of the bier is raised on the shoulders of the noblest members of Equestrian Order and chosen young Senators, carried along the Sacred Way, and placed in the Forum Romanum...a chorus of children from the noblest and most respected families stands facing a body of women selected on merit. Each group sings hymns and songs."

Septimius Severus

“After this the bier is raised and carried outside the city walls to a square structure filled with firewood and "covered with golden garments, ivory decorations and rich pictures." On top of the structure are five more structures that are progressively smaller. “The whole thing was often five or six stories tall."

"When the bier has been taken to the second story and put inside, aromatic herbs and incense of every kind produced on earth, together with flowers, grasses and juices collected for their smell, and brought and poured in heaps...When the pile of aromatic material is very high and the whole space filled...The whole equestrian Order rides round...Chariots also circle in the same formation, the charioteers dressed in purple and carrying images with the masks of famous Roman generals and emperors."

"The heir to the throne takes a brand and sets it to every building . All the spectators crowd in and add to the flame. Everything is very easily and readily consumed...From the highest and smallest story...an eagle is released and carried up into the sky with the flames. The Romans believe the bird bears the soul of the emperor from earth to heaven. Thereafter the dead emperor is worshipped with the rest of the gods."

Emperor Worship: A Unifying Force in the Roman Empire

Dr Nigel Pollard of Swansea University wrote for the BBC: “Emperor-worship was a unifying factor in the Roman world, practiced not only by army units spread throughout the empire but also by individuals in the provinces, where there were collective imperial cult centres at places such as Lyons (Gaul), Pergamon (Asia) and (probably) Colchester (Britain). The imperial cult helped to focus the loyalty of provincials on the emperor at the centre of the empire, and in some regions (such as Gaul), there is evidence that Roman authorities took the initiative in setting it up, presumably for that very reason. [Source: Dr Nigel Pollard of Swansea University, BBC, March 29, 2011 |::|]

Marianne Bonz wrote for PBS’s Frontline: “In the last century before the common era, the Greek cities had fallen prey to corrupt Roman administrators and sporadic local insurrections, as the power struggles between rival Roman factions consumed the remaining vigor of the dying Roman republic. All of these struggles came to an end when Octavian (who, as emperor, was given the name Augustus) defeated the forces of Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium. [Source: Marianne Bonz, Frontline, PBS, April 1998. Bonz was managing editor of Harvard Theological Review. She received a doctorate from Harvard Divinity School, with a dissertation on Luke-Acts as a literary challenge to the propaganda of imperial Rome.]

“With the advent of the reign of Augustus in 27 B.C., life in the provincial cities of the Greek East became far more stable and prosperous than it had been for a very long time. The relief of the subject peoples was immense, and a number of the cities issued decrees honoring the new emperor as the earthly appearance of a benevolent god: "Providence. . .by producing Augustus [has sent] us and our descendants a Savior, who has put an end to war and established all things. . . ."

“Such a response was not without precedent. Since the time of Alexander the Great, the Greeks had been accustomed to giving their rulers divine honors. But with the advent of Augustus, the situation was different. As historian S. R. F. Price observes, the decrees honoring Augustus "make explicit and elaborate comparisons between the actions of the emperor and those of the gods."

“Furthermore, the worship of Augustus was not tied to specific benefactions or civic improvements. Rather, Augustus was worshipped throughout the empire as the benefactor of the whole world. The outpouring of praise, gratitude, and affection for this first emperor, who reigned at the time when Jesus was born, was undoubtedly genuine.

“It was Augustus's virtually unchallenged prestige and popularity that provided the impetus for establishing a cult of the emperors. And this cult, once established, provided continuing support for the imperial governing authority. Accordingly, from the very beginning, the cult of the emperors was a complete merging of religion and politics.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Rome sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Late Antiquity sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; “Outlines of Roman History” by William C. Morey, Ph.D., D.C.L. New York, American Book Company (1901) ; “The Private Life of the Romans” by Harold Whetstone Johnston, Revised by Mary Johnston, Scott, Foresman and Company (1903, 1932); BBC Ancient Rome bbc.co.uk/history/ ; Project Gutenberg gutenberg.org ; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Live Science, Discover magazine, Archaeology magazine, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, The New Yorker, Wikipedia, Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopedia.com and various other books, websites and publications.

Last updated November 2024