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$Unique_ID{bob00825}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter III: Part I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{augustus
religion
gods
temple
worship
temples
new
emperors
public
roman}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of The Romans
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter III: Part I

Religion Under The Empire

     The Reforms of Augustus - Innovations - Deification of Deceased Emperors
- Worship of the Living Emperor - Foreign Deities - Syrian Gods - Cybele and
Attis - The Mysteries - Taurobolium - Worship and Mysteries of Isis -
Initiations - Mysteries of Mithras - The Spelaea - Degrees - Origin of the
Religion - The Mithraic Myth - Christianity - Suppression of the Old
Religions.

     It would be a mistake to infer from the signs of decadence which are so
conspicuous in the last century of the republic that religion itself had lost
all hold on the hearts and lives of men.  It must be remembered that the
sources from which our knowledge of religious and moral conditions in that
century is drawn disclose to us chiefly the state of things in the capital and
among the classes upon which the demoralising influences described above
worked with the greatest energy.  That the Roman character was not
irremediably corrupted, and that the vitality of religion was not wholly
exhausted is, indeed, convincingly proved by the history of the following
centuries.

     Julius Caesar, who had been a member of the pontifical college since 74
B. C. and became Pontifex Maximus in 63, made some reforms in the state
religion, and planned others.  Augustus showed his interest in the revival of
forms long since fallen into desuetude by declaring war against Cleopatra in
32 B. C. with the ancient priestly rites of the fetiales - the first time they
had been used, it is said, in a century.  When the victory over Antonius at
Actium made him master in the state he turned his hand to the filling of
priesthoods and the restoration of priestly guilds that had become extinct,
such as the Sodales Titii and the Arval Brotherhood.  Already for years a
member of all three of the great colleges (Pontifices, Augures, Quindecemviri
Sacris Faciundis), he had himself enrolled in the revived sodalities, and the
leading men of the time were prompt to follow his example.  His expressed wish
overcame the reluctance of the great families to dedicate their daughters to
the service of Vesta, and at last (in 11 B. C.) the long-vacant place of
Flamen Dialis was filled again.  Beginning in the year 28 B. C., eighty-two
temples in the city of Rome were restored, while others had to be completely
rebuilt - a striking testimony to the neglect of the last generations.

     All these measures had for their end the revival and reform of religion
as it was before the century of its decline.  But along with this Augustus
made innovations which mark an era in the history of Roman religion.  The
Julian gens regarded Apollo as their peculiar patron and protector; Augustus
raised him to the place of the tutelary deity of the monarchy and thus of the
state.  As a monument of his gratitude for his victories over Sextus Pompeius
and Marcus Antonius, he erected for Apollo a new and splendid temple on the
Palatine.  This edifice stood on ground belonging not to the state but to the
dedicator (in solo privato), and was, therefore, according to the ancient
doctrine of the sacred law, not a public temple; but no such antiquated
distinction could prevent the imperial temple from taking rank with the
temples of the state, and if the Palatine Apollo with Diana by his side
yielded precedence for the sake of history to the Capitoline Juppiter and his
companions, Juno and Minerva, his actual importance was second to none.
Indeed, the new ritual for the celebration of the Ludi Saeculares in 17 B. C.
seems expressly designed to put the Palatine pair upon an equality with the
Capitoline triad, while the poets of the time exalt Apollo with their highest
praises.

     An even bolder innovation was ventured when, after Augustus became
Pontifex Maximus (12 B. C.), he consecrated a new temple of Vesta on the
Palatine adjoining his palace, thus, as it were, appropriating for the
imperial house the sacred hearthfire of the Roman people.  In the new Forum
Caesaris a temple was erected to Venus Genetrix as the origin of the Julian
house; in the middle of the Forum of Augustus stood a temple of Mars Ultor
(dedicated in 2 B. C.).  The statutes of this temple ordained that in it
members of the imperial family should offer sacrifice upon assuming the toga
virilis; from it magistrates should set out to the provinces; here the senate
should sit when voting to make war or decreeing a triumph; here, after the
celebration of a triumph, the triumphator should lay down the insignia; here
captured standards should be deposited; and here the censors should drive
their nail at the expiration of each lustrum (five years).  In transferring
these ceremonies from the temple of the Capitoline Juppiter to this new
centre, Augustus pursued his consistent policy of dissociating public acts
from the localities with which they had been connected in republican times and
attaching them to places which had no memories, and no associations save with
the new order of things.  The temple of Mars Ultor stood in fact, like that of
Apollo on the Palatine, on private ground; it was a foundation not of the
Roman people but of the prince personally; and the god thus honoured was,
significantly enough, the Avenger of the murder of Julius Caesar.  Venus, as
the ancestress of the Julian gens, had a place in this temple also.

     Finally, when in 7 B. C. Augustus redivided the city into regions and
wards, he prescribed that in every shrine of the Lares Compitales - the patron
saints of the parish, one might say - the Genius Augusti should have a place
between the two Lares.  The reforms of Augustus were thus not merely an
antiquarian restoration of the old Roman religion or a revival of the Greek
rite, but inaugurated a new epoch; in them was laid the foundation of the
religion of the empire.

     The most salient feature of this religion as it subsequently developed is
the worship of the deified emperors.  The first step in this path was taken in
42 B. C., when by formal act of the senate and the people Julius Caesar was
enrolled among the gods.  In 29 B. C. a temple was dedicated to him in the
Forum; he had a flamen (sacrificial priest) of his own, and a festival (on his
birthday) among the public holidays.  The example thus set was followed in the
case of Augustus (died 14 A. D.); but it was not till the end of the century
that the consecration of the deceased emperors became a matter of course.
Before Nerva, only Augustus, Claudius, Vespasian, and Titus had been thus
honoured.

     The senate exercised its right to make gods not only in favour of rulers
but of other members of the imperial family, including Livia, the wife of
Augustus; Drusilla, sister of Caligula; Nero's daughter Claudia and his wife
Poppaea; Titus' daughter Julia; Trajan's father, sister, and wife; Hadrian's
wife and mother-in-law; and the wives of Antoninus Pius and Marcus Aurelius.
This practice later fell into disuse, but from Nerva on almost every emperor
became a god, and the consecratio, which at first had followed some time after
the ruler's death, was a regular part of the funeral ceremonies.

     The Divi Imperatores were not mere titular and complimentary gods. Each
of them down to Marcus Aurelius received his own temple and priesthood; and
the place they took in the state religion is shown by the form of the oath of
office.  In republican times magistrates had sworn by Juppiter Optimus Maximus
and the Penates; in Domitian's reign the formula ran: "Per Iovem et divom
Augustum et divom Claudium et divom Vespasianum Augustum et divom Titum
Augustum et genium imperatoris Caesaris Domitiani Augusti Deosque Penates."
The deified empresses had their own priests (or priestesses), and their
birthdays were calendar festivals, but they were worshipped in the temples
dedicated to their consorts - Livia with Augustus, Plotina with Hadrian,
Faustina with Antoninus Pius.

     In this way a new class of gods was introduced into the public religion,
for whom the name Divi, hitherto equivalent to Dei, was appropriated.  They
were introduced as a class even into ancient liturgies like that of the Arval
Brotherhood which otherwise recognised only the old Roman gods, and in their
piacular rites the Arvals offered victims to each of the deified emperors with
an invocation by name (inscriptions speak of sixteen or twenty).  New
sodalities were established for the cult of the Divi, beginning with the
Sodales Augustales, who, after the consecration of Claudius, assumed his
worship also and the name Augustales Claudiales. A second sodality was formed
for Vespasian (Flaviales), which in like manner added the cult of Titus
(Flaviales Titiales); the Hadrianales perhaps included Trajan.  Each of these,
it will be observed, is devoted to the Divi of one family, or at least of
closely connected lines.  The last of the imperial sodalities, the
Antoniniani, however, added to the worship of Antoninus Pius, for which it was
originally constituted, not only that of his adoptive sons, Lucius Verus,
Marcus Aurelius, and Commodus, but their successors, Pertinax, Caracalla, and
Alexander Severus - the assimilation to a gentilic cult is abandoned.

     The multiplication of Divi, each with his temple, priesthood, and public
festivals celebrated with processions and exhibitions in the circus, became in
time a serious burden: not only was the cost of these celebrations a heavy
charge on the treasury, but the interruption of public and private business
was intolerable.  It was plain that, if things went on so, there would soon be
more holidays than there were days in the year.  Long before it became the
custom to deify every dead ruler, the senate had found it necessary to appoint
a commission (in 7 A. D.) to go over the calendar and reduce the number of
public festivals, if there were to be any working days at all.  After M.
Aurelius no Divus was honoured with a separate temple; and from the middle of
the second century there was a Templum Divorum on the Palatine dedicated to
all these deities, with an individual shrine for each.

     Beside this public cult of the deceased emperors, the worship of living
emperors established itself.  Augustus, as we have seen, had introduced the
worship of the Genius Augusti along with the Lares Compitales; as the father
of the people he thus takes the place which the genius of the paterfamilias
had in the domestic cult.  Only in this form, which was for the Roman
apprehension quite distinct from the worship of a living man, had the worship
of the emperor a place in the state religion. In the provinces, however, both
in the East and the West, Augustus was worshipped in his lifetime as a god on
earth.  In Egypt kings had been divine from time immemorial.  Alexander had
gone out of his way to get from the oracle of Ammon in the great oasis an
attestation that he was the son of the god.  The Ptolemies succeeded to the
divinity of the Pharaohs: they were worshipped by the Egyptians in the temples
of the national gods, while in the Greek cities in Egypt special temples and
priesthoods were dedicated to them.  The divine titles Soter, Euergetes,
Epiphanes, with or without the word Theos, speak for themselves.  The queens
shared this divinity.  The first Ptolemy and Berenice were; Ptolemy II and
Arsinoe, Ptolemy III and Berenice II, and so on down the line.  The Seleucid
kings in Syria wore the same titles; there was a priesthood for the dead kings
and another for the living.  The custom of being a god found imitation not
only by the kings of Pergamon but in Commagene and in distant Bactria. Temples
were erected, sacrifices offered, festivals and games celebrated in their
honour.  In Greece itself the city of Athens honoured its deliverer, Demetrius
Poliorcetes, and his father Antigonus, with a formal cult, erected an altar to
them as Saviours, and voted them an annual festival with processions and
games.

     The modern is likely to take such apotheoses of living men - often of
detestable men - as ignoble flattery or "Oriental servility," and to see in
the acceptance of such homage, not to say in the assumption of divine
attributes, an arrogance bordering on insanity.  It must be remembered,
however, that the gods in the popular conception were only magnified men -
there was no fundamental difference of kind or character; and that the
benefits they bestowed on their worshippers were in great part those which it
lay within the power of a ruler to confer on his subjects - protection from
their enemies, peace, order, and prosperity.  Indeed, for these blessings the
dependence of the people on their sovereign was much more immediately manifest
than their dependence on the gods; in the collapse of the nationalities the
ancient tutelary gods of the cities had proved powerless to secure to their
worshippers these blessings.  And as for the too human shortcomings of these
gods of clay, the popular religions knew nothing of impeccable gods.

     It was natural that in the eastern provinces the new ruler should succeed
to the divine as well as the human titles of his predecessors. But there were
other reasons for the veneration of Augustus - reasons no less strongly felt
in Italy than in the provinces.  Augustus had put an end to the century of
intestine strife, of civil wars and ruthless proscriptions, that had more than
once created a veritable reign of terror.  He had established a firm peace at
home and abroad; the closing of the doors of the temple of Janus was more than
the revival of an obsolete rite, it was the inauguration of a new era.  The
Saviour had appeared, the golden age had begun.  The language in which Virgil
and Horace extol Augustus is not merely the extravagant flattery of court
poets; it expresses a general sentiment.  The ills from which he had delivered
mankind were so enormous that the achievement seemed superhuman - the man,
superman.  He is compared to Juppiter and often assimilated to Apollo; the
name "god" is given him outright by Virgil, as well as by Propertius and Ovid.

     In response to petitions from the Province of Asia and from Bithynia (in
29 B. C.) for permission to establish his worship, Augustus ordained that the
temples should be dedicated jointly to the Goddess Rome (the deified city, to
whom the Greeks had erected temples as far back as the time of the Punic wars)
and himself; and this conjunction is attested in many municipal and provincial
cults both in the East and West.  Whether it was modesty or policy which
prompted Augustus thus to cling to the skirts of Dea Roma, the fiction was not
long maintained; before his death temples were erected to Augustus alone, not
only in the provinces, but in Italian cities.  In Rome itself, as we have
seen, the worship of the Genius of the Emperor was engrafted on the state
religion, but the cult of the ruling emperor in his proper person had no
place.

     Tiberius forbade the foundation of temples and priesthoods to himself,
nor would he allow his statue to be set up among the images of the gods.  In
the provinces he allowed temples to be dedicated to him jointly with the Roman
senate and his mother.  On the other hand, Caligula took his godhead seriously
and demanded divine homage for his person. Nero was more modest; he loved to
be hailed in the circus as the new Apollo, but declined a proposal made in the
senate to erect a temple to him as Divus - a kind of oblique consecration in
his lifetime which may well have seemed to him ominous.  Domitian signed
himself god in writing to his procurators, but after his death the senate
voted him, not the consecratio, but a damnatio memorioe.  Among the later
emperors, Commodus was as much obsessed of his divinity as Caligula.  But none
of them received the same general worship throughout the empire which had
spontaneously been accorded to Augustus.  The temples dedicated to him in his
lifetime became, upon his death and consecration, temples of Divus Augustus,
and did not pass to his successor in the empire.  Nor had the reigning
emperors after Augustus priesthoods in their own names, at least in the West -
some such occur in the East.  These senate-made gods did not always abide in
their divinity; the worship of some was abolished by decree, as that of
Claudius by Nero, others were simply forgotten.

     Provinces and municipalities vied with one another in commending
themselves to their earthly god by the dedication of temples and images, by
festivals and games.  These celebrations did more than anything else to make
the worship of the divine emperor popular.  They survived, indeed, the triumph
of Christianity and the suppression of the sacrifices; numerous laws of the
Christian emperors are concerned with the regulation of the games, which were
still given under the auspices of the provincial priesthoods.

     In connection with the worship of the emperors, mention must be made of
the establishment of special cults for numerous deities which modern scholars
often conceive as personifications of qualities, such as Faith, Hope, Virtue,
Honour, and the like, but which Cicero, with truer apprehension, defines, in
introducing a list of them, as "res . . . in qua vis inest maior aliqua." Some
gods of this class belong to the old Roman religion, others had been added in
later times on various occasions; they seem to have multiplied especially in
the last century of the republic and the early empire.  A new turn and fresh
impulse was given to this phase of religion by association with the emperor.
Such titles as Salus Augusta, Pax Augusta; Clementia ^1 or Providentia
Caesaris, exemplify a category which it would be too long to enumerate.  The
association varies, but the effect was to link in another way the familiar
forms of religion to the person of the ruler.

[Footnote 1: The senate decreed in 39 A. D. an annual offering to the
Clementia of Caligula!]

     The worship of the emperors - the Divi and the living ruler - was the one
religious bond that united all the diverse peoples and religions of the
empire.  Other gods were widely worshipped; these universally. However little
real faith and reverence there may often have been in it, this universality
had more than a mere political significance; it accustomed men to the notion
of a public religion in which men of all races and tongues took part.  To this
extent it prepared the way for the cosmopolitanism of Christianity.

     In this rapid sketch of the reforms and institutions of Augustus, our
attention had been occupied with the external aspects of religion; but it
would be a mistake to imagine that we have to do only with a reorganisation of
religion from above by a statesman who knew its political value.  The power
and glory of Rome in the Augustan age wrought an exaltation of the national
consciousness which carried in itself a revival of the national religion, so
that the measures of Augustus found a response in popular feeling.  The
revival was, however, short-lived; or perhaps it would be better to say, the
decadence was only for a little while arrested.