THE MISSING IVLIVS-ROMA CULT

Dio's remarks on the first official cult to Augustus offer the only coherent account of what kind of cults the triumvir allowed to be consecrated in Asia and Bithynia. The scene is set in Pergamum, where the young Caesar met representatives from Asia and Bithynia (51.20.6-8):

Dio's words have led to the universal consensus that Augustus allowed the inauguration of two different cults: one to his own worship and one to Divus Iulius and Thea Roma; and that both cults and the relevant sanctuaries were established as described by Dio.Footnote ⁵ Whereas the cults to Roma and Augustus in Pergamum and Nicomedia are attested on the cities' coins and in the accounts of both Tacitus and Suetonius, there is no other evidence for cults to the joint worship of Iulius and Roma in either Ephesus or Nicaea.Footnote ⁶

The assumption that the cult to Iulius and Roma never existed, owing to lack of evidence, is of course an argument from silence and therefore in many ways a problematic conclusion. On the other hand, if a joint cult to Iulius and Roma never existed, there is no evidence to support its non-existence. Such an argument will have to be circumstantial and the conclusion has to be drawn from the surprising lack of evidence for the cult in two of the best documented cities in Asia and Bithynia and on the basis of the oddity that neither Tacitus nor Dio himself mentions the cult when they discuss why Ephesus was not chosen as the host city to any of the later cults, to Tiberius and to Caligula. Another aspect that needs to be factored in is Dio's reservation against any kind of cult to living emperors, which, combined with how Augustus is portrayed as the model emperor, should encourage a very cautious reading of 51.20.6-8.Footnote ⁷ In order to fit his own model of the ideal emperor, who treated the senatorial elite respectfully, Dio would have to downplay Augustus' role in the inauguration of cults where Roman citizens were asked to worship the living emperor.Footnote ⁸

Various sources have been seen as evidence for the existence of the Iulius-Roma cult. One example is a damaged inscription from Ephesus, where the worship of Caesar is mentioned.Footnote ⁹ The inscription has been interpreted as a transliteration of a Roman decree set up in relation to the Divus Iulius cult in 44 b.c.e., after the triumviri had won control over the affairs of the state.

The essential word in the inscription is hieromnēmonē, which has been interpreted as a Greek translation of either pontificatus or flaminatus.Footnote ¹⁰ The mention of Antonius' name in the inscription has led to the assumption that it was set up as early as 41 b.c.e., when Antonius was in Ephesus.Footnote ¹¹ Later it was suggested that the year 41 might be too early and that the inscription should be dated to the year 40 or perhaps 39 b.c.e.—after the triumviri had begun promoting the cult.Footnote ¹² It is difficult to be certain, but Antonius' appearance in the inscription suggests that he was somehow involved in the cult or its inauguration. Still, it is of course not impossible that an earlier law mentioning Antonius could have been set up at the consecration of a cult in Ephesus in 29 b.c.e. or shortly thereafter, to Divus Iulius and Roma, who is not mentioned in the inscription, but it seems unlikely that Octavian would accommodate the memory of his enemy by associating him with Caesar in a legal document, and thereby underline the close relationship between his father and his mortal enemy. What seems altogether more convincing is that the inscription should be dated to the beginning of the triumvirate, in the years after the Battle at Philippi, when Antonius was first active in the east, promoting the cult in an area previously controlled by the Liberators and not in the years after the civil wars, where the memory of Antonius was, if not condemned, surely not a part of Octavian's ideology.

Another attempt to locate the Iulius-Roma temple in Ephesus is offered by Hänlein-Schäfer. Her investigation of the temples of the early imperial cults suggests that a building on the so-called Kaiserforum in Ephesus may have been the temple to Iulius and Roma. The hypothesis is based on the building technique datable to the first century b.c.e., a Roman architectonical style and the fact that the construction could host two cells and thereby the joint cult of the two deities.Footnote ¹³ Naturally, the possibility is not to be excluded that this building did host the temple to the Iulius-Roma cult. But, without any reliable epigraphic references to tie the building and the cult together, Dio remains the only testimony if we attempt to find a suitable location for the cult. Without any epigraphic and numismatic references, the existence of the cult will have to rest on the available literary evidence, which treats the Early Imperial period and thereby also to some extent the worship of the Julio-Claudian emperors. Tacitus' description of how the second imperial temple, on this occasion in Smyrna, was inaugurated in honour of Tiberius, Livia and the Senate offers information on early emperor-worship. Tacitus explains why Smyrna was chosen to host the temple over Ephesus and Pergamum (Ann. 4.55.2):

Tacitus goes on to note how Smyrna was selected over Sardis because the city had supported Rome well before it was clear that the Romans would win world-domination (Ann. 4.56). But what is more exciting for this discussion is why the temple was not awarded to the people of Pergamum or Ephesus. According to Tacitus, Pergamum had already been sufficiently honoured after receiving the temple to Augustus, and the Ephesians were believed to be too devoted to the worship of Artemis and therefore not obvious candidates for an award of a temple to the emperor. It is odd that Tacitus mentions the cult to Augustus in Pergamum but not the cult to Iulius-Roma in Ephesus, particularly if we are to believe that the Iulius-Roma cult was consecrated simultaneously with the Augustus cult in Pergamum. The missing reference to the Iulius-Roma cult does not, of course, prove that the cult never existed. But it is strange that Tacitus does not mention the cult, which, if it did exist, would have been an important element in the worship of Augustus' house per se and to the public image of the Julio-Claudian dynasty in general; and it is particularly odd in a context, where Ephesus' suitability to host a temple to the second Julio-Claudian emperor is considered. But what is even more surprising is how Dio also ignores the Iulius-Roma cult when he discusses the official explanation as to why Caligula chose Miletus over Ephesus when he searched for a suitable venue for the temple to his cult (59.28.1):

Once again, it is the worship of Artemis, and the presence of one of the most important temples in the Greek world, not Iulius and Roma, which seems to be the reason why Ephesus is denied the honour of a temple to the emperor. No emperor would want his temple or cult to stand in the shadow of another cult, not even the cult to Artemis. But it is still surprising that Dio does not mention the cult to Iulius-Roma, especially when he underlines its importance in Book 51.20.6-8.

One explanation why Dio would ascribe the worship of Thea Roma to a cult followed by Roman citizens might be found in the later practice among Roman immigrants in Galatia of worshipping Roma as Roma Archegetis—Roma the Founder. The origin of this form of Roma worship emerged on Roman initiative, as is suggested by the names of priests in Attaleia in Pamphylia, where, for example, Caecilia Tertulla, the priestess of Julia Augusta and Roma, and Sextus Paccius Valerianus Flaccus, a sacerdos of Roma, testify that Roman citizens were involved in the worship of Roma.Footnote ¹⁴ The cult to Roma was initially a way by which, from the beginning of the second century, cities in Asia Minor showed their loyalty to Rome. But as has been pointed out by Stephen Mitchell, the worship of Roma the Founder became a way by which Roman immigrants could emphasize their Roman origin and a common identity in a foreign environment.Footnote ¹⁵ Furthermore, by the time Dio wrote his Roman history, Roma was now formally introduced as a state cult in Rome and worshipped in one of the city's largest temples, together with Venus. The first Roma cult, in which Roma appears together with Venus, and the temple in Rome date to the reign of Hadrian and are mentioned by Dio, who may not have been aware that this was indeed the first official cult to Roma in the capital.Footnote ¹⁶

Another possible reference to the Iulius-Roma cult, this time from Nicaea, is in the inscriptions above the city's northern and eastern gates, where Nicaea's status as neôkoros is mentioned.Footnote ¹⁷ The temple the Nicaeans claim to have guarded has also been identified as a temple to Hadrian built after the emperor's visit in 123-4 c.e. Footnote ¹⁸ Another possibility is that the people of Nicaea were referring to a historical status as neôkoros, a status, which the city may have lost along with its status as Metropolis. According to Strabo 12.4.7, Nicaea was the Metropolis of Bithynia when he wrote his Geography in the first decades of the first century; a status the city had lost to Nicomedia by the time Dio of Prusa wrote his speeches on homonoia, sometime around the beginning of the second century (Dio of Prusa 38.39).Footnote ¹⁹ This opens up the possibility that the first provincial cult to Augustus in Bithynia was initially planned and perhaps even commenced in Nicaea and then, at a later time, moved to Nicomedia when Nicaea was no longer the Metropolis of Bithynia. In any case, there is nothing that suggests that the reference to neôkoros refers to a temple to Iulius-Roma, which clearly, if it did exist, would not count among the koinon-supervised temples.

The inscription refers to the temple of the emperors and there is no mention either of Roma or of the divine Caesar or, for that matter, of Hadrian.Footnote ²⁰ Instead, the inscription on the gates states that Nicaea was the neôkoros of a temple to the Sebastoi, which suggests that not one but a number of Augusti were worshipped in the temple. A similar temple is known from Ephesus, where a temple to the joint cult of several emperors was dedicated to the Flavian emperors in the reign of Domitian, which in any case suggests a date much later than the first century b.c.e. Footnote ²¹ Another inscription, this time on the sarcophagus of a C. Cassius Chrestus, archpriest and sebastophant from Nicaea, supports a Flavian date.Footnote ²² Chrestus' name also appears on the gates, in another inscription where he is recorded as the agent who, on behalf of the proconsul Plancius Varus, set up the statue groups of the Flavian emperors.Footnote ²³ Now, the Flavian inscription does not mention that Nicaea was a neôkoros, but the title could have been bestowed upon the city later on, perhaps as a sign of gratitude for the statues.

Other scholars have suggested that the Iulius-Roma cult was introduced only to disappear soon or relatively soon after its inauguration.Footnote ²⁴ It has been argued that in 51.20.6-8 Dio is referring to some sort of legal document, where the decision to consecrate the two cults in Asia and Bithynia is described.Footnote ²⁵ If Dio was indeed quoting an official document, it would render plausible the assumption that a cult to Iulius and Roma was, at least, being planned or maybe even realized, only then to be abandoned before it caught on. In addition, the Roman citizens Dio says worshipped Iulius and Roma were not, in the late first century, in a position where they were likely to mint coins on their own initiative—something which would explain why there is no numismatic attestation to the cult in Ephesus or Nicaea. These are valid points, which can support the consecration of the two different cults and explain the lack of conclusive evidence for the cult to Iulius-Roma.

Yet, despite the probability that the Iulius-Roma cult could have been inaugurated as described by Dio, it remains remarkable that no evidence, numismatic or epigraphic, has survived from either of the two cities, which one would expect to have been keen to advertise the honour of hosting what would be official cults to Augustus' divine father. And even if Roman citizens in the last decades of the first century b.c.e. were few in number in Asia and Bithynia—and therefore less integrated in the cities' political institutions, and therefore not involved in the decisions about which images were to appear on the coins—it is still surprising that Ephesus and Nicaea would refrain from advertising the honour on their coins or elsewhere. Furthermore, Dio does not suggest that the Iulius-Roma cult was an exclusive club for Roman citizens in Nicaea and Ephesus. There was, therefore, nothing to prevent local citizens in Nicaea and Ephesus from honouring the two deities and no reason why just one of the two cities would decide to mint coins or set up inscriptions commemorating the honour of hosting the Iulius-Roma cult and its sanctuaries.

That the cities should have neglected the cult seems particularly odd considering the competing nature of the cities in western Asia Minor, where the disagreement over where to locate the temple to Tiberius, Livia and the Senate in the twenties c.e. suggests that the honour of hosting an official cult and an additional sanctuary was essential to the cities' image. Furthermore, considering the importance Augustus attributed to the Divus Iulius cult in Rome, it seems even more strange if we are to believe that Nicaea and Ephesus—or for that matter the Romans Augustus allegedly ordered to take part in the cult in both cities—abandoned the cult or altogether refrained from consecrating it.Footnote ²⁶

To neglect a cult that was both introduced by Augustus and essential to his ideology could easily lead, if not to serious reprisals, such as when Tiberius removed Cyzicus' status as a free town, partly owing to the city's neglect of its temple of Augustus, then at least to damage to the relations between the city and the imperial house—something which the cities were keen to both secure and maintain.Footnote ²⁷ Another important question to be considered is whether Octavian would jeopardize support for a cult to his father, essential to his appearance as Diui filius, by introducing a goddess, who up until then had personified the people of Asia's submission to Roman rule, into a cult, where Roman citizens, in the same region, were requested to pay their respect. Whittaker moves on to argue in favour of the existence of the Iulius-Roma cult, suggesting that Augustus—by introducing Thea Roma into the Divus Iulius cult—wanted to establish a link between his own Roma-Augustus cult and that of Caesar and Roma.Footnote ²⁸ But it remains difficult to see why the introduction of Roma would smooth the way for the worship of Augustus. If anything, Augustus would risk offending the Romans in Asia Minor, who would be very likely to have disapproved of an arrangement, if they were ordered to honour a goddess worshipped by their subjects.

Owing to lack of evidence for a cult to Iulius-Roma, the conclusion to be suggested here is that joint cults to Caesar and Thea Roma were never consecrated either in Ephesus or in Nicaea. Worship of Caesar did take place in Ephesus when the dictator was alive and it is reasonable to assume that it continued under the triumviri and into the reign of the Julio-Claudian emperors. What seems unlikely is the claim that Augustus had the people of Asia and Bithynia inaugurate joint cults to Caesar and Thea Roma, whom the Roman citizens in the region were ordered to worship, and then, shortly thereafter, decided that it was he himself who was to appear in a joint cult together with Roma. It is, of course, not difficult to imagine a significant degree of confusion, changes of plan, misinformation or misunderstanding. Still, disorder does not explain why Augustus would allow or encourage the inauguration of a cult to a goddess who—at this particular place and point in time—symbolized loyalty and submission to Roman rule; and then ask Roman citizens from Rome and Italy to pay their respects here.

True, the cult to Roma and Augustus did find its way into the cities on the Italian peninsula, testifying that Roman citizens in Italian cities (Pola, Neapolis and Ostia) worshipped the cult to Roma together with Augustus.Footnote ²⁹ This presents us with a paradox that is not easily solved. One possible explanation is that the official cults in Asia and Bithynia inspired the cities in Italy to consecrate cults to Roma and Augustus. It has also been suggested that the Roma cult changed its meaning after Actium and the Augustan settlement, shifting from a traditional Hellenistic ruler to a personification of Rome the imperial city, the res Romana.Footnote ³⁰ That the cult later changed its meaning as a result of Augustus' Principate is also suggested by what seems to be an abandonment of single cults to Roma after she was incorporated into a joint cult with Augustus.Footnote ³¹ If true, this approach fits with Hadrian's temple and cult to Rome in the second century, later known as the temple to the city of Rome, and Tacitus' identification of the Roma-Augustus temple in Pergamum as the temple to Augustus and the city of Rome.Footnote ³² If, in the Age of Augustus, Roma personified the city of Rome and the Roman state, rather than submission to Roman rule, worship of Roma would then represent a way by which the Italians, and the Roman citizens in the provinces, could worship the emperor and Roma, but not necessarily as a means of underlining their submission or loyalty to a nexus of power. Instead, the worship of Roma and Augustus, in a joint cult, was a way to uphold the Roman or the imperial community. To the non-Roman part of the population, particularly in the beginning of the Principate, where the number of locals with Roman rights was still small, Roma might have maintained her traditional meaning as the personification of Roman power.

If no joint cult to Roma and Divus Iulius ever existed, the idea that, right from the beginning, the imperial cult was divided between a cult where Romans worshipped the deceased ruler and a cult where Rome's subjects (i.e. those without Roman status) worshipped the current emperor no longer stands. Augustus and later emperors were deified by the Senate and after their death they were worshipped as Rome's official gods, and it is also more than likely that the cult to Divus Iulius in Rome served as the inspiration for Augustus' own deification in 14 c.e. But in the Early Principate, the only cult through which Romans as well as non-Romans could demonstrate their support and devotion to the first citizen and his new political order was the cult to Augustus.

The Augustus cult in Italy was an exception, but that Roman citizens elsewhere worshipped Augustus in the same context and in the same fashion as those without Roman civic rights is suggested by an inscription found in the city of Neapolis in Pontus. Here, in central Asia Minor, oaths of loyalty were sworn to Augustus, Gaius and Lucius in 3 b.c.e. in Paphlagonia and in Pontus:Footnote ³³

When the Emperor Caesar Augustus, son of the god [Julius Caesar] had been consul for the twelfth time, in the third year, March 6, in Gangra in …, the oath was taken by those who dwell in Paphlagonia and by the Romans who pursue their business among them. ‘I swear by Zeus, the Earth, the Sun, all the gods and goddesses and by Augustus himself that I will be favourable towards Caesar Augustus and his children and descendants.’

And later in the same inscription

Likewise did the Phazemonitae, who dwell in what is also called Neapolis, all swear in the sanctuary of Augustus at the altar of Augustus.Footnote ³⁴

Judging from the inscription it appears that both the Romans, who did their business in the region (which again must mean that they were from outside the region), and the indigenous population in the eparchies of Pontus and Paphlagonia, of their own volition or otherwise, swore to the god Augustus at the Augustus sanctuaries in the region. From a political point of view, Romans as well as non-Romans were all, in a sense, subjects to Augustus.Footnote ³⁵ The only exception was in the capital, where in his own words Augustus superseded the rest of the citizens in influence but still wished to be counted among them.

THE UNDIGNIFIED WORSHIP OF THE LIVING LEADER

The problems with Dio's account of the early worship of Augustus are not limited to the question of temples or the number of consecrated cults. The claim that no living emperors were ever worshipped in Rome or Italy is another example of how Dio offers unreliable information as to how the early worship of Augustus was organized. As demonstrated by Ittai Gradel, Augustus was worshipped in Italy while alive in temples, at altars and with priests; and the attempts to explain Dio's remark by suggesting that the Italian cities worshipped the emperor's genius, not the emperor per se, no longer stand.Footnote ³⁶ It is hard to believe that Dio's claim was out of ignorance, and it raises the question why Dio would mislead his readers.

Dio's reluctant attitude towards any kind of cult to living rulers has been pointed out, and it is likely to be here, in his general scepticism towards emperor worship, that we are to find the reason for Dio's version of the early imperial cult.Footnote ³⁷ This critical attitude towards cult to living emperors is particularly evident in the Agrippa-Maecenas dialogue, where any kind of divine honours are characterized as inappropriate and compromising for the emperor's public image. Here Dio has Maecenas point out that worship of the living emperor would require the emperor's own consent who would then end up consecrating his own cult and face the risk of being ridiculed (Dio 52.35-36.1).

This bias towards a cult, where Roman citizens worshipped the living emperor, has convincingly been seen as the result of how emperors in the late second and early third century repeatedly crossed the boundary between mortal and divine, even in the capital.Footnote ³⁸ Elsewhere, Dio describes how Commodus asked to be worshipped as Hercules, how the young emperor took the name ‘god’ and commissioned statues in gold to be set up in his honour (Dio 73.15-16).Footnote ³⁹ The Syrian emperor Elagabalus was no better. With no senatorial background, and only fourteen years old when appointed princeps, Elagabalus, according to Dio, set out to rearrange Roman religion by elevating Elagabal the Syrian sun-god of Emesene above Jupiter (Dio 80.11-12.2).Footnote ⁴⁰ Elagabalus also had a golden statue made in his own image and a picture of himself, together with his god, set up in the senate house above the image of Victory, where the senators sacrificed before initiating the meetings (Dio 80.12.1 and Herodian 5.3-6). In Dio's eyes, this kind of behaviour was altogether intolerable. To accommodate and promote one's own divinity was, as is shown in Maecenas' speech, seen as a mark of megalomania and an example of tyranny, where by the claim to divinity the emperors set themselves apart from the rest of the Roman population—not least from the senatorial elite, who were then forced to submit themselves to what were often young inexperienced emperors. Gone was the illusion of the emperors as Rome's first citizens. The distinction between a cult where Roman citizens worshipped the deceased emperor and a cult where foreigners worshipped the living ruler, as described in 51.20.6-8, can therefore be interpreted as a literary construct aimed to convince the readers that it was never Augustus' intention that Roman citizens should worship him as a god, at least not until after his death and the official deification by the Senate.Footnote ⁴¹

It has been argued that Maecenas' advice to Augustus should be seen as a source for how emperor worship was organized under the first princeps.Footnote ⁴² But to see Maecenas' speech retrospectively as evidence for how emperor worship was carried out at the beginning of the Principate, without considering Dio's predisposed attitude towards ruler cult, is problematic. It offers the impression that Augustus was reluctant towards receiving any kind of personal cult, but ignores the fact that he, while still alive, accommodated various kinds of divine worship in a variety of ways and contexts in Asia Minor, Greece and Italy, and also in Gaul and in Spain, precisely the fact to which Dio has Maecenas object (52.35.1):

And later, on the question of temple dedications (52.35.4):

Maecenas' speech, the account of how no emperor was worshipped in Italy and in Rome, and the fact that the early emperor-worship was divided into separate cults according to legal status, can be read as Dio's attempt to convince his readers that emperor worship, in his own day, was becoming out of touch with the original intention. Dio's version of how emperor worship was first planned is therefore to be seen as a well-disposed critique of a practice where Roman citizens were expected to worship current emperors. In the first decades of the third century a large share of the provincial elite were now Roman citizens and had been so for one or more generations; and a significant part of the provincial population could, following Caracalla's edict in 212, now acquire Roman citizenship. Consequently, most of the empire's civic elite and a significant share of the rest of the population were not, according to Dio, meant to worship living emperors.

For this to be convincing, at a time when worship of both living and deceased emperors was a well-integrated part of the empire's religious and political landscape, even in the city of Rome, Dio needed emperor worship to be divided according to legal status. The senators' role in consecrating the cult was crucial as it was subject to their approval that the cult became tolerable. By controlling the right to determine whether or not an emperor should be deified, the senators would obtain not only the illusion that the emperor was a citizen like themselves but also, at least theoretically, the opportunity to refuse the deification of emperors whom they considered unworthy to be counted among Rome's gods.

This, of course, was all in Dio's head. From the very beginning, Roman citizens were involved in cults of Augustus, not least in Italy, where soon after Augustus' accession, P. Vedius Pollio built a Caesareum to Augustus and the colonia Beneuentana—a gesture other Italian cities were soon to follow.Footnote ⁴³ As Dio's model emperor, Augustus could not come across as the kind of leader who would promote his own worship. Therefore, he had to appear in the role of the passive recipient who, when allowing cults to his own worship, accommodated local traditions. But by letting Augustus be the emperor who reluctantly allowed non-Romans to consecrate cult in his honour, but never asked Roman citizens to do the same, Dio was able to underline how, in his own day, emperor worship was getting out of hand, and needed to find its way back to the original intention, where Romans would honour their leaders, granting them divine honours, if they had ruled rightfully and respectfully. That the non-Roman part of the empire's population worshipped the living emperors, as a sign of their loyalty and submission, was another matter, even if Dio firmly believed that all extraordinary honours would compromise the emperor's integrity and therefore ought to be avoided altogether.Footnote ⁴⁴