This chapter argues for the role of collective cognition in creating Roman religious reality. Inauguratio, through which priests were created, was no empty orthopraxic ritual but a means of generating collective belief in order to create socio-religious status and power. Ideally, when Romans judged the ritual of inauguratio efficacious, they collectively believed that Jupiter had sent auspicial signs approving a candidate and that the candidate was therefore a priest. Collective belief was what made the priest a priest, with all the powers and duties concomitant with that status. But the Romans were typically blind to the collective-intentional nature of their social reality. Thus the standard Roman explanation of inauguratio mystifies sacerdotal ontology, holding that priests were priests as a result of Jupiter’s nod. Constitutive beliefs are distinguished from non-constitutive, merely religious beliefs. The Romans’ collectively held constitutive beliefs about sacerdotal status and power actually constituted priests as priests. Although Jupiter’s agency could not be constituted by Roman collective belief, it was a genuine religious belief and part of Roman conceptions of the basis of sacerdotal authority.

Imperial behaviour, like the emperor’s name and image, was multifaceted, with different people expecting different things at different times. The variation was limited. A set of imperial roles – military, religious, and civil – was established rapidly and remained important throughout Roman history. There was variation of the balance between these different roles, but it was difficult for any emperor to wholly ignore any of them. Emperors could not present themselves as they saw fit. In that sense, Roman emperorship shows striking continuity. Still, the empire developed, and emperorship developed with it. Some of these shifts took place within traditional patterns. Christianity reformulated the emperor’s religious role, but did not redefine it. Child emperors were still expected to be military leaders. The move away from Rome as the emperors’ residence seems to have had a different kind of impact, diminishing the importance of some of the ‘Republican’ expectations with which Roman emperors had to cope. Yet for a Roman emperor to become exemplary, he had to satisfy different demands. Playing the right roles for relevant people was the best way to become the perfect emperor.