| Summary: | It is the aim of this thesis to examine and contrast three aspects of the Roman state imperial cult as it existed under the Julio-Claudians and Domitian: the official state cult recorded by the Arval brothers (chapter one), and the roles of the Genius of the princeps (chapter two) and the divi (chapter three) in Roman state imperial cult. I will identify fundamental remodelling of several key aspects of the cult, and argue that this reflects changes to the ideology of imperial power that the cult expressed. Specifically I will argue that the imperial cult under the Julio-Claudians expressed the dynastic and earthly sources of their power – their hereditary claim to power and the powers they were invested with by the senate – and also created a cult of personality around each individual princeps, treating them as a prince of Rome. I will show that it was exactly these aspects that were largely removed from the form of the imperial cult by the reign of Domitian. Under Domitian, rather than concentrating on the claim to power of an individual charismatic princeps, cult focussed on the Principate as an important institution in Rome that had to be maintained over individual reigns and even dynasties. As a result of these changes the princeps was also largely represented as a chief magistrate who acted for the benefit of the state. The subsidiary goal of this thesis is to suggest the possibility that the majority of this remodelling in fact took place during the reign of Vespasian, but the evidence surviving from his reign is too limited to confirm this suggestion with certainty.
|
|---|