The Imperial Cult

Primary Sources

LR I 201, 207, 211.
Cicero, Letters to Atticus, Book 5.21.2-7; Book 12.18.1 and 12.19.36; Book 14.11.1 (scattered across volumes 2-4).
Vergil, Eclogues, 4.15-16, 48-49.
Augustus, Res Gestae 9-11.
Horace, Odes Book 3.6.1-20, 33-43 (= Book 3, Ode 6, lines 1-20, 33-43)
Livy, Periochae (= Summary of Book) 139.
Velleius Paterculus, Roman History, 2.124.
Ovid, Tristia, 2.53-55, 169-175.
Pliny the Elder, Natural Histories 2.94.
Suetonius, Julius Caesar 88; Augustus Caesar 7, 31, 52, 59, 94, 98, 100; Tiberius 26.
Tacitus, Annals 1.10, 39, 57, 78; 4.15, 37, 38, 55-56.

Secondary Sources

R. Syme, The Roman Revolution (Oxford repr. 1987), pp. 440-458.

S. R. F. Price, Rituals and Power: the Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge U. Press, 1984), pp. 23-59, 74-75, 207-248.

P. Zanker (tr. A. Shapiro), The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Michigan 1988), pp. 297-333.

Main Questions

What precedents were there in the Greek east for emperor worship? What was Augustus' attitude toward the imperial cult? Did he regard it differently in the eastern as opposed to the western provinces? What form did it take, and what political and social rôles did it play? How does one reconcile the imperial cult with Augustus' 'Republicanism'?

What evidence is there for Price's view that the Roman imperial cult in the Greek world is an accommodation of external authority within the traditions of the local communities? What, in Price's view, are the dangers of both Christianizing and functionalist interpretations (along with the dichotomy of 'efficient' and dignified' aspects of the state) of the imperial cult (pp. 234-248)?