Jesper Majbom Madsen

Criticizing the benefactors: the severans and the return of dynastic rule

This chapter focuses on Dio’s critique of the Severan dynasty and on dynastic rule in general. The negative portrayal of the emperors of Dio’s own lifetime is here read as a frustration over how the rule of a new dynasty had replaced the practice of electing the next emperor through adoption among established members of the Senate, who had already proven their administrative and military skills. Even if the notion of how the adoptive emperors opened up their government and involved the senators in the decision making process was an illusion, Dio still portrays the better part of the second century as one of the most stable periods in Roman politics, in which the Senate both acted as the emperors’ trusted advisory board and formed the body from which the next emperor was chosen. When read in its entirety, Dio’s Roman History stands out as work of political history with the specific aim to convince the readers of how monarchical rule was the only safe form of government for a state the size of Rome. But, just as importantly, it needed to be a monarchy in which the emperor took into consideration the advice of a Senate recruited from across the entirety of the Empire.

CASSIUS DIO AND THE CULT OF IVLIVS AND ROMA AT EPHESUS AND NICAEA (51.20.6-8)

This paper considers Cassius Dios account of the early worship of Augustus. Its main focus is the number of cults consecrated to the worship of Romes new undisputed leader and his father, the now deceased and deified Divus Iulius, after the triumvir, on his way back from Alexandria in 29 b.c.e. , wintered in Asia Minor. In his account of how the first official worship of Augustus was organized, Dio describes how Augustus let two separate cults inaugurate: a joint cult to the worship of Divus Iulius and the goddess Thea Roma—a Greek deity, which since the second century served as a personification of Roman rule or Roman power—and a personal cult to the worship of the victorious triumvir (51.20.6-8).

Introduction: A Roman Greek

This introductory chapter of this book on Roman Rule in Greek and Latin Writing gives overview on the various aspects discussed in the book. The book gathers chapters on a variety of authors, across several literary prose genres and documentary texts, and through this spectrum, makes possible a comparison of educated Greek and Latin views of Roman power (in various manifestations, including military, religion, law and politics). This comparison proves valuable to understanding of the relationships between culture(s) and authority in a diverse imperialist society. The first two chapters of the book offer contrasting pictures of Greek participation in aspects of Roman power over a wide chronological range. Across the chapters of the book, the visions of imperial government and culture that Greek- and Latin-speaking writers from the late first to mid third centuries command are seen to be resistant to tidy linguistic compartmentalisation. Keywords: diverse imperialist society; Greek participation; imperial government; linguistic compartmentalisation; Roman power