NOTES

1  On the place of these two works and two supplementary essays published in 1930 on Gundolf’s scholarly ffiuvre as a whole, see Poschl 1981.

2  My title alludes deliberately to the first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang Di.

3  The absence of Julius Caesar from Pliny, NH 11.143-4 does not show that ‘‘Augustus counted as the first of the Caesars for the elder Pliny’’ (as asserted by Pelling 2002: 213), only that Pliny did not consider Caesar’s ‘‘dark and lively eyes’’ (Suetonius, lul. 45.1) as remarkable as those of the emperors Tiberius, Augustus, Claudius, Caligula, and Nero - whose eyes and eyesight he discusses in this order. Nor again does the younger Pliny’s comparison of Trajan’s consecration of Nerva as a god to the consecrations of Augustus by Tiberius, of Claudius by Nero, and of Vespasian and Titus by Domitian show that either he or Trajan considered Augustus the first emperor: Pliny cites these precedents in order to praise Trajan for not imitating predecessors who did the same as Trajan, but with different motives, Tiberius in order to introduce trials for maiestas, Nero to ridicule a recently dead emperor, and Domitian to glorify himself (Panegyric 11.1-2).

4  Geiger (1975, 2002: 93-5) dates Plutarch’s imperial lives to the reign of Nerva and argues that Augustus headed the official list of good emperors for nearly a century after his death until Trajan introduced the name of Julius Caesar. But official celebration of Caesar’s birthday began in 42 BC and its annual celebration on 12 July is attested during the reign of Tiberius (Degrassi 1963: 185-99, 208; cf. Barnes 1998: 144-1), in the Feriale Duranum, which is datable between 225 and 227 (P. Dura, col. ii.21), and perhaps at Theveste in Africa at about the same date (CFL 8.1858-9 = FLAlg 1.3040, 3041), and it is still registered, even if on the wrong day, in the fifth century calendar of Polemius Silvius (CFL 12, p. 261 = Degrassi 1963: 270). Admittedly, Caesar’s birthday is absent from both the calendar for July and the list of imperial birthdays in the so-called Chronographer of the Year 354 (CFL 12, pp. 260, 255 = Degrassi 1963: 250-1). But that does not necessarily mean that Constantine removed Caesar from the list of imperial divi whose birthdays were officially celebrated, as argued by Zecchini (1990; cf. Degrassi 1963: 482). It should be noted that the fact that the Arval Brothers did not celebrate Caesar’s birthday during the first century does not prove that it was not officially celebrated by others, since the only birthdays which the Arval confraternity ever celebrated were those of reigning emperors and their close relatives (Scheid 1998). It seems probable, therefore, that Caesar’s birthday was officially celebrated in Rome continuously for several centuries.

5  Long (2006: 65-6) finds Caesar ‘‘a somewhat surprising guest’’ on the assumption that in 362 “contemporary habits of thought’’ regarded Augustus as the first emperor.

6  It should be noted that the apparently earlier work often cited as A. Schenk von Stauffenberg, Caesar bei Malalas, diss. Halle, 1930, is not the author’s dissertation, which was examined and accepted by the University of Halle-Wittenberg in 1928, but merely a preprint of pages 79-123 of his book of 1931 issued separately, but with identical pagination.

7  Compare Symeon the Logothete (pseudo-Leo Grammaticus), p. 53.22-54.17 Bonn and George Cedrenus, p. 299.20-300.21 Bonn: both make Caesar an emperor, both report that a horse was born on his estates with cloven hooves that no-one else could ride, and both have some (though not the same) genuine snippets of information about Caesar’s assassination.