One of the great problems for those dealing with the imperial cult is the question of how the “theology” of the cult and the information were disseminated. In this context a papyrus from Egypt offers valuable information. The text has preserved part of a play that was staged at the local theater. The god Phoebus Apollo himself appeared on stage to announce to the audience that he had just accompanied the emperor Trajan, with his carriage drawn by white horses, to heaven. But then he announces the good news that the new emperor Hadrian has just entered office, who is characterized with the words “whom all things obey because of his virtue and the Genius of his divine father (= Trajan).”
The superhuman appearance of the emperor and his core family could quite effectively be transmitted by the minting of coins (see chapter 11). Of course coins could not replace the written message of an honorary inscription and an official oration praising the divine achievements of the emperor, but certainly coins were much more widely disseminated within the empire. Coins used a pictorial language with a concentrated and simplified message that could be immediately understood, at least by the population of the cities. A coin with a picture showing the supreme god, Jupiter, handing a small statue of the goddess of victory to the emperor transmitted a definite message: the emperor has received his power and his ability to be victorious from the supreme god himself.
Only a very small minority of the Roman population had the chance to meet the emperor at least once during their own lifetime. The emperors only rarely left Rome or Italy - the traveling emperor Hadrian (ad 117-38) is clearly an exception - but the desire to enjoy the personal presence of the emperor was very great. Under these circumstances the fabricated image of the emperor was of enormous importance, because it could be used as a substitute for his person. You could address the image of the emperor when you offered sacrifice to him; the picture of the emperor was present if you took an oath and invoked his name to confirm the validity of your statement. A slave who felt tortured by his master could flee to the statue of the emperor and find a kind of asylum, because the shelter offered by the image of the emperor was as valid as the emperor himself.
The conviction that the statue of an emperor was as powerful as the living emperor himself was much more than an expression of a primitive popular belief. It represented a kind of belief that was also shared by the higher ranks of the political hierarchy. Therefore the picture of the emperor could be used even during diplomatic encounters to represent the authority and power of the emperor if he could not attend the meeting. When the Armenian king Tiridates met Domitius Corbulo, the Roman supreme commander who had conducted the war against him, the reigning emperor Nero (ad 54-68) was far away in Rome. Tacitus (Annales 15.28) has described the ceremony that took place in ad 63.
The Roman and Armenian armies, arranged in battle order, were watching. In the center of the Roman army a tribunal had been built, on which the seat of a magistrate {sella curulis) with the image of Nero had been placed. After victims had been sacrificed king Tiridates approached this image, took the diadem from his head, and placed it in front of the image. Afterward Tiridates traveled to Rome to receive his appointment from Nero himself. The presence of the emperor’s image during this ceremony has a double meaning. First of all the image had the function of substitute for the emperor, but then it also emphasized that Corbulo, the leading Roman magistrate in the place, was licenced to act as the representative of the emperor.
As in the eyes of the people the emperor and his well-being were an indispensable precondition for the well-being of the empire as a whole, the subjects too had to contribute their share so that the other gods supported and protected the emperor. The legal aspects of the problem that we can grasp in the imperial oaths were not sufficient.
Therefore people had to turn directly to the gods to win their assistance for the security of the emperor. This was accomplished by regular prayers and sacrifices for the security of the emperor, but also by collective actions, when the population publicly offered vows {vota) for the security of the emperor. Each year on January 3 the so-called “taking of vows” {nuncupatio votorum) took place. It was a public and collective ceremony during which the assembled population took a solemn vow in front of the images of the gods and the emperor.
to the testimony of Pliny {Epist. 10.100f.) we know quite well the words of such a vow as it was usually made in the reign of emperor Trajan. Pliny, as the governor of the province of Bithynia and Pontus in what today is Turkey, was obliged to organize such a ceremony and recite the words of the vow, which were repeated or at least confirmed by the people, who had to take part in this ceremony. To take part in such a publicly performed ceremony did not mean that people were expected to make an individual confession of their creed - such a problem faced only the Christians with their very strict monotheistic creed - but they had to take part as citizens of the Roman empire or as members of a group.
World History
