Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor

by S.R.F. Price

In his study of the Greek cults of the Roman emperor in Asia minor, Simon Price attempts to discover why the Roman Emperor was treated like a god. He contends that ever since the emergence of Christianity within the Roman Empire the problem has been misinterpreted; a Christianizing distinction between religion and politics has led to the cult being considered simply as a form of political honours. Drawing on anthropology as well as numismatics and archaeology, literary sources and inscriptions, Dr Price offers a fundamentally different perspective. He examines how the Greek cults of the Roman Emperor located the Emperor with their subjection to the external power of Rome. The book falls into two major parts. The first analyses the historical, social and cultural contexts of the Imperial cult, showing that the cult was deeply rooted in the Greek cities. The second focusses on the evocations of the rituals of temples, images and sacrifices. It casts light on the architechural development of Greek Cities, on cult statues in the ancient world and on the vitality and flexibility of the Greek religious system. In his concluding chapter the author draws out some of the general implications of the book; comparative material from Africa and Cambodia help our understanding of the relationship between religious ritual and political power. This book, which assumes no knowledge of Latin or Greek, will appeal to students and teachers of ancient history and archaeology. It will also attract anthropologists, historians and others interested in the interpretation of rituals and in the history of early Christianity.

Genres: History, Religion, Anthropology

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[Lee Harmon · Rating 3 out of 5]

By beginning the book with a survey of the development of Hellenistic religion and Temple worship, Price eases into the topic of how Roman emperors grew to be worshipped in the same manner. Drawing on literary sources and archaeology, and comparing the rituals of Imperial temples to those of Greek gods, he concludes that the worship of Roman emperors was far from some sham religion meant to honor Asia Minor’s controlling rulers. The emperors of Rome were honestly worshipped as divine.

Price discusses temple construction, the cultural context, and the rituals that were performed. Caesar worship became hopelessly intertwined with public religion, commerce, government, entertainment, and ceremony.

Why is this topic interesting to me? Because the rise of the Imperial Cult mirrored the rise of Christianity, and in Asia minor especially, it must be considered a primary competitor to Christianity. The Book of Revelation provides the most clear Christian response to the Imperial Cult in Asia Minor, severely opposing its abominable worship. While very little is mentioned in Price’s book about Christianity, the Christian scholar will, of course, read the book with the topic of Christian opposition and particularly John’s Apocalypse in the back of his mind.

I’m unaware of any more exhaustive research on this topic, and for that reason, it’s an important book. I did, however, find the writing too dry for easy reading. You will learn, but you will dig hard to do so.

[Jack O'Connell · Rating 3 out of 5]

The text succeeds in being both entertaining and quite informative. Unfortunately, not all the arguments have aged well and many suffer from a teleological understanding of the past.

[Jared Saltz · Rating 2 out of 5]

In a post-Christian world which sees Christianity as "victorious" over Greek and Roman religions, modern scholars have had the tendency to see this as necessary in the historical sense. They view Greek and Roman religion as having a classical high point that slowly erodes and decays over time, where later ideas are necessarily less true or valuable or honorable than earlier ones (certainly a golden age view!). Thus, the emperor cult, having its roots in Hellenistic Greek religion and manifesting most prominently in the three centuries at the end of the pagan era of Rome (1-3rd cent AD), the apply the hermeneutic of decay and see it as a religion purely political--the elite surely didn't actually believe the emperors were gods! It was just perverse Greek adulation or Roman politicking! However, Price doesn't think that this is tenable. By looking at archaeology of cults in Asia Minor synchronically, and pairing it with numismatic, epigraphic, and limited literary evidence, he concludes that imperial cult is not an "either / or" of politics and religion, but a nexus of power best viewed through anthropological models of "embodiment thinking" or "segments of symbolic knowledge" and a way to view the world without discussing what was actually believed. Indeed, Price thinks that asking what the Greeks actually believed about the emperors is irrelevant, and asked only do to our "Christian Spirit," where belief is important. To some degree, this critique is valid--certainly ancient Judaism and other religions cared less about what one actually believed than what one did, but to disregard any question of belief, conception, or emotional response to the cult seems foolhardy. Better is Price's decision to trace the entre from Hellenistic ruler cult, which Price states was a response to changing norms, when cities had ot honor an absent king, and thus it was a way of negotation new political and ideological space. He then moves forward to say that the decision to model the imperial cult after divine cult--while spontaneous and arising in the cities and villages of Asia Minor--was conscious in that it was not modeled after the hero cult (as seen from the way sacrifices were offered and the specifics of where adulation was given). The greatest value of the book comes not from his argument, which I find at many places weak, but the evidence that he gives (particularly in part 2 of the book), allowing readers to gain a better understanding of the scope of nature of the evidence themselves.

[Melek Nur]

Good