scholarly journals The imperial cult and the individual : the negotiation of Augustus' private worship during his lifetime at Rome

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Claire McGraw

This dissertation argues for a reevaluation of the imperial cult in Rome. It demonstrates that worship of the living Augustus began in private acts which progressed into public rituals after his senate-decreed divinity in 14 CE. Scenes of private worship, preserved in architecture, poetry, and the city's topography, as well as private images of the emperor anticipate Augustus' public cult as a divus (deified emperor). The chapters show how the climate in Rome allowed for the private articulation of Augustus' living cult, and then address specific aspects of his worship: sacrifice, cult places, and cultic statues. This argument expands our understanding of Augustus' divinity in Rome to include worship of the vivus (living emperor), and demonstrates how this worship transitioned into public cult. No less importantly, it challenges lingering modern assumptions about the boundaries between divinity and humanity as these played out around the figure of the emperor in early imperial Rome.

1984 ◽  
Vol 104 ◽  
pp. 79-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. R. F. Price

The Greeks under Roman rule suffer from a double prejudice. On the one hand, Hellenists lose interest in the Greeks after the classical period; on the other, Roman historians find it hard to avoid a Romanocentric perspective. This double prejudice becomes particularly acute when the issue is the religious language used by the Greeks to refer to the Roman emperor. For example, the Greeks called the living emperor both theou huios (‘son of god’) and also theos (‘god’). The language looks odd from the perspectives both of classical Athens and of imperial Rome. One way to make sense of it is to treat it as a translation out of Latin. Thus the bizarre practice of calling the emperor theou huios is seen as perfectly natural because it is simply the translation of divi filius. Why natural? Because, as the heirs of Rome, we can attempt to ignore the cultural differences between us and the ancient world. But the tactic of treating Greek as a translation out of Latin does not always work. Calling the living emperor theos cannot be seen as a translation of divus, a term which applies only to dead emperors. Modern scholars are therefore forced to treat the usage as ‘deviant’, the product of either folly or flattery. In fact the failure of theos to translate divus undermines the first assumption that theou huios is a translation of divi filius.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 181
Author(s):  
Carmen Alarcón Hernández

Resumen: El trabajo presenta una revisión historiográfica del culto a los emperadores romanos y su domus en las publicaciones más destacadas de los siglos XX y XXI principalmente. Se aborda un análisis que comienza con el examen de las aportaciones más importantes sobre la materia, de la centuria pasada, que pueden enmarcarse en el paradigma positivista, y finaliza con la influencia de las concepciones postmodernas en el estudio de la adoración a los emperadores. Así, se pretende mostrar de qué modo la interpretación del culto imperial está ligada tanto a la adscripción a determinadas escuelas historiográficas, como a las posturas individuales de cada historiador, marcadas por sus propias convicciones religiosas.Palabras clave: culto imperial, domus imperatoria, historiografía, paradigma interpretativo, religión romana.Abstract: This document presents a historiographical review of the most relevant publications in the 20th and 21st centuries in the cult to the Roman emperors and their domus. The study begins with an examination of the most important contributions on the subject matter that can be framed in the positivist paradigm and ends by exploring the influence of postmodern conceptions in the studies on emperor worship. The paper thereby aims to explain how the interpretation of the imperial cult is linked to both the affiliation with certain historiographical schools and to the individual positions of historians, marked by their own religious convictions.Key words: imperial cult, domus imperatoria, historiography, interpretative paradigm, Roman religion.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 177-207
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Smirnova

The article focuses on clarifying the role of names of Roman emperors in Dostoevsky’s calligraphic records in his notebooks of the late 1860s (Russian State Archive of Literature and Art. Funds 212.1.6 and 212.1.7). One of the reasons for Fedor Dostoevsky’s invocation of images and themes from Roman history was the idea characteristic of the educated class of the mid-19th century, namely, that the history of Rome is a model of virtues and example of vices and atrocities, and is therefore essential to everyone who is not indifferent to the fate of humankind. Since the writer’s creative reflections mainly refer to Gaius Julius Caesar and the rulers of the first two centuries (and the first three dynasties) of the Imperial Period, the writer’s interest in the Roman Caesars must be correlated with his assessment of Imperial Rome in the I—II centuries as the time of strengthening the sole nature of the Emperor’s power and the spread of the Imperial cult, on the one hand, and the formation of Christianity, on the other. At the same time, Dostoevsky’s attention was drawn to Attila and Romulus Augustulus, whose names are associated with the final pages of the history of the Western Roman Empire. For Dostoevsky, Not only texts authored by ancient and Christian authors, but also images of Imperial Rome in contemporary literature and journalism became the sources of associations and motifs associated with the Roman Caesars for Dostoevsky. The most important nuances of meaning were born from the comparison of ancient Roman history with the new history of Western Europe and Russia. The evolution of the subject of calligraphic notes in The Idiot is significant: in the initial drafts of the novel the emphasis was placed on the despotism and monstrosity of the Roman rulers, while the notes for the final version concentrated on the reflection of the history of Imperial Rome and its fate in the Apocalypse.


Author(s):  
C.N. Sun

The present study demonstrates the ultrastructure of the gingival epithelium of the pig tail monkey (Macaca nemestrina). Specimens were taken from lingual and facial gingival surfaces and fixed in Dalton's chrome osmium solution (pH 7.6) for 1 hr, dehydrated, and then embedded in Epon 812.Tonofibrils are variable in number and structure according to the different region or location of the gingival epithelial cells, the main orientation of which is parallel to the long axis of the cells. The cytoplasm of the basal epithelial cells contains a great number of tonofilaments and numerous mitochondria. The basement membrane is 300 to 400 A thick. In the cells of stratum spinosum, the tonofibrils are densely packed and increased in number (fig. 1 and 3). They seem to take on a somewhat concentric arrangement around the nucleus. The filaments may occur scattered as thin fibrils in the cytoplasm or they may be arranged in bundles of different thickness. The filaments have a diameter about 50 A. In the stratum granulosum, the cells gradually become flatted, the tonofibrils are usually thin, and the individual tonofilaments are clearly distinguishable (fig. 2). The mitochondria and endoplasmic reticulum are seldom seen in these superficial cell layers.


Author(s):  
Anthony J. Godfrey

Aldehyde-fixed chick retina was embedded in a water-containing resin of glutaraldehyde and urea, without dehydration. The loss of lipids and other soluble tissue components, which is severe in routine methods involving dehydration, was thereby minimized. Osmium tetroxide post-fixation was not used, lessening the amount of protein denaturation which occurred. Ultrathin sections were stained with 1, uranyl acetate and lead citrate, 2, silicotungstic acid, or 3, osmium vapor, prior to electron microscope examination of visual cell outer segment ultrastructure, at magnifications up to 800,000.Sections stained with uranyl acetate and lead citrate (Fig. 1) showed that the individual disc membranes consisted of a central lipid core about 78Å thick in which dark-staining 40Å masses appeared to be embedded from either side.


Author(s):  
Anthony A. Paparo ◽  
Judith A. Murphy

The purpose of this study was to localize the red neuronal pigment in Mytilus edulis and examine its role in the control of lateral ciliary activity in the gill. The visceral ganglia (Vg) in the central nervous system show an over al red pigmentation. Most red pigments examined in squash preps and cryostat sec tions were localized in the neuronal cell bodies and proximal axon regions. Unstained cryostat sections showed highly localized patches of this pigment scattered throughout the cells in the form of dense granular masses about 5-7 um in diameter, with the individual granules ranging from 0.6-1.3 um in diame ter. Tissue stained with Gomori's method for Fe showed bright blue granular masses of about the same size and structure as previously seen in unstained cryostat sections.Thick section microanalysis (Fig.l) confirmed both the localization and presence of Fe in the nerve cell. These nerve cells of the Vg share with other pigmented photosensitive cells the common cytostructural feature of localization of absorbing molecules in intracellular organelles where they are tightly ordered in fine substructures.


Author(s):  
William W. Thomson ◽  
Elizabeth S. Swanson

The oxidant air pollutants, ozone and peroxyacetyl nitrate, are produced in the atmosphere through the interaction of light with nitrogen oxides and gaseous hydrocarbons. These oxidants are phytotoxicants and are known to deleteriously affect plant growth, physiology, and biochemistry. In many instances they induce changes which lead to the death of cells, tissues, organs, and frequently the entire plant. The most obvious damage and biochemical changes are generally observed with leaves.Electron microscopic examination of leaves from bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum L.) and cotton (Gossipyum hirsutum L.) fumigated for .5 to 2 hours with 0.3 -1 ppm of the individual oxidants revealed that changes in the ultrastructure of the cells occurred in a sequential fashion with time following the fumigation period. Although occasional cells showed severe damage immediately after fumigation, the most obvious change was an enhanced clarity of the cell membranes.


Author(s):  
D. E. Becker

An efficient, robust, and widely-applicable technique is presented for computational synthesis of high-resolution, wide-area images of a specimen from a series of overlapping partial views. This technique can also be used to combine the results of various forms of image analysis, such as segmentation, automated cell counting, deblurring, and neuron tracing, to generate representations that are equivalent to processing the large wide-area image, rather than the individual partial views. This can be a first step towards quantitation of the higher-level tissue architecture. The computational approach overcomes mechanical limitations, such as hysterisis and backlash, of microscope stages. It also automates a procedure that is currently done manually. One application is the high-resolution visualization and/or quantitation of large batches of specimens that are much wider than the field of view of the microscope.The automated montage synthesis begins by computing a concise set of landmark points for each partial view. The type of landmarks used can vary greatly depending on the images of interest. In many cases, image analysis performed on each data set can provide useful landmarks. Even when no such “natural” landmarks are available, image processing can often provide useful landmarks.


Author(s):  
B. Carragher ◽  
M. Whittaker

Techniques for three-dimensional reconstruction of macromolecular complexes from electron micrographs have been successfully used for many years. These include methods which take advantage of the natural symmetry properties of the structure (for example helical or icosahedral) as well as those that use single axis or other tilting geometries to reconstruct from a set of projection images. These techniques have traditionally relied on a very experienced operator to manually perform the often numerous and time consuming steps required to obtain the final reconstruction. While the guidance and oversight of an experienced and critical operator will always be an essential component of these techniques, recent advances in computer technology, microprocessor controlled microscopes and the availability of high quality CCD cameras have provided the means to automate many of the individual steps.During the acquisition of data automation provides benefits not only in terms of convenience and time saving but also in circumstances where manual procedures limit the quality of the final reconstruction.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document