Author : Ittai Gradel
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780199275489
Total Pages : 408 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (754 download)
Book Synopsis Emperor Worship and Roman Religion by : Ittai Gradel
Download or read book Emperor Worship and Roman Religion written by Ittai Gradel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While Roman religion worshipped a number of gods, one kind in particular aroused the fury of early Christians and the wonder of scholars: the cult of Roman emperors alive or dead. Was the divinity of emperors a glue that held the Empire together? Were rulers such as Julius Caesar and Caligula simply mad to expect such worship of themselves? Or was it rather a phenomenon which has only been rendered incomprehensible by modern and monotheistic ideas of what religion is--or should be--all about? This book presents the first study of emperor worship among the Romans themselves, both in Rome and in its heartland Italy. It argues that emperor worship was indeed perfectly in keeping with Roman religious tradition, which has been generally misunderstood by a posterity imbued with radically different notions of the relationship between humans and the divine.