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ASCLEPIADES

Cult to Republican generals

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Well one has to be careful : the roman rulers of Republican time may indeed have been the object of a cult but only outside of Rome, in the Hellenic area. Cult inside of Rome did not arrive until Augustus when the Princeps orchestrated a cult for his father Caesar which he made central to the whole empire. Before then it was left to each city to decide if they wanted to organize a cult to someone, and they did it mainly to stand into the good graces of those leaders and their descendant.

 

Caesar, while indeed using his divine descent in his propaganda, did not say he was a god himself for other could have made the claim base on similar ancestry...

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Well one has to be careful : the roman rulers of Republican time may indeed have been the object of a cult but only outside of Rome, in the Hellenic area. Cult inside of Rome did not arrive until Augustus when the Princeps orchestrated a cult for his father Caesar which he made central to the whole empire. Before then it was left to each city to decide if they wanted to organize a cult to someone, and they did it mainly to stand into the good graces of those leaders and their descendant.

 

Caesar, while indeed using his divine descent in his propaganda, did not say he was a god himself for other could have made the claim base on similar ancestry...

 

I totally agree.

 

For example, TQ Flaminius was only worshipped by the citizens of one polis, Chalcis of Euboea...

 

(but for a very long time!)

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You give a very good example Asclepiades. The controversy that arose in Rome around the statue of Flaminius that the Greeks offered him ( the famous bronze statue we can still see at the Palazzo Massimo in Rome ) because he was represented in the heroic nude as a god is a famous case showing how the Romans saw their generals.

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