Imperial State Religion as a Collective Project

Visual rhetorical strategies of the frieze that emphasized the religious nature of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus over its dynastic function also implicated the Senate and people of Rome in the imperial religious project of which the temple was one facet.

La Follette cautions against personifying ritual objects in sacred assemblages and interpreting them solely in light of the political significance of the actors, advocating instead for interpretations that underscore their ritual significance (2011-2012, 27). Metonymic imagery in sacred assemblages, however, is so powerful because it is multivalent, drawing on multiple associations including ritual use and the identities of the actors. While objects in the frieze such as the culter, malleus, and securis represent actions performed by people with specific roles in sacrificial ritual, there are no class distinctions or implications for the cursus honorum inherent in these roles. In contrast, the apex is intimately connected to the status and identity of the flamines, the only individuals permitted to wear the cap.^[280] The exclusive entitlement of the flamines to perform rituals in the context of Roman state cult marked their status in a divinely sanctified social order (Varhelyi 2010, 2). Significantly, members of the pontifical college, the pontifex maximus and the flamines, could only be appointed from the senatorial ranks.

Closely associated to the flamen divorum in function and status, though not part of the pontifical college, were the imperial sodalitates, the associations charged with veneration of the deified emperors. A staggering twenty-one members, including four members from the imperial family, were appointed to the Sodales Augustales in 14 CE (Dio 56.46.1; Tac. Ann 1.54).^[281] After the death and deification of Claudius the Sodales Augustales transformed into the Sodales Augustales Claudiales.

Subsequently, Domitianic literary sources and inscriptions attest to the establishment of the Sodales Flaviales and Seviri Flaviales, charged with the veneration of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus.^[282] Recognition of the importance of the imperial sodalitates is found in an episode from the Capitolia festival established by Domitian, who enjoyed the festivities from his vantage point between the flamen Dialis and members of the Sodales Flaviales Titiales (Hardie 2003, 130). Senatorial competition for appointment as a member in one of the four major priestly colleges, as well as in the sodalitates, was intense in the Julio-Claudian and Flavian periods because, Zsuzsanna Varhelyi suggests, priesthoods remained one of the exclusive privileges of senatorial rank (2010, 57). In addition, unlike political appointments that were temporary, the lifelong term of many priesthoods lent dignity to the positions. A priesthood or membership in sodalitates might also entitle a senator to participate in religiously and symbolically charged festivals such as games in Rome given by the Senate as vota for Julia's health in 22, in which priests of the four major colleges and the Sodales Augustales had prominent roles.

While the ritual evoked by the frieze in the minds of viewers was likely a bloody sacrifice by a flamen Maiores or flamen divorum, for Senators the apex may also have represented their collective religious authority and status. In a masterful analysis of senatorial religion under the empire, Varhelyi argues for a communal aspect to senatorial membership in priestly colleges. With one component of Senatorial identity associated with its traditional claim to religious expertise, in the Imperial period priestly office was an integral part of what it meant to be a senator in Rome (2010, 56-90).

Though individuals held priesthoods, the Senate was represented as unified in its claim to religious authority. Visual imagery in particular, Varhelyi observes, characterized priestly roles as communal rather than individual (2010, 56-90).

In large-scale representations of religious scenes with a focus on sacrifice the emperor is the “prime sacrificer” (Gordon 1990, 209-10). Consigned to a group of togate men in the background, priests are presented as a symbolic collectivity of anonymous actors. Communal, Varhelyi cautions, does not mean devoid of agency; rather senatorial identity derived from membership and religious authority inherent in the group, such as the power to grant deification. Though the emperor usually instigated the deification of a deceased predecessor, official deification was a senatorial process that required deliberation and resulted in a decree of the Senate attesting to corporate religious authority (Varhelyi 2010, 53-54).

Metonymic representation of a flamen through the galerus renders the individual priest anonymous while granting ritual agency to all flamines, and perhaps implicitly to all priests of the four major colleges as well as the sodalitates affiliated with the cults of the divi. Denying individual priestly identity in the frieze, the representation of the galerus has divested the frieze of specificity avoiding individual honor.^[283] In terms of epideictic speech, the galerus may be considered a collective biographical snapshot of one role, either actual or aspirational, of the senatorial elite that was crucial to its collective identity.

The frieze's prominent placement on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus accentuates a fundamental function of the flamines and suggests that the role of the Senate in deification and veneration of deified emperors was more complex than simply serving as an alternative source for legitimacy of the cults. Benefiting priesthood holders, and by extension the senatorial class, when juxtaposed with the temple inscription the frieze not only highlighted the collective agency of the Senate in implementing and sustaining the cults of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, but also contributed valuable symbolic capital to the Roman senatorial elite by concretizing their role in the timeless world of Roman state cult practice. Despite social measures that enhanced the difference between ruler and ruled, such as the Lex lulia Theatralis that explicitly structured the hierarchy of viewership in the theater, close association of priests with the emperor simultaneously raised their social standing while unequivocally relegating them to a subordinate role of veneration.^[284] If Varhelyi is correct in identifying an imperial agenda aimed at appeasing senators who wanted more religious authority, such an agenda supports the view that the Flavians are explicitly recognizing priestly status and authority by visual emphasis on the community of priests, not on the emperor as a prime sacrificer or on any other individual man (2010, 77-79).

At a minimum, monumental acknowledgement of priestly roles would have appealed to the senatorial elite, of whom many were invested in the success of the imperial religious program because they identified it with the traditional religious associations of their own power (Varhelyi 2010, 47). In short, the sacred context of the frieze set members of the pontifical college in a special relationship with the gods, though certainly not as close to the gods as the emperor.

The frieze of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, however, targeted viewers beyond the senatorial elite. As suggested above, viewers likely associated the objects in the frieze with ritual participants that they might have witnessed conducting sacrifice in front of the temple on one of the yearly sacrifices. Relying on the memorial process of viewers, the metonymic imagery of the frieze drew on personal experience to bring the sacrificial ritual to life in the viewer's imagination, complete with movement, sound, and action. In this sense the viewer is an active participant complicit in mentally reenacting the bloody sacrifice. As the viewer surveys the successive objects, she reanimates the ritual in a process of mental recreation that sets the events free from their spatial framework, perhaps by rearranging them in a mental tableau independent of their fixed visual configuration (Leach 1988, 310). Admittedly, explicit recognition of the rhetorical concepts of ornament, clarity, and repetition applied to the frieze may have been available primarily only to the educated viewer, but visual cues that underscored the animation of the objects and drew on past experiences were accessible to a general audience.^[285]

Further implicating the viewer, the architrave inscription located patronage of the temple firmly in the public realm outside of the imperial family. It served as an enduring record attesting to the role of the Senate and Roman people in the instigation, concretization, and monumentalization of the new cults.

Thus, pietas towards Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus was not only in the domain of the new gods' successor, Domitian, but was also a quality to be demonstrated by the Senate and people, an ideal echoed in the frieze reenacting public sacrifice. For Roman and non-Roman viewers the inscription ostensibly expressed the communal will of a collectivity, the Senate and people of Rome.

As a closing note, in discussing potential viewer responses to the frieze on the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus it is necessary to consider, at least briefly, the practical issue of visibility. Were viewers able see the frieze and discern not only the objects of the frieze, but also the intricate details that artists carved with such skill and attention? At a height of 1.022 m, the frieze was 15.074 m above the ground level of the pronaos (including the 0.703 m tall column base, 11.80 m tall column shaft, 1.667 m tall Corinthian capital, and 0.904 m tall architrave). Add to the 15.074 m an additional 4.2 m tall podium at the lowest level of the Clivus Capitolinus on the north side of the temple, and less on the south side to account for the upward sloping ground line of the Clivus Capitolinus that viewers used to approach the temple from the Roman Forum.^[286] It is also important to keep in mind that the frieze adorned the two long, lateral sides of the temple and that an inscription adorned the frieze on the facade. Because of the width of the pronaos of the temple of Concordia, much narrower than the width of its cella, a majority of the frieze of the temple of Divus Vespasian, including at least several sequences, was visible to a viewer approaching the temple from the northeast up the Clivus Capitolinus. It was from the southwest side of the temple, however, that Romans likely had an excellent view of the frieze. There, from high up on the Clivus Capitolinus or from the paved courtyard of the Porticus Deorum Consentium, newly constructed by the Flavians after being displaced for the construction of the temple of Divus Vespasian and Divus Titus, viewers likely had an unobstructed view of the frieze of sacred implements.^[287]

Conclusion

The unmistakable connection between the Divi Vespasian and Titus and bloody sacrifice made in the frieze emphasized the necessity of ritual maintenance to the pax deorum and well-being of the Roman Empire.

Indeed, recurring ritual provided the ephemeral framework of action around which Roman life revolved. In the frieze from the temple, artists used hard stone to invoke the active characteristics of sacrifice such as the passage of time, movement in space, and ritual action. By representing one object associated with each act or actor integral to the sacrifice, the configuration of elements constituting the frieze of the temple functioned to concretize these ephemeral moments, spurring recall of yearly sacrifice and the meanings entailed by religious performance. Rather than interpreting this frieze solely in light of the status and virtues of the emperor standing in front of the temple, this interpretation highlights the function of the frieze in foregrounding the divinity of the gods within the temple as well implicating the roles of the Senate and people of Rome in the maintenance of the Roman imperial religious project.

<< | >>

↑

Source: Blakely S. (ed.). Gods, Objects, and Ritual Practice. Lockwood Press,2017. — 371 p.. 2017

Imperial State Religion as a Collective Project

More on the topic Imperial State Religion as a Collective Project: