Recent scholarship on early Christian martyrdom tends to be sceptical towards the traditional picture according to which Roman emperors wanted to destroy the emerging Christianity and ordered numerous believers who did not take part in the imperial cult to be executed. The vast majority of sources are written from a Christian point of view; they are narratives of uncompromising commitment and the superiority of the Christian faith, not disinterested reports of what happened. No matter how slim the historical evidence on early Christian martyrdom, its ideological significance was remarkable – the sentiment of belonging to a persecuted minority was an important factor of Christian identity. Part of this ideology was to portray the emperor as an archenemy of Christianity, an agent of ultimate evil who is in constant warfare with the divine. Even though the emperors seldom appear in the trial scenes of martyrs, they have an important part to play in the stories of martyrdom. They are present through their officials and their decrees and it is these unjust imperial orders that result in martyrdom. Martyrdom, however, is seen as a God-given fate and the martyr as a triumphant hero, which makes the emperor, despite his apparent victory, an eventual loser. While the battle between the martyr and the emperor is cast on a cosmic level, the authority of the emperor and his entitlement to honours on the mundane level are not questioned

This article deals with the question of the role of gods involved with cultivation, grain and food supply in the Roman imperial iconography during the reign of Septimius Severus. By evaluating numismatic and written evidence, as well as inscriptions, the article discusses which gods related to grain and cultivation received most attention from Septimius Severus, and how their use helped the emperor to stabilize his rule. It appears that the three main deities used by Severus were Annona, Ceres and Tellus. The use of Annona and Ceres was concentrated in the first years of Severan rule, when the emperor was out of the capital and fighting wars. Apparently, the importance of Annona, the goddess symbolizing imperial food supply, was connected with the acts of the emperor: wars and other crisis were periods when food supplies to the capital were often under threat. When Severus returned to Rome for a somewhat longer period, more emphasis was put on Tellus, traditional goddess of agriculture and a deity connected with a Golden Age – as the emperor was now in the capital, this meant an age of peace and plenty for his subjects. As a result, it could be argued that the use of fertility gods was closely related to the acts of Severus himself – thus legitimizing his image as a protector of his subjects.

Roman emperors communicated a number of qualities which constituted an ideological basis for their unique position of power. These qualities were expressed by both verbal and visual references to the emperor. Besides references to his dynastic lineage or to his military capability, a recurring line of imperial discourse is the use of divine association. Connections between emperors and divinity ranged from references to a quality of an emperor that evoked divine associations to identification with a specific god and could be brought about by emperors themselves or anyone else. This article discusses how and why Roman emperors are presented in divine contexts in Greek papyrus texts from Egypt. Even if the majority of papyrus texts were written for practical reasons and their relevance was limited to the persons to whom the documents concerned, many texts are instructive for how emperors were divinely embedded in language. By applying a discourse approach, I aim to show that Greek papyri can be read on several levels. In this way, I hope to offer a new perspective on how divine language in papyrus texts can be looked at and how these documents can be read within a wider imperial context.

The present contribution provides an examination of the relationship between the emperor and the divine sphere in Latin panegyric poetry of the fifth and sixth centuries. Following the path magisterially set forth by Claudian, poets like Sidonius Apollinaris and, later on, Corippus employs the same literary genre to praise the newly-come Germanic kings or the Eastern Emperor. They have, however, to face a profoundly transformed historical and political realm, not to mention a different approach towards religion. Whereas Panegyrici Latini and Claudian could make wide use of mythological similes to celebrate Rome, her grandeur and the deeds of the emperor, his successors deal with the ancient gods in quite a clear-cut or, so to say, crystallized way. They show a conservative (and, to some extent, nostalgic) attitude and still believe in the endurance of Rome, which is fated to last eternally. The sacralization of Rome (with the concurring ideas of a Christian providence and the literary cliché of pagan aeternitas) is integrated within the frame of an empire that has become totally Christianized and, especially in the East, finds in political theology a privileged terrain to establish its roots. In particular the link between Christianity and the emperor as vicar of God is well outlined by the symbolism of court ceremonial and gesture, which panegyrics describe in great detail.

This article explores the development of the imperial title pontifex maximus from Emperor Augustus (12 BC) to fourth-century Emperor Gratian (382 AD) as well as the transformation of the title into that of pontifex inclitus after Gratian. Following the precedent of Augustus, every emperor down to Gratian (d. 383) was pontifex maximus. The title pontifex maximus formed a standing element in the imperial titulature, usually in first place in the litany of titles. The article demonstrates that the title pontifex maximus was modified into pontifex inclitus from Gratian on. Christian emperors were anxious to eliminate the pagan associations of pontifex maximus but they were reluctant to give up their traditional claim to priestly authority.