THE early Emperors rather discouraged than stimulated this tendency to flatter them by a premature apotheosis. If temples had been built to them in their lifetime, they had always been to their “genius,” or had at least been associated—as at Athens—with the divinity of Rome.1 Augustus, with these restrictions, had yielded to the earnest entreaties of the people of Pergamos and Nicomedia, but had expressly forbidden the Romans to take any part in this new cult. The base example spread rapidly in the provinces, and though it is probable that in secret Augustus was not displeased at so astonishing a proof of his own power, he affected to smile at it as a man of the world.2 In the frenzy of flattery, which is the disease of despotisms, it was but too likely that this deification of a living man would creep from the provinces into Italy, and, in spite of the assertion of Dion Cassius, that in Italy no one ventured to worship Augustus, it is certain from the Corpus Inscriptionumthat at his death there had sprung up, either by his permission or without his interference, priests of Augustus at Pompeii, flamens at Præneste, an Augusteum at Pisa, and a Cæsareum at Puteoli; and this—though it was due far more to the religious degradation of the age than to the phrenetic pride of the autocrat—was made a source of bitter blame against him when he was dead. Even at Rome,3 though no temple rose to him till he was dead, yet we need go no further than the poetry of Virgil, Horace, and Ovid,4 to show that he was commonly addressed as a deity (numen) and a god, and that sacrifices were offered either to him or in his name; and, as appears from inscriptions, even at Rome, if they did not worship him directly, they did so indirectly, by rearing altars to his virtues and his laws, and by inserting his name among those of ancient deities in the songs of the Arval brothers. After his death the worship was extended without limit. He was known universally as the Divine Augustus, a phrase which became as common as feuleroi.5
Tiberius, for political reasons, patronised, and even to a certain extent enforced, this new worship, but he also discouraged the extravagance which endeavoured to extend divine honours to his livingself, and by doing so he at once gratified his undisguised cynicism and showed his strong good sense. But the tendency to apotheosis was in his time firmly established. He was, as a matter of course, deified after his death, and his panegyrist, Velleius Paterculus, tells us a story that when he was in the midst of a campaign among the Chauci, a barbarian chief obtained permission to see him, and after crossing the river in order to do so, gazed at him for a long time in silence, and exclaiming that he had now seen the gods,6 asked to touch his hand, and then pushed off his boat towards the opposite shore, gazing to the last on the living deity. So rapidly did the disease of adulation grow that, according to Suetonius, Domitian actually used to begin his letters with the words “Dominus et Deus noster sic fieri jubet”—“Thus orders our Lord and God, Domitian!”7