Exposed by Caroline Vout

Author:Caroline Vout
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Profile
Published: 2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

119. Commodus teeters on the brink as Hercules in an absurdly elaborate sculpture found on the Esquiline Hill in Rome (the site in antiquity of lavish gardens). It was discovered with two triton figures that presumably framed it.

Not that these emperors were not also godlike. They had to be godlike, if they too were to ‘derive their power and authority from Zeus’. Diocletian was aligned with Zeus or Jupiter, and his co-ruler, Maximian, with Hercules. If anything, they had to be more godlike than their predecessors. Insecurity saw to that, creating a need for increased pomp and ceremony. Diocletian is said to have been the first Roman emperor to have required his subjects to call him ‘god’, the first, after Caligula and Domitian, to be called ‘lord’ in public, and the first to be ‘adored’ rather than saluted. He did not just wear the purple cloak of office, but clothes and shoes that were jewelled like those of a cult statue. Such behaviour had condemned Caligula and Domitian as bad rulers. But times had changed, and any charge of arrogance had been tempered by the emphasis on concord. When, with Maximian’s approval, the imperial system expanded in 293 CE to include two further rulers, poets rejoiced: ‘Indeed, all the fundamentals rely on and rejoice in the number of your godhead: there are four elements and the same number of seasons of the year; and the world is divided fourfold by a double Ocean; and the cycle of years returns after four revolutions of the sky, the Sun’s four-horse chariot …’ Eight years later, his health waning, Diocletian would be the first Roman emperor voluntarily to step down from active office, retiring to his palace in Croatia, where he devoted his time to growing vegetables.

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