Sublime

For the founding father of all Roman emperors, however, it has always proved difficult to pin him down. In fact, the new name ‘Augustus’, which he adopted soon after his return from Egypt (and which I shall use from now on), captures the slipperiness very nicely. It is a word that evoked ideas of authority (auctoritas) and proper religious

Some imperial claims to divine status were always thought undeniably wrong. For most inhabitants of the Roman Empire, it would have been a crass category mistake and a hyperbolic affront for an emperor to declare himself a living god, as if there were no difference between himself and Jupiter. The Romans were hardly stupid: they knew the difference

Seneca in its grisly humor and in its narcissism—although unlike Seneca, Nero had no loyal wife or family members or friends to stand by his side in death, since he had killed them all.

Throughout the Roman world, the living emperor was treated very like a god. He was incorporated into rituals celebrated in honour of the gods, he was addressed in language that overlapped with divine language, and he was assumed to have some similar powers.

But Augustus became something no Roman had been before: the commander-in-chief of all the armed forces, who appointed their major officers, decided where and against whom the soldiers should fight, and claimed all victories as by definition his own, whoever had commanded on the ground.

Après la mort de son père survenue dans sa prime enfance, il fut remarqué, protégé, favorisé par l'empereur Hadrien. Peu avant de mourir, en 138, celui-ci, pour assurer sa succession, adopta Antonin, l'oncle par alliance du futur Marc Aurèle, en lui demandant d'adopter celui-ci et en même temps Lucius Verus, le fils d'Aelius Caesar, un personnage