Ancient History Bulletin 9, 1995: Deification of Roman Women, Marleen B. Flory

The Deification of Roman Women

Marleen B. Flory (Gustavus Adolphus College)

The Ancient History Bulletin 9.3-4 (1995) 127-134

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Much has been written about the historical, social, and psychological conditions that led to divine honors for eminent Roman leaders and the deification of Roman emperors; for example, the charisma of the triumphator, the influence of the Hellenistic world, Stoic philosophy, and the models of Alexander and Herakles and Romulus. Discussion of the deification of Roman women has been limited primarily to lists of the comparisons between Roman empresses and deities or to special honors that seem to confirm quasi-divine or divine status.¹ There has been no attempt to construct a history of the development of the deification of Roman women that focuses on the theoretical basis. The study of women has not only been shunted aside as intrinsically of little political or historical significance, but there has been an assumption that the deification of the first empresses was an inevitable step that needed no grounding in Roman customary practices.

The purpose of this article is to trace ideas about the divinity of women from the time they first surface in Roman society until the deification of Livia in A.D. 41. The material is difficult to organize coherently because of innate problems with quantifying or evaluating the meager evidence — a few dedications or a single literary reference to future deification. Yet, even so, there does emerge a picture of how the deification of Roman women only became viable in Roman society when the concept of power as family-based had emerged as an accepted principle of political life.

Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, in a letter written to her sons, refers to her transmutation into a 'deum parentem' after death.² Cornelia, writing in the last decades of the second century B.C., suggests that a mother like a father had a divine spirit that should receive family worship after death. A similar religious concept was the iuno of a woman, the divine essence, which might be an object of dedication, and which perhaps developed as a separate offshoot of the genius of a man during the period between the Second Punic War and the Augustan era; it is this latter era that first produces literary and epigraphical evidence about the iuno of a woman. Rives has argued that the development of the iuno of a woman parallels the increased wealth of women whose dependents sought to honor them as materfamilias.³

Livia's iuno gains significance at the time of the worship of the genius of Augustus, although only a very few dedications survive. In Falerii, between 4 and 14 A.D., a freedman set up a dedication to 'genio Augusti et Ti(berii) Caesaris Iunoni Liviae' (CIL

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11. 3076). At El-Lehs in Africa in A.D. 3 a freeborn couple who had been 'saved from danger' dedicated a thanksgiving offering to 'iunoni Liviae Augusti' (CIL 8. 16456). Two portrait busts of Livia and Tiberius were found with the remnant of a snake in a house in Ephesus; apparently a household cult included the genius and the iuno of the emperor and his mother sometime after A.D. 14.⁴ Dedications that include both Livia and her husband or son show the logical extension of the sentimental devotion to Augustus to include his family. For the Augustan period there is no surviving evidence of the official worship of Livia's iuno. Her birthday officially begins to be celebrated by the fratres arvales in 27 B.C., two years before her death (CIL 6. 2024f.3). Three years after Livia's death the priests were also celebrating her birthday (Tac. Ann. 6 .5. 1). The celebration of her birthday in official cult ritual could point to the inclusion of her iuno in state cult, but the birthdays of other members of the imperial family were also part of the official, cultic calendar and may only point to high social standing and a median position between human and divine.

By the last years of Nero's reign, however, the iuno of female family members is receiving sacrifice in state cult in conjunction with the emperor. In A.D. 63, for example, sacrifices are made by the Arval Brethern for the genius of Nero and the iuno of Poppaea and the iuno of her daughter Claudia (CIL 6. 2043.2.10-12). Three years later a similar double offering was made to the iuno of Statilia Messalina, Nero's third wife, and her husband, the emperor (CIL 6. 2044.28). The context suggests a half step toward deification, which Nero did confer on both Poppaea and Claudia. This development, which occurred only after the deification of both Drusilla and Livia, shows that the worship of the iuno ultimately did suggest quasi-divine status. A great difference, however, exists between this official offering of prayer on behalf of the state and the unofficial dedications to Livia's iuno some forty years earlier. The official dedications to the iuno of female members of the emperor's family seem the result of the recent deification of Livia and Drusilla rather than the accumulative effect of a growing interest in or sentiment toward the worship of the iuno of the empress.

The earliest surviving evidence of the assimilation of a female member of Octavian's family to quasi-divine status comes in the triumviral period. During this time Octavian experimented with Hellenistic ideas about divine birth only to reject them. In propaganda of the period Atia, Octavian's mother, claimed that Apollo had fathered her child when she had spent the night with other matronae in an unnamed religious ritual in the temple of Apollo Medicus in the Circus Flaminius (Suet. Aug. 94. 4; Cass. Dio 45. 1. 2). The story of divine birth, which was modeled on that of Scipio and Alexander, must have provoked strong criticism, since Octavian had the Senate vote her a public funeral (Cass. Dio 47. 17. 6) and one of his partisans, Domitius Marsus, wrote an epigram defending Atia.⁵ In the poem, which must have originated in the late 40s and shortly after her death, and probably after Philippi, Atia claims that she will

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always be considered 'blessed' (felix) beyond all other women whether she has begotten a man or a god. The poem reveals that Octavian, in the face of criticism, had adopted a more ambivalent position about his divine birth.

In 37 B.C. at the time of his marriage Octavian manufactured an omen in which Livia, as she rode back to her estate at Veii, received a divine gift: an eagle, messenger of Jupiter, dropped a pregnant hen with a laurel sprig in her mouth into Livia's lap. The omen is an apt symbol of the new race of triumphatores that Octavian was boastfully predicting would result from his marriage to a scion of the eminent Claudii and Livii. Like Atia Livia is described as an object of divine favor. This period is instructive in a history of the deification of women, for Octavian abandoned these ideas in the West after he came to power and with them the elevation of his female relations to the status of 'divine consorts', an idea that he learned in the Hellenistic East and which he may have disseminated with the East as part of the audience he had in mind. The story of Octavian's divine birth from Apollo is not mentioned in any Augustan source or in the adulatory biography of Nicolaus of Damascus. The story of Livia's omen is recorded in Cassius Dio (48. 52. 3-4), Suetonius (Gal. 1), and Pliny the Elder (15. 136-37), but is not mentioned in any Augustan source. The silence of contemporary sources, especially on Augustus' divine birth, must show that the princeps did not want to keep the story alive. As regarded his womenfolk, Octavian learned a lesson from Cleopatra, and, for the purposes of propaganda, advertised Livia and Octavia as exemplars of old-fashioned, dutiful Roman wives. The triumviral period shows that Hellenistic ideas about women were an experiment that was stifled once it outlived its propagandistic usefulness. In the Greek East at a later period there was open identification of Livia and other women of Augustus' family with deities, but those ideas did not directly influence Roman ideas about the deification of women during the Augustan or Tiberian period.

Augustus advertised himself as a second Romulus, and Romulus was a significant prototype for his own deification, including the establishment of Augustus' translation to heaven as a significant aspect of all such ceremonies in the future. A first step toward deification is comparison with a deity, but most authors of the Augustan period are silent about Livia. Only Ovid mentions her and primarily in exilic literature. In one passage in the Metamorphoses (14. 829-51), Ovid writes of the deification of Hersilia, the wife of Romulus, and here there may be a subtle comparison between Livia, wife of Augustus, and Hersilia, wife of Romulus. Domenicucci has written that the story of Hersilia's deification was new and probably introduced by Ovid.⁶ If we can accept a contemporary identification of Augustus with Romulus, then it may be possible to see an allusion to Livia. An interesting passage in Cassius Dio (56. 5. 5) has Augustus refer to Hersilia as the woman who had 'introduced marriage customs' to Rome as if this were a well-known aspect of her story. Since Livia was strongly identified during the Augustan period as the exemplum of the ideal marriage and as the patron of Concordia,

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Bona Dea, and perhaps Pudicitia,⁷ all related to marriage and female fertility, it is interesting to speculate that as Augustus was the second founder to the state Livia gained a reputation as the second founder of the sanctity of marriage. Elsewhere Ovid compares Livia to Juno, Vesta, and Venus for her virtue and beauty (Pont. 3. 1. 117; 4. 13. 29).

But to what extent does Ovid reflect contemporary ideas, his own ideas, or the ideas of a limited group of Romans, for example, the court circle? In post-exilic poetry his flattery of Livia seems to have a great deal to do with his desire for rescue by a potential benefactress. During the final years of Augustus' reign, however, as Ovid's exilic poetry testifies, there was great stress on the monolithic concept of a domus Augusta. Ovid, in fact, was the first author to use the phrase (Pont. 2. 2. 74). One of its aspects was its sacredness (Ov. Pont. 4. 6. 20), since all the members were descendants or relatives of the founder of the house, soon to become a divus. Ovid's references to Livia as a goddess may be hyperbole or could reflect his idea that the ruling family was divine and, therefore, Livia would become a deity. Ovid in fact established a shrine in his lararium at his house in Tomis and worshipped Augustus, Livia, and Tiberius, whose statuettes a friend had sent from Rome (Pont. 2. 8. 1-6; cf Pont. 3. 1. 161-64). After Augustus' death he added two more statues, those of Germanicus and Drusus the Younger (Pont. 4. 9. 105-110). His worship shows his personal conception of the ruling house as a group of potential deities.

We can tentatively conclude that Ovid's idea of a domus divina — although the phrase does not appear in written sources until A.D. 33⁸ — was an aspect of official Imperial ideology as early as the death of Augustus. In A.D. 15 the Senate erected a statue to divus Augustus and the domus Augusta in the Circus Flaminius.⁹ This act showed the importance of the family of Augustus in Rome's political life and subtly suggested that the domus Augustus was also a domus divina by the juxtaposition of the statues of the first divus and his living relatives, probably Livia, Tiberius, Germanicus, and Drusus the Younger. In a surviving oath to the Imperial household, datable to A.D. 14 immediately after the accession of Tiberius, the Cypriots swear to worship all the household of Tiberius Caesar Augustus and to give divine honors to Tiberius and the sons of his blood and them alone.¹⁰ The oath is singular evidence that Livia was not on the same level with Augustus and his successors. Livia, as a member of the ruling domus, had the right to be included in worship but not the privilege of deification. Weinstock argues that the basic ideas espoused in the oath came from Rome and had the emperor's approval.

The difference between Rome and the East was profound, for after the death of her

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husband and even in a few cases before - Livia was openly hailed as a divinity, the divine consort of the god Augustus, and the mother of the god Tiberius. Eastern practice, however, which can be charted from coins and dedications, does not reflect official Roman policy.¹¹ The Greek-speaking East followed its own social conventions, and there is evidence to show that no official efforts were made to encourage divine honors for women but also on occasion no official efforts made to impede them. When Germanicus refused deification in Alexandria, he stated that they were only appropriate honors for his father (Tiberius) and his grandmother (Livia).¹² Tiberius, whose official emissary Germanicus was, clearly accepted the idea of worship of Livia in this city. When the residents of the city of Gytheion wrote to Tiberius and asked to set up an Imperial festival and to accord divine honors to him, he wrote back and refused, although he allowed his mother to choose what honors among those offered - among them divine honors - she would accept.¹³ In the west too there are manifestations of individual devotion to Livia. In Spain there are attested in her lifetime two priests, one of whom she shared with Germanicus (AE 1915, no. 95; CIL 2. 194). Such acts were undoubtedly the spontaneous gestures of people who revered the widow of Augustus and the mother of the heir as beyond human stature. But these may also have been people who had benefited from Livia's help or patronage or had met her since she traveled extensively with her husband (Tac. Ann. 3. 34. 6). She was a generous benefactor to peoples all over the empire and traditionally divine honors were a method of repayment from a grateful people to a great benefactor.

Ovid's statement — 'sic Augusta novum Iulia numen erit' (Fast. 1. 536) — in conjunction with the taking of the name of Augusta have been the most quoted evidence to support the idea that Augustus intended Livia to be consecrated. The word 'augustus' meant, among other things, a man who enjoyed divine favor. Livia's new name was apt for the sacerdos divi Augusti; she had the divine favor of the god whose cult she served. In a special way, as Augustus' widow and priestess, Livia could mediate between the deified Augustus and the Roman people. Augustus, however, earned his divinity as savior of the state not by virtue of the special name he possessed, even if that name gave him a special charismatic aura. Antonia Augusta succeeded to the title Augusta after Livia's death and at the accession of her grandson Caligula (Suet. Cal. 15. 2; Cass. Dio 59. 3. 4). There is no mention in our sources that there was any

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consideration of deifying her because of her name.

Moreover an incident reported by Tacitus for A.D. 17 shows the Imperial household's decision to make a clear distinction between human and divine. A charge of maiestas was brought against Appuleia Varilla for insulting remarks made against divus Augustus, Tiberius, and Livia (Tac. Ann. 2. 50. 1). Statements made about Augustus were actionable, but Tiberius and his mother refused to claim a comparable standing with Augustus, emphasizing their lack of equality with the gods. Interestingly Tiberius consulted with Livia and allowed her to make her own response, which was the same as her son's.

Events at the end of Livia's life show that her deification had been considered by Tiberius and Livia but was refused by both. After Livia's death Tiberius instructs the Senate that he does not want Livia to be deified because clearly he thinks that the Senate may do so (Tac. Ann. 5. 2. 1; Cass. Dio 58. 2. 1; Suet. Tib. 51. 2). Both Suetonius and Tacitus say that Tiberius wrote the Senate that Livia herself had not wished divine honors. The discussion that now ensues in his Senate is a highly significant one that has not been scrutinized as an important phase in the development of the theoretical model for the deification of a woman. The Senate, although instructed not to deify Livia, now begins to discuss Livia's virtues as if, in fact, it were debating the issue of whether or not Livia should become a diva. The discussion follows on the vote of an arch for Livia (Cass. Dio 58. 2. 3), a singular honor for a woman, never repeated, and not completed for Livia since Tiberius acceded to the request, promised to pay for the arch himself - thus removing the honor from the public sphere - but never did so (Cass. Dio 58. 2. 6). The arch may have been a substitute form of deification, since no arches existed for mortal women, but there were arches that contained statues of goddesses and were votive offering to female deities.¹⁴

The reasons given by the Senate to honor Livia emphasize her role of 'savior' of the state because she 'had saved the lives of many of them' (Cass. Dio 58. 2. 3). Dio's language does not allow us to know if he means the Senate alone — where Livia was indeed a significant benefactor — or a more general clientela. The Senatus Consultum de Pisone, which has not yet been fully published, mentions 'multa beneficia' that Livia had carried out for men 'utriusque ordinis.'¹⁵ This, in addition to her having given birth to the princeps, allows her the extraordinary favor of saving Plancina from a trial for wrong-doing by the Senate. The senators then, after mentioning Livia's role as savior, specifically discuss how she paid to have many children reared who might otherwise have been abandoned by their parents and how she paid for the dowries of many girls whose parents could not afford them. As a result some of the senators wish to give her the title of 'mater patriae' or 'parens [patriae]' (Tac. Ann. 1. 14. 1; Suet. Tib. 50. 2-3; Cass. Dio 57. 12. 4; cf. 58. 2. 3). This discussion echoes earlier actions taken for

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Augustus who had also earned himself the title of pater patriae by saving his country and had contributed thereby to his right to eventual deification. The key point that the Senate focuses on is her merit and, as a result of her merit, her right to be hailed as the mother of her country. The arch seems to show that, given their own preference, the Senate would have deifed Livia. There is no mention of her name Augusta, her role as mother of the emperor, or even of her place as the widow of the deified Augustus. The senatorial debate shows that ideas about Livia's deification suggested by Ovid or by the concept of the domus Augusta divina were not strong enough to assure Livia's deification, but her merit was.

Tiberius' refusal of divine honors for his mother was not necessarily the act of a jealous and vindictive son but a policy statement that Tiberius' view of the state did not include a deified family. It is not hard to believe that the conservative Tiberius would have felt uncomfortable with the state worship of the Imperial domus, since it would have established a significant precedent for the future. Moreover, Tiberius himself had refused, albeit reluctantly, divine honors, which only added to the awkwardness of his mother's receiving them (Tac. Ann. 4. 37-38).

Until the time of Caligula's rule the official attitude about the deification of a woman had been virtually non-existent, for the evidence does not add up to any state policy. The final words of the Senate discussing Livia's case prove that discussion was considered necessary as surely it was not in the case of Augustus. The Senate could find a rationale to deify Livia, and it did want one. Caligula, ignoring past history and influenced by the practices of the Hellenistic East, established a cult for his sister, which showed no attempt to integrate the cult into Roman traditions or to even provide a rationale. Drusilla was not the wife of the emperor or the mother of a potential emperor. She received a separate shrine of her own plus a priesthood of both men and women (Cass. Dio 59. 11. 2-3,5; Suet. Cal. 24. 2; Sen. Polyb. 17. 5). Her divine honors, derided by Seneca (Apoc. 1), lasted as long as her brother held the throne. Caligula demanded allegiance to his whole house and prayers on behalf of all. His concept of his own family was as a domus divina (Cass. Dio 59. 9. 1-2).

With Caligula's model before him Claudius proceeded far more cautiously when he, as one of his first acts of pietas, had Livia deified. His act was far more significant than the political and family act that it is usually interpreted to be. While it is true that he sought to emphasize his father and his brother and his Claudian kin, the deification of Livia, his grandmother, could have brought him only limited political benefit except to the extent that her deification established Claudius' ties with Augustus. Claudius showed that he was aware of precedent and the new cult was presented to the world in a way that did not violate traditional Roman practices. Livia's cult was joined to that of her husband in the same temple; cult practices were entrusted to the Vestal Virgins with whom Livia and successive Imperial women were closely identified (Cass. Dio 60. 5. 2; Suet. Claud. 11. 2). The coinage that Claudius struck was for DIVUS AUGUSTUS-DIVA AUGUSTA as the divine parents of the Roman people.¹⁶

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Claudius emphasized Livia as part of a sacred conjugal and family unit and not as an individual. Since the worship of Augustus had been conceived of as a cult of the gens, Claudius carefully adhered to that tradition. An inscription from the East summarizes the role that was advertised for her as the woman 'who founded the race of Sebastoi ... an immortal house' (SEG 28 [1978], 1227).

Claudius' act is the second important theoretic moment in the history of the deification of women. His act shows that the idea of a ruling family of divine origin and divine character was a fully established idea; thus the inclusion of a woman could hardly have been felt as an innovation as clearly it would have been just twelve years earlier when the Senate debated Livia's merits. It was not the deification of Drusilla that broke down reserve - although that might seem to be the case - but rather that the concept of a ruling family of divine nature had become an essential aspect of Imperial self-representation. The deification of Poppaea and her daughter Claudia (Tac. Ann. 15. 23. 4; Cass. Dio 63. 26. 3) only slightly later, as well as sacrifices to the iuno of Nero's third wife, now appear completely understandable, even if Tacitus regards Nero's actions as immoderate.¹⁷ Nero struck coins to an Augustus-Augusta, although these are controversial, probably a reference to Augustus and Livia with a possible further reference to Nero and his wife Poppaea.¹⁸ The coins, however, continue the idea of the Imperial family as a sacral institution introduced by Claudius. The idea of the domus divina is now firmly entrenched, and the deification of Roman women from now on becomes a regular Imperial custom. As the wives and mothers of emperors, they deserved a place in the divine hierarchy. There is no evidence that there was any discussion of Livia's merita in Claudius' announcement to the Senate that he wished her deified; rather, her merita was that she had produced the heirs to the throne and had been married to Augustus. On that basis rested the claims as well of all future female relatives of emperors to divine status.

Footnotes

1 The most important synthesis for women is by G. Grether, 'Livia and the Roman Imperial Cult', AJPh 67 (1946), 222-52. On comparison with deities: H. Temporini, Die Frauen am Hofe Trajans: Ein Beitrag zur Stellung der Augustae im Principat (Berlin, 1978), 71-76.