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Stefan Pfeiffer. Der römische Kaiser und das Land am Nil: Kaiserverehrung und Kaiserkult in Alexandria und Ägypten von Augustus bis Caracalla (30 v. Chr. - 217 n. Chr.). Historia Einzelschriften, 212. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2010. Pp. 378. e67.00. ISBN 978-3-515-09650-8.
With the work especially of Duncan Fishwick, Simon Price, and Ittai Gradel tending nowadays to set the stage, our appreciation of worshipping, honoring, and just generally perceiving the Roman emperor has progressed apace. The present book by Stefan Pfeiffer is an important and fascinating contribution to this discussion.
What Pfeiffer offers is an exhaustive study of both the cultic veneration and the diversified honoring of Roman emperors (down to Caracalla) in Egypt. The book is admirable in several large, or conceptual, ways. First, Pfeiffer takes very great pains to distinguish sharply between actual (cultic) worship of an emperor and the various mechanisms for honoring him; nonetheless, in doing this, he allows the ancients' less-than-absolute posture regarding the distinction between gods and humans to stand. All of this results in a highly nuanced approach to...