Content area
Full text
THE IMPERIAL CULT IN THE LATIN WEST: STUDIES IN THE RULER CULT OF THE WESTERN PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. Volumes 3.1, 3.2, 3.3, and 3.4. By DUNCAN FISHWICK. Leiden: Brill (Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 145-148). 2002-2004. Pp. xvi, 259, 20 ills.; xvi, 324, 51 ills.; xxiv, 397, 113 ills.; viii, 256, 7 ills.
THE THIRD INSTALLMENT of Duncan Fishwick's monumental series on the imperial cult in the Latin west (Vol. 1 reviewed in Phoenix 42 [1988] 371-374 by S. Price and Vol. 2 reviewed in Phoenix 48 [1994] 87-89 by W. Liebeschuetz) focuses on the cult of emperors on the provincial level. Volume Three is divided into four parts: a chronological Part One traces the institution and evolution of the cult in the provinces; a geographical Part Two provides a province-by-province study of the provincial priesthood; and Part Three is divided between a discussion of individual provincial cult centers and analyses of ritual elements (such as rites and dedications). Finally, Part Four comprises bibliography, indices, and addenda.
Part One reiterates Fishwick's conviction that the radically different circumstances of the western provinces (in comparison to the east) allowed for a primarily policy-based and systematic introduction of the imperial cult. If so, the cult would indeed mainly reveal imperial interests, but, in fact, there is welcome variety already in the early evidence; the earliest site of cult in the west was in fact established and named after a senatorial commander ca 22-19 B.C.E. Fishwick categorizes this and some other early items as a first phase of preliminary, regional cults during the lifetime of Augustus in relatively unsettled areas (e.g., north-west Spain and the Elbe). The actual beginnings of the provincial cult belong to a new, second phase, starting with Tiberius, with the institution of the cult of the deified Augustus in the Romanized provinces of Hispania Citerior and Lusitania. That the initiative at least in Hispania Citerior clearly came from the provincials (Tac. Ann. 1.78) may not need to be dismissed as so out of the ordinary or as much a temporary phase as Fishwick suggests in order to maintain his "central initiative" thesis. Rather, whatever the negotiations may represent, they definitely suggest a more lively dynamic (in the same way in this...