Divine Fury (9 page)

Already, there were intimations in his youth. The historian Suetonius recounts how, as a young man, Octavian visited an astrologer with Agrippa, his close friend and ally, the future general of renown. When the astrologer predicted the commander’s brilliance, Octavian remained silent, withholding the details of his own birth for fear that he might be shown to possess a less exalted fate than his friend. But when he finally agreed to share them, the astrologer jumped up and venerated him, overcome by the brilliance of his destiny. “Soon,” Suetonius writes, “Augustus had acquired such faith in fate that he made public his horoscope and had a silver coin struck with the image of the star sign Capricorn, under which he was born.” Later, famously, when a comet appeared at games sponsored by Octavian in honor of the slain Julius Caesar, the young man interpreted the celestial disturbance as a sign that Caesar’s birth-star, his
genius
, had returned to signal his favor, urging the adopted son to fulfill his father’s fate. Henceforth, he would claim the
sidus Iulium
, the “Julian star,” as his own.
⁴⁵

Octavian’s faith in his own destiny was only reaffirmed by the stunning victory at Actium against Mark Antony, whose
genius
, Plutarch recounts—and Shakespeare would later repeat—continually cowered before Octavian’s own. The battle brought to an end a prolonged period of civil strife and left Octavian sole ruler of Rome, allowing him to complete the task initiated by Julius Caesar—that of emasculating the institutions of the fractious Republic, in effect bringing it to an end. Gradually, he consolidated his rule by investing it with divine authority, stressing his proximity—even likeness—to the gods. His official title, “Augustus,” reflected this ambition. Conferred by the Senate in the year 27
BCE
, the title had strong religious connotations. Ovid claims it was synonymous with
sanctus
or
divinus
—holy or divine—and though that was probably a flattering exaggeration, the term does seem to have been used to describe holy places and consecrated ground. In the popular
mind, in any case, the word was linked to
augurium
(augury), a connection that led, in turn, to another. For as everyone knew, the power of Rome’s mythical founder Romulus had been confirmed by a divine augury—the appearance of twelve vultures in the sky—a sign of the gods’ will that Romulus should be father of Rome. And as Octavian’s promoters were well aware, educated Romans would have known the line from the poet Ennius indicating that by “august augury,” glorious Rome was founded (“Augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est”). Octavian, too, would be a founder, a new father of his people and a prophetic man, whose very spirit would gather in its midst the spirit of all Rome.
⁴⁶

It was the public cult of his private
genius
, the
genius Augusti
, that consolidated that role. If, as Max Weber says further of charismatic authority, the “genuine prophet, like the genuine military leader and every true leader in this sense, preaches, creates, or demands new obligations . . . by virtue of oracle, inspiration, or of his own will,” then the revelation of Augustus’s
genius
was a fundamental disclosure. Like all Roman men, Octavian possessed a tutelary spirit, a personal god of birth. But it was his crucial innovation to transform his private god into an object of public worship, conflating it in practice with the
Genius populi Romani
, the Genius of the Roman people that had been worshipped from at least the third century
BCE
. Livy recounts how, with Hannibal across the Alps and threatening the very survival of the Republic, the Romans sacrificed “five adult victims” (
maiores hostiae quinque
) to “Genius.” It is the earliest reference to a collective or public
genius
—what later sources describe variously as the
Genius urbis Romae
, the
Genius publicus
, or the
Genius populi Romani
. And while scholars have suggested that these gods of the city were likely an adaptation from Hellenistic models—the cult of the
demos
of Athens, for example, or the Tyche of the city of Antioch—the collective
genius
was also a perfectly natural extension of the
genius
cult of the family,
gens
, and place. Were not Romans, too, a family of sorts, an extended people or clan? And did not that family also have a birth, a beginning, a generation? If a genial power could watch over the body of a person, then a
genius
could maintain vigilance over the body politic.
⁴⁷

Something like this logic seems to have been at play in the emergence of the cult of the
genius populi
and a great many other corporate bodies and places. But Augustus made it explicit, identifying his own
genius
with the
genius populi
, rendering it the father of all. As early as 30
BCE
, his compliant Senate decreed that a libation of wine should be poured out at every meal in the fatherland in honor of the emperor’s
genius
—a sacrifice to be conducted alike in the humblest private
dwelling and at the most lavish public banquet. Not long after, coins were struck bearing the image of Augustus’s
genius
, and over the course of his long reign, various other measures and practices were put into place. In 12
BCE
—the year in which Augustus assumed the title of
pontifex maximus
, the highest priestly office in the realm—a law was passed requiring that all official oaths be sworn in the name of Augustus’s
genius
. Whereas members of private households had previously sworn by the
genius
of their master, and ordinary Romans frequently had sworn by the
genius
of Jove or some other god, they were now asked, indeed required, to invoke their emperor’s
genius
in matters of solemnity, as Christians would later swear by the angels and the saints. At roughly the same time, Augustus introduced the cult of the crossroads (
compita
), reviving and significantly altering an ancient practice that had been abandoned during the Republic. At the crossroads of every district in Rome, the emperor ordered the construction of sanctuaries containing a sacrificial altar and images—usually statues—of his
genius
and familial Lares. A regular cult was maintained there by magistrates of the administrative districts of Rome, and a yearly festival, the Compitalia, was held involving sacrifice, feasting, and games. The carefully crafted message was clear: as crossroads marked the boundaries of territories, and the Lares and
genius
were the keepers of family and space, the cult of the
compita
united the whole of Rome with the household of Augustus. His private
genius
was the
genius
of all.
⁴⁸

The man sired by a snake thus laid claim to a god far more expansive, and far more powerful, than that of any other man. Fittingly, it was nourished, like the
Genius populi Romani
, by a victim of flesh—in this case, a great bull—sacrificed on special occasions and on Augustus’s
dies natalis
, which was celebrated as a public holiday, with games and hymns in honor of the emperor’s
genius
. Whether an official state cult to the
Genius Augusti
was maintained in Rome itself is debatable. But in the provinces, and the more indulgent East, special temples were undoubtedly erected in Augustus’s honor, overseen by their own priesthoods. And the image of Augustus’s
genius
, indistinguishable from Augustus himself—was ubiquitous on paintings, coins, public monuments, and statues. Ovid claims that in the crossroads chapels in the city of Rome alone, there were more than 1,000 figures of his
genius
, perfect likenesses of Augustus.
⁴⁹

By conflating the private god of his birth with the
genius
of the public writ large, Augustus effected an important and powerful union.
Genius
remained what it had always been—a means of connecting individuals and families to the divine. But in Augustus’s hands, the
genii
of the countless inhabitants of the empire were channeled through his person,
or rather, through the divine embodiment of his person, his private companion and double, which represented his innate qualities and gifts. Just as members of the Roman household had originally joined in honoring the
genius
of the paterfamilias, swearing oaths by the father’s guardian spirit, so now did the Roman people honor the
genius
of their collective father, their
pater patriae
, swearing by him. The
genius
of Augustus was the spiritual force that brought together the private spirits of each member of the empire with the spirit of Rome, creating a god that towered above all others of its kind.

Augustus’s flirtation with apotheosis was an innovation of major consequence. For although there were Greek precedents, as well as the short-lived examples of Alexander and Julius Caesar, both of whom were widely acknowledged as gods after their death, proud Roman republicans had never been inclined to worship their living leaders as gods. Whether they actually did so in the case of Augustus remains a matter of debate. Officially, he joined the immortal ones only at his death. But clearly the cult of his
genius
was conceived to affirm the transcendent character of his rule. The fate of Augustus was indistinguishable from that of the Roman people; his rule was inscribed in the stars, divinely consecrated and conferred.

Augustus’s innovation—his revolution—put in place a regime and cult of personality of potentially dangerous consequences that would be abused by successors like Nero and Caligula, who had no compunctions about openly declaring themselves gods. To rule divinely, however, requires the genius to pull it off, and the evil
genii
of Nero and Caligula were manifestly perverse, calling attention to the poverty of their directing spirits. Few, in the end, could live up to the standard of Augustus, yet the Roman Empire lived on regardless, and with it the cult of the emperor’s
genius
, which would receive libations and oaths for centuries to come. In this respect, Augustus was more successful than either Alexander or Julius Caesar before him. If charismatic authority, like the authority derived from one’s genius, is always unstable—a “specifically revolutionary force” in its repudiation of the past, as dangerous as the demon in us all—Augustus provided simultaneously for its containment. He was a master of bureaucratic and administrative organization, which served to “routinize” and contain his
auctoritas
and so to survive the waning of his
genius
. Even in his innovation, he looked continually to what had been, inventing laws, discovering traditions, re-creating precedents that had long been forgotten or overlooked. By resurrecting republican morals at the very moment that he destroyed the Republic, he could thus credibly present his rule as a return to established forms.
So did the past constrain the present, and imitation of what had been hold in check what was yet to be.
⁵⁰

Yet Augustus had generated a precedent, and it was one that brought together centuries of classical reflection on the
divinum quiddam
that makes a great man truly great. The mysterious, generative force that coursed through the souls of special men might serve as the basis of a superhuman authority. The
genius
of a great man might rule as the
genius
of the people, uniting the all to the one. That this force was volatile, even dangerous, virtually all agreed—it could lead the unsuspecting to madness, take possession of the mind, divert the course of the soul. Men of eminence, Pseudo-Aristotle warned—whether poets or politicians, philosophers or practitioners of the arts—were in possession of a common power that rendered them unstable, prone to dark tempers of the soul. Plato insisted that those seized by the
daimonic
force of divine inspiration were similarly at risk, susceptible to the madness and alienation of possession. Largely for that reason, Plato would ban the poets from the public sphere as dangerous conjurers of words. And though he held out hope that in a perfect world a philosopher who knew the
furor divinus
might rule as a philosopher-king, his model of the kind refused the temptation. Socrates’s
genius
kept him from politics, and the people of Athens agreed. Not all would prove so prudent. But as the twists and turns of the
daimon
led those who would be more than men to the throne of the Christian God, a new thought was born along with a new model of the highest human type. The
genius
of the individual might be worshipped in glory as an angelic force ascending to the heavens, or be consumed as an idol in the fires of hell.

CHAPTER II

THE GENIUS OF CHRISTIANITY

BUT WHEN THE GOVERNOR pressed him and said: “Take the oath and I will let you go, revile Christ,” Polycarp said: “For eighty-six years I have been Christ’s servant, and he has done me no wrong. How can I blaspheme the King who saved me?” But when the Governor persisted, and said, “Swear by the genius of Caesar,” Polycarp replied: “if you vainly suppose that I will swear by the genius of Caesar, as you say, and pretend that you are ignorant of who I am, listen plainly: I am a Christian.”

—EUSEBIUS