The Religion of Empire

4. The Religion of Empire
(i) Introduction

Scholarship wobbles from one thing to another. The fortunes of ‘emperor-worship’ in recent study are typical of what happens in many areas. Faced with a rich density of material, scholars can easily lose sight of one entire segment of the field, only then to rediscover it with a whoop of delight, clutch it to their hearts, and make it the previously lost key which will at last open all their locked doors. This leads, however, to oversimplifications and generalizations, and the next and necessary wobble is into a thicker description of the new discovery, producing more distinctions and variations, less sense of unity. Thus, during my scholarly lifetime, we have witnessed all three stages (and I have fallen happily into the middle one) in relation to what has sometimes been called ‘the imperial cult’...