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miraculously the image of a snake permanently appeared on her body. Suetonius tells us that “Augustus was born ten months later and for this reason is believed to be the son of Apollo” ( The Deified Augustus 94).
    Moreover, that very night, Atia’s husband, who was off at war in Thrace (northern Greece), had a dream in which he “saw his son of greater than mortal size with a thunderbolt and scepter and emblems of Jupiter Best and Greatest and a radiant crown drawn by twelve brilliantly white horses” ( The Deified Augustus 94). Clearly, these were portents that this child was a divine figure, a great god on earth.
    Unlike some of the later emperors, while in office Augustus was not enthusiastic about being worshiped as a god. Suetonius says that he would not allow temples in the Roman provinces to be dedicated to him unless they were jointly dedicated to the goddess Roma—the patron goddess of Rome. Sometimes cities got around this imperial reluctance by building a temple and dedicating it to the “genius” of Augustus. The word genius in this case does not mean his intellectual brilliance, but the guardian spirit that watched over his family and, especially, him as its leader, making him who he was. In a sense, by worshiping Augustus’s genius, these cities revered him in a depersonalized but highly divinized sense.
    Moreover, despite his reluctance, Octavian was hailed as the “Son of God” as early as 40 BCE —years before he was emperor—and this title is found on coins as early as 38 BCE . A decree from the Greek city of Cos hails Augustus as the god Sebastos (a Greek term equivalent to the Latin “Augustus”) and indicates that he has “by his benefactions to all people outdone even the Olympian gods.” That’s pretty stiff competition for a mere mortal, but for his reverential followers, he was far more than that. After his death Augustus was deified and called “divine,” or “one who has been made divine,” or “one who has been accounted among the gods.” When his body was cremated, according to Suetonius, a high-ranking Roman official claimed that he “saw Augustus’s image ascending to the sky.” He continued to be worshiped as a god by later Romans, including later Roman emperors. 9
The Emperor Cult
    For an ancient historian, the word cult does not have the kind of negative connotations it may have today—referring to a wild sectarian religion with bizarre beliefs and practices. It is simply a shortened version of the term cultus deorum , which means “care of the gods,” a close equivalent to what today we would call “religion” (just as “agri cult ure” means “care of the fields”). The Roman cult of the emperor started with Augustus and continued through the emperors who followed him, many of whom lacked his reticence in being considered a manifestation of the divine on earth. 10
    In a speech by the famous Roman orator Quintilian (35–100 CE ), we are told how the gods are to be praised by speakers giving a public address: “Some [gods] . . . may be praised because they were born immortal, others because they won immortality by their valour, a theme which the piety of our sovereign [the emperor Domitian] has made the glory even of these present times” ( Institutes of Oratory 3.7.9). 11 Quintilian tells us that some gods were born that way (such as the great gods of Greek and Roman mythology), but others have “won immortality by their valour”—that is, some humans have become divine because of their amazing deeds. And he refers to those for whom this has happened in “these present times.” Here, he is meaning the two previous emperors, Domitian’s father, the emperor Vespasian, and Domitian’s brother, the emperor Titus, both of whom were deified.
    Normally, the emperor was officially declared a god at his death by a vote of the Roman Senate. This may seem a bit odd to us today, and it is perhaps best to think of the Senate recognizing a divine figure who