The game combines action oriented real-time battles with turn-based strategy on the campaign map where you raise, supply and move your armies. The cult of Roma thus gradually declined into thebackground of a more potent imperial cult. In Roma Invicta you have the honor of conquering ancient Gaul with your Roman legions. Later emperors had fewer qualms about being worshipped as god-kings, whether by Romans or provincials. A temple to Roma aeterna and Venus was established on the Sacra Via. Roma spelled backwards is amor, Latin for “love,” and thus Hadrian found it amusing to associate Roma with Venus, the Roman mythological progenitor and goddess of love. The cult was established in Rome itself only under the emperor Hadrian. To become of a priest of Roma and the imperial genii was considered a great honor, and was given to wealthy provincials willing to demonstrate their loyalty to Rome. In Greek speaking lands the cult of Roma might be associated with a suitably civic deity such as Zeus (identified with the Roman Jupiter). This Roma was treated as a protective goddess and depicted artistically much like a victorious Athene. Second, the city of Rome itself, the new imperial capitol of the world, could be personified and given cult honors.We thus fine in the East a cult of dea Roma (goddess Rome) or Roma aeterna (Eternal Rome) linked closely with the cult of the imperial genii. DEAE AETERNAE TEMPLVM L VATERIVS MARCELLVS PRAEF REST ('For the goddess Eternity, the prefect Lucius Vaterius Marcellus restores this temple.'), at Old Carlisle, Cumbria, England (RIB 886 milestone). She had altars and votive offerings throughout the Empire. He did bring the 13th to march on Rome so thats why.
Roma victoriosa ('Victorious Rome') (2011) and Roma invicta ('Undefeated.
First, their genii, or spiritual essences, could be honored without proclaiming themselves divinity incarnate. Roma Aeterna was the personification of the power of Rome. One thing that slightly bugged me about the show Rome is that they kept on focusing on the 13th legion when the 10th was Caesars favorite and most personally accountable legion. Lux aeterna ('Eternal light') (2008) is a rewriting of the myth of Orpheus. The early emperors operated under the fiction that they were elected magistrates of a revitalized Republic rather than imperial monarchs in everything but name they could not offend traditional Latin sensibilities by embracing the Oriental “despotism” of the god-king cult.īut what they allowed in the Eastern provinces was a compromise. The Hellenistic East did not know quite what to make of the cultural Latin upstarts who had rapidly conquered their territory, but they had to find ways to relate to their new overlords.įor some time the main expression of political loyalty in the East had been to declare the ruler as a kind of divinity on earth and honor him thusly with cult.