Cicero and the Rise of Deification at Rome

This book tells a part of the back-story to major religious transformations emerging from the tumult of the late Republic. It considers the dynamic interplay of Cicero's approximations of mortals and immortals with a range of artifacts and activities that were collectively closing the divide between humans and gods. A guiding principle is that a major cultural player like Cicero had a normative function in religious dialogues that could legitimize incipient ideas like deification. Applying contemporary metaphor theory, it analyzes the strategies and priorities configuring Cicero's divinizing encomia of Roman dynasts like Pompey, Caesar and Octavian. It also examines Cicero's explorations of apotheosis and immortality in the De re publica and Tusculan Disputations as well as his attempts to deify his daughter Tullia. In this book, Professor Cole transforms our understanding not only of the backgrounds to ruler worship but also of changing conceptions of death and the afterlife.

Author: Spencer Cole
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 01/24/2019
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.66lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.46d
ISBN: 9781108730037

About the Author
Cole, Spencer: - Spencer Cole is Assistant Professor in the Department of Classical and Near Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota. His publications include articles on Roman religion in both the republican and imperial periods, Augustan poetry, and Greek drama. He is also a contributor to The Routledge Encyclopedia of Ancient Mediterranean Religions (2015).