Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 46:1 (NA 1995)
Article: The Achaean Federal Cult Part I: Pseudo-Julian, Letters 198
Author: Antony J. S. Spawforth

TynBul 46:1 (1995) p. 151

The Achaean Federal Cult Part I: Pseudo-Julian, Letters 1981

Antony J. S. Spawforth

Summary

This paper explores the evolution of emperor-worship at Corinth in the first century A.D. Specifically, it argues that a Greek ‘letter’ in the correspondence on the emperor Julian should be redated to c. A.D. 80-120 and identified as a petition from the city of Argos to the Roman governor of Achaia, in which the Argives sought exemption from payments towards the cost of celebrations of the imperial cult at the Roman colony of Corinth. Since these celebrations involved many of the province’s cities, the paper goes on to argue that they can be identified with the collective cult—its place of celebration previously uncertain—known from inscriptions to have been founded by the member-cities of the Achaean league in the mid-first century A.D.

I. Introduction

It will be argued that ca. A.D. 54 a highly significant religious development occurred in Corinth. A quasi-provincial, as against a local, imperial cult was established by the cities of the Achaean League so that the province of Achaia as a whole could engage in emperor-worship. Such a move is likely to have pleased the local population because of the great honour and substantial pecuniary advantages that accrued for the Roman colony.

The purpose of this paper is (I) to discuss the dating and content of a largely unnoticed petition from Argos against Corinth

TynBul 46:1 (1995) p. 152

concerning the provincial imperial cult, and (II) to provide an historical reconstruction of the founding of the provincial imperial cult in Achaia ca. A.D. 54 based on this document and epigraphic evidence.

II. The Contents And Dating Of The Petition To The Governor

A Greek literary text of disputed date and authorship is preserved in the correspondence of the emperor Julian as Letter 198 (Bidez). The text is addressed to an unidentified person, to whom it recommends an Argive embassy seeking a hearing of a dispute with Corinth over Argive payments for the staging of wild-beast shows (venationes) in the Roman colony. In 1913, in a long and carefully argued paper, Bruno Keil sought to demonstrate that this text should be redated to the second half of the first century after Christ, that it is a letter of recommendation addressed to the Roman governor of Greece, and that its author was an otherwise unknown Greek notable in the governor’s retinue who had undertaken, in effect, to ‘broker’ an audience on the embassy’s behalf. If correct, this view would make the text a rare surviving example of a type of letter no doubt generated in large numbers by the rout...