A.D. 381 heretics, pagans, and the dawn of the monotheistic state ( PDFDrive )

II
THE DIVINE EMPEROR
IN 363, the court orator, Themistius, had delivered a panegyric, or hymn of
praise, in honour of Jovian, the emperor whose campaign against the Persians
was to end in such humiliation. Despite the disastrous reality of Jovian’s reign,
the traditions of the panegyric required the adulation of the emperor as if he was
divine. ‘The emperor is the living law, divine law descended from on high,
incarnation in time of the Eternal Good, emanation of its nature, Providence on
earth, in constant contemplation of God, chosen to be his present reflection, in
brief, true son of Zeus, raised up by Zeus, and sharing with Zeus his array of
titles’, as Themistius had put it. 1 Themistius proved to be a remarkable survivor,
especially as he was a pagan in an increasingly Christianised empire. Eighteen
years later he was still on hand in Theodosius’ court to offer a new panegyric,
which again stressed the divine imagery that surrounded the emperor. ‘Mark
well, exalted emperor, that neither beauty nor stature, neither speed nor prowess
make a good ruler, if he does not bear in his soul some form of being like God.’
Themistius then referred back to the poet Homer, who ‘had taught us how a
being walking on the earth and clothed in flesh can be thought to have the form
of him who is enthroned above the highest vault of heaven and above everything
that exists’. Theodosius was that ‘being’ and Themistius went on to argue that
the fact that Theodosius had not usurped the imperial throne but had waited for it
to be granted him by Gratian was a further sign of God’s support for his
promotion. 2
The images that Themistius used to glorify Theodosius, with their references
to Zeus (or Jupiter, as the Romans knew him - Themistius was speaking in
Greek) and Homer, can be traced back to the adulation offered to the kings who
succeeded Alexander the Great in the late fourth century BC. However, it had
only been in the previous hundred years that they had been applied to Roman
emperors. In the early empire the tradition had been that an emperor might be
recognised by the senate in Rome as having acquired divinity only after his
death. Julius Caesar, Augustus and Trajan were among those accepted as divus