1944 in the Siberia Khitan Russian village of Vyatskoye;Persian-Islam-Bulgaria vs Vladimir prefering wine prohibited by Islam; Khan prayed...ancestry to Volva Bukgaria Golden Horde Crimea Khan N.K. Kim Clan; Rome Greek cult of personality

Imperial cult (ancient Rome)

The Imperial cult of ancient Rome identified emperors and some members of their families with the divinely sanctioned authority of the Roman State. The framework for the Imperial cult was formulated during the early Principate of Augustus, and was rapidly established throughout theEmpire and its provinces, with marked local variations in its reception and expression.Augustus' reforms transformed Rome's Republican system of government to a de factomonarchy, couched in traditional Roman practices and Republican values. The princeps (later known as Emperor) was expected to balance the interests of the Roman military, Senate and people, and to maintain peace, security and prosperity throughout an ethnically diverse empire. The official offer of cultus to a living emperor acknowledged his office and rule as divinely approved and constitutional: his Principate should therefore demonstrate pious respect for traditional Republican deities and mores.A deceased emperor held worthy of the honor could be voted a state divinity (divus, plural divi) by the Senate and elevated as such in an act of apotheosis. The granting of apotheosis served religious, political and moral judgment on Imperial rulers and allowed living Emperors to associate themselves with a well-regarded lineage of Imperial divi from which unpopular or unworthy predecessors were excluded. This proved a useful instrument to Vespasian in his establishment of the Flavian Imperial Dynasty following the death of Nero and civil war, and toSeptimius in his consolidation of the Severan dynasty after the assassination of Commodus. In the development of Imperial rule from Principate to Dominate, the role of the Senate was increasingly marginalised and military loyalty became the key to Imperial authority.The Imperial cult was inseparable from that of Rome's official deities, whose cult was essential to Rome's survival and whose neglect was therefore treasonous. Traditional cult was a focus of Imperial revivalist legislation under Decius and Diocletian. Christian apologists andmartyrologists saw the cult of the Emperor as a particularly offensive instrument of "pagan" impiety and persecution.[1] It therefore became a focus of theological and political debate during the ascendancy of Christianity under Constantine I. The emperor Julian failed to reverse the declining support for Rome's official religious practices: Theodosius I adopted Christianity as Rome's state religion. Rome's traditional gods and "Imperial cult" were officially abandoned. However, many of the rites, practices and status distinctions that characterized the cult to emperors were perpetuated in the theology and politics of the Christianized Empire.[2]The Roman Imperial cult is sometimes considered a deviation from Rome's traditional Republican values, a religiously insincere cult of personality which served Imperial propaganda.[3][4] It drew its power and effect, however, from both religious traditions deeply engrained in Roman culture, such as the veneration of the Genius of each individual and of the ancestral dead, and on forms of the Hellenistic ruler cult developed in the eastern provinces of the Empire.

BackgroundEdit

Roman

Venus and Mars sculpture group reworked to portray an Imperial couple (created 120–140 AD, reworked 170–175)For five centuries, the Roman Republic did not give worship to any historic figure, or any living man, although surrounded by divine and semi-divine monarchies. Rome's legendary kings had been its masters; with their removal, Republican Romans could identify Romulus, the founder of the city, with the god Quirinus and still retain Republican liberty. Similarly, Aeneas was worshipped as Jupiter Indiges.[5] The Romans worshipped several gods and demi-gods who had been human, and knew the theory that all the gods had originated as human beings, yet Republican traditions (mos maiorum) were staunchly conservative and anti-monarchic. The aristocrats who held almost all Roman magistracies, and thereby occupied almost all of the Senate, acknowledged no human as their inherent superior. No citizen, living or dead, was officially regarded as divine, but the honors[6] awarded by the state — crowns, garlands, statues, thrones, processions — were also suitable to the gods, and tinged with divinity; indeed, when the emperors were later given state worship, it was done by a decree of the Senate, phrased like any other honor.[7]Among the highest of honors was the triumph. When a general was acclaimed imperator by his troops, the Senate would then choose whether to award him a triumph, a parade to the Capitol in which the triumphator displayed his captives and spoils of war in the company of his troops; by law, all were unarmed. The triumphator rode in a chariot, bearing divine emblems, in a manner supposed to be inherited from the ancient kings of Rome, and ended by offering his victory to Jupiter Capitolinus. Some scholars have viewed the triumphator as impersonating or even becoming a king or a god (or both) for the day but the circumstances of triumphal award and subsequent rites also functioned to limit his status. Whatever his personal ambitions, his victory and his triumph alike served the Roman Senate, people and gods and were recognised only through their consent.[8][9]In private life, however, tradition required that some human beings be treated as more or less divine; cult was due from familial inferiors to their superiors. Every head of household embodied the genius – the generative principle and guardian spirit – of his ancestors, which others might worship and by which his family and slaves took oaths;[10] his wife had a juno. A client could call his patron "Jupiter on earth".[11] The dead, collectively and individually, were gods of the underworld or afterlife (dii manes). A letter has survived from Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, expecting that when she was dead, her sons would venerate her as deus parens, a parental (or a nurturing) divinity; such piety was expected from any dutiful son.[12]A prominent clan might claim divine influence and quasi-divine honors for its leader. Death masks (imagines) were made for all notable Romans and were displayed in the atria of their houses; they were used to represent their ghostly presence at family funerals. The mask of Scipio Africanus, Cornelia's father and victor over Hannibal, was stored in the temple of Jupiter; his epitaph (by Ennius) said that he had ascended to Heaven.[12] A tradition arose in the centuries after his death that Africanus had been inspired by prophetic dreams, and was himself the son of Jupiter.[13]There are several cases of unofficial cult directed at men viewed as saviors, military or political. In Further Spain in the 70s BC, loyalist Romans greeted the proconsul Metellus Pius as a savior, burning incense "as if to a god" for his efforts to quash the Lusitanian rebellion led by the RomanSertorius, a member of the faction which called itself "men of the People" (populares). This celebration, in Spain, featured a lavish banquet with local and imported delicacies, and a mechanical statue of Victory to crown Metellus, who wore (extralegally) a triumphator's toga picta for the occasion. These festivities were organized by the quaestor[14] Gaius Urbinus, but were not acts of the state. Metellus liked all this, but his older and pious (veteres et sanctos) contemporaries thought it arrogant and intolerable.[15] After the land reformers Tiberius andGaius Gracchus were both murdered by their opponents, their supporters "fell down" and offered daily sacrifice at the statues of the Gracchi "as though they were visiting the shrines of the gods".[16] After Gaius Marius defeated the Teutones, private citizens would offer food and drink to him alongside their household gods; he was called the third founder of Rome after Romulus andCamillus.[17] In 86 BC, offerings of incense and wine were made at crossroad shrines to statues of the still-living Marius Gratidianus, the nephew of the elder Marius, who was wildly popular in his own right, in large part for monetary reforms that eased an economic crisis in Rome during his praetorship.[18]

Greek

Repoussé pendant of Alexander the Great, horned and diademed like Zeus Ammon: images of Alexander were worn as magic charms (4th-century Roman).When the Romans began to dominate large parts of the Greek world, Rome's senior representatives there were given the same divine honours as were Hellenistic rulers. This was a well-established method for Greek city-states to declare their allegiance to an outside power; such a cult committed the city to obey and respect the king as they obeyed and respected Apollo or any of the other gods.The cities of Ionia worshipped the Spartan general Lysander, when he personally dominated Greece, immediately following the Peloponnesian War; according to Plutarch, this was the first instance of ruler-cult in Greek history. There were similar instances of divine cult to humans in the same century, although some rulers, like Agesilaus, declined it.[19] Clearchus, tyrant of Heraclea, dressed up like Zeus and claimed godhood; this did not stop the Heracleots from assassinating him. Isocrates said of Philip II of Macedon that after he conquered the Persian Empire, there would be nothing for him to attain but to become a god; the city of Amphipolis, and a private society at Athens, worshiped him even without this conquest; he himself set out his statue, dressed as a god, as the thirteenth of the Twelve Olympians.[20]But it was Philip's son Alexander the Great who made the divinity of kings standard practice among the Greeks. The Egyptians accepted him as Pharaoh, and therefore divine, after he drove the Persians out of Egypt; other nations received him as their traditional divine or quasi-divine ruler as he acquired them. In 324, he sent word to the Greek cities that they should also make him a god; they did so, with marked indifference[21] – which did not stop them from rebelling when they heard of his death next year.His immediate successors, the Diadochi, offered sacrifices to Alexander, and made themselves gods even before they claimed to be kings; they put their own portraits on the coinage, whereas the Greeks had always reserved this for a god or for an emblem of the city. When the Athenians allied with Demetrius Poliorcetes, eighteen years after the deification of Alexander, they lodged him in the Parthenon with Athena, and sang a hymn extolling him as a present god, who heard them, as the other gods did not.[22]Euhemerus, a contemporary of Alexander, wrote a fictitious history of the world, which showed Zeus and the other established gods of Greece as mortal men, who had made themselves into gods in the same way; Ennius appears to have translated this into Latin some two centuries later, in Scipio Africanus' time.The Ptolemies of Egypt and the Seleucids claimed godhood as long as they lasted; they may have been influenced in this by the Persian and Egyptian traditions of divine kings – although the Ptolemies had separate cults in Egyptian polytheism, as Pharaoh, and in the Greek. Not all Greek dynasties made the same claims; the descendants of Demetrius, who were kings of Macedonand dominated the mainland of Greece, did not claim godhead or worship Alexander.

Romans among the Greeks

The Roman magistrates who conquered the Greek world were fitted into this tradition; games were set up in honor of M. Claudius Marcellus, when he conquered Sicily at the end of the Second Punic War, as the Olympian games were for Zeus; they were kept up for a century and a half untilanother Roman Governor abolished them, to make way for his own honors. When T. Quinctius Flamininus extended Roman influence to Greece proper, temples were built for him and cities placed his portrait on their coinage; he called himself godlike (isotheos) in an inscription at Delphi – but not in Latin, or at Rome. The Greeks also devised a goddess Roma, not worshipped at Rome, who was worshipped with Flamininus (their joint cult is attested in 195 BC); she would become a symbol of idealised romanitas in the later Roman provinces, and a continuing link, whereas a Marcellus or Flamininus might only hold power for a couple years.When King Prusias I of Bithynia was granted an interview by the Roman Senate, he prostrated himself and addressed them as "Saviour Gods", which would have been etiquette at his own court; Livy was shocked by Polybius' account of this, and insists that there is no Roman source it ever happened.[23]Worship and temples appear to have been routinely offered to Roman Governors; their reaction varied. Cicero declined a temple proposed by the city officials of Roman Asia to his brother and himself, while the latter was proconsul, to avoid jealousy from other Romans; when Cicero himself was Governor of Cilicia, he claimed to have accepted no statues, shrines, or chariots. His predecessor, Appius Claudius Pulcher, was so pleased, however, when the Cilicians built a temple to him that, when it was not finished at the end of Claudius' year in office, Claudius wrote Cicero to make sure it was done, and complaining that Cicero was not active enough in the matter.[24]

Intermediate forms

The Romans and the Greeks gave religious reverence to and for human beings in ways that did not make the recipients gods; these made the first Greek apotheoses easier. Similar middle forms appeared as Augustus approached official divinity.The Greeks did not consider the dead to be gods, but they did pay them homage, and give them sacrifices – using different rituals than those for the gods of Olympus. The Greeks called the extraordinary dead – founders of cities and the like – heroes; in the simplest form, hero cult was the burial and the memorials which any respectable Greek family gave their dead, but paid for by their City in perpetuity.[25] Most heroes were the figures of ancient legend, but some were historical: the Athenians revered Harmodius and Aristogeiton as heroes, as saviours of Athens from tyranny; also, collectively, those who fell at the battle of Marathon. Statesmen did not generally become heroes, but Sophocles was the hero Dexion ("the Receiver") – not as a playwright, nor a general, but because, when the Athenians took Aesculapius' cult during the Peloponnesian War, he housed it until a shrine could be built. The Athenian leader Hagnonfounded Amphipolis shortly before the Peloponnesian War; thirteen years later, while Hagnon was still alive, the Spartan general Brasidas liberated it from the Athenian empire, and was fatally wounded in the process. The Amphipolitans buried him as a hero, declaring him the second founder of the city, and erased Hagnon's honors as much as they could.The Greeks also honored founders of cities while they were still alive, like Hagnon. This could also be extended to men who did equally important things; during the period when Dion ruled inSyracuse, the Syracusans gave him "heroic honors" for suppressing the tyrants, and repeated this for Timoleon; these could also be described as worshipping his good spirit (agathos daimon,agathodaemon; every Greek had an agathodaemon, and the Greek equivalent of a toast was offered to one's agathodaemon).[26] Timoleon was called savior; he set up a shrine to Fortune (Automatia) in his house; and his birthday, the festival of his daimon, became a public holiday.[27]Other men might claim divine favor by having a patron among the gods; so Alcibiades may have had both Eros and Cybele as patrons;[28] and Clearchus of Heraclea claimed to be "son of Zeus". Alexander claimed the patronage of Dionysus and other gods and heroes;[29] he held a banquet atBactra which combined the toast to his agathos daimon and libations to Dionysus, who was present within Alexander (and therefore the celebrants saluted Alexander rather than the hearth and altar, as they would have done for a toast).[30]It was not always easy to distinguish between heroic honors, veneration for a man's good spirit, worship of his patron deity, worship of the Fortune of a city he founded, and worship of the man himself. One might slide into another; In Egypt, there was a cult of Alexander as god and as founder of Alexandria; Ptolemy I Soter had a separate cult as founder of Ptolemais, which presumably worshipped his daimon and then gave him heroic honors, but in his son's reign, the priests of Alexander also worshipped Ptolemy and Berenice as the Savior Gods (theoi soteres).[31]Finally, a man might, like Philip II, assume some prerogatives of godhood and not others. The first Attalid kings, of Pergamum, were not gods, and supported a cult of Dionysus Cathegemon, as their ancestor; they put the picture of Philetaerus, the first prince, on the coins, rather than their own. Eventually, like the Seleucids, they acquired an eponymous priest, and put themselves on the coinage; but they still were not called gods before their deaths. Pergamum was usually allied with Rome, and this may have influenced the eventual Roman practice.[32]

End of the RepublicEdit

In the last decades of the Roman Republic, its leaders regularly assumed extra-constitutional powers. The mos majorum had required that magistrates hold office collectively, and for short periods; there were two consuls; even colonies were founded by boards of three men;[33] but these new leaders held power by themselves, and often for years.The same men were often given extraordinary honors. Triumphs grew ever more splendid;Marius and Sulla, the rival leaders in Rome's first civil war, each founded cities, which they named after themselves; Sulla had annual games in his honor, at Rome itself, bearing his name; the unofficial worship of Marius is above. In the next generation, Pompey was allowed to wear his triumphal ornaments whenever he went to the Games at the Circus.[34] Such men also claimed a special relationship to the gods: Sulla's patron was Venus Felix, and at the height of his power, he added Felix to his own name; his opponent Marius believed he had a destiny, and that no ordinary man might kill him. Pompey also claimed Venus' personal favour, and built her a temple. But the first Roman to become a god, as part of aiming at monarchy, was Julius Caesar.

Divus Julius

Caesar had personal ties to the gods, both by descent and by office. He was descended fromAeneas and his mother Venus; more doubtfully, from Ancus Marcius and the kings of Rome, and so from Mars. When he was a teenager, Marius had named him flamen Dialis, the special priest of Jupiter. Sulla had cancelled this appointment; however, relatively early in his career, Caesar had become pontifex maximus, the chief priest of Rome, who fulfilled most of the religious duties of the ancient kings.[35] He had spent his twenties in the divine monarchies of the eastern Mediterranean, and was intimately familiar with Bithynia.[36]Caesar made use of these connections in his rise to power, but not more than his rivals would have, or more than his other advantages. When he spoke at the funeral of his aunt Julia in 69 BC, Julius Caesar spoke of her descent from the Roman kings, and implied his own; but he also reminded his audience she had been Marius' wife, and (by implication) that he was one of the few surviving Marians.When, however, he defeated his rivals, in 45 BC, and assumed full personal control of the Roman state, he asserted more. During the Roman Civil War, since 49 BC, he had returned to the Eastern Mediterranean, where he had been called god and savior, and been familiar with the Ptolemaic Egyptian monarchy of Cleopatra, called Cleopatra Thea because of the weight she placed on her own divinity. Also, he had a new Senate to deal with. Most of the more resolute defenders of the Senate had joined with Pompey, and – one way or another – they were not sitting in the Senate. Caesar had replaced them with his own partisans, few of whom were committed to the old Roman methods; some of them were not even from Italy. It was rumoured that Caesar intended a despotic removal of power and wealth from Rome eastwards, perhaps to Alexandria or Ilium(Troy).[37]During the Civil War, he had declared Venus his patron goddess: he vowed to erect a temple forVenus Victrix if she granted him the battle of Pharsalia, but he had built it, in 46 BC, to Venus Genetrix, which epithet combined her aspects as his ancestress, the mother of the Roman people, and the goddess invoked in the philosophical poem De rerum natura. The new Senate had also put up a statue of Caesar, with an inscription declaring him a demi-god, but he had it effaced, as not the claim he wished to make.[38] Granted the same extension of rights to triumphal dress as Pompey had been given, Caesar took to wearing his triumphal head-wreath "wherever and whenever", excusing this as a cover for his baldness. He may also have publicly worn the red boots and the toga picta ("painted", purple toga) usually reserved to a triumphing general for the day of his triumph; a costume also associated with the rex sacrorum (the priestly "king of the sacred rites" of Rome's monarchic era, later the pontifex maximus), the Monte Albano kings, and possibly the statue of Jupiter Capitolinus.When the news of his final victory, at the battle of Munda, reached Rome, the Parilia, the games commemorating the founding of the city, were to be held the next day; they were rededicated to Caesar, as if he were founder. Statues were set up to his Liberty, and to Caesar himself, as "unconquered god."[39] He was accorded a house at public expense which was built like a temple; his image was paraded with those of the gods;[40] his portrait was put on the coins (the first time a living man had appeared on Roman coinage). Early in 44 BC, he was called parens patriae(father of the fatherland);[41] legal oaths were taken by his Genius; his birthday was made a public festival; the month Quinctilis was renamed July, in his honor (as June was named for Juno). At last a special priest, a flamen, was ordained for him; the first was to be Marc Antony, Caesar's adjutant, then consul – an honor which once officially adopted would rank Caesar not only as divine, but as a divinity honoured equally with Quirinus, Jupiter, and Mars. In Cicero's hostile account, the living Caesar's honours in Rome were already and unambiguously those of a full-blown god (deus).[42]His name as a living divinity – not as yet ratified by senatorial vote – was Divus Julius (or perhaps Jupiter Julius); divus, at that time, was a slightly archaic form of deus, suitable for poetry, implying some association with the bright heavens. A statue of him was erected next to the statues of Rome's ancient kings: with this, he seemed set to make himself King of Rome, in the Hellenistic style, as soon as he came back from the expedition to Parthia he was planning; but "friends" in the Senate killed him on 15 March 44 BC.[43][44][45][46]An angry, grief-stricken crowd gathered in the Roman Forum to see his corpse and hear Mark Antony's funeral oration. Antony appealed to Caesar's divinity and vowed vengeance on his killers. A fervent popular cult to divus Julius followed. It was forcefully suppressed but the Senate soon succumbed to Caesarian pressure and confirmed Caesar as a divus of the Roman state. A comet interpreted as Caesar's soul in heaven was named the "Julian star" (sidus Iulium) and in 42 BC, with the "full consent of the Senate and people of Rome", Caesar's young heir, his great-nephew Octavian, held ceremonial apotheosis for his adoptive father.[47] In 40 BC Antony took up his appointment as flamen of the divus Julius. Provincial cult centres (caesarea) to the divusJulius were founded in Caesarian colonies such as Corinth.[48] Antony's loyalty to his late patron did not extend to Caesar's heir: but in the last significant act of the long-drawn civil war, on 1 August 31 BC, Octavian defeated Antony at Actium and was left in undisputed power.

Caesar's heirEdit

Augustus as Jove, holding scepter and orb (first half of 1st century AD)In 30/29 BC, the koina of Asia and Bithynia requested permission to worship Octavian as their "deliverer" or "saviour".[49] This was by no means a novel request but it placed Octavian in a difficult position. He must satisfy popularist and traditionalist expectations and these could be notoriously incompatible. Marius Gratidianus's popular support and cult had ended in his public and spectacular death in 82 BC, at the hands of his enemies in the Senate; likewise Caesar's murder now marked an hubristic connection between living divinity and death.[48] Octavian had to respect the overtures of his Eastern allies, acknowledge the nature and intent of Hellenic honours and formalise his own pre-eminence among any possible rivals: he must also avoid a potentially fatal identification in Rome as a monarchic-deistic aspirant. It was decided that cult honours to him could be jointly offered to dea Roma, at cult centres to be built at Pergamum andNicomedia. Provincials who were also Roman citizens were not to worship the living emperor, but might worship dea Roma and the divus Julius at precincts in Ephesus and Nicaea.[50][51][52]In 29 BC Octavian dedicated the temple of the divus Julius at the site of Caesar's cremation. Not only had he dutifully, legally and officially honoured his adoptive father as a divus of the Roman state. He "had come into being" through the Julian star and was therefore the divi filius (son of the divinity).[53] But where Caesar had failed, Octavian had succeeded: he had restored the pax deorum (divinely ordained peace) and re-founded Rome through "August augury".[54] In 27 BC he was voted – and accepted – the elevated title of Augustus.[55]

Religion and Imperium under Augustus

Augustus appeared to claim nothing for himself, and innovate nothing: even the cult to the divusJulius had a respectable antecedent in the traditional cult to di parentes.[56] He re-invented the Roman Republic with due deference to the senatorial and consular tradition. His unique – and still traditional – position within the Senate as princeps or primus inter pares (first among equals) offered a curb to the ambitions and rivalries that had led to the recent civil wars: but Augustus' principate was unprecedented in its extraordinary breadth, totality and duration. As censor and pontifex maximus he was morally obliged to renew the mos maiores by the will of the gods and the "Senate and People of Rome" (senatus populusque romanus). As tribune he encouraged generous public spending, and as princeps of the Senate he discouraged ambitious extravagance. He disbanded the remnants of the civil war armies to form new legions and a personal imperial guard (the Praetorian Guard): the patricians who still clung to the upper echelons of political, military and priestly power were gradually replaced from a vast, Empire-wide reserve of ambitious and talented equestrians. For the first time, senatorial status became heritable.[57]Augustan renewal of mos maiorum included the seating arrangements at theatres and games,sumptuary law, and family life.[58] Ordinary citizens could circumvent the complex, hierarchic bureaucracy of the State, and appeal directly to his magnanimity and judgment. Throughout Rome and its provinces, his name and image were ubiquitous – on state coinage and on the streets, within and upon the temples of the gods, and particularly in the courts and offices of the civil and military administration.[59] By the end of his reign, the official res gestae (achievements) of Augustus included his repair of 82 temples in 28 BC alone, the founding or repair of 14 others in Rome during his lifetime and the overhauling or foundation of civic amenities including a new road, water supplies, Senate house and theatres.[60] Above all, his military pre-eminence had brought an enduring and sacred peace, which earned him the permanent title of imperator and made the triumph an Imperial privilege.[61] He seems to have managed all this within due process of law through a combination of personal brio, cheerfully veiled threats and self-deprecation as "just another senator".[62][63]Most tellingly, Rome's Imperial Mausoleum identified Augustus, his family (and later, his descendants) by name only, not as divi.[64] In Rome, it was enough that the office, munificence,auctoritas and gens of Augustus were identified with every possible legal, religious and social institution of the city. Should "foreigners" or private citizens wish to honour him as something more, that was their prerogative, within moderation. The official acknowledgment of cult demonstrated the emperor's moral responsibility and generosity towards his subjects: the Imperial revenue funded temples, amphitheatres, theatres, baths, festivals and government. This unitary principle laid the foundations for what is now known as "Imperial cult", which would be expressed in many different forms and emphases throughout the multicultural Empire. After Augustus' reign, the only new cults to Roman officials are those connected to the Imperial household.[65][66][67]

Eastern provinces

Augustus in Egyptian style, on the temple of Kalabsha in Egyptian Nubia.In the Eastern provinces, cultural precedent ensured a rapid and geographically widespread dissemination of cult, extending as far as the Augustan military settlement at modern-dayNajran.[68] Considered as a whole, these provinces present the Empire's broadest and most complex syntheses of imperial and native cult, funded through private and public initiatives and ranging from the god-like honours due a living patron to what Harland (2003) interprets as privately funded communal mystery rites.[69][70] The Greek cities of Roman Asia competed for the privilege of building high-status Imperial cult centres (neocorates). Ephesus and Sardis, ancient rivals, had two apiece until the early 3rd century AD, when Ephesus was allowed an additional temple, to the reigning emperor Caracalla. When he died, the city lost its brief, celebrated advantage through a religious technicality.[71]The Eastern provinces offer some of the clearest material evidence for the imperial domus andfamilia as official models of divine virtue and moral propriety. Centres including Pergamum,Lesbos and Cyprus offered cult honours to Augustus and the Empress Livia: the Cypriot Calendar honoured the entire Augustan familia by dedicating a month each (and presumably cult practise) to imperial family members, their ancestral deities and some of the major gods of the Romano-Greek pantheon. Coin evidence links Thea Livia with Hera and Demeter, and Julia the Elder with Venus Genetrix and Aphrodite. In Athens, Livia and Julia shared cult honour with Hestia(equivalent to Vesta), and the name of Gaius was linked to Ares (Mars). These Eastern connections were made within Augustus' lifetime – Livia was not officially consecrated in Rome until some time after her death. Eastern Imperial cult had a life of its own.[72]

Western provinces

The Western provinces were only recently "Latinised" following Caesar's Gallic Wars and most fell outside the Graeco-Roman cultural ambit. There were exceptions: Polybius mentions a past benefactor of New Carthage in Republican Iberia "said to have been offered divine honours".[73] In 74 BC, Roman citizens in Iberia burned incense to Metellus Pius as "more than mortal" in hope of his victory against Sertorius.[74] Otherwise, the West offered no native traditions of monarchic divinity or political parallels to the Greek koina to absorb the Imperial cult as a romanising agency.[75] The Western provincial concilia emerged as direct creations of the imperial cult, which recruited existing local military, political and religious traditions to a Roman model. This required only the willingness of barbarian elites to "Romanise" themselves and their communities.[76]Temple of Augustus and Livia,Vienne (modern France). Originally dedicated to Augustus and Roma. Augustus was deified on his death in 14 AD: his widow Livia was deified in 42 AD by Claudius.The first known Western regional cults to Augustus were established with his permission around 19 BC in north-western ("Celtic") Spain and named arae sestianae after their military founder, L. Sestius Quirinalis Albinianus.[77] Soon after, in either 12 BC or 10 BC, the first provincial imperial cult centre in the West was founded at Lugdunum by Drusus, as a focus for his new tripartite administrative division of Gallia Comata. Lugdunum set the type for official Western cult as a form of Roman-provincial identity, parceled into the establishment of military-administrative centres. These were strategically located within the unstable, "barbarian" Western provinces of the new Principate and inaugurated by military commanders who were – in all but one instance – members of the imperial family.[78]The first priest of the Ara (altar) at Lugdunum's great Imperial cult complex was Caius Julius Vercondaridubnus, a Gaul of the provincial elite, given Roman citizenship and entitled by his priestly office to participate in the local government of his provincial concilium. Though not leading to senatorial status, and almost certainly an annually elected office (unlike the traditional lifetime priesthoods of Roman flamines), priesthood in imperial provinces thus offered a provincial equivalent to the traditional Roman cursus honorum.[79] The rejection of cult spurnedromanitas, priesthood and citizenship; in 9 AD Segimundus, imperial cult priest of what would later be known as Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium (sited at modern Cologne in Germany) cast off or destroyed his priestly regalia to join the rebellion of his kinsman Arminius.[80]

Western provinces of Roman Africa

In the early Principate, an altar inscribed Marazgu Aug(usto) Sac(rum) ("Dedicated to Marazgu Augustus"), identifies a local Libyan (Berber) deity with the supreme power of Augustus. In the senatorial province of Africa, altars to the Dii Magifie Augusti attest (according to Potter) a deity who was simultaneously local and universal, rather than one whose local identity was subsumed or absorbed by an Imperial divus or deity.[81] Two temples are attested to Roma and the divus Augustus – one dedicated under Tiberius at Leptis Magna, and another (Julio-Claudian) atMactar.[82]

The Imperial successionEdit

Julio-Claudian

Even as he prepared his adopted son Tiberius for the role of princeps and recommended him to the Senate as a worthy successor, Augustus seems to have doubted the propriety of dynasticimperium; this, however, was probably his only feasible course.[83] On his death, the senate debated and passed a lex de imperio which voted Tiberius princeps through his "proven merit in office", and awarded him the honorific "Augustus" as name and title.[84]Tiberius accepted the titles with apparent reluctance. Though he proved a capable and efficient administrator, he could not match his predecessor's extraordinary energy and charisma. Roman historians described him as morose and mistrustful. With a self-deprecation that may have been entirely genuine, he encouraged the cult to his father, and discouraged his own.[85] After much wrangling, he allowed a single temple in Smyrna to himself and the genius of the Senate in 26 AD; eleven cities had competed – with some vehemence and even violence – for the honour.[86]His lack of personal auctoritas allowed increasing praetorian influence over the Imperial house, the senate and through it, the state.[87] In 31 AD, his praetorian prefect Sejanus – by now a virtual co-ruler – was implicated in the death of Tiberius' son and heir apparent Drusus, and was executed as a public enemy. In Umbria, the Imperial cult priest (sevir Augustalis) memorialised "the providence of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, born for the eternity of the Roman name, upon the removal of that most pernicious enemy of the Roman people". In Crete, thanks were given to "thenumen and foresight of Tiberius Caesar Augustus and the Senate" in foiling the conspiracy – but at his death, the senate and his heir Caligula chose not to officially deify him.[88]Caligula's rule exposed the legal and moral contradictions of the Augustan "Republic". To legalise his succession, the Senate was compelled to constitutionally define his role, but the rites and sacrifices to the living genius of the emperor already acknowledged his constitutionally unlimited powers. The princeps played the role of "primus inter pares" only through personal self-restraint and decorum. It became evident that Caligula had little of either. He seems to have taken the cult of his own genius very seriously, and is said to have enjoyed acting the god – or rather, several of them. However, his infamous and oft-cited impersonations of major deities may represent no more than his priesthood of their cults, a desire to shock and a penchant for triumphal dress.[89]Whatever his plans, there is no evidence for his official cult as a living divus in Rome or his replacement of state gods, and none for major deviations or innovations in his provincial cult.[90]His reported sexual relations with his sister Drusilla and her deification after death aroused scorn from later historians; after Caligula's death, her cult was simply allowed to fade. His reported compulsion of priesthood fees from unwilling senators are marks of private cult and personal humiliations among the elite. Caligula's fatal offense was to willfully "insult or offend everyone who mattered", including the senior military officers who assassinated him.[91] The histories of his reign highlight his wayward impiety. Perhaps not only his: in 40 AD the Senate decreed that the "emperor should sit on a high platform even in the very senate house".[92] Claudius (his successor and uncle) intervened to limit the damage to the imperial house and those who had conspired against it, and had Caligula's public statues discreetly removed.[93]Cameo depicting the apotheosis of Claudius (mid-1st century CE)Claudius was chosen emperor by Caligula's praetorians and consolidated his position with cash payments (donativa) to the military. The senate were forced to ratify the choice and accept the affront. Claudius adopted the cognomen Caesar, deified Augustus' wife, Livia, 13 years after her death and in 42 AD was granted the title pater patriae (father of the fatherland) but relations between emperor and Senate seem to have been irreparable.[94] Claudius showed none of Caligula's excesses. He seems to have entirely refused a cult to his own genius: but the offer of cult simultaneously acknowledged the high status of those empowered to grant it and the extraordinary status of the princeps – Claudius' repeated refusals may have been interpreted as offensive to Senate, provincials and the imperial office itself. He further offended the traditional hierarchy by promoting his own trusted freedmen as imperial procurators: those closest to the Emperor held high status through their proximity.[95]It has been assumed that he allowed a single temple for his cult in Britain, following his conquest there.[96] The temple is certain – it was sited at Camulodunum (modern Colchester), the colonia-capital of the Iceni under their client king, Prasutagus, and was a focus of British wrath during theBoudiccan revolt of 60 AD.[97] But cult to the living Claudius there is very unlikely: he had already refused Alexandrine cult honours as "vulgar" and impious and cult to living emperors was associated with arae (altars), not temples.[98] The British worship offered him as a living divus is probably no more than a cruel literary judgment on his worth as emperor. Despite his evident respect for Republican norms he was not taken seriously by his own class, and in Seneca's fawning Neronian fiction, the Roman gods cannot take him seriously as a divus – the wild British might be more gullible.[99] In reality, they proved resentful enough to rebel, though probably less against the Claudian divus than against brutal abuses and the financial burden represented by its temple.Claudius died in 54 AD and was deified by his adopted son and successor Nero.[100] After an apparently magnificent funeral, the divus Claudius was given a temple on Rome's disreputableMons Caelius.[101] Fishwick remarks that "the malicious humour of the site can hardly have been lost by those in the know... the location of Claudius' temple in Britain (the occasion for his "pathetic triumph") may be more of the same".[102]Once in power, Nero allowed Claudius' cult to lapse, built his Domus Aurea over the unfinished temple, indulged his sybaritic and artistic inclinations and allowed the cult of his own genius aspaterfamilias of the Roman people.[103] Senatorial attitudes to him appear to have been largely negative. He was overthrown in a military coup, and his institutions of cult to his dead wife Poppaea and infant daughter Claudia Augusta were abandoned. Otherwise, he seems to have been a popular emperor, particularly in the Eastern provinces. Tacitus reports a senatorial proposal to dedicate a temple to Nero as a living divus, taken as ominous because "divine honours are not paid to an emperor till he has ceased to live among men".[104] After his death,Pliny the Elder remarked the resemblance between Nero's own head and that of his colossal sun-god statue (now known as the Colossus) but this was probably meant to flatter Titus, a more modest emperor.[105]

Flavian

The Genius of Domitian, with aegis andcornucopia, found near the Via Labicana,EsquilineNero's death saw the end of imperial tenure as a privilege of ancient Roman (patrician and senatorial) families. In a single chaotic year, power passed violently from one to another of four emperors. The first three promoted their own genius cult: the last two of these attempted Nero's restitution and promotion to divus. The fourth, Vespasian – son of an equestrian from Reate – secured his Flavian dynasty through reversion to an Augustan form of principate and renewed the imperial cult of divus Julius.[106][107] Vespasian was respected for his "restoration" of Roman tradition and the Augustan modesty of his reign. He dedicated state cult to genio populi Romani(the genius of the Roman people), respected senatorial "Republican" values and repudiated Neronian practice by removing various festivals from the public calendars, which had (in Tacitus' unsparing assessment) become "foully sullied by the flattery of the times".[108] He may have had the head of Nero's Colossus replaced or recut for its dedication (or rededication) to the sun godin 75 AD.[109][110][111] Following the first Jewish Revolt and the destruction of the Temple inJerusalem in 70 AD, he imposed the didrachmon, formerly paid by Jews for their Temple's upkeep but now re-routed to Jupiter Capitolinus as victor over them "and their God". Jews who paid the tax were exempt from the cult to imperial state deities. Those who offered it however were ostracised from their own communities.[112] Vespasian appears to have approached his own impending cult with dry humour – according to Suetonius, his last words were puto deus fio("I think I'm turning into a god"). Vespasian's son Titus reigned for two successful years then died of natural causes. He was deified and replaced by his younger brother, Domitian.Within two weeks of accession, Domitian had restored the cult of the ruling emperor's genius.[113]He remains a controversial figure, described as one of the very few emperors to scandalously style himself a living divus, as evidenced by the use of "master and god" (dominus et deus) in imperial documents. However, there are no records of Domitian's personal use of the title, its use in official address or cult to him, its presence on his coinage or in the Arval Acts relating to his state cult. It occurs only in his later reign and was almost certainly initiated and used by his own procurators (who in the Claudian tradition were also his freedmen).[114] Like any otherpaterfamilias and patron, Domitian was "master and god" to his extended familia, including his slaves, freedmen and clients. Pliny's descriptions of sacrifice to Domitian on the Capitol are consistent with the entirely unremarkable "private and informal" rites accorded to living emperors. Domitian was a traditionalist, severe and repressive but respected by the military and the general populace. He admired Augustus and may have sought to emulate him, but made the same tactless error as Caligula in treating the Senate as clients and inferiors, rather than as the fictive equals required by Augustan ideology. His assassination was planned and implemented from within his court, and his name officially but rather unsystematically erased from inscriptions.[115]

Nervan-Antonine

The Senate chose the elderly, childless and apparently reluctant Nerva as emperor. Nerva had long-standing family and consular connections with the Julio-Claudian and Flavian families, but proved a dangerously mild and indecisive princeps: he was persuaded to abdicate in favour ofTrajan. Pliny the Younger's panegyric of 100 AD claims the visible restoration of senatorial authority and dignity throughout the empire under Trajan, but while he praises the emperor's modesty, Pliny does not disguise the precarious nature of this autocratic gift.[116] Under Trajan's very capable civil and military leadership, the office of emperor was increasingly interpreted as an earthly viceregency of the divine order. He would prove an enduring model for Roman imperial virtues.[117][118]The Emperor Hadrian's Hispano-Roman origins and marked pro-Hellenism changed the focus of imperial cult. His standard coinage still identifies with the genius populi Romani, but other issues stress his identification with Hercules Gaditanus (Hercules of Gades), and Rome's imperial protection of Greek civilisation.[119] Commemorative coinage shows him "raising up" provincial deities (thus elevating and "restoring" the provinces); he promoted Sagalassos in Greek Pisidiaas the Empire's leading Imperial cult centre and in 131–2 AD he sponsored the exclusively GreekPanhellenion.[120] He was said to have "wept like a woman" at the death of his young companionAntinous, and arranged his apotheosis. Dio claims that Hadrian was held to ridicule for this emotional indulgence, particularly as he had delayed the apotheosis of his own sister Paulinaafter her death.[121]Antinous portrayed as Dionysus in a relief from the area between Anzioet LanuviumThe cult of Antinous would prove one of remarkable longevity and devotion, particularly in the Eastern provinces. Bithynia, as his birthplace, featured his image on coinage as late as the reign of Caracalla (r. 211–217). His popular cult appears to have thrived well into the 4th century, when he became the "whipping boy of pagan worship" in Christian polemic. Vout (2007) remarks his humble origins, untimely death and "resurrection" as theos, and his identification – and sometimes misidentification by later scholarship – with the images and religious functions of Apollo, Dionysius/Bacchus, and later, Osiris.[122] In Rome itself he was also theos on two of three surviving inscriptions but was more closely associated with hero-cult, which allowed direct appeals for his intercession with "higher gods".[123][124] Hadrian imposed the imperial cult to himself and Jupiter in Judaea following the Bar Kokhba revolt. He was predeceased by his wifeVibia Sabina. Both were deified but Hadrian's case had to be pleaded by his successor Antoninus Pius.[125]Marcus Aurelius' tutor Fronto offers the best evidence of imperial portraiture as a near-ubiquitous feature of private and public life.[126] Though evidence for private emperor worship is as sparse in this era as in all others, Fronto's letters imply the genius cult of the living emperor as an official, domestic and personal practice, probably more common than cult to the divi in this and other periods.[127]Marcus' son Commodus succumbed to the lures of self-indulgence, easy populism and rule by favourites.[128][129] He described his reign as a "golden age", and himself as a new Romulus and "re-founder" of Rome, but was deeply antagonistic toward the Senate – he reversed the standard "Republican" imperial formula to populus senatusque romanus (the people and senate of Rome). He increasingly identified himself with the demigod Hercules in statuary, temples and the arena, where – to the horror of the senate and (probably) the delight of the plebs – he liked to entertain as a bestiarius in the morning and a gladiator in the afternoon. In the last year of his life he was voted the official title Romanus Hercules; the state cult to Hercules acknowledged him as heroic, a divinity or semi-divinity (but not a divus) who had once been mortal.[130] Commodus may have intended declaring himself as a living god some time before his murder on the last day of 192 AD.[131]The Nervan-Antonine dynasty ended in chaos. The senate declared damnatio memoriae on Commodus, whose urban prefect Pertinax was declared Emperor by the Praetorian Guard in return for the promise of very large donatives.[132] Pertinax had risen through equestrian ranks by military talent and administrative efficiency to become senator, consul and finally and briefly Emperor; he was murdered by his Praetorians for attempting to cap their pay.[133] Pertinax was replaced by Didius Julianus, who had promised cash to the Praetorians and restoration of power to the Senate. Julianus began his reign with an ill-judged appeal to the memory of Commodus, a much resented attempt to bribe the populace en masse and the use of Praetorian force against them. In protest, a defiant urban crowd occupied the senatorial seats at the Circus Maximus.[134]Against a background of civil war among competing claimants in the provinces, Septimius Severus emerged as a likely victor. The Senate soon voted for the death of Julianus, the deification of Pertinax and the elevation of Septimius as Emperor.[135] Only a year had passed since the death of Commodus.

Severan

"Sit divus dum non sit vivus" (let him be a divus as long as he is not alive). Attributed to Caracalla, before murdering his co-emperor and brother Geta.[136]The Severan Tondo shows Septimius Severus, his wifeJulia Domna, their younger son Caracalla (lower right of picture) and the obliterated image of his murdered co-heir, Geta. Staatliche Museen zu Berlin.In 193 AD, Septimius Severus triumphally entered Rome and gave apotheosis to Pertinax. He cancelled the Senate's damnatio memoriae of Commodus, deified him as a frater (brother) and thereby adopted Marcus Aurelius as his own ancestor through an act of filial piety.[137] Severan coin images further re-enforced Septimius' association with prestigious Antonine dynasts and the genius populi Romani.[138][139]Septimius' reign represents a watershed in relations between Senate, Emperors, and the military.[140] Senatorial consent defined divine imperium as a Republican permission for the benefit of the Roman people, and apotheosis was a statement of senatorial powers. Where Vespasian had secured his position with appeals to the genius of the Senate and Augustan tradition, Septimius overrode the customary preferment of senators to senior military office. He increased plebeian privilege in Rome, stationed a loyal garrison there and selected his own commanders. He paid personal attention to the provinces, as sources of revenue, military manpower and unrest. Following his defeat of his rival Clodius Albinus at Lugdunum, he re-founded and reformed its imperial cult centre: dea Roma was removed from the altar and confined to the temple along with the deified Augusti.[141] Fishwick interprets the obligatory new rites as those due any paterfamilias from his inferiors.[142] Septimius' own patron deities,Melqart/Hercules and Liber/Bacchus, took pride of place with himself and his two sons at the Saecular Games of 204 AD.[143] Septimius died of natural causes in 211 AD at Eboracum (modern York) while on campaign in Britannia, after leaving the Empire equally to Caracalla and his older brother Geta, along with advice to "be harmonious, enrich the soldiers, and scorn all other men."[144]By 212 AD, Caracalla had murdered Geta, pronounced his damnatio memoriae and issued theConstitutio Antoniniana: this gave full Roman citizenship to all free inhabitants of the Empire.[145]and was couched as a generous invitation to celebrate the "victory of the Roman people" in foiling Geta's "conspiracy". In reality, Caracalla was faced by an endemic shortfall of cash and recruits. His "gift" was a far from popular move, as most of its recipients were humiliores of peasant status and occupation – approximately 90% of the total population. Humiliores they remained, but now liable to pay taxes, serve in the legions and adopt the name of their "liberator". Where other emperors had employed the mos maiorum of family obligation at the largely symbolic level of genius cult, Caracalla literally identified his personal survival with the state and "his" citizens.[146] Caracalla inherited the devotion of his father's soldiery but his new citizens were not inclined to celebrate and his attempts to court popularity in Commodan style seem to have misfired.[147] In Philostratus' estimation, his embrace of Empire foundered on his grudging, parochial mindset. He was assassinated in 217 AD, with the possible collusion of his praetorian prefect Macrinus.[148]The military hailed Macrinus as imperator, and he arranged for the apotheosis of Caracalla. Aware of the impropriety of his unprecedented leap through the traditional cursus honorum from equestrian to Emperor, he respectfully sought senatorial approval for his "self-nomination". It was granted – the new emperor had a lawyer's approach to imperium[149] but his foreign policy proved too cautious and placatory for the military.[150] After little more than a year, he was murdered in a coup and replaced with an emperor of Syrian background and Severan descent,Varius Avitus Bassianus, more usually known by the Latinised name of his god and his priesthood, Elagabalus.[151]The 14-year old emperor brought his solar-mountain deity from his native Emesa to Rome and into official imperial cult.[152] In Syria, the cult of Elagabalus was popular and well established. In Rome, it was a foreign and (according to some ancient sources) disgusting Eastern novelty. In 220 AD, the priest Elagabalus replaced Jupiter with the god Elagabalus as sol invictus (the unconquered Sun) and thereafter neglected his Imperial role as pontifex maximus. According to Marius Maximus, he ruled from his degenerate domus through prefects who included among others a charioteer, a locksmith, a barber, and a cook.[153] At the very least, he appears to have been regarded as an unacceptably effete eccentric by the Senate and military alike. He was assassinated by the Praetorians at the age of 18, subjected to the fullest indignities of damnatio memoriae and replaced with his young cousin Alexander Severus, who reigned for 13 years until killed in a mutiny. Alexander was the last "Severan" Emperor.

Imperial crisis and the DominateEdit

This section provides an overview of developments most relevant to cult: for a full listing of Emperors by name and date, see List of Roman Emperors.The end of the Severan dynasty marked the breakdown of central imperium. Against a background of economic hyperinflation and latterly, endemic plague, rival provincial claimants fought for supremacy and failing this, set up their own provincial Empires. Most Emperors seldom even saw Rome, and had only notional relationships with their senates. In the absence of coordinated Imperial military response, foreign peoples seized the opportunity for invasion and plunder.Maximinus Thrax (reigned 235–8 AD) sequestered the resources of state temples in Rome to pay his armies. The temples of the divi were first in line. It was an unwise move for his own posterity, as the grant or withholding of apotheosis remained an official judgment of Imperial worthiness, but the stripping of the temples of state gods caused far greater offense. Maximinus's actions more likely show need in extreme crisis than impiety, as he had his wife deified on her death[154]but in a rare display of defiance the senate deified his murdered predecessor, then openly rebelled.[155] His replacement, Claudius Gothicus, reigned briefly but successfully and was made a divus on his death. A succession of short-lived soldier-emperors followed. Further development in imperial cult appears to have stalled until Philip the Arab, who dedicated a statue to his father as divine in his home town of Philippopolis and brought the body of his young predecessor Gordian III to Rome for apotheosis. Coins of Philip show him in the radiate solar crown (suggestive of solar cult or a hellenised form of imperial monarchy), with Rome's temple to Venus and dea Roma on the reverse.[156]In 249 AD, Philip was succeeded (or murdered and usurped) by his praetorian prefect Decius, a traditionalist ex-consul and governor. After an accession of doubtful validity, Decius justified himself as rightful "restorer and saviour" of Empire and its religio: early in his reign he issued a coin series of imperial divi in radiate (solar) crowns.[157] Philip, the three Gordians, Pertinax and Claudius were omitted, presumably because Decius thought them unworthy of the honour.[158][159] In the wake of religious riots in Egypt, he decreed that all subjects of the Empire must actively seek to benefit the state through witnessed and certified sacrifice to "ancestral gods" or suffer a penalty: only Jews were exempt.[160] The Decian edict required that refusal of sacrifice be tried and punished at proconsular level. Apostasy was sought, rather than capital punishment.[161] A year after its due deadline, the edict was allowed to expire and shortly after this, Decius himself died.[162]The Decian edict appealed to whatever common mos maiorum might reunite a politically and socially fractured Empire. Within its multitude of cults, no ancestral gods need be specified by name. The fulfillment of this sacrificial obligation by loyal subjects would define them and their gods as Roman.[163] Yet despite its appeal to tradition, the Decian edict represents a significant departure from precedent. Most oaths of loyalty were collective; the Decian oath has been interpreted as a design to root out individual subversives.[164] Crisis had helped reformulate what Empire was, and what it was not: in the earliest days of the Principate, Livy had been convinced that the problems of the late Republic stemmed from impiety.[165] The principate of Augustus had been justified by its restoration of peace and the mos maiorum. Then, as now, devotion to private and mystery cults was acceptable within limits; excessive or exclusive devotion to one cult were marks of superstition and obsession. This was not merely improper but robbed Rome's gods of their dues from its citizens. Valerian (253–60) singled out the largest and most stubbornly self-interested of these cults: he outlawed Christian assembly and urged Christians to sacrifice to Rome's traditional gods.[166][167] His son and co-Augustus Gallienus – himself an initiate of theEleusinian Mysteries – also identified himself with traditional Roman gods and the virtue of military loyalty.[168] Aurelian (270–75) appealed for harmony among his soldiers (concordia militum), stabilised the Empire and its borders and successfully established an official, Hellenic form of unitary cult to the Palmyrene Sol Invictus in Rome's Campus Martius. The senate hailed him as restitutor orbis (restorer of the world) and deus et dominus natus (god and born ruler) but his intolerance of military corruption led to his murder by the Praetorians. Aurelian's immediate successors consolidated his achievements: coinage of Probus (276–82) shows him in radiate solar crown, and his prolific variety of coin types include issues showing the temple of Venus andDea Roma in Rome.[169][170]These policies and preoccupations culminated in Diocletian's Tetrarchy. This divided the empire into Western and Eastern administrative blocs: each had its Augustus (senior emperor), helped by a Caesar (junior emperor) as Augustus-in-waiting. Provinces were divided and subdivided: their imperial bureaucracy was extraordinary in size, scope and attention to detail but their seniorAugustus was fundamentally conservative. On his accession in 284 AD, he held games in honour of the divus Antinous.[171] Where his predecessors preferred persuasion and coercion of recalcitrant sects, Diocletian launched a series of ferocious reactions known in Church history as the Great Persecution. According to Lactantius, this began with a report of ominous haruspicy in Diocletian's domus and a subsequent (but undated) dictat of placatory sacrifice by the entire military.[172] A date of 302 is regarded as likely and Eusebius also says the persecutions of Christians began in the army.[173] However Maximilian's martyrdom (295) came from his refusal of military service, and Marcellus' (298) for renouncing his military oath. Legally, these were military insurrections and Diocletian's edict may have followed these and similar acts of conscience and faith.[166] An unknown number of Christians appear to have suffered the extreme and exemplary punishments traditionally reserved for rebels and traitors.The nature and intent of the imperial cult under Diocletian are hard to discern through the taints of his notoriety but his expanded imperial collegia seems to have had major implications.[174]While the division of empire and imperium catered to a peaceful and well-prepared succession, its unity still required the highest investiture of power and status in one man. In matters of titulature and ceremonial alike, the hyperinflation of imperial honours distinguished both Augustifrom their Caesares and Diocletian (as senior Augustus) from his colleague Maximian. An elaborate choreography of etiquette surrounded the approach to the imperial person and imperial progressions. The senior Augustus in particular was made a separate and unique being, accessible only through those closest to him. By this period, low-born, trusted imperial eunuchs played a major procuratorial role and as in Claudius' time, their proximity to the source ofimperium was resented by the Senate, whose role in government was supplanted by the imperial bureaucracy.[175]The near identical official images of the collegial Imperial Tetrarchs conceal Diocletian's seniority and the internal stresses of his empire.Diocletian's avowed conservatism almost certainly precludes a systematic design toward personal elevation as a "divine monarch". Rather, he formally elaborated imperial ceremony as a manifestation of the divine order of empire and elevated emperorship as the supreme instrument of the divine will. The idea was Augustan, or earlier, expressed most clearly in Stoic philosophy and the solar cult, especially under Aurelian. At the very beginning of his reign, before his Tetrarchy, Diocletian had adopted the signum of Jovius; his co-Augustus adopted the titleHerculius. During the Tetrarchy, the titles were multiplied, but with no clear reflection of implicit divine seniority: in one case, the divine signum of the Augustus is inferior to that of his Caesar. These divine associations may have followed a military precedent of emperors as comes to divinities (or divinities as comes to emperors). Moreover, the divine signum appears in the fairly narrow context of court panegyric and civil etiquette. It makes no appearance on the general coinage of the Tetrarchy: coin images and group statuary of the Tetrarchs themselves show each as an impersonal, near-homogenous abstraction of imperial might and unity.[176][177]

Context and precedentsEdit

The Augustan settlement was promoted by its contemporary apologists as restorative and conservative rather than revolutionary.[178] Official cult to the genius of the living princeps as "first among equals" elaborated the hierarchal honours of mos maiorum to justify the unprecedented range and permanence of his powers. The official gift of Caesar's apotheosis in a stable Republic justified the future cult of Imperial divi.The official offer of divine honours to the living princeps weighed his god-like powers against his self-restraint and pious respect for Republican tradition. "Good" emperors rejected the offer with every appearance of gratitude and humility, accepting the more modest offer of genius cult as an honour to the donor and the imperial office. Claims that later emperors sought and obtained divine honours in Rome reflect their bad relationship with their senates: in Tertullian's day, it was still "a curse to name the emperor a god before his death". On the other hand, to judge from the domestic ubiquity of the emperor's image, private cults to "good" living emperors are as likely in Rome as elsewhere and as Gradel observes, no Roman was ever prosecuted for sacrificing to his emperor.[179][180]

Divus, deus and the numen

Dedicatory inscription (CIL14.04057) to the "numen of the House of the Augustus", fromOstia AnticaThe place of the divi among state deities is far from clear. They had precedent in the di parentes, who were elevated to "godhead" by their sons and accorded ancestral rites, but dead ancestors, no matter how honoured, remained manes of the underworld. A mortal did not normally possess the divine power (numen), which according to Gradel "can also be synonymous withdeus".[181][182] Official divi were politico-religious creations of the senate – or at least the senate played a formal role in their creation.[183][184] As long as the correct rituals and sacrifice were offered, the divus would be received by the heavenly gods as a coelicola (a dweller in heaven), a lesser being than themselves.[185] What the divus was supposed to be or do in heaven was left to imagination, not theology. Popular belief held that the divus Augustus would be personally welcomed by Jupiter but in Seneca's Apocolocyntosis, the unexpected arrival of Augustus' equally divine descendant Claudius creates a problem for the Olympians. They have no idea who or what he is and when they find out, they cannot think what to do with him. Seneca's sarcastic wit – an unacceptable impiety towards a deus – freely portrays the divus Claudius as just a dead, ridiculous and possibly quite bad emperor.[186] Later Roman divi range from "dead but not guilty emperor" to "emperor of fond memory". Their images were sacrosanct and their rites definitively divine[187] but divi could be made, unmade, remade or simply forgotten.[188] Augustus and Trajan appear to have remained the ideals for longer than any, and cult to "good" divi appears to have lasted well into the late Imperial dominate. In Rome's state cult, deceased divi were not credited with "personal" divine power – this was reserved for their divine patrons – but they may have functioned as intercessors.The immense power of living emperors, on the other hand, was mediated through the encompassing agency of the state. Once acknowledged as paterfamilias to an Empire, a princeps was naturally entitled to genius cult from Imperial subjects of all classes. Cult to a living emperor's numen was quite another matter, and might be interpreted as no less than a statement of divine monarchy. Imperial responses to the first overtures of cult to the August numen were therefore extremely cautious.[189] Only much later, probably in consequence of the hyperinflation of honours to living Emperors, could a living emperor be openly, formally addressed as numen praesens (the numinous presence).[190]The obscure relationship between deus, divus and numen in Imperial cult might simply reflect its origins as a pragmatic, respectful and somewhat evasive Imperial solution using broad terminology whose meanings varied according to context. For Beard et al., a practicable and universal Roman cult of deified emperors and others of the Imperial house must have hinged on the paradox that a mortal might – like the semi-divine "heroic" figures of Hercules, Aeneas and Romulus – possess or acquire sufficient measure of numen to rise above their mortal condition and be in the company of the gods, yet remain mortal in the eyes of Roman traditionalists.[191]

Res divinae, res humanae and religio

In the Late Republican era, Cicero speculated in Stoic terms on a distinction between res divina("divine matters"), which were spiritual and godly, and res humanae ("human affairs"), which were material and temporal. Balancing intellectual skepticism with his role as augur and senator, Cicero concludes that it is better to honour the gods, even if there is no incontrovertible evidence of their existence. Religio was a matter of transactional reciprocity (do ut des, "I give, that you may give"), and piety was a system of offering honors and receiving benefactions. State religion provided a bridge between the divine will and the ordering of human affairs, with the city as earthly home to the gods and the center of Roman order. Cult to the State gods would benefit the community: cult offered by individuals to their personal deities sought only their own interest. The religions and offices of the state were entwined: its senior priesthoods were held by its senior magistrates. This represented a continuous strand in Rome's religious, social and political life, from the days of the kings, then of the rex sacrorum, then of the pontifex maximus and later the emperor, the highest magistrates had access to the most powerful gods of Rome. Public religion at Rome incorporated local and regional cults from the earliest period; as the empire expanded, gods and cults of both allies and the conquered were imported. The simultaneous preservation and subordination of others' religions facilitated unity under Rome rule and fostered mutual religious tolerance within the hierarchy.[192]

Sacrificium

For general context, see Religion in ancient RomeMarcus Aurelius as pontifex offers sacrifice to Jupiter Capitolinus in gratitude for victory. Once part of the Arch of Marcus Aurelius. Capitoline Museum, Rome."Sacred offerings" (sacrificium) formed the contract of public and private religio, from oaths of office, treaty and loyalty to business contracts and marriage. Participation in sacrificiumacknowledged personal commitment to the broader community and its values, which under Decius became a compulsory observance.[193] Livy believed that military and civil disasters were the consequence of error (vitium) in augury, neglect of due and proper sacrifice and the impious proliferation of "foreign" cults and superstitio.[194] Religious law focused on the sacrificial requirements of particular deities on specific occasions.[195]In Julio-Claudian Rome, the Arval priesthood sacrificed to Roman state gods at various temples for the continued welfare of the Imperial family on their birthdays, accession anniversaries and to mark extraordinary events such as the quashing of conspiracy or revolt. On 3 January they consecrated the annual vows: sacrifice promised in the previous year was paid, as long as the gods had kept the Imperial family safe for the contracted time. If not, it could be withheld, as it was in the annual vow following the death of Trajan.[196] In Pompeii, the genius of the living emperor was offered a bull: presumably a standard practice in Imperial cult at this time, though lesser offerings of wine, cakes and incense were also given, especially in the later Imperial era. The divi and genii were offered the same kind of sacrifice as the state gods, but cult officials seem to have offered Christians the possibility of sacrifice to emperors as the lesser act.[197][198]

Augury, ira deorum and pax deorum

Main article: AugurBy ancient tradition, presiding magistrates sought divine opinion of proposed actions through an augur, who read the divine will through the observation of natural signs in the sacred space (templum) of sacrifice.[199] Magistrates could use their right of augury (ius augurum) to adjourn and overturn the process of law, but were obliged to base their decision on the augur's observations and advice. For Cicero, this made the augur the most powerful authority in the Late Republic.[200][201]In the later Republic, augury came under the supervision of the college of pontifices, a priestly-magistral office whose powers were increasingly woven into the cursus honorum. The office ofpontifex maximus eventually became a de facto consular office.[202] When the consul Lepidusdied, his office as pontifex maximus passed to Augustus, who took priestly control over the State oracles (including the Sibylline books), and used his powers as censor to suppress unapproved oracles.[203] Octavian's honorific title of Augustus indicated his achievements as expressions of divine will: where the impiety of the Late Republic had provoked heavenly disorder and wrath (ira deorum), his obedience to divine ordinance brought divine peace (pax deorum).

Genius and household cults

The mos maiorum established the near-monarchic familial authority of the ordinary paterfamilias("the father of the family" or the "owner of the family estate"), his obligations to family and community and his priestly duties to his lares and domestic penates. His position was hereditary and dynastic, unlike the elected, time-limited offices of Republican magistrates. His family – and especially his slaves and freedmen – owed a reciprocal duty of cult to his genius.[204][205]A winged genius raisesAntoninus Pius and his Empress Faustina in apotheosis, escorted by twoeagles. From the column-base of Antoninus Pius, Vatican.Genius (pl. genii) was the essential spirit and generative power – depicted as a serpent or as a perennial youth, often winged – within an individual and their clan (gens, pl. gentes), such as theJulli (Julians) of Julius Caesar. A paterfamilias could confer his name, a measure of his geniusand a role in his household rites, obligations and honours upon those he adopted. As Caesar's adopted heir, Octavian stood to inherited the genius, heritable property and honours of his adoptive father in addition to those obtained through his own birth gens and efforts.[206] The exceptionally potent genius of living emperors expressed the will of the gods through Imperial actions.[207] In 30 BC, libation-offerings to the genius of Octavian (later Augustus) became a duty at public and private banquets, and from 12 BC, state oaths were sworn by the genius of the living emperor.[208]The Roman paterfamilias offered daily cult to his lares and penates, and to his di parentes/divi parentes, in domestic shrines and in the fires of the household hearth.[209] As goddess of all hearths, including the ritual hearth of the State, Vesta thus connected the "public" and "private" duties of citizens. Her official cults were supervised by the pontifex maximus from a state-owned house near the temple of Vesta. In Vergil's Aeneid, Aeneas brought the Trojan cult of the laresand penates from Troy, along with the Palladium which was later installed in the temple ofVesta.[210] When Augustus became pontifex maximus in 12 BC he gave the Vestals his own house on the Palatine. His penates remained there as its domestic deities, and were soon joined by his lares. His gift therefore tied his domestic cult to the sanctified Vestals and Rome's sacred hearth and symbolically extended his domus to the state and its inhabitants. He also co-opted and promoted the traditional and predominantly plebeian Compitalia shrines and extended their festivals, whose Lares were known thereafter as Augusti.[211][212][213][214][215]The traditional familia structure and rites of adoption helped develop and justify Imperial cult despite often violent changes of dynasty, and the affairs of the Imperial domus were accounted in deliberations for and against apotheosis – against, because like any other domus, the Imperial household might be seen as a potential hotbed of sexual immorality, disloyalty, unhealthy role-reversal (such as the "henpecked" paterfamilias and disobedient children or slaves), and outright conspiracy.[216][217][218]

Imperial cult in the military

The cult of Mithras was gradually absorbed within Imperial solar monism: sol Invictus is to the left of picture. The plaque was commissioned by an evidently wealthy Imperial slave. Vatican Museum.The praetorians stood to gain immensely from their unique proximity and personal loyalty to the emperor and proved a source of anxiety for the people, senate and emperors alike. Where the senate and people must rely on due process of law and Imperial permissions, the praetorians could create, support or remove the head of state. Tiberius' praetorian prefect Sejanus appears to have approached the legions for support in his alleged plot and Suetonius implicates his replacement Macro in Tiberius' death. Septimius' praetorian prefect Plautianus, "the clarissimuspraetorian prefect and our kinsman" was executed after an alleged attempted coup. Whatever the truth of these accusations, praetorian prefects exercised dangerously charismatic influence. For Sejanus and Plautianus this may have extended to their own cult: both were certainly included in the annual vows to the Imperial familia.[219] The praetorian corps were disbanded and reformed by various emperors until abolished by Constantine I.Despite the Augustan reforms, the citizen legionaries appear to have maintained their Marian traditions. With customary staid obedience, they gave cult to Jupiter for the emperor's well-being and regular cult to State, local and personal divinities. Cult to the Imperial person and familia was generally offered on Imperial accessions, anniversaries and renewal of annual vows: a bust of the ruling emperor was kept in the legionary insignia shrine for the purpose, attended by a designated military imaginifer. By the time of the early Severans, the legions offered cult to the state gods, the Imperial divi, the current emperor's numen, genius and domus (or familia), and special cult to the Empress as "mother of the camp." At around this time, Mithraic cults became very popular with the military, and provided a basis for syncretic Imperial cult which absorbed Mithras into Solar and Stoic Monism as a focus of military concordia and loyalty.[220][221][222]

Altars, temples and priesthoods

Interior of the College of the Augustales at HerculaneumAn Imperial cult temple was known as a caesareum (Latin) or sebasteion (Greek). In Fishwick's analysis, cult to Roman state divi was associated with temples, and the genius cult to the living emperor with his altar. In both cases, the image of the emperor focused attention on his person and attributes, and its siting within the sacred precinct underlined his position in the divine and human hierarchies. Expenditure on the physical expression of Imperial cult was vast, and was only curbed by the Imperial crisis of the 3rd century. As far as is known, no new temples to statedivi were built after the reign of Marcus Aurelius.[223]The Imperial divi and living genii appear to have been served by separate ceremonies and priesthoods. Emperors themselves could be priests of state gods, the divi and their own geniuscult images. The latter practice illustrates the Imperial genius as innate to its holder but separable from him as a focus of respect and cult, formally consistent with cult to the personification of ideas and ideals such as Fortune (Fortuna), peace (Pax) or victory (Victoria) et al. in conjunction with the genius of the Emperor, Senate or Roman people; Julius Caesar had showed his affinity with the virtue of clemency (Clementia), a personal quality associated with his divine ancestor and patron goddess Venus. Priests typically and respectfully identified their function by manifesting the appearance and other properties of their deus. The duties of Imperial priests were both religious and magistral: they included the provision of approved Imperial portraits, statues and sacrifice, the institution of regular calendrical cult and the inauguration of public works, Imperial games (state ludi) and munera to authorised models. In effect, priests throughout the empire were responsible for re-creating, expounding and celebrating the extraordinary gifts, powers and charisma of emperors.[224]As part of his religious reforms, Augustus revived, subsidised and expanded the Compitaliagames and priesthoods, dedicated to the Lares of the vici (neighbourhoods), to include cult to his own Lares (or to his genius as a popular benefactor). Thereafter, the Lares Compitales were known as Lares Augusti. Tiberius created a specialised priesthood, the Sodales Augustales, dedicated to the cult of the deceased, deified Augustus. This priestly office, and the connections between the Compitalia cults and the Imperial household, appear to have lasted for as long as the Imperial cult itself.[225]

Saviours and monotheists

Livia in the guise of a goddess withcornucopiaGreek philosophies had significant influence in the development of Imperial cult. Stoic cosmologists saw history as an endless cycle of destruction and renewal, driven by fortuna (luck or fortune), fatum (fate) and logos (the universal divine principle). The same forces inevitably produced a sōtēr (saviour) who would transform the destructive and "unnatural disorder" of chaos and strife to pax, fortuna and salus (peace, good fortune and well-being) and is thus identified with solar cults such as Apollo and Sol Invictus. Livy (in the early to mid 1st century BC), and Lucan (in the 1st century AD) interpreted the crisis of the late Republic as a destructive phase which led to religious and constitutional renewal by Augustus and his restoration of peace, good fortune and well-being to the Roman people. Augustus was a messianic figure who personally and rationally instigated a "golden age" – the pax Augusta – and was patron, priest and protege to a range of solar deities. The Imperial order was therefore not merely justified by appeals to the divine; it was an innately natural, benevolent and divine institution.[226][227]The Imperial cult tolerated and later included specific forms of pluralistic monism. For Imperial cult apologists, monotheists had no rational grounds for refusal, but imposition of cult was counter-productive. Jews presented a special case. Long before the civil war, Judaism had been tolerated in Rome by diplomatic treaty with Graeco-Judaean rulers. It was brought to prominence and scrutiny after Judaea's enrollment as a client kingdom in 63 BC.[228][229] The following Jewish diaspora helped disperse early "Judaic" Christianity. Early Christians appear to have been regarded as a sub-sect of Judaism and as such were sporadically tolerated. Judaism's highly developed textual tradition provided a model for Pauline Christianity's distinctively "non-Jewish" literary-religious narrative.[230]Jewish sources on Emperors, polytheistic cult and the meaning of Empire are fraught with interpretive difficulties. In Caligula's reign, Jews resisted the placing of Caligula's statue in their Temple and pleaded their compliance with his cult through offerings and prayer to Yahweh on his behalf.[231] According to Philo, Caligula was unimpressed because the offering was not made directly to him (whether to his genius or his numen is never made clear) but the statue was never installed. Philo does not challenge the Imperial cult itself: he commends the god-like honours given Augustus as "the first and the greatest and the common benefactor" but Caligula shames the Imperial tradition by acting "like an Egyptian".[232] However, Philo is clearly pro-Roman: a major feature of the first (66 AD) Jewish revolt was the ending of Jewish sacrifices to Rome and the Emperor and the defacement of imperial images.[233]After the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem (and most of the city) in the first Jewish revolt, Hadrian rebuilt both in Greek style, dedicated the rebuilt Temple (in Dio's account) to Jupiter, renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina and sought a ban on circumcision as impious disfigurement. The ensuing Bar Kokhba revolt overwhelmed the Roman military occupation and destabilised much of the Empire. For almost three years, Judea was an independent state, led by the messianic commander Simon Bar Kokhba. Then it was obliterated by the Imperial armies and erased from the Roman map – Hadrian renamed it as Syria Palaestina.[234] Christians described their persecution under Bar Kokhba. Jews described theirs in its aftermath. Jewish messianism retreated into abstraction, and a Jewish nation-state became an ideal. Christians were less inclined to identify with the Judaic roots of their religion: some actively repudiated them. Hadrian's restrictions on Judaism were later relaxed and Jewish exemption from the full obligations of Imperial cult proved a source of suspicion and resentment for Hellenists and Christians alike.[235]

The Imperial cult and ChristianityEdit

To pagan Romans a simple act of sacrifice, whether to ancestral gods under Decius or state gods under Diocletian, represented adherence to Roman tradition and loyalty to the pluralistic unity of Empire. Refusal was treason. Christians, however, identified "Hellenistic honours" as parodies of true "worship".[236][237] Under the reign of Nero or Domitian, the author of the Book of Revelationrepresented Rome as the "Beast from the sea", Judaeo-Roman elites as the "Beast from the land" and the charagma (official Roman stamp) as a sign of the Beast.[238] Some Christian thinkers perceived divine providence in the timing of Christ's birth, at the very beginning of the Empire that brought peace, laid paths for the spread of the Gospels, and destroyed Jerusalem and its Temple to punish the Jews for refusing the Christ.[239] With the abatement of persecution Jerome could acknowledge Empire as a bulwark against evil but insist that "imperial honours" were contrary to Christian teaching.[240]As pontifex maximus Constantine I favoured the "Catholic Church of the Christians" against theDonatists because:it is contrary to the divine law... that we should overlook such quarrels and contentions, whereby the Highest Divinity may perhaps be roused not only against the human race but also against myself, to whose care he has by his celestial will committed the government of all earthly things. Official letter from Constantine, dated 314 AD.[241]In this change of Imperial formula Constantine acknowledged responsibility to an earthly realm whose discord and conflict might arouse the ira deorum but recognised the power of the new Christian priestly hierarchy in determining what was auspicious or orthodox. Though unbaptised, Constantine had triumphed under the signum of the Christ (probably some form of Labarum as an adapted or re-interpreted legionary standard). He may have officially ended – or attempted to end – blood sacrifices to the genius of living emperors but his Imperial iconography and court ceremonial outstripped Diocletian's in their elevation of the Imperial hierarch to superhuman status. Constantine's permission for a new cult temple to himself and his family in Umbria is extant: the cult "should not be polluted by the deception of any contagious superstition".[242] At the First Council of Nicaea Constantine united and re-founded the empire under an absolute head of state by divine dispensation and was honoured as the first Christian Imperial divus. On his death he was venerated and was held to have ascended to heaven. Philostorgius later criticised Christians who offered sacrifice at statues of the divus Constantine.[242] His three sons re-divided their Imperial inheritance: Constantius II was an Arian – his brothers were Nicene.Constantine's nephew Julian, Rome's last non-Christian emperor, rejected the "Galilean madness" of his upbringing for a synthesis of neo-Platonism, Stoic asceticism and universal solar cult and actively fostered religious and cultural pluralism.[243] His restored Augustan form of principate, with himself as primus inter pares, ended with his death in 363, after which his reforms were reversed or abandoned. The Western emperor Gratian refused the office of pontifex maximus and, against the protests of the Senate,[244] removed the altar of Victoria (Victory) from the Senate House and began the disestablishment of the Vestals. Theodosius I briefly re-united the Empire, officially adopted Nicene Christianity as the Imperial religion and ended official support for all other creeds and cults. He refused to restore Victoria to the Senate House, extinguished the sacred fire and vacated their temple yet accepted comparison with Hercules and Jupiter as a living divinity and commended his heirs to its overwhelmingly Hellenic Senate in traditional Hellenic terms. He was the last emperor of both East and West.[245][246] After his death the sundered Eastern and Western halves of Empire followed increasingly divergent paths: nevertheless both were Roman and both had emperors. Imperial ceremonial – notably the Imperial adventus or ceremony of arrival, which derived in greater part from the Triumph – was embedded within Roman culture, Church ceremony and the Gospels themselves.[247]The last Western divus was probably Libius Severus, who died in 465 AD.[248] Very little is known about him. His Imperium was not recognised by his Eastern counterpart and he may have been a puppet-emperor of the Germanic general Ricimer. The ineffectiveness and eventual collapse of Western Imperium was partly replaced by the spiritual supremacy and political influence of the Roman Catholic Church, whose popes could anoint or excommunicate kings and emperors.In the Eastern Empire Christian orthodoxy became a prerequisite of Imperial accession –Anastasius signed a document attesting his obedience to its doctrine and practices. He is the last emperor known to be consecrated as divus on his death (518 AD). The title appears to have been abandoned on grounds of its spiritual impropriety but the consecration of Eastern emperors continued: they held power through divine ordinance and their rule was the manifestation of sacred power on earth. The adventus and the veneration of the Imperial image continued to provide analogies for devotional representations (Icons) of the heavenly hierarchy and the rituals of the orthodox Churches.[249]

Historical evaluationsEdit

The nature and function of Imperial cult remain contentious, not least because its Roman historians employed it equally as a topos for Imperial worth and Imperial hubris. It has been interpreted as an essentially foreign, Graeco-Eastern institution, imposed cautiously and with some difficulty upon a Latin-Western Roman culture in which the deification of rulers was constitutionally alien, if not obnoxious.[250] In this viewpoint, the essentially servile and "un-Roman" Imperial cult was established at the expense of the traditional Roman ethics which had sustained the Republic.[251] For Christians and secularists alike, the identification of mortal emperors with godhead represented the spiritual and moral bankruptcy of paganism which led to the triumph of Christianity as Rome's state religion.[252][253]Very few modern historians would now support this point of view. Some – among them Beard et al. – find no distinct category of Imperial cult within the religio-political life of Empire: the Romans themselves used no such enveloping term. Cult to living or dead emperors was inseparable from Imperial state religion, which was inextricably interwoven with Roman identity and whose beliefs and practices were founded within the ancient commonality of Rome's social and domestic mos maiorum. Descriptions of cult to emperors as a tool of "Imperial propaganda" or the less pejorative "civil religion" emerge from modern political thought and are of doubtful value: in Republican Rome, cult could be given to state gods, personal gods, triumphal generals, magnates, benefactors, patrons and the ordinary paterfamilias – living or dead. Cult to mortals was not an alien practise: it acknowledged their power, status and their bestowal of benefits. The Augustan settlement appealed directly to the Republican mos maiorum and under the principate, cult to emperors defined them as emperors.[254]With rare exceptions, the earliest institution of cult to emperors succeeded in providing a common focus of identity for Empire. It celebrated the charisma of Roman Imperial power and the meaning of Empire according to local interpretations of romanitas,[255] firstly an agency of transformation, then of stability. Cult to Imperial deities was associated with commonplace public ceremonies, celebrations of extraordinary splendour and unnumbered acts of private and personal devotion. The political usefulness of such an institution implies neither mechanical insincerity nor lack of questioning about its meaning and propriety: an Empire-wide, unifying cult would necessarily be open to a multitude of personal interpretations but its significance to ordinary Romans is almost entirely lost in the critical interpretations of a small number of philosophically literate, skeptical or antagonistic Romans and Greeks, whether Christian or Hellene.[256][257] The decline of prosperity, security and unity of Empire was clearly accompanied by loss of faith in Rome's traditional gods and – at least in the West – in Roman emperors. For some Romans, this was caused by the neglect of traditional religious practices. For others – equally Roman – breakdown of empire was God's judgment on faithless or heretical Christians and hardened pagans alike.As Roman society evolved, so did cult to emperors: both proved remarkably resilient and adaptable. Until its confrontation by fully developed Christian orthodoxy, "Imperial cult" needed no systematic or coherent theology. Its part in Rome's continued success was probably sufficient to justify, sanctify and "explain" it to most Romans.[258][259] Confronted with crisis in Empire, Constantine matched the Augustan achievement by absorbing Christian monotheism into the Imperial hierarchy. Cult to emperors was not so much abolished or abandoned as transformed out of recognition.[260]

See also

Notes






Volga BulgariaItil Bolğar← 7th century–1240s → Islam was adopted as the state religion in the early tenth century, under Almish ibn Shilki Yiltawar.[2] Ibn Fadlan was dispatched by the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir in 922/3 to establish relations and bring qadis and teachers of Islamic law to Volga Bulgaria, as well as help in building a fort and a mosque.[3] The Volga Bulgarians attempted to convert Vladimir I of Kiev to Islam; however Vladimir rejected the notion of Russians giving up wine, which he declared was the "very joy of their lives".[4]Commanding the Volga River in its middle course, the state controlled much of trade between Europe and Asia prior to the Crusades (which made other trade routes practicable). The capital,Bolghar, was a thriving city, rivalling in size and wealth with the greatest centres of the Islamic world. Trade partners of Bolghar included from Vikings, Bjarmland, Yugra and Nenets in the north to Baghdad and Constantinople in the south, from Western Europe to China in the East. Other major cities included Bilär, Suar (Suwar), Qaşan (Kashan) and Cükätaw (Juketau). Modern citiesKazan and Yelabuga were founded as Volga Bulgaria's border fortresses.The Volga Bulgarians attempted to convert Vladimir I of Kiev to Islam; however Vladimir rejected the notion of Russians giving up wine, which he declared was the "very joy of their lives".[4]United States

The United States of America contains roughly 40% of the Jewish population of the world, and most US wine stores, particularly in the northeast, have a small kosher section.Historically, kosher wine has been associated in the US with the Manischewitz brand and its imitators, which produce a sweetened wine with a distinctive taste, made of labrusca rather than vinifera grapes. Due to the addition of high-fructose corn syrup, the normal bottlings of Manischewitz are, for Ashkenazi Jews, not kosher during Passover by the rule of kitniyot, and a special bottling is made available. This cultural preference for a distinct, unique variety of wine dates back to Jewish settlements in early US history. [4]Today, there are thousands of kosher wines available in every conceivable style from virtually all of the world's wine-producing regions.Because of wine's special role in many non-Jewish religions, the kashrut laws specify that wine cannot be considered kosher if it might have been used for idolatry. These laws include Yayin Nesekh (יין נסך) -wine that has been poured to an idol; Stam Yainom-wine that has been touched by someone who believes in idolatry or produced by non-Jews. When kosher wine is yayin mevushal ("יין מבושל" - "cooked" or "boiled"), it becomes unfit for idolatrous use and will keep the status of kosher wine even if subsequently touched by an idolater.While none of the ingredients that make up wine (alcohol, sugars, acidity and phenols) is considered non-kosher, the kashrut laws involving wine are concerned more with who handles the wine and what they use to make it.[2] To be considered kosher, a Sabbath-observant Jew must be involved in the entire winemaking process from the harvesting of the grapes, throughfermentation to bottling. Any ingredients used, including finings, must be kosher.[1] This requirement can exclude certain fining agents, such as casein (which is derived from dairy products; this does not render it non-kosher but rather unfit for consumption with meat), gelatin(which is commonly, but not necessarily, derived from non-kosher animals; even if kosher, as a byproduct of animal slaughter, it renders the wine unfit for consumption with dairy products) andisinglass (which historically came exclusively from non-kosher fish, but currently can be produced from kosher fish as well). Egg whites can be used in the clarification of kosher wine but would not be appropriate for vegan kosher wine.[2]Wine that is described as "kosher for Passover" must have been kept free from contact withgrain, bread and dough.[2]

Mevushal wines

As mentioned above, when kosher wine is mevushal (מבושל—"cooked" or "boiled"), it thereby becomes unfit for idolatrous use and will keep the status of kosher wine even if subsequently touched by an idolater. It is not known whence the ancient Jewish authorities derived this claim; there are no records concerning "boiled wine" and its fitness for use in the cults of any of the religions of the peoples surrounding ancient Israel. Indeed, in Orthodox Christianity, it was common to add boiling water to the sacramental wine. Another opinion holds that mevushal wine was not included in the rabbinic edict against drinking wine touched by an idolater simply because such wine was uncommon in those times.Mevushal wine is frequently used in kosher restaurants and by kosher caterers so as to allow the wine to be handled by non-Jewish and/or non-observant waiters.The process of fully boiling a wine kills off most of the fine mold, or "must", on the grapes, and greatly alters the tannins and flavors of the wine. Therefore, great care is taken to satisfy the legal requirements while exposing the wine to as little heat as necessary. There is significant disagreement between halachic deciders as to the precise temperature a wine much reach to be considered mevushal, ranging from 165°F (74°C) to 194°F (90°C). (At this temperature, the wine is not at a rolling boil, but it is cooking, in the sense that it will evaporate much more quickly than usual.) Cooking at the minimum required temperature reduces some of the damage done to the wine, but still has a substantial effect on quality and aging potential.[2]Recently, a process called flash pasteurization has come into vogue. This method rapidly heats the wine to the desired temperature and immediately chills it back to room temperature. This process is said to have a minimal effect on flavor, at least to the casual wine drinker.Irrespective of the method, the pasteurization process must be overseen by mashgichim to ensure the kosher status of the wine. Generally, they will attend the winery to physically tip the fruit into the crush, and operate the pasteurization equipment. Once the wine emerges from the process, it can be handled and aged in the normal fashion.

According to Conservative Judaism

In the 1960s, the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards approved a responsum ("legal ruling") by Rabbi Israel Silverman on this subject. Silverman noted that some classical Jewish authorities believed that Christians are not considered idolaters, and that their products cannot be considered forbidden in this regard. He also noted that most winemaking in the United States is fully automated. Based on 15th–19th century precedents in the responsa literature, he concluded that wines manufactured by this automated process may not be classified as wine "manufactured by gentiles", and thus are not prohibited by Jewish law. This responsum makes no attempt to change halakhah in any way, but rather argues that most American wine, made in an automated fashion, is already kosher by traditional halakhic standards. Some criticism was later made against this teshuvah, because (a) some wines are not made by automated processes but rather, at least in some steps, by hand, and (b) on rare occasions non-kosher fining ingredients are used in wine preparation. Silverman later retracted his position.A later responsum on this subject was written by Rabbi Elliot N. Dorff, and also accepted by the CJLS. (Elliot Dorff, "On the Use of All Wines" YD 123:1.1985) Dorff noted that not all wines are made by automated processes, and thus the reasoning behind Silverman's responsum was not conclusively reliable in all cases. He explored rabbinic thought on Jewish views of Christians, also finding that most poskim refused to consign Christians to the status of idolater. Dorff then explored the traditional halakhic argument that avoiding such wine would prevent intermarriage. Dorff asserted, however, that those who were strict about the laws of kashrut were not likely to intermarry, and those that did not follow the laws would not care if a wine has a heksher or not. He also noted that a number of non-kosher ingredients may be used in the manufacturing process, including animal blood.Dorff concluded a number of points including that there is no reason to believe that the production of such wines is conducted as part of pagan (or indeed, any) religious practice. Most wines have absolutely no non-kosher ingredients whatsoever. Some wines use a non-kosher ingredient as part of a fining process, but not as an ingredient in the wine as such. Dorff noted that material from this matter is not intended to infiltrate the wine product. The inclusion of any non-kosher ingredient within the wine occurs by accident, and in such minute quantities that the ingredient is nullified. All wines made in the USA and Canada may be considered kosher, regardless of whether or not their production is subject to rabbinical supervision. Many foods once considered forbidden if produced by Gentiles (such as wheat and oil products) were eventually declared kosher. Based on the above points, Dorff's responsum extends this same ruling to wine and other grape-products.However, this teshuvah also notes that this is a lenient view. Some Conservative rabbis disagree with it, e.g. Isaac Klein. As such Dorff's teshuvah states that synagogues should hold themselves to a stricter standard so that all in the Jewish community will view the synagogue's kitchen as fully kosher. As such, Conservative synagogues are encouraged to use only wines with a heksher, and preferably wines from Israel.Almost all Jewish holidays, especially the Passover Seder where all present drink four cups of wine, on Purim for the festive meal, and on the Shabbat require obligatory blessings (Kiddush) over filled cups of kosher wine that are then drunk. Grape juice is also suitable on these occasions. If no wine or grape juice is present on Shabbat, the blessing over challah suffices. AtJewish marriages, circumcisions, and at Redemption of First-born ceremonies, the obligatory blessing of Borei Pri HaGafen ("Blessed are you O Lord, Who created the fruit of the vine") is almost always recited over kosher wine (or grape juice).According to the teachings of the Midrash, the forbidden fruit that Eve ate and which she gave toAdam was the grape from which wine is derived, though many would contest this and say that it was in fact a fig. The capacity of wine to cause drunkenness with its consequent loosening of inhibitions is described by the ancient rabbis in Hebrew as nichnas yayin, yatza sod ("wine enters, [and one's personal] secret[s] exit"), similar to the Latin "in vino veritas". Another similarly evocative expression relating to wine is: Ein Simcha Ela BeBasar Veyayin—"There is no joy except through [eating] meat and [drinking] wine".)It has been one of history's cruel ironies that the [Christian medieval] blood libel---accusations against Jews using the blood of murdered gentile children for the making of wine and matzot---became the false pretext for numerous pogroms. And due to the danger, those who live in a place where blood libels occur are halachicallyexempted from using [kosher] red wine, lest it be seized as "evidence" against them.Kosher wine (Hebrew: יין כשר, yayin kashér) is grape wine produced according to Judaism'sreligious law, specifically, Jewish dietary laws (kashrut).To be considered kosher, Sabbath-observant Jews must supervise the entire winemakingprocess and any ingredients used, including finings, must be kosher.[1] Wine that is described as "kosher for Passover" must have been kept free from contact with grain, bread and dough.[2]When kosher wine is produced, marketed and sold commercially, it must have the hechsher("seal of approval") of a kosher supervising agency or organization, or of an authoritative rabbi who is preferably also a posek ("decisor" of Jewish law) or be supervised by a beth din ("Jewish religious court of law").In recent times, there has been an increased demand for kosher wines and a number of wine producing countries now produce a wide variety of sophisticated kosher wines under strictrabbinical supervision, particularly in Israel, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, South Africa, and Australia. Two of the world's largest producers and importers of kosher wines, Kedemand Manischewitz, are both based in the Northeastern United States.





The Secret History of the Mongols (Traditional Mongolian:  Mongγol-un niγuca tobčiyan, Khalkha Mongolian: Монголын нууц товчоо, Mongolyn nuuts tovchoo[1]) is the oldest surviving Mongolian-language literary work. It was written for the Mongol royal family some time after Genghis Khan's death in AD 1227, by an anonymous author and probably originally in theUyghur script, though the surviving texts all derive from transcriptions or translations intoChinese characters dating from the end of the 14th century, compiled by the Ming Dynasty under the name The Secret History of the Yuan Dynasty (Chinese: 元朝秘史; pinyin: Yuáncháo mìshǐ).The Secret History is regarded as the single significant native Mongolian account of Genghis Khan. Linguistically, it provides the richest source of pre-classical Mongolian and Middle Mongolian.[2] The Secret History is regarded as a piece of classic literature in both Mongolia and the rest of the world.Like other texts from this era, The Secret History contains elements of folklore and poetry and is not as factual or consistent as historians would like. It is nevertheless entirely fundamental, both as a historical source and as one of the first recorded samples of Mongolian poetry.[3]The work begins with a semi-mythical genealogy of Temüjin's family. The description of Temüjin's life begins with the kidnapping of his mother, Hoelun, by his father Yesügei. It then covers Temüjin's early life; the difficult times after the murder of his father; and the many conflicts against him, wars, and plots before he gains the title of Genghis Khan (Universal Ruler) in 1206. The latter parts of the work deal with the campaigns of conquest of Genghis and his third son Ögedei throughout Eurasia; the text ends with Ögedei's reflections on what he did well and what he did wrong. It relates how the Mongol Empire was created.It contains 12 chapters:Temüjin's origin and childhood.Temüjin's teenage years.Temujin destroys the Merkit and takes the title Genghis Khan.Genghis Khan struggles against Jamuga and Tayichiud.Genghis Khan destroys the Tatar and tangles with Wang KhanDestruction of the KereyidThe fate of Wang KhanEscape of Kuchlug and defeat of Jamuga.Establishment of the empire and imperial guard.Conquest of the Uighur and forest peoples.Conquest of China, the Tanghut, the Sartuul, Baghdad and RussiaTemüjin's death and Ögedei's reign.Several passages of the Secret History appear in slightly different versions in the 17th century Mongolian chronicle Altan Tobchi ("The Golden Summary of the Principles of Statecraft as established by the Ancient Khans").The only surviving copies of the work are transcriptions of the original Mongolian text with Chinese characters, accompanied by a (somewhat shorter) in-line glossary and a translation of each section into Chinese. In China, the work had been well known as a text for teaching Chinese to read and write Mongolian during the Ming Dynasty and the Chinese translation was used in several historical works, but by the 1800s, copies had become very rare.Baavuday Tsend Gun (1875-1932) was the first Mongolian scholar to transcribe The Secret History of the Mongols into modern Mongolian, in 1915-17. The first to discover the Secret History for the west and offer a translation from the Chinese glossary was the Russian sinologistPalladiy Kafarov. The first translations from the reconstructed Mongolian text were done by the German sinologist Erich Haenisch (edition of the reconstructed original text: 1937; of the translation: 1941, second edition 1948) and Paul Pelliot (ed. 1949). B. I. Pankratov published a translation into Russian in 1962.[4] Later, Tsendiin Damdinsuren transcribed the chronicle intoKhalkha Mongolian in 1970.Arthur Waley published a partial translation of the Secret History, but the first full translation into English was by Francis Woodman Cleaves, The Secret History of the Mongols: For the First Time Done into English out of the Original Tongue and Provided with an Exegetical Commentary.[5] The archaic language adopted by Cleaves was not satisfying to all and, between 1972 and 1985, Igor de Rachewiltz published a fresh translation in eleven volumes of the series Papers on Far Eastern History accompanied by extensive footnotes commenting not only on the translation but also various aspects of Mongolian culture. (Brill released de Rachewiltz' edition as a two-volume set in 2003.) The Secret History of the Mongols has been published in translation in over 30 languages by researchers.In 2004 the Government of Mongolia decreed that the copy of the Secret History of the Mongols covered with golden plates to be located to the rear part of the Government building.[6]ReignSpring 1206 – August 1227CoronationSpring 1206 in khurultai at the Onon River, MongoliaFull nameGenghis KhanMongol: Чингис хаанChinggis KhaanMongol script (right):Chinggis Khagan[note 1]TitlesKhan, KhaganTemple name: 元太祖 (pinyin: Yuán Tàizǔ; Wade–Giles: Yüan2 T'ai4-tsu3)Posthumous name: Emperor Fatian Qiyun Shengwu(Emperor Fa-tien Chi-yun Sheng-wu; 法天啟運聖武皇帝)Bornlikely 1162[2]BirthplaceKhentii Mountains, MongoliaDiedAugust 1227[3] (aged c. 65)Genghis Khan (/ˈɡɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/ or /ˈdʒɛŋɡɪs ˈkɑːn/,[4][5] Mongol: [tʃiŋɡɪs xaːŋ] ( ); Chingis/Chinghis Khan; 1162? – August 1227), born Temujin, was the founder and Great Khan (emperor) of the Mongol Empire, which became the largest contiguous empire in history after his demise.He came to power by uniting many of the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. After founding the Mongol Empire and being proclaimed "Genghis Khan," he started the Mongol invasions that resulted in the conquest of most of Eurasia. These included raids or invasions of the Kara-Khitan Khanate, Caucasus, Khwarezmid Empire, Western Xia and Jin dynasties. These campaigns were often accompanied by wholesale massacres of the civilian populations – especially in theKhwarezmian controlled lands. By the end of his life, the Mongol Empire occupied a substantial portion of Central Asia and China.Before Genghis Khan died, he assigned Ögedei Khan as his successor and split his empire intokhanates among his sons and grandsons.[6] He died in 1227 after defeating the Western Xia. He was buried in an unmarked grave somewhere in Mongolia at an unknown location. His descendants went on to stretch the Mongol Empire across most of Eurasia by conquering or creating vassal states out of all of modern-day China, Korea, the Caucasus, Central Asian countries, and substantial portions of modern Eastern Europe, Russia and the Middle East. Many of these invasions repeated the earlier large-scale slaughters of local populations. As a result Genghis Khan and his empire have a fearsome reputation in local histories.[7]Beyond his military accomplishments, Genghis Khan also advanced the Mongol Empire in other ways. He decreed the adoption of the Uyghur script as the Mongol Empire's writing system. He also promoted religious tolerance in the Mongol Empire, and created a unified empire from the nomadic tribes of northeast Asia. Present-day Mongolians regard him as the founding father ofMongolia.[8]

Early life

Lineage

Main article: Family tree of Genghis KhanTemujin was related on his father's side to Khabul Khan, Ambaghai and Hotula Khan who had headed the Khamag Mongol confederation and were descendants of Bodonchar Munkhag (c. 900). When the Chinese Jin Dynasty switched support from the Mongols to the Tatars in 1161, they destroyed Khabul Khan.[9]Temujin's father, Yesügei (leader of the Borjigin clan and nephew to Ambaghai and Hotula Khan), emerged as the head of the ruling clan of the Mongols. This position was contested by the rivalTayichi’ud clan, who descended directly from Ambaghai. When the Tatars grew too powerful after 1161, the Jin switched their support from the Tatars to the Keraits.The Onon River, Mongolia, in autumn, the region where Temujin was born and grew up.Because of the lack of contemporary written records, scant factual information exists about the early life of Temujin. The few sources that provide insight into this period often conflict.Temujin was born in 1162 or 1155[2] in Delüün Boldog near Burkhan Khaldun mountain and theOnon and Kherlen rivers in modern-day northern Mongolia, not far from the current capital,Ulaanbaatar. The Secret History of the Mongols reports that Temüjin was born with a blood clot grasped in his fist, a traditional sign that he was destined to become a great leader. He was the third-oldest son of his father Yesügei, a Khamag Mongol's major chief of the Kiyad and an ally ofToghrul Khan of the Kerait tribe,[10] and the oldest son of his mother Hoelun. According to the Secret History, Temujin was named after a Tatar chieftain, Temujin-üge, whom his father had just captured. The name also suggests that they may have been descended from a family of blacksmithsYesukhei's clan was called Borjigin (Боржигин), and Hoelun was from the Olkhunut, the sub-lineage of the Onggirat tribe.[11][12] Like other tribes, they were nomads. Because his father was a chieftain, as were his predecessors, Temüjin was of a noble background. This higher social standing made it easier to solicit help from and eventually consolidate the other Mongol tribes.[citation needed]

Early life and family

Temujin had three brothers named Hasar, Hachiun, and Temüge, and one sister named Temülen, as well as two half-brothers named Behter and Belgutei. Like many of the nomads of Mongolia, Temujin's early life was difficult. His father arranged a marriage for him, and at nine years of age, he was delivered by his father to the family of his future wife Börte, who was a member of the tribe Onggirat. Temujin was to live there in service to Dai Setsen, the head of the new household, until he reached the marriageable age of 12.While heading home, his father ran into the neighboring Tatars, who had long been enemies of the Mongols, and he was subsequently poisoned by the food they offered. Upon learning this, Temujin returned home to claim his father's position as chieftain of the tribe; however, his father's tribe refused to be led by a boy so young. They abandoned Hoelun and her children, leaving them without protection.Jurchen inscription (1196) in Mongolia relating to Genghis Khan's alliance with the Jin against the Tatars.He was religiously tolerant and interested in learning philosophical and moral lessons from other religions. To do so, he consulted Buddhist monks, Muslims, Christian missionaries, and theTaoist monk Qiu Chuji.[17] The Secret History of the Mongols chronicles Genghis praying to theBurhan Haldun mountain.Ulus of JochiЗүчийн улсGolden Horde←  ←  ← 1240s–1502↓FlagCapitalSarai BatuLanguagesMongolian language, Kypchak languageReligionTengrism, Shamanism, Islam, Christianity,Judaism, Tibetan Buddhism(1240s–1313)Islam(1313–1502)Today part of Russia Ukraine Kazakhstan Moldova Belarus Romania Uzbekistan Turkmenistan Georgia Azerbaijan Bulgaria China Lithuania PolandVolga Bulgaria, or Volga–Kama Bolghar, was a historic Islamic Bulgar state that existed between the seventh and thirteenth centuries around the confluence of the Volga and Kama rivers, in what is now European Russia. The population was mostly Bulgars, who had conquered Finno-Ugricsand Turkic speakers of the region. The population had been pagan, but Islam was adopted as the state religion in the early tenth century.Information from first-hand sources on Volga Bulgaria is rather sparse. As no authentic Bulgarrecords have survived, most of our information comes from contemporary Arabic, Persian, Indianor Russian sources. Some information is provided by excavations.It is thought that the territory of Volga Bulgaria was originally settled by Finno-Ugric peoples, including Mari people. The Bulgars of Kubrat's son and appointed heir Batbayan Bezmer moved from the Azov region in about AD 660, commanded by the Kazarig Khagan Kotrag to whom he had surrendered. They reached Idel-Ural in the eighth century, where they became the dominant population at the end of the 9th century, uniting other tribes of different origin which lived in the area.[1] Some Bulgar tribes, however, continued westward and eventually settled along theDanube River, in what is now known as Bulgaria proper, where they created a confederation with the Slavs, adopting a South Slavic language and the Eastern Orthodox faith.Most scholars agree that the Volga Bulgars were subject to the great Khazarian Empire, until Khazaria's destruction and conquest by Sviatoslav in the late 10th century, after which Volga Bulgaria grew in size and power. Sometime in the late 9th century unification processes started, and the capital was established at Bolghar (also spelled Bulgar) city, 160 km south from modernKazan. Most scholars doubt, however, that the state could assert independence from the Khazars until the latter were annihilated by Svyatoslav of Rus in 965.Islam was adopted as the state religion in the early tenth century, under Almish ibn Shilki Yiltawar.[2] Ibn Fadlan was dispatched by the Abbasid Caliph al-Muqtadir in 922/3 to establish relations and bring qadis and teachers of Islamic law to Volga Bulgaria, as well as help in building a fort and a mosque.[3] The Volga Bulgarians attempted to convert Vladimir I of Kiev to Islam; however Vladimir rejected the notion of Russians giving up wine, which he declared was the "very joy of their lives".[4]Commanding the Volga River in its middle course, the state controlled much of trade between Europe and Asia prior to the Crusades (which made other trade routes practicable). The capital,Bolghar, was a thriving city, rivalling in size and wealth with the greatest centres of the Islamic world. Trade partners of Bolghar included from Vikings, Bjarmland, Yugra and Nenets in the north to Baghdad and Constantinople in the south, from Western Europe to China in the East. Other major cities included Bilär, Suar (Suwar), Qaşan (Kashan) and Cükätaw (Juketau). Modern citiesKazan and Yelabuga were founded as Volga Bulgaria's border fortresses.Some of the Volga Bulgarian cities still have not been found, but they are mentioned in Russian sources. They are: Ashli (Oshel), Tuxçin (Tukhchin), İbrahim (Bryakhimov), Taw İle. Some of them were ruined during and after the Golden Horde invasion.The Russian principalities to the west posed the only tangible military threat. In the 11th century, the country was devastated by several Russian raids. Then, at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries, the rulers of Vladimir (notably Andrew the Pious and Vsevolod III), anxious to defend their eastern border, systematically pillaged Bulgarian cities. Under Russian pressure from the west, the Bulgars had to move their capital from Bolghar to Bilär.A large part of the region's population included Turkic or Iranian groups such as Suars, Barsil,Bilars, Baranjars and part of Burtas (by ibn Rustah). Modern Chuvashes descend from Suars andKazan Tatars descend from the Volga Bulgars.[citation needed] Another part comprised Finnic and Magyar (Asagel and Pascatir) tribes, from which Bisermäns probably descend.[5] Ibn Fadlan refers to Volga Bulgaria as Saqaliba which is a general Arabic term for Slavic people. Other researches tie the term to the ethnic name Scythian (or Saka in Persian).[6]In September 1223 near Samara an advance guard of Genghis Khan's army under command ofUran, son of Subutai Bahadur, entered Volga Bulgaria but was defeated in the battle of Samara Bend. In 1236, the Mongols returned and in five years had subjugated the whole country, which at that time was suffering from internal war. Henceforth Volga Bulgaria became a part of the UlusJochi, later known as the Golden Horde. It was divided into several principalities; each of them became a vassal of the Golden Horde and received some autonomy. By the 1430s, the Khanate of Kazan was established as the most important of these principalities.Devil's Tower inYelabuga, 12th century.According to some historians, over 80% of the country's population was killed during the invasion. The remaining population mostly relocated to the northern areas (territories of modern Chuvashia and Tatarstan). Some autonomous duchies appeared in those areas. The steppe areas of Volga Bulgaria may have been settled by nomadic Kipchaks and Mongols, and the agricultural development suffered a severe decline.Over time, the cities of Volga Bulgaria were rebuilt and became trade and craft centers of the Golden Horde. Some Bulgarians, primarily masters and craftsmen, were forcibly moved to Saraiand other southern cities of the Golden Horde. Volga Bulgaria remained a center of agriculture and handicraft.





The Khitan language (also known as Liao and Kitan (ISO 639-3); Chinese: 契丹語) is a now-extinct language once spoken by the Khitan people (388–1243AD). Khitan is generally deemed to be genetically linked to the Mongolic languages.[2] It was written using two mutually exclusivewriting systems known as the Khitan large script and the Khitan small script. The language was the official language of the Liao Dynasty (907–1125) and Kara-Khitan Khanate (1124–1218). Janhunen states "A better term for Khitan than Mongolic would be Para-Mongolic, implying that it was probably a language collateral to the ancestor of all the Mongolic languages."[3] Presently the theory of the Mongolic, rather than Tungusic, affiliation of Khitan is more and more commonly accepted by both eastern and western scholars.[4]

Vocabulary

Compared with Khitan, The Tungusic numerals of the Jurchen language differ significantly: three=ilan, five=shunja, seven=nadan, nine=uyun, hundred=tangu.In the national (Khitan) language this day (5th day of the 5th lunar month) is called 'Tao Saiyier'. 'Tao' means five; 'Saiyier' means moon.'Tao Saiyier' corresponds to Mongolian 'tavan sar' (fifth moon/month). The Turkic equivalent would be 'beshinchi ay' while the Tungusic equivalent would be 'sunja biya'.




Shiwei (simplified Chinese: 室韦; traditional Chinese: 室韋; pinyin: Shìwěi; Wade–Giles: Shih4-wei3) were a Mongolic people that inhabited far-eastern Mongolia, northern Inner Mongolia and northern Manchuria and were recorded from the time of the Northern Wei (386-534) until the rise of the Mongols of Genghis Khan in 1206 when the name "Mongol" and "Tatar" were applied to all the Shiwei tribes. They were closely related to the Khitan people to their south. As a result of pressure from the west, south and south-east they never established unified, semi-sedentarized empires like their neighbors, but remained at the level of a nomadic confederation led by tribal chieftains, alternately submitting to the Turks, the Chinese and the Khitan as the political climate evolved. The Mengwu Shiwei, one of the twenty Shiwei tribes during the Tang dynasty (618-907), were called the Menggu during the Liao dynasty (907-1125) and are generally considered to be the ancestors of the Mongols of Genghis Khan. The modern Korean pronunciation of Mengwu (蒙兀) is Mong-ol (/moŋ.ol/). Mongolia is still called "Menggu" (蒙古 Měnggǔ) in Chinese today.In describing the origin of the Shiwei, Chinese dynastic histories record that it is somewhat related to the Khitan, who were of Xianbei origin. They were local Xianbei tribes who became independent after the Xianbei state dissolved in 234 with the death of Budugen. In the Weishu, it is recorded that the language of the Shiwei was the same as that of the Khitan, who spoke theKhitan language; in the Suishu, it is claimed that the Shiwei belonged to the same kind of people as the Khitan; and in both the Xin Tangshu and Jiu Tangshu, it is claimed that the Shiwei were a collateral branch of the Khitan. In this sense, the Shiwei, exactly some tribes of the Shiwei, undoubtedly had some ethnic relations with the Khitan.[1] The Suishu records that the title of the northern Shiwei chieftain was Mohefu, which is the same as the Khitan title for their chieftain -Mohefu (莫賀弗) or "Mofuhe" (莫弗賀). For example, the Khitan Mofuhe Hechen who paid tribute to the Northern Wei at Datong in 466-470 and the Khitan Mofuhe Wuyu who fled from theGoguryeo and Rouran in 479. Mohefu is a Chinese rendition of the title Baghatur.[2] Concerning the ethnic relationship between the Shiwei and the Khitan, Janhunen provides a more detailed theory, "the ethnonymic distinction between the Shiwei and Khitan suggests that the division had been completed between the branches leading to Proto-Mongolic and Para-Mongolic"[3] Tang Dynasty historian (Wan Gowei) wrote that Shiwei were a Khitan tribe.[4]The Shiwei and Wuluohou are known as the Shiwei tribes in the period of the Northern Wei Dynasty (386-534), but are separately recorded in the Wei Shu. During the period from the Northern Qi (550-577) to the Sui Dynasty (581-618), there were five big sections of the Shiwei, they were the Nan (Southern) Shiwei, Bei (Northern) Shiwei, Da (Great) Shiwei, Bo Shiwei and Shenmoda Shiwei. In the Tang period (618-907), it is known that there were twenty Shiwei tribes, according to the records in dynastic histories. They were the Wusugu, Yisaimo, Saiezhi, Hejie, Wuluohu, Nali, Lingxi, Shanbei, Huangtou (Yellow-head), Da (Great) Ruzhe, Xiao (Lesser) Ruzhe, Powo, Nebeizhi, Luotuo, Dong (Eastern) Shiwei, Xi (Western) Shiwei, Da (Great) Shiwei, Mengwu Shiwei, Luozu Shiwei and Dagui.Wuluohun is said to be another name for the Uriankhai. The Da Shiwei tribe is thought to be descended from some Rouran who fled east after being defeated by the Turks in 555. They were led by their chieftain Tantan (Tatar) and were incorporated into the Shiwei. In fact, Tatar is held to be an alternative name for some major Shiwei tribes. The Da Shiwei are thought to be the same as the Taichuud tribe. According to the Stele of Kul Tigin the Thirty Tatars and Nine Tatars were formidable eastern rivals of the Göktürks along with the Khitan. The number of Tatar tribes are roughly equal to the number of Shiwei tribes. Although linguistically Mongolic, the Da Shiwei may have been descended in some part from the Dingling. The Heichezi ("black-cart") was a Shiwei clan famous for their cart industry. According to the Liaoshi, at one time the Khitan learnt the art of cart-making from the Heichezi clan. The Huangtou ("yellow-head") Shiwei may have been named so because of a high incidence of blondness within their tribe, but it is not certain. However, blondness still occurs regularly in the region today.The Xianbei (simplified Chinese: 鲜卑; traditional Chinese: 鮮卑) were an ancient, significantMongolic nomadic people residing in what became today's eastern Mongolia, Inner Mongolia, and Northeast China.

OriginsEdit

Chinese historical texts unequivocally state that the Xianbei were descendants of the Donghu. They were a northern or northeastern Asian Mongoloid population according to modern Chinese and Russian anthropologists.[1] The Donghu are mentioned by Sima Qian as already existing inInner Mongolia north of the state of Yan in 699–632 BC. Mentions in the Lost Book of Zhou (Yizhoushu) and the Shanhaijing indicate the Donghu were also active during the Shang dynasty(1600–1046 BC). The Upper Xiajiadian culture is sometimes associated with the Donghu. Donghu, and therefore the Xianbei, were also heirs of the horse-riding nomadic way of life first seen in the Afanasevo culture (3500–2500 BC) in Mongolia[citation needed]. They were aShamanists, pastoralist, yurt-dwelling warlike people fond of epic poetry, wrestling, horse racing, archery, fur hats and fermented mare's milk. The Mongolic-speaking Xianbei formed a part of the Donghu confederation, but had earlier times of independence, as evidenced by a mention in theGuoyu ("晉語八" section) which states that during the reign of King Cheng of Zhou (reigned 1042–1021 BC) the Xianbei (鮮卑) came to participate at a meeting of Zhou subject-lords at Qiyang (岐阳) (now Qishan County) but were only allowed to perform the fire ceremony under the supervision of Chu (楚), since they were not vassals by covenant (诸侯). The Xianbei chieftain was appointed joint guardian of the ritual torch along with Xiong Yi. These early Xianbei came from the nearby Zhukaigou culture (2200–1500 BC) north in the Ordos Desert where maternal DNA corresponds to Mongolic Daurs and Evenks (Tungusified Xianbei). The Zhukaigou Xianbei (part of the Ordos culture of Inner Mongolia and northern Shaanxi) had trade relations with the Shang dynasty (1600–1046 BC). The Xianbei may have come to Qiyang as one of the Donghu tribes or as a separate Mongolic tribe. Whatever the case, they later formed an integral part of the Donghu confederation and took part in its various wars. As a nomadic confedation composed mainly of the Xianbei and Wuhuan, the Donghu were prosperous in the 4th century BC during the later Zhou dynasty, forcing surrounding tribes to pay tribute and constantly harassing the State of Zhao (325 BC, during the early years of the reign of Wuling) and the State of Yan (in 304 BC Qin Kai, general of King Zhao of Yan, was given as a hostage to the Donghu). The Donghu, who were ruled by a king, enjoyed a golden age in the 4th century BC before Wuling and Qin Kai retaliated by adopting Donghu clothing and battle tactics and the North Wall of the Yan State was built to keep the Donghu out. Despite losing battles to Wuling and Qin Kai the Donghu were still powerful and prosperous (according to Sima Qian) until 209 BC when the Xiongnu rose to put an end to their dominance.Xianbei Empire under Tanshihuai (141–181.)After the Donghu were defeated by Modu Chanyu around 208 BC the Xianbei and Wuhuan survived as the main remnants of the confederation. The Hou Hanshu says that “the language and culture of the Xianbei are the same as the Wuhuan”. Tadun of the Wuhuan (died 207 AD) was the ancestor of the proto-Mongolic Kumo Xi (aka Tatabi). The Weishu (Description of the Khitan, Vol. 1000, 2221) records that the Kumo Xi and Khitan (descendants of the Xianbei) spoke the same language. In 49 AD the Mongolic Xianbei ruler Bianhe (Bayan Khan?) raided and defeated the Xiongnu, killing 2000, after having received generous gifts from Emperor Guangwu of Han. In 54 AD the Xianbei rulers Yuchoupen and Mantu presented themselves to the Han emperor and received the titles of wang and gou. Until 93 AD the Xianbei were quietly protecting the Chinese border from Wuhuan and Xiongnu attacks and received ample rewards. From 93 AD the Xianbei began to occupy the lands of the Xiongnu. 100,000 Xiongnu families changed their name to Xianbei. In 97 AD Feijuxian in Liaodong was attacked by the Xianbei, and the governor Qi Sen was dismissed for inaction. Other Xianbei rulers who were active before the rise of the Xianbei emperor Tanshihuai (141–181) were Yanzhiyang, Lianxu and Cizhiqian. Cizhiqian fought against the Han dynasty in the period 121–132 with mixed results. The Xianbei reached their peak under Tanshihuai Khan (reigned 156–181) who expanded the vast, but short lived, Xianbei Empire.Tanshihuai was born in 141. According to the Hou Hanshu his father Touluhou had been serving in the Southern Xiongnu army for three years. Returning from his military duties Touluhou was furious to discover that his wife had become pregnant and given birth to a son. He ordered the child put to death. His wife replied: “When I was walking through the open steppe a huge storm developed with much lightning and thunder. As I was looking upward a piece of hail fell into my mouth, which I unknowingly swallowed. I soon found out I had gotten pregnant. After 10 months this son was born. This must be a child of wonder. It is better to wait and see what happens.” Touluhou did not heed her words, so Tanshihuai was brought up secretly in the ger (yurt) of relatives. When Tanshihuai was around 14 or 15 years old he had become brave and sturdy with talent and ability. Once people from another tribe robbed his maternal grandparent's herds. Tanshihuai pursued them alone, fought the robbers and managed to retrieve all the lost herds. His fame spread rapidly among the Xianbei tribes and many came to respect and trust him. He then put some laws and regulations in force and decided between litigants. Nobody dared to violate those laws and regulations. Because of this, he was elected supreme leader of the Xianbei tribes at the age of 15 and established his ordo (palace) at Mount Darkhan. He defeated theDingling to the north (around Lake Baikal), Buyeo to the east (north of Korea) and the Wusun to the west (Xinjiang and Ili River). His empire stretched 7000 km and included all the lands of the former Xiongnu.The Sanguo Zhi records:Tanshihuai of the Xianbei divided his territory into three sections: the eastern, the middle and the western. From the You Beiping to the Liao River, connecting the Fuyu and Mo to the east, it was the eastern section. There were more than twenty counties. The darens (chiefs) (of this section) were called Mijia, Queji, Suli and Huaitou. From the You Beiping to Shanggu to the west, it was the middle section. There were more than ten counties. The darens of this section were called Kezui, Queju, Murong, et al. From Shanggu to Dunhuang, connecting the Wusun to the west, it was the western section. There were more than twenty counties. The darens (of this section) were called Zhijian Luoluo, Rilü Tuiyan, Yanliyou, et al. These chiefs were all subordinate to Tanshihuai.[2]Uneasiness at the Han court about this development of a new power on the steppes finally ushered in a campaign on the northern border to annihilate the confederacy once and for all. In 177 A.D., 30,000 Han cavalry attacked the confederacy, commanded by Xia Yu (夏育), Tian Yan (田晏) and Zang Min (臧旻), each of whom was the commander of units sent respectively against the Wuhuan, the Qiang, and the Southern Xiongnu before the campaign. Each military officer commanded 10,000 cavalrymen and advanced north on three different routes, aiming at each of the three federations. Cavalry units commanded by chieftains of each of the three federations almost annihilated the invading forces. Eighty percent of the troops were killed and the three officers, who only brought tens of men safely back, were relieved from their posts.The Hou Hanshu records a memorial submitted in 177 AD:Ever since the [northern] Xiongnu ran away, the Xianbei have become powerful and populous, taking all the lands previously held by the Xiong-nu and claiming to have 100,000 warriors. … Refined metals and wrought iron have come into the possession of the [Xianbei] rebels. Han deserters also seek refuge [in the lands of the Xianbei] and serve as their advisers. Their weapons are sharper and their horses are faster than those of the Xiong-nu.Another memorial submitted in 185 AD is recorded by the Hou Hanshu:The Xianbei people … invade our frontiers so frequently that hardly a year goes by in peace, and it is only when the trading season arrives that they come forward in submission. But in so doing they are only bent on gaining precious Chinese goods; it is not because they respect Chinese power or are grateful for Chinese generosity. As soon as they obtain all they possibly can [from trade], they turn in their tracks to start wreaking damage.Tanshihuai died in 181 at the age of 40. The Xianbei state of Tanshihuai fragmented following the fall of Budugen (reigned 187–234), who was the younger brother of Kuitoi (reigned 185–187). Kuitou was the nephew of Tanshihuai's incapable son and successor Helian (reigned 181–185).The 3rd century AD saw both the fragmentation of the Xianbei Empire in 235 and the branching out of the various Xianbei tribes later to establish significant empires of their own. The most prominent branches are the Murong, Tuoba, Khitan, Shiwei and Rouran. These tribes spoke Mongolic (or Para-Mongolic) languages. The Murong tribe were descendants of the tribal division ruled by Murong, the Xianbei chief of the central section under Tanshihuai. Murong Mohuba actively supported Sima Yi's Liaodong campaign in 238, leading an auxiliary Murong force. Mohuba was succeeded in 246 by his son Muyan (木延) who also aided the Cao Weicampaign against the Goguryeo that same year. The Former Yan (337–370), Western Yan (384–394), Later Yan (384–409) dynasties as well as the Tuyuhun Kingdom (285–670) were all later founded by the Murong. The Tuoba (Tabgach) tribe started their rise with Tuoba Liwei (219–277) who was the ancestor of the future Northern Wei Dynasty and was thus posthumously honored as Emperor Shenyuan, with the temple name Shizu. The Khitan tribe formed part of the Yuwen Xianbei under Yuwen Mohuai (reigned 260–293). They separated from the Yuwen along with the Kumo Xi in 344 and finally separated from the Kumo Xi in 388 beginning their independent history. The Khitan later established the Dahe Confederation (618–730), the Yaonian Khaganate(730–906), the Liao Dynasty (907–1125) and the Kara-Khitan Khanate (1124–1218). The Shiwei tribe, like the Tuoba, were originally located to the north of the Murong and Khitan. While the Tuoba migrated south and established the State of Dai (310–376) and Northern Wei dynasty(386–534) the Shiwei remained in the north but eventually paid tribute to the Northern Wei (for example the Wuluohu sub-tribe started paying tribute in 444). Known also as the Tatars the Shiwei would later establish the Khamag Mongol Khanate (1125–1206), the Mongol Empire(1206–1368), the Northern Yuan Dynasty (1368–1635) and the Zungar Empire (1640–1756). The Rouran tribe remained in Outer Mongolia after the fragmentation of the Xianbei Empire. Yujiuliu Muguliu (reigned early 4th century) was the first ancestor of the Rouran khagans. Yujiuliu Shelun was the first major steppe leader to use the title “Khagan” in 402. The Rouran (also called Jujuan, Juanjuan and Nirun) are sometimes equated with the Avars. The Avar khagan Bayan I has both a Mongol name (meaning 'rich') and title. The Göktürks relentlessly pursued the Rouran (whose subjects they formerly were) west all the way to Crimea in the 550s–570s.The Xianbei were descendants of the Donghu, which used to be believed to represent the “Eastern Hu” based on the Chinese record. Now most Chinese historians believe that Donghu by itself was an ethnonym, rather than having derived from their location on the east of the Xiongnu. Whereas Donghu was a Chinese transcription, the Mongolian reference was “Tünghu”.[3] Later they migrated south and westward into areas of the modern Chinese provinces of Shanxi,Shaanxi, Gansu, Qinghai, Hebei, Inner Mongolia, and Liaoning. Possibly some Xianbei groups also lived in ancient Eastern Heilongjiang or Hulun[disambiguation needed] Manchu Imperial province,[4] currently Khabarovsk and Amur regions in the Russian Far East.Art of the Xianbei portrayed their nomadic lifestyle and consisted primarily of metalwork and figurines. The style and subjects of Xianbei art were influenced by a variety of influences, and ultimately, the Xianbei were known for emphasizing unique nomadic motifs in artistic advancements such as leaf headdresses, crouching and geometricized animals depictions, animal pendant necklaces, and metal openwork.[5]

Leaf Headdresses

The leaf headdresses were very characteristic of Xianbei culture, and they are found especially in Murong Xianbei tombs. Their corresponding ornamental style also links the Xianbei to Bactria. These gold hat ornaments represented trees and antlers and, in Chinese, they are referred to as buyao (“step sway”) since the thin metal leaves move when the wearer moves. Sun Guoping first uncovered this type of artifact, and defined three main styles: “Blossoming Tree” (huashu), which is mounted on the front of a cap near the forehead and has one or more branches with hanging leaves that are circle or droplet shaped, “Blossoming Top” (dinghua), which is worn on top of the head and resembles a tree or animal with many leaf pendants, and the rare “Blossoming Vine” (huaman), which consists of “gold strips interwoven with wires with leaves.”[6] Leaf headdresses were made with hammered gold and decorated by punching out designs and hanging the leaf pendants with wire. The exact origin, use, and wear of these headdresses is still being investigated and determined. However, headdresses similar to those later also existed and were worn by women in the courts.[5][6][7]

Animal Iconography

Another key form of Xianbei art is animal iconography, which was implemented primarily in metalwork. The Xianbei stylistically portrayed crouching animals in geometricized, abstracted, repeated forms, and distinguished their culture and art by depicting animal predation and same-animal combat. Typically, sheep, deer, and horses were illustrated. The artifacts, usually plaques or pendants, were made from metal, and the backgrounds were decorated with openwork or mountainous landscapes, which harks back to the Xianbei nomadic lifestyle. With repeated animal imagery, an openwork background, and a rectangular frame, the included image of the three deer plaque is a paradigm of the Xianbei art style. Concave plaque backings imply that plaques were made using lost-wax casting, or raised designs were impressed on the back of hammered metal sheets.[8][9]

Horses

The nomadic traditions of the Xianbei inspired them to portray horses in their artwork. It is obvious that the horse played a large role in the existence of the Xianbei as a nomadic people, and in one tomb, a horse skull lay atop Xianbei bells, buckles, ornaments, a saddle, and one gilded bronze stirrup.[10] The Xianbei not only created art for their horses, but they also made art to depict horses. Another recurring motif was the winged horse. It has been suggested by archaeologist Su Bai that this symbol was a “heavenly beast in the shape of a horse” because of its prominence in Xianbei mythology.[8] This symbol is thought to have guided an early Xianbei southern migration, and is a recurring image in many Xianbei art forms.

Figurines

Figure of a Xianbei warrior from the Northern Dynasties (286-581 AD) eraXianbei figurines help to portray the people of the society by representing pastimes, depicting specialized clothing, and implying various beliefs. Most figurines have been recovered from Xianbei tombs, so they are primarily military and musical figures meant to serve the deceased in afterlife processions and guard the tomb. Furthermore, the figurine clothing specifies the according social statuses: higher-ranking Xianbei wore long-sleeved robes with a straight neck shirt underneath, while lower-ranking Xianbei wore trousers and belted tunics.[11]

Buddhist Influences

Xianbei Buddhist influences were derived from interactions with Han culture. The Han bureaucrats initially helped the Xianbei run their state, but eventually the Xianbei became Sinophiles and promoted Buddhism. The beginning of this conversion is evidenced by the Buddha imagery that emerges in Xianbei art. For instance, the included Buddha imprinted leaf headdress perfectly represents the Xianbei conversion and Buddhist synthesis since it combines both the traditional nomadic Xianbei leaf headdress with the new imagery of Buddha. This Xianbei religious conversion continued to develop in the Northern Wei dynasty, and ultimately led to the creation of the Yungang Grottoes.[5]It is generally accepted that the Shiwei branch of the Xianbei spoke a Mongolic language. The core Borjigid Mongols of Genghis Khan are the Mengwu Shiwei (Mongol Shivei). The Proto-Mongolic language, archaic features of 13th century written Mongolian as well as Mongolic loanwords in Old Turkic reflect the early Shiwei language. The Khitan language, a Mongolic language, has several closed systems of lexical items for which systematic information is available and which show that the language was Mongolic. These include seasons, numbers, animals, directions and natural objects. The fact that these two major Xianbei branches spoke Mongolic is enough for some to acknowledge that the Xianbei spoke Mongolic. Two more branches showing evidence of being Mongolic are the Murong (included in the core of the Xianbei during Tanshihuai's reign) and the Tuoba. According to the Dunhuang Documents (P. 1283, in Tibetan) the "language of the Khitan and that of the Tuyuhun could generally communicate with each other". This shows that the Murong spoke a language closely related to Khitan. The earliest attestation of the Mongolic title 'Khagan' (khaan) is among the Murong Xianbei between 283 to 289. The Mongolic word 'Agan' (Modern Mongolian: ah; elder brother) is also attestable from a Murong Xianbei song composed in 285. Many Tuoba words are Mongolic such as holan (Modern Mongolian: olon; many), eulen (Modern Mongolian: üül; cloud), ezhen (ezen; owner), akan (Modern Mongolian: akh; brother), shilu (Modern Mongolian: shil; high mountain), chino (Modern Mongolian: chono; wolf), kapagchin (Modern Mongolian: khaalgachin; doorkeeper), tapagchin (infantryman), bitigchin (Modern Mongolian: bicheech; scribe), kelmorchin (Modern Mongolian: khelmerch; interpreter), sagdagchin (Modern Mongolian: saadagchin; quiver-bearer), qitgaichin (Modern Mongolian: gesgeechin; executioner), portogchin (Modern Mongolian: bortogochin; post-office clerk) and tawusun (Modern Mongolian: toos; dust). Of these the most important is the Tuoba word for cloud 'eulen' (Pinyin: youlian) which is not only exclusively Mongolic (i.e. not found in Turkic or Tungusic) but can also be directly compared to the Khitan word for cloud (eu.ul) and the Shiwei word for cloud (e'ule). This makes possible an accurate reconstruction of the Xianbei word for cloud as spoken in the time of Tanshihuai (141-181) and before. These four important branches, the Shiwei, Khitan, Murong and Tuoba all arose as discernible entities in the middle of the 3rd century just after the Xianbei Empire had fallen in 235. They were continuations of the original Xianbei populations. The fact that the Rouran branch of the Xianbei used the title 'Khagan' independently of the Murong shows their close continuity with the early Xianbei. Certain words and names of the Rouran also indicate a Mongolic identity. The fact that the Weishu states the Kumo Xi spoke the same language as the Khitan and that the Hou Hanshu states the Wuhuan spoke the same language as the Xianbei indicate relative linguistic homogeneity within the Xianbei and a common Mongolic identity of the Wuhuan and Xianbei as remnants of the Donghu confederation.Anti-Altaicist Claus Schönig says in The Mongolic Languages (2003)[12]Opinions differ widely as to what the linguistic impact of the Xianbei period was. Some scholars (like Clauson) have preferred to regard the Xianbei and Tabghach (Tuoba) as Turks, or even as Bulghar Turks, with the implication that the entire layer of early Turkic borrowings in Mongolic would have been received from the Xianbei, rather than from the Xiongnu. However, since the Mongolic (or Para-Mongolic) identity of the Xianbei is increasingly obvious in the light of recent progress in Khitan studies, it is more reasonable to assume (with Doerfer) that the flow of linguistic influence from Turkic (or Bulghar Turkic) into Mongolic was at least partly reversed during the Xianbei period, yielding the first identifiable layer of Mongolic (or Para-Mongolic) loanwords in Turkic. Items with Mongolic roots and/or suffixes and apparently borrowed into Turkic in this period include Old Turkic balbal ‘statue (of a slain enemy)’ < Mongolic *bari.mal‘structure’ (from *bari- ‘to grab; to construct’), kertü ‘true’ < Mongolic *gere.tü ‘evident’ (from*gere ‘light’), qarghu ‘watchtower’ < Mongolic *kara.xu/harah (from *kara- ‘to watch’), andyalawac ‘envoy’ (< *yala.ba.ci ‘invitee’, from Mongolic jala/zal- ‘to invite’). In many other cases criteria for the direction of borrowing are missing, as in Turko-Mongolic *kom (qom) ‘a piece of felt placed under the pack on a camel’.Other Xianbei words :[13]chjichjen (Chinese pronunciation) — Mongolian: tsetsen (wise)bidechjen — Mongolian: bicheech (typist)chjeguichjen — Middle Mongolian: juuchin Modern Mongolian: zuuchin (letter carrier)fuchjen — Middle Mongolian: buurchin. This word used in Secret History of the Mongols. (chief cook)fuchjuchjen — Mongolian: örtööchin (relay stationist): Ortoohulochjen — Mongolian: horchin (weapon keeper/carrier)kebochjen — Mongolian: haalgachin (doorkeeper)pudachjien — Mongolian: bogtagchin (woman who keeps noble's clothes)syanchjen — Mongolian: zamchin (giude, middleman)tsihaichjen — Mongolian: gesgeegchin (executioner)tsivanchjen — Mongolian: helmerch (translator)uaichjen — Mongoian: üizen (title of clerk/noble)yanchjen — Mongolian: yamutan Modern Mongolian: yazguurtan (noble)The ancestries of the Mongols can be traced back to a branch of the Xianbei called the Mengwu Shiwei.Today the "Monguor" as known in the West and as “Tu Zu”[citation needed] in China may have descended from the Xianbei who were led by Tuyuhun Khan to migrate westward and establish the Tuyuhun Kingdom (284-670) in the third century and Western Xia (1038–1227) through the thirteenth century.[22] Today they are primarily distributed in Qinghai and Gansu Province, and speak an Altaic Mongolic language. The multi-ethnic environment and relative distant distribution in the northwest, detached from the political centers of China, have enabled them to preserve their language and culture until the present times.The Xibe or "Xi Bo" people also believed themselves to be descendants of the Xianbei, with considerable controversies that have attributed their origins to the Jurchens, the Elunchun, and the Xianbei.[23][24] Since they were historically referred to as "Suolun people" and spoke Tungusrather than Mongolic language, they may have derived their origins from one or more fractions of the Xianbei or other ethnic groups subjugated by the Xianbei. While most of the Xianbei went south and westward to establish different empires, they remained behind in Manchuria until subjugated by the Jurchens who moved southward from the Tungus Plains in Eastern Russia.






Kim Man-il (Hangul: 김만일; hanja: 金萬一; Vyatskoye, 1944 – , Pyongyang 1947/8) was the second son and child of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung and his first wife, Kim Jong-suk.He was born in 1944 in the Russian village of Vyatskoye. Inside his family, he was nicknamedShura. Official North Korean biographies state that Shura and his older brother Kim Jong-il got along very well and played together.In the summer of 1947 or 1948, Shura and his brother were playing in a pond in the city ofPyongyang, when Shura mysteriously drowned. Official records state that Kim Jong-il was devastated and could never get over the trauma of losing his younger brother. In 1949, his mother, Kim Jong-suk died while giving birth to a stillborn girl.Information concerning the Shiwei tribes and their relationship with the KhitansThe original inhabitants apparently were various Tungusic peoples.Formerly part of Outer Manchuria, Vyatskoye along with Khabarovsk and Vladivostok was ceded to Imperial Russia by the Qing dynasty as part of the 1860 Convention of Peking.During World War II near Vyatskoye was a camp for the Soviet 88th Brigade, which was made up of Korean and Chinese guerrillas. Kim Il-sung, future leader of North Korea, was stationed there as a Captain in the Soviet Red Army commanding a battalion, and according to some sources his family was there as well.[1] According to those same sources his son Kim Jong-il was born there on February 16, 1941 (although the North Korean government claims Kim Jong-il was born onBaekdu Mountain). Residents of the town claim that his brother Shura Kim (also known as the first Kim Pyong-il) fell into a well and died, and was buried there;[2] however other sources claim that Kim Jong-il's sibling drowned in a pool in Pyongyang in 1947.









VyatskoyeThe original inhabitants apparently were various Tungusic peoples.Formerly part of Outer Manchuria, Vyatskoye along with Khabarovsk and Vladivostok was ceded to Imperial Russia by the Qing dynasty as part of the 1860 Convention of Peking.During World War II near Vyatskoye was a camp for the Soviet 88th Brigade, which was made up of Korean and Chinese guerrillas. Kim Il-sung, future leader of North Korea, was stationed there as a Captain in the Soviet Red Army commanding a battalion, and according to some sources his family was there as well.[1] According to those same sources his son Kim Jong-il was born there on February 16, 1941 (although the North Korean government claims Kim Jong-il was born onBaekdu Mountain). Residents of the town claim that his brother Shura Kim (also known as the first Kim Pyong-il) fell into a well and died, and was buried there;[2] however other sources claim that Kim Jong-il's sibling drowned in a pool in Pyongyang in 1947.Khabarovsk Krai (Russian: Хаба́ровский край, tr. Khabarovsky kray, IPA: [xɐˈbarəfskʲɪj kraj]) is afederal subject of Russia (a krai), located in the Russian Far East. It lies mostly in the basin of the lower Amur River, but also occupies a vast mountainous area along the coastline of the Sea of Okhotsk, an arm of the Pacific Ocean. The administrative center of the krai is the city ofKhabarovsk. Population: 1,343,869 (2010 Census).[7]The indigenous people of the area are various Tungusic peoples (Evenks, Negidals, Ulchs, Nanai,Oroch, Udege) and Amur Nivkhs.[11]The indigenous people of the area are various Tungusic peoples (Evenks, Negidals, Ulchs, Nanai,Oroch, Udege) and Amur Nivkhs.[115th century-900

According to various Chinese and Korean records, the southern part of Khabarovsk Krai was originally occupied one of the five semi-nomadic Shiwei, the Bo Shiwei tribes and the Black Water Mohe tribes living respectively on the west and the east of the Bureinsky and the Malyi Khingan ranges.

17th century-1850

In 1643, Vassili Poyarkov's boats descended the Amur, returning to Yakutsk by the Sea of Okhotsk and the Aldan River, and in 1649–1650 Yerofey Khabarov occupied the banks of the Amur. The resistance of the Chinese, however, obliged the Cossacks to quit their forts, and by theTreaty of Nerchinsk (1689) Russia abandoned her advance into the basin of the river.Although losing the rights to navigate the Amur River, the Chinese Qing Empire, however, never claimed the lower courses of the river. Nikolay Muravyov insisted on conducting an aggressive policy with China by claiming that the lower reaches of the Amur River belong to Russians.Later in 1852, a Russian military expedition under Muravyov explored the Amur, and by 1857 a chain of Russian Cossacks and peasants were settled along the whole course of the river. The accomplished fact was recognized by China in 1858 by the Treaty of Aigun, recognized the Amur River as the boundary between Russia and Qing Empire, and granted Russia free access to the Pacific Ocean.Vyatskoye (Russian: Вя́тское) (alternatively known as Viatsk or Viatskoe) is a small fishingvillage in Khabarovsky District, Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located on the east side of the Amur River, 70 kilometers (43 mi) northeast of Khabarovsk. The 76th Radio Technical Brigade is located there.Khabarovsk Krai shares its borders with Magadan Oblast in the north, with the Sakha Republicand Amur Oblast in the west, with the Jewish Autonomous Oblast, China, and Primorsky Krai in the south, and is limited by the Sea of Okhotsk in the east. In terms of area, it is the fourth-largest federal subject within the Russian Federation.Taiga and tundra in the north, swampy forest in the central depression, and deciduous forest in the south are the natural vegetation in the area.During the Soviet period, the high authority in the oblast was shared between three persons: The first secretary of the Khabarovsk CPSU Committee (who in reality had the biggest authority), the chairman of the oblast Soviet (legislative power), and the Chairman of the oblast Executive Committee (executive power). Since 1991, CPSU lost all the power, and the head of the Oblast administration, and eventually the governor was appointed/elected alongside elected regional parliament.The Charter of Khabarovsk Krai is the fundamental law of the region. The Legislative Assembly of Khabarovsk Krai is the province's regional standing legislative (representative) body. The Legislative Assembly exercises its authority by passing laws, resolutions, and other legal acts and by supervising the implementation and observance of the laws and other legal acts passed by it. The highest executive body is the Oblast Government, which includes territorial executive bodies such as district administrations, committees, and commissions that facilitate development and run the day to day matters of the province. The Oblast administration supports the activities of the Governor who is the highest official and acts as guarantor of the observance of the krai Charter in accordance with the Constitution of Russia.Khabarovsk Krai is the most industrialized territory of the Far East of Russia, producing 30% of the total industrial products in the Far Eastern Economic Region. The machine construction industry consists primarily of a highly developed military-industrial complex of large scale aircraft and ship building enterprises.[12] The Komsomolsk-on-Amur Aircraft Production Association is currently one of among the krai's most successful enterprises, and for years has been the largest taxpayer of the territory.[12] Other major industries include timberworking andfishing, along with metallurgy in the main cities, although the krai's own mineral resources are poorly developed. Komsomolsk-on-Amur is the iron and steel center of the Far East; a pipelinefrom northern Sakhalin supplies the petroleum-refining industry in the city of Khabarovsk. In the Amur basin, there is also some cultivation of wheat and soybeans. The capital city, Khabarovsk, is at the junction of the Amur River and the Trans-Siberian railway.According to the 2010 Census,[7] 91.8% of the population are Russians, 2.1% Ukrainians, 0.8%Nanais, 0.6% Tatars 0.6% Koreans and 0.4% Belarusians. 55,038 people were registered from administrative databases, and could not declare an ethnicity. It is estimated that the proportion of ethnicities in this group is the same as that of the declared group.[15]In addition to the Nanai, other indigenous groups include the Evenks and Evens in the northern part of the province, and Ulchs in the lower Amur river (Ulchsky District). Some Nivkhs (Gilyak), an indigenous fishing people speaking an isolate language, live around the Amur river delta as well. Smaller groups indigenous to the area are Negidals (567), Orochs (686), and Udege (1,657) according to the 2002 census.According to a 2012 official survey[21] 26.2% of the population of Khabarovsk Krai adheres to theRussian Orthodox Church, 4% are unaffiliated generic Christians, 1% adheres to other Orthodox Churches, 1% to Islam. In addition, 28% of the population deems itself to be "spiritual but not religious", 23% is atheist, and 16.8% follows other religions or did not give an answer to the question.[21]Sister relationsEdit

 Gyeongsangnam-do, South Korea[25] Hyogo Prefecture, Japan[26]Хабаровская краевая Дума. №150 30 ноября 1995 г. «Устав Хабаровского края», в ред. Закона №202 от 30 июля 2008 г. (Khabarovsk Krai Duma. #150 30 November 1995 Charter of Khabarovsk Krai, as amended by the Law #202 of 30 July 2008. ).Chaussonnet, Valerie (1995) Native Cultures of Alaska and Siberia. Arctic Studies Center. Washington, D.C. 112p. ISBN 1-56098-661-1









Count Vladimir Nikolayevich Lamsdorf (Russian: Владимир Николаевич Ламсдорф, Lamsdorf, January 6 [O.S. December 25] 1845 – March 19 [O.S. March 6] 1907) was a Russian statesman ofBaltic German descent who served as Foreign Minister of the Russian Empire from 1900 – 1906, a crucial period which included the Russo-Japanese War and the Russian Revolution of 1905.

Early careerEdit

Like so many other Russian diplomats, Lamsdorf was trained in the Tsarskoye Selo Lyceum in St. Petersburg. At the Berlin Congress he was in the retinue of Prince Alexander Gorchakov, the Chancellor of the Russian Empire. In 1884 the young diplomat was present at the meeting ofAlexander III of Russia, Wilhelm I of Prussia and Franz Josef of Austria in Skierniewice andKroměříž.Gorchakov's successor, Nicholas de Giers, singled out Lamsdorf as his protégé and prospective successor. During the 1880s, he was a vocal supporter of the Three Emperors' League but shifted his views after Bismarck's resignation in 1890. In 1897 he was appointed Deputy Foreign Minister. He played a major role at the First Hague Peace Conference of 1899. There was a fair degree of continuity in policies when he succeeded Mikhail Muraviev three years later in 1900.

Foreign MinisterEdit

Lamsdorf's main concerns revolved around the Eastern Question and the proposed administrative reform of the Ottoman Empire towards strengthening and protecting Russia's position in the Balkans. In late 1902 he personally visited Belgrade, Sofia and Vienna to discuss the Balkan impasse with Nikola Pašić, Hristo Tatarchev, Agenor Maria Gołuchowski, and their monarchs. In September 1903 he accompanied Nicholas II to Vienna andMürzzuschlag.Lamsdorf was anxious to prevent the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the face of Slavic nationalism and emphatically condemned the Ilinden-Preobrazhenie Uprising and other activities of the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization. He was also sympathetic to theZionist cause, as promoted by Theodor Herzl.[1]The main event of Lamsdorf's tenure in office was the Russo-Japanese War. He proposed to relinquish Russia's impractical ambitions in Korea in order to safeguard her interests inManchuria. He viewed Pacific politics as something of a sideshow and was steadily sidelined by the jingoist hard-liners from the military. In terms of Far Eastern politics, Admiral Yevgeni Ivanovich Alekseyev exerted more influence on the Tsar, to whom he had direct access in his capacity of chairman of the semi-official Committee on Far Eastern Affairs. As a result of Alekseyev's activities, Russia reneged on her promise to evacuate Manchuria by 1902, and events continued their downward spiral to war, with Lamsdorf seemingly resigned to its inevitability.During and after the war, Lamsdorf was to a large degree overshadowed by the stronger personality of his close associate, Count Sergey Witte. Together they negotiated the Treaty of Portsmouth, only to learn, upon their return to St. Petersburg, that the Tsar had secretly signed the Treaty of Björkö with Imperial Germany. It was owing to their efforts that the projected Russian-German alliance against Britain never came into effect. This earned Lamsdorf the enmity of both German government and press. If the Tsar had not listened to the arguments of Witte and Lamsdorf, "the whole history of Europe and of the world could have been different".[2]When eventually relieved of his duties in 1906, Lamsdorf prided himself on having maintained a position equidistant from both Potsdam and Buckingham Palace. He compared Russia's standing in Europe to "that of a rich bride which none wanted to see fall into the arms of another".[3] Lamsdorf's decidedly cool attitude to both British and German empires was demonstrated by his handling of the Dogger Bank incident and the Treaty of Björkö.Lamsdorf was described by his contemporaries as a "leisurely, well-bred man of good society... with a very high forehead and a soft affable manner".[3] He never married and fathered no children. Rumors about his sexual orientation were often exploited by his enemies to undermine his authority at court. A characteristic excerpt from Suvorin's diary: "The Tsar calls Lamsdorfmadame and promotes his lover Savitsky within the ranks of the count. Lamsdorf boasts that he spent thirty years in the corridors of the Foreign Ministry. As he is a homosexual and all men are for him sluts, he thus spent thirty years in a bordello".[4] At his resignation, Lamsdorf was admitted into the State Council of Imperial Russia but chose to spend the few remaining months of his life on the Italian Riviera, where he died (in San Remo) at the age of 62.The Dogger Bank incident (also known as the North Sea Incident, the Russian Outrage or theIncident of Hull) occurred on the night of 21/22 October 1904, when the Russian Baltic Fleetmistook some British trawlers in the Dogger Bank area of the North Sea for an Imperial Japanese Navy force and fired on them. Russian warships also fired on each other in the chaos of the melée.[1] Three British fishermen died and a number were wounded. One sailor and a priest aboard a Russian cruiser caught in the crossfire were also killed. The incident almost led to war between Britain and Russia.[2]The Russian warships involved in the incident were en route to the Far East, to reinforce the 1st Pacific Squadron stationed at Port Arthur, and later Vladivostok, during the Russo-Japanese War. Because of incorrect reports about the presence of Japanese torpedo boats, submarines and minefields in the North Sea, and the general nervousness of the Russian sailors, 48 harmless fishing vessels were attacked by the Russians, thousands of miles away from enemy waters.The incident arose from the fact that the recently developed torpedo boats of the European navies did have the potential to wreck large warships, and could also strike while nearly invisible. Torpedo boats created a psychological stress on sailors at war, and as early as 1898, during theSpanish-American War, American warships had opened fire on ocean swells, trains on land, and rocks along the coastline, after sailors had mistaken them for Spanish torpedo boats.[3]Accidents and rumours, which had also dogged the United States Navy during the war with Spain in 1898, did not exempt the Russian fleet on their voyage, and there was general fear of attack among the sailors, with widespread rumours that a fleet of Japanese torpedo boats were stationed off the Danish coast, as well as talk of the Japanese having mined the seas and alleged sightings of Japanese submarines. To quell the fears of the crews, Admiral Rozhestvensky called for increased vigilance and issued an order that "no vessel of any sort must be allowed to get in among the fleet". This soon led to an incident near the Danish coast unrelated to the Dogger Bank disaster, when fishermen bearing consular dispatches from Russia for the fleet were fired on, but escaped unharmed due to the poor standards of Russian gunnery.[4]After negotiating a non-existent minefield, the Russian fleet sailed into the North Sea. The disaster of 21 October began in the evening, when the captain of the supply ship Kamchatka(Камчатка), which was last in the Russian line, took a passing Swedish ship for a Japanese torpedo boat and radioed that he was being attacked. Later that night, during fog, the officers on duty sighted the British trawlers, interpreted their signals incorrectly and classified them as Japanese torpedo boats. The Russian warships then trained their searchlights on the trawlers and opened fire. The British trawler Crane was sunk, and its captain and first mate were killed. Four other trawlers were damaged, and six other fishermen were wounded, one of whom died a few months later. As the trawlers had their nets down, they were unable to flee and, in the general chaos, Russian ships shot at each other: the cruisers Aurora and Dmitrii Donskoi were taken for Japanese warships and bombarded by seven battleships sailing in formation, damaging both ships and killing at least one Russian sailor and severely wounding another, and fatally wounding a naval chaplain. During the pandemonium, several Russian ships signalled torpedoes had hit them, and on board the battleship Borodino, rumours spread that the ship was being boarded by the Japanese, with some crews donning life vests and lying prone on the deck and others drawing cutlasses to repel a boarding. More serious losses to both sides were only avoided by the extremely low quality of Russian gunnery, with the battleship Oryol reportedly firing more than 500 shells without hitting anything.[4] The firing lasted for twenty minutes before the British fishermen observed a blue light being signalled on one of the warships; this was the order to cease firing.[5]The Aurora, a Russian cruiser attacked by other Russian ships during the incident.The incident led to a serious diplomatic conflict between Russia and Britain, which was particularly dangerous due to the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. In the aftermath some British newspapers called the Russian fleet 'pirates' and the Russian admiral Zinovy Rozhestvensky was heavily criticised for not leaving the British sailors lifeboats. The editorial of the morning's Times was particularly scathing:"It is almost inconceivable that any men calling themselves seamen, however frightened they might be, could spend twenty minutes bombarding a fleet of fishing boats without discovering the nature of their target."[2]The Royal Navy prepared for war, with 28 battleships of the Home Fleet being ordered to raise steam and prepare for action, while British cruiser squadrons shadowed the Russian fleet as it made its way through the Bay of Biscay and down the coast of Portugal. Under diplomatic pressure, the Russian government agreed to investigate the incident, and Rozhestvenski was ordered to dock in Vigo, Spain, where he left behind those officers considered responsible (as well as at least one officer who had been critical of him).[4] From Vigo, the main Russian fleet then approached Tangiers, Morocco, and lost contact with the Kamchatka for several days. TheKamchatka eventually rejoined the fleet and claimed that she had engaged three Japanese warships and fired over 300 shells: the ships she had actually fired at were a Swedish merchantman, a German trawler, and a French schooner. As the fleet left Tangiers, one ship accidentally severed the city's underwater telegraph cable with her anchor, preventing communications with Europe for four days.[4]The Russian fleet was barred from using the Suez Canal and British ports as a result of the incident. It thus proceeded around Africa, where it rendezvoused with German supply ships that had been hired to replenish its coal stocks at sea. The fleet then proceeded to the Sea of Japanwhere it was defeated in the Battle of Tsushima.On 25 November 1904, the British and the Russian governments signed a joint agreement in which they agreed to submit the issue to the International Commission of Inquiry at the Hague.[6]The commission completed its report on 26 February 1905, in which it criticised Admiral Rozhestvenski for his decision to fire upon the British ships. However, it concluded that "as each [Russian] vessel swept the horizon in every direction with her own searchlights to avoid being taken by surprise, it was difficult to prevent confusion". It concluded that "the opening of fire by Admiral Rozhestvenski was not justifiable". It also concluded as follows: "the commissioners take pleasure in recognising, unanimously, that Admiral Rozhestvenski personally did everything he could, from beginning to end of the incident, to prevent trawlers, recognised as such, from being fired upon by the squadron".[7]The fishermen eventually received £66,000 from Russia in compensation.[8] In 1906 the Fisherman's Memorial was unveiled in Hull to commemorate the deaths of the three British sailors. The approx. 18 feet high statue shows the dead fisherman George Henry Smith and carries the following inscription:Erected by public subscription to the memory of George Henry Smith (skipper) and William Richard Legget (third hand), of the steam-trawler CRANE, who lost their lives through the action of the Russian Baltic Fleet in the North Sea, 22 October 1904, and Walter Whelpton, skipper of the trawler MINO, who died through shock, May 1905







Kim Jong-suk was born on December 24, 1919 in Hoeryong County, North Hamgyong Province, in Chosŏn (Japanese Korea).[3] Suh Dae-sook writes that she was "the elder of two daughters of a poor farmer."[1] However, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), states that she had a younger brother, Kim Ki-song, who was born February 9, 1921.[4]Kim Jong-suk followed her mother to Manchuria to look for her father, but they discovered that he had already died there. Soon after that, her mother died and she became an orphan. Most sources agree that Kim Jong-suk then joined Kim Il-sung’s guerrilla force in 1935 or 1936[5] as a kitchen helper.[1][3] The KCNA, however, reports that Kim Jong-suk and Kim Ki-song joined the guerrilla forces after their mother and their elder brother’s wife were murdered by the Japanese.[4]During this time, Kim Jong-suk worked various odd jobs, was arrested by the Japanese in 1937 in an undercover attempt to secure food and supplies. After her release, she rejoined the guerrillas, where she cooked, sewed, and washed.[1]It was around this time that Kim Jong-suk reportedly saved Kim Il-sung’s life. Baik Bong relates the story in Kim Il-sung’s official biography:One day, while the unit was marching under the General’s [Kim Il-sung] command, five or six enemies unexpectedly approached through the reeds and aimed at the General. The danger was imminent. Without losing a moment, Comrade Kim Jung Sook [Kim Jong-suk] shielded the General with her own body and shot down an enemy with her revolver. The General also shot down the second enemy. Two revolvers spurted fire in turn and annihilated the enemy in a twinkle. But this was not the only time such dangers occurred, and each time, Comrade Kim Jung Sook rose to the occasion with fury, and protected the Headquarters of the revolution at the risk of her life.[6]Kim Jong-suk married Kim Il Sung in the Soviet Union, most likely in 1941.[3] On February 16, 1941[5][7] (or 1942, sources vary),[1][3] in the Soviet village of Vyatskoye, Kim Jong-suk gave birth to Kim Jong-il, who was given the Russian name "Yuri Irsenovich Kim," and the nickname "Yura."[1][3][7] In 1944, Kim Jong-suk gave birth to a second son, Kim Pyong-il in Korean and "Alexander" or "Sura" in Russian.[3] In 1946, she gave birth to daughter, Kim Kyŏng-hŭi.[5]Augustina Vardugina, a woman from Vyatskoye, was in her teens when Kim Il-sung’s guerrilla group camped there. She remembers Kim Jong-suk, and how she would come to the village to barter military rations for chicken and eggs. Her son, Kim Jong-il, would be holding her hand.[3]A year after the establishment of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and until her death, Kim Jong-suk was the first lady of North Korea. According to some accounts, Kim Jong-suk "was a small, quiet woman, not particularly well educated, but friendly and life-loving."[8]Major General N.G. Lebedev, an executive Soviet officer during the Soviet occupation of North Korea, recalled Kim Jong-suk as "a vivacious and generous lady who always cooked enormous amounts of food for the hungry Soviet generals when they visited Kim’s home."[1]

Death

Kim Jong-suk died in Pyongyang in 1949. The official story is that she died from "the hardships she had endured during the years as a guerrilla fighter."[9] The unofficial story is that she died in childbirth while delivering a stillborn child.[3] Her death, however, is omitted from her official biography.[5] Some say she died from tuberculosis,[7] and there are other stories that she was shot and bled to death.[5] Many North Korean authorities claim she basically was raised into the sky and into the Juche afterlife.[5]Kim Jong-suk김정숙金正淑Born24 December 1919Osan-dong, Hoeryong, North Hamgyong,Japanese KoreaDied22 September 1949 (aged 29)North KoreaSpouse(s)Kim Il-sung (1941-1949)Kim Jong-suk married Kim Il Sung in the Soviet Union, most likely in 1941.[3] On February 16, 1941[5][7] (or 1942, sources vary),[1][3] in the Soviet village of Vyatskoye, Kim Jong-suk gave birth to Kim Jong-il, who was given the Russian name "Yuri Irsenovich Kim," and the nickname "Yura."[1][3][7] In 1944, Kim Jong-suk gave birth to a second son, Kim Pyong-il in Korean and "Alexander" or "Sura" in Russian.[3] In 1946, she gave birth to daughter, Kim Kyŏng-hŭi.[5]Augustina Vardugina, a woman from Vyatskoye, was in her teens when Kim Il-sung’s guerrilla group camped there. She remembers Kim Jong-suk, and how she would come to the village to barter military rations for chicken and eggs. Her son, Kim Jong-il, would be holding her hand.[1944 in the Russian village of Vyatskoye.Kim Man-il (Hangul: 김만일; hanja: 金萬一; Vyatskoye, 1944 – , Pyongyang 1947/8) was the second son and child of North Korean leader Kim Il-sung and his first wife, Kim Jong-suk.He was born in 1944 in the Russian village of Vyatskoye. Inside his family, he was nicknamedShura. Official North Korean biographies state that Shura and his older brother Kim Jong-il got along very well and played together.In the summer of 1947 or 1948, Shura and his brother were playing in a pond in the city ofPyongyang, when Shura mysteriously drowned. Official records state that Kim Jong-il was devastated and could never get over the trauma of losing his younger brother. In 1949, his mother, Kim Jong-suk died while giving birth to a stillborn girl.







Soviet records show that Kim was born in the village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk, in 1941,[9]where his father, Kim Il-sung, commanded the 1st Battalion of the Soviet 88th Brigade, made up of Chinese and Korean exiles. Kim Jong-il's mother, Kim Jong-suk, was Kim Il-sung's first wife.However, Kim Jong-il's official biography states he was born in a secret military camp on Baekdu Mountain (Korean: 백두산밀영고향집) in Japanese-occupied Korea on 16 February 1942.[10]Official biographers claim that his birth at Baekdu Mountain was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow across the sky over the mountain and a new star in the heavens.[11] According to one comrade of Kim's mother, Lee Min, word of Kim's birth first reached an army camp in Vyatskoye via radio and that both Kim and his mother did not return there until the following year.[12][13]In 1945, Kim was four years old when World War II ended and Korea regained independence from Japan. His father returned to Pyongyang that September, and in late November Kim returned to Korea via a Soviet ship, landing at Sonbong (선봉군, also Unggi). The family moved into a former Japanese officer's mansion in Pyongyang, with a garden and pool. Kim Jong-il's brother, "Shura" Kim (the first Kim Pyong-il, but known by his Russian nickname), drowned there in 1948. Unconfirmed reports suggest that five-year-old Kim Jong-il might have caused the accident.[14]Reports indicate that his mother died in childbirth in 1949,[15] however, unconfirmed reports suggest that his mother might have been shot and left to bleed to death.[14]Cult of personality

A North Korean voting booth containing portraits of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il under the national flag. Below the portraits is the ballot box.Main article: North Korea's cult of personalityKim Jong-il was the centre of an elaborate personality cult inherited from his father and founder of the DPRK, Kim Il-sung. Defectors have been quoted as saying that North Korean schools deify both father and son.[43][page needed] He was often the centre of attention throughout ordinary life in the DPRK. On his 60th birthday (based on his official date of birth), mass celebrations occurred throughout the country on the occasion of his Hwangab.[44] Many North Koreans believed that he had the "magical" ability to "control the weather" based on his mood.[43] In 2010, the North Korean media reported that Kim's distinctive clothing had set worldwide fashion trends.[45]One point of view is that Kim Jong-il's cult of personality was solely out of respect for Kim Il-sung or out of fear of punishment for failure to pay homage.[46] Media and government sources from outside of North Korea generally support this view,[47][48][49][50][51] while North Korean government sources aver it was a genuine hero worship.[52] The song "No Motherland Without You", sung by the KPA State Merited Choir, was created especially for Kim in 1992 and is frequently broadcast on the radio and from loudspeakers on the streets of Pyongyang.[53]The field of psychology has long been fascinated with the personality assessment of dictators, a notion that resulted in an extensive personality evaluation of Kim Jong-il. The report, compiled by Frederick L. Coolidge and Daniel L. Segal (with the assistance of a South Korean psychiatrist considered an expert on Kim Jong-il's behavior), concluded that the "big six" group of personality disorders shared by dictators Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Saddam Hussein (sadistic,paranoid, antisocial, narcissistic, schizoid and schizotypal) were also shared by Kim Jong-il — coinciding primarily with the profile of Saddam Hussein.[121]According to the Sunday Telegraph, Kim had US$4 billion on deposit in European banks in case he ever needed to flee North Korea. The Sunday Telegraph reported that most of the money was in banks in Luxembourg.[123]