*The imperial cult.* A new religion which was to be symbolic of the unity
of the empire and the loyalty of the provincials was the cult of Rome and
Augustus, commonly known as the imperial cult. The worship of the goddess
Roma, the personification of the Roman state, had sprung up voluntarily in
the cities of Greece and Asia after 197 B. C. when the power of Rome began
to supplant the authority of the Hellenistic monarchs for whom deification
by their subjects was the theoretical basis of their autocratic power.
This voluntary worship had also been accorded to individual Romans, as
Flamininus, Sulla, Caesar and Mark Antony. As early as 29 B. C. the cities
of Pergamon in Asia and Nicomedia in Bithynia erected temples dedicated to
Roma and Augustus, and established quinquennial religious festivals called
_Romaia Sebasta_. Other cities followed their example and before the death
of Augustus each province in the Orient had at least one altar dedicated
to Roma and the princeps. From the East the imperial cult was officially
transplanted to the West.

In the year 12 B. C. an altar of Rome and Augustus was established at the
junction of the rivers Rhone and Saone, opposite the town of Lugdunum
(modern Lyons), the administrative center of Transalpine Gaul apart from
the Narbonese province. Here the peoples of Gaul were to unite in the
outward manifestation of their loyalty to Roman rule. A similar altar was
erected at what is now Cologne in the land of the Ubii between 9 B. C. and
9 A. D. Both in the East and in the West the maintenance of the imperial
cult was imposed upon provincial councils, composed of representatives of
the municipal or tribal units in which each province was divided.

The imperial cult in the provinces was thus the expression of the absolute
authority of Rome and Augustus over the subjects of Rome, but for that
very reason Augustus could not admit its development on Italian soil; for
to do so would be to deny his claim to be a Roman magistrate, deriving his
authority from the Roman people, among whom he was the chief citizen, and
would stamp his government as monarchical and autocratic. Therefore,
although the poet Horace, voicing the public sentiment, in 27 B. C.
acclaimed him as the new Mercury, and both municipalities and individuals
in southern Italy spontaneously established his worship, this movement
received no official encouragement and never became important. However,
from the year 12 B. C. onwar