person who would free these nations from the oppression and injustice of the Roman
domination, and bring back older and therefore better times. This holds true for
the expectations that the Greeks connected with the policy of Mithradates VI
(120 – 63bc), but also for the messianic hopes of the Jews, who expected first of
all, contrary to the Christian interpretation, a Jewish messiah with political aims. The
Romans themselves expected especially the appearance of a man who would bring
the nearly endless succession of civil wars and political upheavals to a fortunate and
final end. In this case, too, the expected condition of the new world that would
emerge was identical with the return to an older and therefore near paradisiac time.
The great poet Virgil voiced the hopes of many of his contemporaries in one of
his poems (Eclogue4). Virgil, too, was convinced that mankind had reached the final
period of its existence, but that after the catastrophe a new generation would be
sent from heaven and a new golden era would start again. Virgil had no specific idea
who would accomplish this redemption of mankind and make the new golden era
a reality. When he wrote this poem he only hoped for a child that would be sent
from heaven. This “child” has to be understood as a symbol of something new and
innocent, something that had not been tainted by past guilt. This poem was the
expression of a widespread sentiment, not a political manifesto with a clear agenda.
Every politician who responded to the feelings of the population could be regarded
as the heaven-sent savior.
The Response of Augustus to the Problems
In the reality of political life after the murder of Gaius Iulius Caesar it soon became
obvious that Gaius Iulius Caesar Octavianus, the adopted son and heir of the mur-
dered dictator (since January 16, 27bc, honored with the title Augustus=“the
sublime”), was the best qualified to respond adequately to these not very specific
expectations. Octavian took up these vague expectations of a divine savior, but he
transferred these ideas onto his own person and made them politically useful for
himself (Ramsey and Licht 1997).
Certainly it was very helpful for him that in the eastern parts of the empire the
concept of the divine benefactor (euergetes) and savior (soter) was much more firmly
established than in Rome. The Greek east already had a long religious tradition of
how to deal with such divine rulers, dating back to the time of Alexander the Great.
Therefore Augustus only had to step into the role of the Hellenistic kings and the
whole system of religious honors that had evolved around their person. Sacrifices,
temples, competitions, statues, identifications between ruler and god represented a
well-established religious system challenged by nobody.
Thus Augustus could use without hesitation all the religious and ideological oppor-
tunities that were offered to him by the precedents of the Hellenistic world. Very
soon the tradition was formed that Augustus had been conceived by his mother Atia
when she visited the temple of Apollo in Rome and that his real father was Apollo
himself. Besides the message to the public that the new ruler of Rome was a demigod
and therefore capable of achieving more than ordinary humans, Augustus thus placed
306 Peter Herz