A Family of Gods

194 PHOENIX bution to current scholarship on Vergil’s epic. Within the polyphony of scholarly voices on the Aeneid Stahl’s is not only a strong but at times also a thundering one. Shattering the wishful concept of a regime-critical poet time and again, by insisting on a precise and contextual reading of Vergil’s text, he fearlessly (and at times fiercely) takes on the approaches of the Harvard School as well as readings that are informed by, among others, New Criticism and Semiotic Theory. In view of the opening questions, however, it may be said that Stahl contributes a valiant voice to the monumental “song” of the human condition that scholarship on the Aeneid has created and will continue to create. University of Montana Barbara Weinlich A Family of Gods: The Worship of the Imperial Family in the Latin West. By Gwynaeth McIntyre. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press (Societas: Historical Studies in Classical Culture 2). 2016. Pp. 179. In A FAMILY OF GODS, Gwynaeth McIntyre examines the titles of priests in western provinces dedicated to the worship of individuals deified in Rome. Most of the focus is at the municipal rather than provincial level, and McIntyre is interested in the balance between centralized authority and local initiative in the development and spread of imperial cult. Honorific inscriptions that include such a priesthood within the career of the honorand comprise her main body of evidence. Well-documented inconsistencies in titulature even within provinces lead her to put greater weight on local impulses than imposition from the center. The book thus contributes to ongoing scholarly work on issues from city politics to imperial ideology and “Romanization.” Unfortunately, a few opportunities to engage these issues more strongly are missed. The first chapter, “Center and Periphery: The Establishment of Cult to the Emperor and Members of his Family,” sets the stage by assessing the earliest examples of the process whereby individuals were elevated to divine status in Rome, paying special attention to the deification of Julius Caesar and the exceptional honors for Augustus’ deceased sons Gaius and Lucius. The latter two prove more relevant to the questions at hand, in that McIntyre is able to explore through epigraphy how the colonia of Pisa in Italy responded to the honors voted to each dead prince in the Roman senate. The public sacrifices and holidays, the statues and monuments, as well as the city magistrates tasked with establishing them, shed light on the way local politicians utilized and expanded upon senatorial models to create honors early in the development of what would become imperial cult. Chapter Two, “Not Quite Gods: Priests of Living and Nondeified Members of the Imperial Family,” looks to the spread of priesthoods outside of Italy, specifically priests within the Gauls, the Spains, and in North Africa dedicated to the worship of individuals who were not formally deified in Rome. McIntyre notes that the mere existence of such priests “suggests the absence of formal central control over cultic establishments” (11). The primary theme pursued within the chapter, however, is that the imperial ideology revealed by the cults is that of an imperial family, including its prominent women and even sometimes children, not just an emperor. Chapters Three (“Divi in the Provinces: Priesthoods, Honours, and Sacred Space”) and Four (“Female Divinities: The Divae and Their Priests”) look at titles for priests of divi and divae respectively in cities across the selected provinces. Valuable observations BOOK REVIEWS/COMPTES RENDUS 195 about gender differences emerge. The great majority of municipal priesthoods were held by men in honor of divi and other men from imperial family, but there are some provincial women who occupied priesthoods honoring imperial women. These latter seem modeled on priesthoods created for imperial women themselves, although those in turn were priesthoods in honor of deified emperors held by their widowed empresses. New gender roles were thus being forged in the provinces that reinterpret what was observed in the imperial center. Similarly, McIntyre finds interesting provincial variation that points to potential for further work—for example, Africa Proconsularis continued to have priests appointed to some divi, such as Vespasian and Titus, long after their deaths and even the end of their

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