The Imperial Cults in the Greek Provinces
Résumé
Abstract The Greek cities established a wide variety of cults for the goddess Roma, the imperatores of the late Republican period, and finally the emperors and their families. The so-called ‘imperial cult’ spread to all the Greek provinces, at different paces. The Greek cities and the federal assemblies developed a wide range of means to honour the emperor: dedication of statues, altars and temples, contests. All these celebrations marked the daily life of the Greek populations of the empire. The imperial cults were rooted in the communities that made up the empire. Far from being imposed from above by the imperial power as a unified and foreign cult, they were fully integrated into local religious traditions. However, their existence at all levels of the political and religious life of the empire is in itself a factor of integration; the imperial cults reflect, and probably contributed to, the homogenization of the empire.