Now that new contributions have been made to the study of “the imperial cult” in the early Roman Empire, the time is ripe to broaden that conversation: by drawing attention to imperial cult practices in the late Roman world. This topic will provide an excellent illustration of how our modern categories, like “Roman/Christian” or “pagan/Christian,” fail to capture the nuances of social life in the late Roman world. Two recent studies – one focusing on divus Constantine, the other on the iconography of Christ as the heavenly emperor – have already begun to sketch out that picture.

This contribution expands on that work by examining the social and cultural context of one inscription from Rome (CIL 6.1783). This inscription has recently been used to characterize the late fourth and early fifth centuries as a period of “Christian triumph” and “pagan revival” although that narrative no longer withstands scrutiny. Traditional worship practices did not vanish with the conversion of Constantine; and abundant epigraphic, legal, numismatic, and textual sources, discussed here, attest to the continued practice of naming late antique emperors divi – including references to the diva memoria of the eastern Roman emperor Zeno (474–91 CE) and one reference to divus Anastasius (491–518 CE). Given this context, it is surprising, however, that no scholar to date has chosen to discuss the fact that the inscription from Rome names the emperor Theodosius as divus.

This chapter rereads that inscription in light of the resilience of traditional Roman worship practices in the fourth century, including imperial cult practices. In doing so, it suggests a model for understanding how the same social and cultural mechanisms by which individuals and communities drew the attention and patronage of the imperial house, as in earlier periods, remained an important “transactional” mechanism for brokering social relations in the late antique world. This chapter may challenge scholars who see “the imperial cult” as a phenomenon inherently in tension with early Christianity or as one whose outward “pagan” trappings were thrown off with the legalization of Christianity.

Rome, circa 431 CE

Few inscriptions have merited their own monograph. CIL 6.1783 is privileged to count among this group. Discovered in Rome in 1849 in the Forum of Trajan, the inscription dates to 431 CE and preserves a letter from Flavius Theodosius II and Flavius Valentinian III to the Senate of Rome.

To understand the complex processes of change that Roman society underwent with the advent and expansion of Christianity, scholars of the late antique and early Christian period have used cultural memory theory as an interpretive model. Despite the criticisms that may be raised against this approach, from vagueness and lack of terminology, to theoretical exaggeration, the efforts (whether conscious or unconscious) of late Roman people to establish a new collectively shared memory about their Christian past may be detected in and across diverse groups of Christian Romans – from the lower and middle classes to senators and emperors. Such efforts may be seen in the establishment of narratives and commemorative practices with respect to the new Christian guardians of Rome: the apostles and the martyrs. This chapter will discuss one of these commemorations, the festival honoring the Apostles Peter and Paul on June 29, and the narratives supporting it – ancient as well as modern.

According to tradition, Peter and Paul were the founders of the Roman Church by their joint martyrdom at Rome. The memory of the two apostles was anchored to Rome by way of their graves, which were, in fact, called memoriae. These memoriae were monumentalized with shrines donated by emperors, praised by poets, and visited by pilgrims throughout the year, but especially around the annual festival on June 29. On this day, the reenactment of the memory of the Apostles also took place at the so-called Memoriae Apostolorum on the Via Appia, today's S. Sebastiano. Six hundred graffiti from the third century onward contain prayers of intercession devoted to Peter and Paul, thus testifying to a joint cult of these apostles – all year round. In the second half of the fourth century, the cult and the festival on June 29 was intensified by Pope Damasus (366–84) who composed an epigram for Peter and Paul at the Memoriae Apostolorum.

For more than two centuries, a considerable number of scholars have claimed that the celebration of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29 reflected an effort, during the third century, to appropriate an existing celebration on the same day of the divine founder of Rome, Romulus/Quirinus. In this chapter it will be argued, however, that this narrative about a Christian “usurpation” of a pagan celebration of Rome's foundation is a misguided modern construction of religious politics and cultural memory in fourth- and fifth-century Rome.

The so-called circiform funerary basilicas in Rome represent one of the most easily identifiable of all Roman building types. In plan the edifices resemble a circus, as suggested by the oblique short eastern wall that imitates the angle of the circus carceres, a feature that is not determined by topography and that has no utility (Figure 13.1). Side aisles formed an ambulatory around an apsed nave on the inside, and all were roofed, likely with a clerestory. Six are known to date, and all are located on consular roads at roughly the same distance from the city (Figure 13.2). Starting from the northeast, they include S. Agnese on Via Nomentana with the mausoleum attributed to Constantine's daughter Constantina, S. Lorenzo by Via Tiburtina, found under the cemetery Campo Verano, the basilica in the Villa dei Gordiani on Via Praenestina with the mausoleum called Tor de'Schiavi, SS. Pietro e Marcellino on Via Labicana with the mausoleum of Constantine's mother Helena, and S. Sebastiano, or the Basilica Apostolorum, on Via Appia. The discovery of a sixth basilica by Via Ardeatina in the 1990s increases the likelihood that similar edifices were raised on further spokes, such as Via Salaria or Via Ostiense. Their dates and functions are disputed, but scholars generally agree that they all were erected in the first two quarters of the fourth century, and that they functioned primarily as covered graveyards, coemeteria coperta, because their internal surfaces were paved with tombstones, and once built, mausolea and catacomb galleries emerged at their sites. The period of their use was relatively brief; all save the Via Appia basilica, which was preserved through its post-antique association with Saint Sebastian, fell to ruin by the late-seventh and eighth centuries. No circiform basilica has been found outside Rome.

Most scholars discuss the circiform basilicas in the context of Constantine's church-building projects, and the Labicana, Nomentana, and Tiburtina basilicas are mentioned in the Liber Pontificalis, with the Ardeatina a possible fourth. Although Constantine was certainly involved with most of these structures, the construction of one, possibly two, of the edifices – the Praenestina and Appia basilicas – was in all likelihood already begun before his conquest of Rome. This suggests that we need to explain the conception of the building type without regard for Constantine's open support for Christianity after 312.

From the era of Shimashki we move to the period of the sukkalmahs, a title of some antiquity in Mesopotamia which has been interpreted variously in its Iranian context. The mechanics of the transformation of the line of Shimashkian kings into the line of Susian sukkalmahs is obscure, but one thing is certain: under the sukkalmahs, particularly those of the late nineteenth and early eighteenth centuries BC, the prestige and influence of Elam throughout Western Asia was unprecedented (see De Graef 2011c for an overview). The break-up of the Ur III empire witnessed the rise of independent, rival dynasties in the southern Mesopotamian cities of Isin and Larsa. Isin's power was greatest during the first three quarters of the twentieth century BC, and this was a period in which the Elamites suffered a series of political and military setbacks. But, beginning in the late twentieth century BC, the power of Isin waned as that of Larsa waxed, and the Elamites came to have substantial influence in the kingdom of Larsa. Ultimately we see Elam emerge as the major powerbroker in a web of relations which bound Assyria, Babylonia and other neighbouring regions, such as Eshnunna (in the modern Diyala River basin) and Mari (on the Middle Euphrates in Syria), often in uneasy alliances which eventually broke down. Elam provided the much-sought-after tin which Mari dispensed to the kingdoms of western Syria and Palestine. Elamite involvement with regions to the south and east, such as Dilmun (Bahrain) and Magan (Oman) in the Persian Gulf, and the resource-rich region of Bactria (northern Afghanistan/southern Uzbekistan), is also documented during this period. While the archaeological evidence of this era is abundant at Susa and in some of the plains of northern and eastern Khuzistan, it is slim in Fars, although several important rock reliefs exist. Ultimately, Hammurabi of Babylon put an end to this phase of growth and influence which saw Elam change from a regional to a world (still in the limited Western Asiatic sense) power.

Introduction

The plurality of royal titles which characterized the later Shimashki period at Susa continued, in altered form, throughout the first half of the second millennium BC, that time referred to as the sukkalmah period.

More than fifteen years have passed since the original publication of The Archaeology of Elam in 1999. Much of relevance to Elamite studies has occurred in the intervening years. In addition to the hundreds of new publications that have appeared (for compilations of bibliography see Haerinck and Stevens 2005; De Schacht and Haerinck 2013; Jahangirfar 2015; Mofidi-Nasrabadi 2015), many older works have been consulted here that were not incorporated into the original edition, amounting to an augmentation of the references list by more than 800 titles. Moreover, several important conferences on Elam and Iranian archaeology have taken place. But perhaps most importantly, fieldwork in Iran has been conducted by both Iranian teams and joint expeditions involving Iranian and American, Australian, British, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish and other scholars (see e.g. Azarnoush and Helwing 2005). These have investigated a wide range of topics touching on nearly all aspects of Elam's history and archaeology.

As a result of these developments, Asya Graf, Archaeology and Renaissance Studies editor at Cambridge University Press, and I decided, in the autumn of 2013, that a second, revised edition of The Archaeology of Elam was warranted. My thanks go to Cambridge University Press, and Asya Graf in particular, for facilitating this revision. While I have no wish to alter the dedication of this book to my family, I would like to acknowledge the large number of colleagues, particularly in Iran, who have shared their knowledge of Elam with me over the years, and furthered the study of this subject. Iranian history and archaeology are nothing if not diverse. I would not wish to suggest that Elam is more worthy of study than many other aspects of Iranian antiquity. Yet having embarked in earnest on the trail of the ancient Elamites many years ago, I am happy to travel down that path yet again, this time with considerably more data at hand than was previously the case.