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Genius and Emperor

The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with the spirit that is among you all.

Philippians 4:23

Spiritual Identities

The verse that starts this chapter is usually translated “The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit,” and the phrase “your spirit” is sometimes understood to mean “the spirit of each one of you individually.” But Paul probably meant something different in these final words to the Philippian Jesus-followers. With the word “your” being plural and the word “spirit” being singular, he seems to be referencing the singular “spirit” or ethos that Jesus-followers shared corporately among themselves, something that transpired within their gatherings. So the phrase is translated here as “the spirit that is among you all.” We might call this “spirit” the “personified character” or the “spiritual identity” of the community as a single entity. Although we do not think in these terms very often in the twenty-first century, it was very common in the ancient world to imagine that entities had spiritual representations, projections of their true inner essence and identity. In Latin, these were often called the genius (male) or juno (female) of the entity.

This view of things is found throughout the Vesuvian towns, and in any number of spheres of life. As we will see, it informed inscriptions and legal documents, it motivated the construction of temples, and it was graphically displayed on devotional shrines or in mosaics in residential entryways. The same ancient view also informed the practice of emperor worship in the Roman imperial world.

Juno and Genius

One place where this view of things is evidenced is in the tombs, located beyond the gates of Pompeii. Many tombs benefited from the addition of tubes that opened above the surface but went down into the ground where the ashes of the deceased had been placed. At certain times, people sent food down those tubes to nourish the spirits of deceased household members. At one tomb, for instance, a tube was installed to allow nutrients to be fed into the tomb for the benefit of “the juno of Melissaea Amyce” (CIL 10.1009, at tomb HGW04e/f); elsewhere, another tube was installed to benefit “the juno of Tyche, [the slave] of Julia Augusta” (CIL 10.1023, at tomb HGW16).

This was a common practice in the tombs of Pompeii. Of course, any nutrients fed through these tubes were not benefiting deceased bodies (which, after all, would most likely have been cremated); instead, the nutrients benefited a person’s non-corporeal spirit. The female juno or the male genius was a person’s generative power and spiritual life force, which existed regardless of a person’s physical existence within a body. In this regard, a person’s essential identity was greater than the sum of his/her physicality, encompassing more than mere materiality. The spiritual juno or genius was related to but separate from a physical body. Feeding the juno or genius of a person after that person’s death may not simply have been a loving gesture extended by the deceased person’s relatives or friends. Since spiritual entities were powerful, such feedings were probably a form of household insurance, encouraging the juno or genius to look favorably on the households to which they had been attached prior to their deaths.

Instead of the female juno, more frequently we see the male genius emerging from the Vesuvian remains (which is unsurprising in a male-dominated society). In one residence (9.1.20), two freedmen set a marble plaque within the household shrine with the words, “To the genius of our Marcus and to the lares” (CIL 10.861). Since the lares were the spiritual guardians of that particular residence, this shrine featured devotion to two types of spiritual forces that were thought to protect the household—guardian spirits of the place (the lares) and the life force of the householder (his genius). A portrait bust in another Pompeii residence is dedicated “to the genius of our Lucius”—complete with blemishes of his physical appearance (CIL 10.860; see figure 7.1).

Figure 7.1. The bust of Lucius, dedicated to his genius (from the House of Jucundus at 5.1.26)

Household shrines often depicted the householder’s genius in visual form. These were not necessarily portraits of the householder himself, although they may have approximated his general appearance. The shrines were access points to the spiritual world, and the figures depicted in them were predominately spiritual figures. So, for instance, the shrine in the Pompeian residence at 1.14.6 (see figure 7.2) displayed in its center cubicle an image of the householder’s genius holding a cornucopia, or horn of plenty. On the bottom of the shrine are images of the river deity Sarnus (who oversaw the harbor activity), men weighing produce, men transporting goods to and from the harbor, and men loading produce onto boats. Presumably the householder who resided in this house operated a sea-faring business of some kind, and his genius was expected to oversee the success of the business, in conjunction with Sarnus—as long as offerings were made in this household shrine.

Figure 7.2. The shrine at 1.14.6, with the genius of the householder (center) and the householder’s business dealings overseen by the river deity Sarnus (below)

Another residence displays a typical fresco shrine (see figure 7.3). The fresco incorporates several components in its depiction of both physical and spiritual realities involved in a household sacrifice. An altar is the centerpiece of the display’s upper register. To the right of the altar, the genius of the householder holds the cornucopia, while overseeing the sacrifice. Large figures on the outer flanks of the fresco represent the lares, the spiritual forces that protect the place in which the household resides. Miniaturized figures within the fresco are three human players in the ordeal: the person who will soon sacrifice a pig (second from the left), a priestly assistant (second from the right), and a flute player (to the left of the altar, perhaps taller than the other human characters to give an aesthetic balance to the fresco). On the lower register, the protective spirits of the place (or the lares) are represented by two snakes. Although they are non-corporeal beings, the protective spirits nonetheless partake of the nutrients provided by a physical sacrificial offering.

Other Spiritual Life Forces

If humans and places have a spiritual component to their identity, so too do animals, or so many thought in the Greco-Roman world. This is attested in mosaics of dogs at entrances into some Pompeian residences (e.g., 1.7.1; 5.1.26; 6.8.5; see figure 7.4). One mosaic even comes with the Latin warning “Beware of the dog.” These mosaics were not meant to depict the appearance of the guard dog on duty within the house. Instead, these mosaics signaled that the residence was under the protection of a canine spirit—a spirit that was powerful, loyal, and potentially fierce against malicious intruders. Posted at residential entrances, these mosaics advertised the canine anima, or life force, that the householder called up to protect the premises, with an ominous threat against any who would seek to harm the household. The same is true for residences depicting a wild boar or a wounded bear at their entryways (7.2.26; 7.2.45). Neither of those animals was physically present within the residences, of course; instead, their fierce spiritual counterparts were on duty as essential components in the security system of those residences.

Figure 7.3. A fresco shrine depicting the material and spiritual realities involved in a sacrifice (from 7.6.38, MANN 8905)

People in the ancient world also imagined that places had their own spiritual aspect. Whether it be at the level of residences or neighborhoods or urban centers or regions or nations—each distinct place within these levels of society was thought to have its own atmosphere, its own ethos, its own character that transcended its physical features and components. One household was recognized to have a different ambiance from another nearby it; one neighborhood had a different character from another nearby it; one regional territory had a different feel from another nearby it. People in the first century thought that a full explanation for these differences needed to reference the different life forces that animated those distinct places. That spiritual dimension operated in tandem with the material dimension of the place. If the spirit of the place was not tended to, the material dimension of the place would suffer as a consequence. If the spirit of the place was healthy, good things came to its material dimension.

Figure 7.4. Floor mosaics advertising the residence’s protection by the canine spirit (left: from 6.14.20, in situ; right: from 1.7.1, in situ)

This “spirituality of space” is evidenced repeatedly in the material remains of the Vesuvian towns, with snakes representing the benign spirit of the place (seen already in figure 7.3). Snakes also frequently appear on frescos at neighborhood shrines, where the spirit of the neighborhood is appeased through sacrificial offerings (see figure 7.5). One inscription from Pompeii, for instance, refers to a gift given to the neighborhood lares by the presidents of the neighborhood association (CIL 10.927).

Figure 7.5. A neighborhood shrine from Herculaneum (in an obvious state of disrepair) depicting two snakes (on either side of the altar) that represent the neighborhood’s protective spirit

Beyond residences and neighborhoods, one of Pompeii’s temples takes to another level this connection between the material and spiritual aspects of a place. It was a temple paid for by an important Pompeian woman of the early first century. Her name was Mamia, and she was honored after her death by the construction of a magnificent tomb “by a decree of the town council” (CIL 10.998; see figure 7.6). During her life, the “public priestess” Mamia paid for the construction of a temple on what had been “her own land” and “at her own expense”—a temple dedicated to “the genius of the colony” (CIL 10.816). (Archaeologists originally thought the inscription honored “the genius of Augustus,” but more recent arguments suggest that “the genius of the colony” may be the preferred reading. It is not clear where this temple was erected.) Residents of Pompeii would have imagined this temple to attend to the spiritual identity of the local area, with the hope of increasing prosperity within the region. Similar dedications to the genius of the colony appear in the nearby urban centers of Puteoli (CIL 10.1562–68, 10.1574, 10.1591) and Nola (CIL 10.1236).

Figure 7.6. The “seat memorial” of Mamia (HGW04), funded by the town council in return for her public benefaction in service of the genius of the colony; the three pillars in the center of the picture are not part of her memorial but belong to a tomb behind hers.

Spiritual Identities in Christian Texts

In all these ways, we can see how the ancient mindset often imagined material realities to have spiritual aspects that represented them and helped to protect them. With these things in mind, Paul’s comment in Philippians 4:23 regarding “the spirit that is among you all” seems perfectly at home in its first-century context. When Philippian Jesus-followers met for worship, they were not just an ad hoc convergence of separate individuals; they became a single entity, “the body of Christ.” Paul could exhort them to “stand firm in one spirit” (1:27). Even the senate of Rome was thought to have a genius, and so did the Roman people—both were single entities composed of many individuals with a single genius. In the same way, believers in Philippi could be thought to share a single corporate spirit when they gathered for worship. Paul called on divine grace to infuse the community’s corporate ethos, thereby protecting and enriching their corporate life and their common assembly.

Much the same is evident in other Pauline letters. In Philemon, the word “you” sometimes appears in plural form, and this is true of the blessing at the very end of the letter: “May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit” (Philemon 25). The sentence is precisely the same as the sentence from Philippians 4:23, cited at the beginning of this chapter. Once again, although the word “your” is plural, the word “spirit” is singular, referring to the single spirit that was fostered among them all—or, in a sense, their corporate genius, “the spirit that is among you all” (see also Galatians 6:18). This corporate spirit seems to be what the author of Ephesians was referencing with the phrase, “be renewed in the spirit of your minds” (4:23).

Paul can be understood as referencing the corporate genius at several other points in his letters. In 1 Corinthians he asked, “What human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit?” (2:11). Paul could say to the Corinthian Jesus-groups, “Though I am absent [from you] in the body, I am present in spirit” (5:3). Later, he noted that unmarried women benefit from being undistracted by household matters and thus are able to “be holy in body and spirit” (7:34). Later still, he characterized the phenomenon of “speaking in tongues” as a form of prayer language of “the [human] spirit” that does not include the human mind (see especially chapter 8). Toward the end of the same letter, Paul declared Jesus Christ to have become a “life-giving spirit” (15:45) and spoke of his own spirit having been refreshed by the fellowship provided by Stephanus and his household (16:17–18). So too in Romans he claimed to have served his deity “with [his] spirit” by announcing the good news (1:9). Some people among his intended audience might have heard this as a reference to his genius, which animated his concrete efforts. If so, they might also have been interested to hear in the same sentence that Paul remembered them “always in [his] prayers”—since those prayers would have been empowered by a faithful genius that fostered an effective ministry (empowered by the divine Spirit; see chapter 18).

This view of things also helps explain other aspects of early Christian discourse. For instance, John, the author of Revelation, presents himself as a seer of realities in the transcendent world beyond the material world. His authority derives from the fact that he “was in the spirit on the Lord’s day” when the voice of the Lord addressed him “like a trumpet” (1:10). It was then that John was commanded, “Write in a book what you see and send it to the seven churches, to Ephesus, to Smyrna, to Pergamum, to Thyatira, to Sardis, to Philadelphia, and to Laodicea” (1:11). Those churches are addressed in Revelation 2–3, with the sovereign Lord critiquing the spiritual health of the various communities of Jesus-followers. In each instance, however, it is not the church itself that is addressed. Instead, the address is spoken directly “to the angel” of the various churches: “to the angel of the church in Ephesus” (2:1); “to the angel of the church in Smyrna” (2:8); and so on (see also 2:12, 18; 3:1, 7, 14). In each instance, the critique (through one who is “in the spirit”) is addressed to the spiritual projection of the inner realities of the church’s physical gatherings. The angels are the spiritual embodiment of the individual churches, the representations of those churches projected onto the screen of the heavens and captured in the figure of distinct angels.

This also helps us understand a peculiar episode in Mark’s Gospel (see also Matthew 14:1–11). When Herod Antipas (the pro-Roman ruler of Galilee whose family had connections with the imperial household of Rome) heard that Jesus was becoming tremendously popular, he interpreted Jesus’s popularity with these words: “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised” (Mark 6:16). We might think that Herod had taken leave of his senses to imagine that John the Baptist, who had been killed perhaps only a few months earlier, had been physically resurrected in the person of Jesus, who must have been in his late twenties at this point in the story and whose life had overlapped with John’s for some time. But Herod was not a fool. Suspecting that John the Baptist had been raised, Herod was imagining that John’s spirit had come to reside within Jesus, so that it now empowered Jesus’s ministry. According to Mark’s Gospel, this is what some people were, in fact, saying: John the Baptist had been raised “and for this reason these [miraculous] powers [were] at work in him” (6:14). Still others imagined that the spirit of one of Israel’s ancient prophets was empowering Jesus (6:15; see also 8:27–28).

There is an ominous note in Herod’s view that the spirit of John was now empowering Jesus’s ministry. Herod, we are told, “feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man” (Mark 6:20). To murder a righteous man (see 6:17–29) was not necessarily the end of the dead man’s influence, for one had to be on guard against the return of the righteous man’s spirit. This is why Herod’s comment is not an insignificant observation but, instead, would have carried an ominous note for ancient audiences of the narrative. Herod was signaling that Jesus posed a threat to Herod’s political ambition, with the spirit of John the Baptist now on the loose, enraged and more to be feared than when John was alive. People in urban centers of the first century would have readily understood the political intrigue of this episode, being immersed in a world in which people have a genius or juno that transcends their material existence.

Figure 7.7. A winged genius from the Villa of Fannius Synistor in Boscoreale, a few miles north of Pompeii

The Emperor and His Genius

This is where we need to consider a most important human figure: the Roman emperor. In one way, the emperors were no different from everyone else. Between the date of their birth and the date of their death, they loved, lusted, hated, manipulated, schemed, partied, suffered, won, lost, strove—these being ordinary traits of human life. And like every other man, each emperor had a genius. (People in Pompeii sometimes took oaths that affirmed the truthfulness of their legal testimony “by the genius of Imperator Augustus and his children”; see VAR Tab. 16–17, 23–24.) But from the late first century BCE onward, it was fashionable to think that the genius of the emperor was worthy of worship. This was not the worship of a human being (for example, Augustus or Nero or Domitian). It was the worship of the potent life force that infused the emperor, the force that was the conduit of the will of Rome’s deities. If the genius of the householder could receive sacrifices to ensure the protection and benefits of the household, so too the genius of the emperor could receive sacrificial offerings to ensure the protection and benefits of the empire, in accordance with the will of the deities. (In fact, it is possible that the genii in some household shrines depict the emperor’s genius instead of the householder’s genius.) We cannot be certain that everyone in the Roman provinces understood imperial worship to involve the worship of a living emperor’s genius rather than the worship of the living emperor himself, and some evidence suggests that at times the distinction may have been lost. (Of course, when an emperor died, the distinction no longer applied.)

Figure 7.8. Pompeii’s temple honoring the divine emperor Vespasian after his death (7.9.2)

Whether they always understood the distinction or not, the people of Pompeii were strong advocates of the imperial cult. This is clear from the people’s priorities in the final two decades of the town’s life. In 62 (or perhaps 63, since ancient sources differ with regard to the specific year), the temples of Pompeii were devastated by a severe earthquake, but by the time of the eruption in 79, most of the temples to the traditional Greco-Roman deities (e.g., the Temple of Apollo, the Temple of Venus, and the Temple of Jupiter, Juno, and Mercury) were still far from being fully restored and were either not yet functioning (as in the case of Venus) or had only a low-grade functionality. By contrast, the temples that were fully restored and functioning were those associated with the imperial cult and the mystery deities (on which, see chapters 8 and 9). At some point in the 70s (probably even in the final months of Pompeii’s existence), a prominent Pompeian resident and Roman citizen donated funds to establish a temple to emperor Vespasian, a temple sitting prominently within Pompeii’s forum district (see figure 7.8 and figure 5.4—noting that the bull, which is central in figure 5.4, was the expected sacrificial animal in offerings to the imperial genius).

Jesus-Followers and the Emperor

If Pompeians were eager to participate in the worship of the emperor’s genius, they must have imagined that they were contributing to the health of the empire in the process. Some Jesus-devotees sought to find a way to allow for “honoring” the emperor without worshiping him (for example, 1 Peter 2:17; see also Romans 13:1–7; 1 Timothy 2:1–2; Titus 3:1). Some probably heard validation for this approach in Jesus’s (somewhat ambiguous) pronouncement, “Give to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (Mark 12:17; also Matthew 22:21 and Luke 20:25).

One Christian voice took the lead in denouncing not only the worship of the emperor but the whole of the system within which imperial worship was embedded. In the view of this man, emperor worship was only one part of a much larger cancer that was spreading infectious disease throughout the whole world. The prophetic voice that articulated this way of looking at the world belonged to John, the author of Revelation. Probably written (or finally assembled) in the 90s (during the reign of emperor Domitian), that apocalyptic text purports to reveal the future victory of the deity who will prove to be sovereign by eradicating deeply entrenched evil and establishing “a new heaven and a new earth” in which that deity’s sovereignty will permeate all reality (as revealed especially in Revelation 21–22). Along the way, John immerses the reader in a narrative that is deeply entrenched in political critique.

John’s sights are set on the power that is concentrated on the “seven hills” (Revelation 17:9), and in the ancient world it was common knowledge that Rome was built on seven hills. What kind of power was concentrated in the halls of Rome? If the Roman imperial ideology advertised Rome as the embodiment of the deities’ will for humanity, John unmasks it as an entity that received its power from the dragon, who is “the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world” (12:9). The potent force driving the Roman program is not the benevolent genius of the emperor, which is in harmony with the will of the divine. Instead, the spiritual power that emboldens the forward movement of the Roman program is the fraudulent satanic charlatan who leads the whole world away from aligning itself with the divine will. (For a similar critique, see 2 Thessalonians 2:1–12.)

This depiction of the satanic force embedding itself within the Roman system appears especially in Revelation 12–13. The reader is first introduced to a mythological dragon who tries to destroy Jesus Christ, his forebears, and his followers (Revelation 12). Being unsuccessful in that, the dragon hands his power to the beast, giving the beast “his power and his throne and great authority” (13:2). In all this, the author demonizes the Roman program; the beast is shown to empower the whole of the Roman imperial complex. While it is sometimes difficult to interpret the first-century symbolism of Revelation, John’s severe critique of interwoven aspects of the Roman imperial order is visible despite the apocalyptic veneer of his discourse. Three aspects of the Roman program are given prominence:

1. Rome’s military might, as represented by the “power” that the dragon gave the beast, with the people proclaiming in amazement, “Who can fight against it?” (13:4)
2. The worship of the Roman emperor (or his genius), as represented by the “throne” that the dragon gave the beast, with “all the inhabitants of the earth” worshiping a beast that emerges from the whole power complex of the dragon (13:8; this is further illustrated in 13:12 and 14:11)
3. Rome’s imperial reign over all the nations, as represented by the “authority over every tribe and people and language and nation” that the dragon gave the beast (13:7)

And as we will see in chapter 14, even the economic systems of the Roman world did not evade the author’s devastating critique.

Figure 7.9. A statue from Herculaneum depicting emperor Augustus in garb reminiscent of the young divine Jupiter

One feature in this political critique is the fascinating reference to “the name of the beast or the number of its name” (Revelation 13:17). The audience of John’s Revelation is exhorted in this way: “Let anyone with understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a person” (13:18). The number of the person is famously said to be 666.

Some graffiti from Pompeii help set the context for understanding what is involved in “calculating the number of the beast.” Someone from Pompeii wrote on a wall, “I love her whose number is 545” (CIL 4.4861). Someone else referred to his “lady,” stating that “the number of her honorable name is 1035” (CIL 4.4839, although the graffito is difficult to read, so the number might be 45). In the ancient world, letters were often given numerical values, especially in Greek and Hebrew. So people could refer to others on the basis of the numerical value of their name. When this is applied to the number 666, it is probable that the number cryptically refers to the emperor Nero. When the name “Nero Caesar” is transliterated into Hebrew characters and those characters are given their numerical values, the number 666 emerges. As most interpreters agree, the number 666 references Nero, the emperor who dramatically embodied the “bestial” character of Roman reign and delighted in the worship he received from many even while he was alive. (There is another textual tradition that lists the value as 616 instead of 666, and curiously, that number also corresponds to a version of Nero’s name.)

A contemporary of John also offered a negative critique of Nero using the value of his name as the basis for the critique. In the year 59, Nero orchestrated the murder of his mother, Agrippina. According to the Roman historian Suetonius (Nero 39.2), not long after Agrippina’s death someone inscribed the Greek phrase “he killed his own mother” on a wall, next to the name “Nero” in Greek. Intriguingly, the letters of the sentence add up to 1005, precisely the same value as Nero’s own name (when valued according to the system used for Greek letters). For this person, when the emperor’s name is placed alongside this sentence, there is a certain appropriate balance to it, with numerical equivalence helping to reveal the murderous character of the emperor.

Those who supported the Roman imperial order often advertised it as authenticated and empowered by the deities, a force for good that suppressed chaos, brought goodness and plenty to all, and inaugurated peace and security for the nations that submitted themselves to it (as seen in chapter 6). The narrative of Revelation, however, attempts to unmask the Roman imperial order as being animated by a different spiritual order altogether, empowered by satanic forces—forces that ultimately are bestial and chaotic, and forces that cannot stand before the sovereign power of divine justice. This, ultimately, is not a world away from Paul’s own brief formula at the very end of Romans: “The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet” (Romans 16:20 NIV). But it runs directly against the grain of the Roman imperial ideology, in which the genius of the emperor is the conduit through which the prayers and sacrifices of the people of the empire pass to the deities of Rome, and the conduit through which the blessings of Rome’s deities pass, for the benefit of the people of the empire. In John’s estimate, a narrative of that kind is “haughty and blasphemous” (Revelation 13:5) and “deceives the inhabitants of earth” (13:14).