ABSTRACT
At the very beginning of the Principate, the architect Vitruvius opened his work by recalling how Octavians divine mind and spirit won control over the Empire of the world. Right from the start Octavian could be presented as a god: Cicero spoke of his divine qualities, and the man who restored his property to Virgils spokesman in the Eclogues was a god to him. In an epigram of Domitius Marsus Augustus mother is uncertain whether she had given birth to human being or god. Mere words can be dismissed as literary conceits. But Ovid's deities were embodied in silver images. In any case, such a conceit could mean more in the ancient world than it would in Judaeo-Christian society. As Gradel puts it, The mangod divide in the pagan context could be taken to represent a difference in status between the respective beings, rather than a distinction between their respective natures.
