n were descended from gods." After his victories in India, Alexander the Great had demanded of the Athenians and had been granted by them the honours accorded to a god.
Similar elements existed in Roman tradition and religion. Ogilvie points out that "Roman religion is essentially the result of the fusion of primitive Latin and Greek elements." According to him, "the chief feature . . . of the Roman religion was the belief that all the important processes of the world were divinely activated and, conversely, that different gods had charge of particular functions and spheres of activity." In other words, the great leader required and frequently invoked divine assistance through prayer, sacrifices and divination (of omens and auguries) in order to achieve success.
Ogilvie says that "it was one thing to believe that a god stood by your shoulder and helped you to overcome all your difficulties. It was only a short step from this to believe that you had within yourself divine powers." However, the Roman tradition had been otherwise before Julius Caesar stepped onto the scene. Previous victorious generals, like Gaius Marcellus after he liberated Syracuse in Sicily from Carthage and Titus Quinctius Faminius who conquered Greece, had had temples named after them, statues erected and cults established in their honor, but the traditions of Republican Rome had militated against ascribing divinity to its rulers. Weinstock says that "religious honors for an individual were . . . not a novelty in Rome . . . but hitherto they had not been long lasting."
Julius Caesar was born to a patrician family in Rome, which traced its origins back to a Trojan clan founded by Aeneas or one of his companions. Caesar claimed (on the basis of Homeric accounts) to have descended through Aeneas from Venus, the daughter of Jupiter. In the last months, Caesar was called Iuppiter Julius. During his lifetime, Caesar encouraged various myths, such as that ...