Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor

Simon Price's Rituals and Power is a scholarly study of the Roman imperial cult as practiced in the Greek cities of Asia Minor, published by Cambridge University Press and widely regarded as the field defining treatment of the topic. Price argues, against an older assumption that emperor worship was either cynical politics or naive credulity, that it functioned as a genuinely coherent religious system that made sense within existing Greek civic religious practice. Its authority rests on close use of epigraphic and archaeological evidence from the cities themselves and on its lasting influence over how classicists and religious studies scholars since have approached ruler cult generally. Its limit is regional focus, Asia Minor specifically, so a claim about the imperial cult's different character in Rome itself or in other provinces needs a source addressing that different region.