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>>6016979 (pb)
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesareum_of_Alexandria
>The Caesareum of Alexandria is an ancient temple in Alexandria, Egypt. It was conceived by Cleopatra VII of the Ptolemaic kingdom, the last pharaoh of Ancient Egypt, to honour her first known lover Julius Caesar. The edifice was finished by the Roman Emperor Augustus, after he defeated Mark Antony and Cleopatra in Egypt. He destroyed all traces of Antony in Alexandria, and apparently dedicated the temple to his own cult.
>Converted to a Christian church in the late 4th century, the Caesareum was the headquarters of Cyril of Alexandria, the Patriarch of Alexandria from 412 to 444.
>The philosopher and mathematician Hypatia was murdered at the Caesareum by a Christian mob in 415; they stripped her naked and tore her to pieces.
>Elements of the temple survived until the 19th century. Cleopatra's Needles, obelisks from the temple, now stand in Central Park in New York City and on the Thames Embankment, in London.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_cult_of_ancient_Rome#The_Imperial_cult_and_Christianity
To pagan Romans a simple act of sacrifice, whether to ancestral gods under Decius or state gods under Diocletian, represented adherence to Roman tradition and loyalty to the pluralistic unity of Empire. Refusal was treason. Christians, however, identified "Hellenistic honours" as parodies of true worship.[227][228] Under the reign of Nero or Domitian, according to Momigliano, the author of the Book of Revelation represented Rome as the "Beast from the sea", Judaeo-Roman elites as the "Beast from the land" and the charagma (official Roman stamp) as a sign of the Beast.[229] Some Christian thinkers perceived divine providence in the timing of Christ's birth, at the very beginning of the Empire that brought peace and laid paths for the spread of the Gospels; Rome's destruction of Jerusalem and its Temple was interpreted as divine punishment of the Jews for their refusal of the Christ.[230] With the abatement of persecution Jerome could acknowledge Empire as a bulwark against evil but insist that "imperial honours" were contrary to Christian teaching.[231]
As pontifex maximus Constantine I favoured the "Catholic Church of the Christians" against the Donatists because:
it is contrary to the divine law… that we should overlook such quarrels and contentions, whereby the Highest Divinity may perhaps be roused not only against the human race but also against myself, to whose care he has by his celestial will committed the government of all earthly things. Official letter from Constantine, dated AD 314.[232]
In this change of Imperial formula Constantine acknowledged his responsibility to an earthly realm whose discord and conflict might arouse the ira deorum; he also recognised the power of the new Christian priestly hierarchy in determining what was auspicious or orthodox. Though unbaptised, Constantine had triumphed under the signum of the Christ (probably some form of Labarum as an adapted or re-interpreted legionary standard). He may have officially ended – or attempted to end – blood sacrifices to the genius of living emperors but his Imperial iconography and court ceremonial elevated him to superhuman status. Constantine's permission for a new cult temple to himself and his family in Umbria is extant: the cult "should not be polluted by the deception of any contagious superstition".[233] At the First Council of Nicaea Constantine united and re-founded the empire under an absolute head of state by divine dispensation and was honoured as the first Christian Imperial divus. On his death he was venerated and was held to have ascended to heaven. Philostorgius later criticised Christians who offered sacrifice at statues of the divus Constantine.[233] His three sons re-divided their Imperial inheritance: Constantius II was an Arian – his brothers were Nicene.