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Providentia and Aeternitas

1936; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 29; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1017/s0017816000033253

1475-4517

M. P. Charlesworth,

Classical Antiquity Studies

During the first two centuries of the Roman Empire, as the Principate slowly developed, certain qualities and attributes of the emperor tend to become personified or regarded as permanent elements in the character of the ruler: it may be Clementia, or Indulgentia, or Munificentia, it may be the Greek Philanthropia or Euergesia. In this way they tend to acquire a special meaning, or rather a complex of special meanings. Two such words are Providentia and Aeternitas, and the object of the present study is to review some of the evidence (it would be difficult to collect all) and elucidate the significance which the word Providentia or the word Aeternitas might convey to a citizen of the Empire in the second century.