Author’s Note: 3 - Epilogue: Modern Civilization as the Destruction of Archaic Order
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Query: Epilogue: Modern Civilization as the Destruction of Archaic Order
Author’s Note: 3
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Religion and the Justice of Righteous Kings
Hocart[1] 1954: p. 32 (Social Origins): Just as in idolatry one confuses the container with the content, so “as centralization and imperium proceed,” the king “tends to become a god in his won right”Verify CitationCan someone with access to Social Origins by Arthur M. Hocart (1954) check these quotations and their citation including the page number (p. 32)?—as a god himself, not merely the equivalent or representative of gods.
Hocart[2] (Kingship, 1927: p. 36) noted that under the Roman Empire the traditional deities Ceres and Fortuna “became specially connected with the Emperor, and similar tutelar powers were added such as Annona, or the Annual Crops, Abundantia introduced by Elagabalus, the Syrian. From Augustus onwards we find on Roman coins such inscriptions as: the Prosperity of Augustus, the Yearly Increase of Augustus, the Welfare of Augustus, the Ceres of Augustus.”
Hocart quoted P.V. Kane[3] (1922–23: pp. 76f.) in Kingship[4] (1927: p. 50): “The Buddhist Revelations… describe the decadence that is to end this age: ‘In the course of time kings who are not of the right lineage will become unjust; the ministers and others will become unjust. By their injustice the god will not rain at all, then the crops will not flourish at all.”
The Indians held that usurpers would not rule justly, and many other parts of the world shared this belief.
And indeed, the Roman Empire was unjust. Its aristocracy had arrogance. And its prosperity dried up, and it collapsed.
As Hocart[5] wrote (1927: p. 95), inevitably, “kings and their courts tried to forget the conditional nature of the royal power. That phase was reached in England under the Tudors and the Stuarts, and it is significant that those kings tried to deny the popular tenure of their power and escape its conditions by altering the coronation oath.”
- ↑ Arthur M. Hocart, Social Origins (London: 1954), p. 32.
- ↑ Arthur M. Hocart, Kingship (London: 1927), p. 36.
- ↑ P.V. Kane, “The Vedic Basis of Hindu Law,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (Bombay), 1922–23, pp. 76f.
- ↑ Arthur M. Hocart, Kingship (London: 1927), p. 50.
- ↑ Arthur M. Hocart, Kingship (London: 1927), p. 95.
