What is Apotheosis?
Apotheosis is a process by which the human soul attains divine qualities – in effect a mortal becoming a god. In the Hellenistic East, rulers were often treated as divine beings. Divinity was construed as power, and the Hellenistic kings who wielded great armies and massive bureaucracies were certainly powerful. Hellenistic rulers followed in the footsteps of Alexander the Great, who had been proclaimed as the son of Zeus-Ammon by the Oracle of Siwa. Roman rulers were also approached by subjects of the Hellenistic East as god-kings. However, Romans viewed the matter a little differently. It was not until the later empire that they saw the emperor as divine, or as an agent of the divine. Rather, they understand the imperial cult as worshipping the genius of the imperial ruler. Romans honored the genius of their familial paterfamilias. When Caesar died, his successor Augustus had the Senate pass a decree that Caesar’s genius was now worthy of public respect of all Romans. Thus began the
