Why did Roman Emperors think they were Gods?
Well, first off, you really shouldn’t judge a culture based on one of the most insane figures in its history. But I digress; Romans were ancestor worshippers, in a loose sense. Ask a Greek about his religion, and he would have told you about his favorite story. Maybe the story of Hercules or Achilles, maybe Jason or Theuseus. Ask a Roman about his religion, and he would have gotten into the familial ties that his clan had to a particular deity, and would have gone into extrutable detail about the complexities of that relationship. Remember that we live in a post-platonic world, so concepts as simple to us as the division between the worldly and the divine did not exist with the Romans. A person who achieved great deeds could be granted godhood and worshipped by the people. When Caesar Augustus took the imperial purple, one of his first acts was to formally recognize Julius Caesar as the god Divus Iulius. He was literally so great in life that the gods included him as a member of the pa
