![]() It has been suggested that it was Alexander who proposed to the Diadochi (successors) the plan for his own posthumous consecration. His funeral pyre with five levels presaged the rogus consecrationis (funeral pyre) of the Caesars. In dedicating funeral solemnities, of which some elements (particularly eagles) prefigure certain aspects of imperial Roman apotheosis, to the memory of his friend Hephaestion, Alexander established a cult for him, ordering that sacrifice be made to him "as to a god of the highest order" (Diodorus Siculus, 17.114 –115). Alexander, the Diadochi, and Hellenistic Royalty The case of the young Gnostic Epiphanes, adored as a god after his death for being the founder of the Carpocratian sect, exhibits the same process. Philosophers, wise men, and miracle workers (among them Pythagoras and Empedocles, and later Plato, Epicurus, and a number of others) were regarded as god-men, benefactors of humanity. It was the virtus (braveness) of civilizing heroes that earned apotheosis for Herakles, for the Dioscuri, and for Dionysos. The Stoics would apply it generally to people who excelled in services rendered. The Hellenistic ideology of the savior-sovereign, beneficent and euerget ēs (benefactor), derives directly from this concept. Such was the case with Lysander after the victory of Aegospotami in 405 bce: dedicated to him were statues, altars, chants, and sacred games that raised him to the status of the Olympians.Īristotle grants that superiority in valor or virtue secures for certain people the honor of being counted among the gods ( Nicomachean Ethics 7.1.2). Consequently, there is no need to wait for their death before heaping upon them such homage as is accorded the gods ( isotheoi timai ), yet without identifying them with deities. However, if genius, virtue, and political or military success embody divine potential in exceptional men, it is especially so while they are living. Recipients of such honor included Brasidas, Miltiades, Gelon and Hiero I of Syracuse, Theron, and Timoleon. The heroization of founders of cities or of benefactors and peacemakers assured them posthumously a kind of official cult. OriginsĮven though the immortal and blessed condition of the gods differentiates them radically from human nature, the Greeks regarded as "divine" ( theios ) the person whose outstanding qualities set him or her individually apart from the commonplace. It is during the Hellenistic epoch, however, that apothe ōsis takes on new forms that display the stamp of the Roman cult of emperors and of the dead. The noun apothe ōsis is found for the first time in Cicero, though it may have existed already in the classical Greek world. The Greek verb apotheoun appears first in the writings of the historian Polybius, which date from the second century bce. APOTHEOSIS is the conferring, through official, ritual, or iconographic means, of the status of a god upon a mortal person.
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