Apoteosis

Apotheosis (deification). A solemnity among the ancients, by which a man was raised to the Rank of the gods. The custom of their placing mortals who had rendered their country important services, among the gods, was very ancient among the Greeks, who generally followed, in so doing, the advice of an oracle. On their coins, most of the founders of cities and colonies are immortalized as gods; and, in subsequent times, living princes assumed this title. The Romans, for several centuries, deified none but Romulus, and first imitated the Greeks in the fashion of frequent apotheosis. It became at last so common, as to be an object of contempt. Vespasian, in an attack of sickness, said, by way of joke, “ I am a god, or at least not far from it ”.
Acoording to Eusebius, Tertullian and Chrysostom, Tiberius proposed to the senate the apotheosis of Jesus Christ, which, however, was refused by this body. Juvenal, satirizing the frequent practice of apotheosis, introduces poor Atlas, complaining that he could not any longer bear the immense and daily-increasing mass of gods. That virtuous persons, after their death, were raised to the rank of semi-gods, was a doctrine of Pythagoras, who probably derived this idea from the Past. It corresponds with the notion of many Christians, who believe that virtuous men become angels after their death. The period of the Roman emperors, so rich in crime and folly, offers the most infamous instances of apotheosis. After Caesar, the greater part of the Roman emperors were deified. The same hand which had murdered a predecessor, often placen him among the gods.

The savage Nero deified the beautiful Poppaea his wife, after having killed her by a kick when she was pregnant; and Caracalla, having murdered his own brother Geta, with his own hands, in his mother´s arms, grasted him divine honours, accompanied with the infamous remark—Sit divus, dum non sit vivus. The first emperors were not adored in their life-time; but, with the progress of insanity, temples were built to the living tyrant.

Caligula was not satisfied with being a god: he wished to be a priest too, and, taking his horse as a companion in the office, offered sacrifice to himself, and, immediately afterwards appeared as Jupiter or as Cythera, &c. Constantius had the double advantage of being deified by the religion which he had persecuted, and canonized by that which he supported. It was quite customary for the Christian emperors to have altars, and be adored by their pagan subjects. Critics are not wanting who see, in the canonization of the Catholic church, nothing but a continuance of this Roman fashion of deifying men, with this difference only: —that saints were never canonized during their lifetime.

This deification of the living the Romans derived perhaps from the Greeks, whose lively and poetical imaginations led them sometimes to build altars to their mistresses, and offer sacrifices to them. The apotheosis never degenerated to such a criminal excess among the Greeks as among the Romans.

The ceremonies of the Roman apotheosis are curious and interesting. Herodian, in speaking of the apotheosis of Servius, gives us the following description of the ceremony which was used in the apotheosis of their emperors: after the body of the deceased had been burned with the usual ceremonies, they placed an image of wax, perfectly like him, but of a sickly aspect, on a large bed of ivory, covered with a cloth of gold, in the vestibule of the palace. The greatest part of the day the senate sat ranged on the left side of the bed, dressed in robes of mourning; the ladies of the first rank sitting on the right side, in plain white robes, without ornaments. This continued for seven days successively, during which time the physicians came regularly to visit the sick emperor, reporting that each time that he grew worse, till they reported that he was dead. After this, the young senators and Roman knights took the best of state upon their shoulders, and carried it through the Via Sacra to the old Forum, where the magistrates used to divest themselves of the insignia of office. Here it was placed between two kinds of amphitheatres, in one of which were the young men, and in the other the young females, of the first families in Rome, singing hymns set to solemn music, in praise of the deceased. When the hymns were ended, the bed was carried out of the city into the Campus Martius, in the middle of which was erected a square pavilion, which was filled with combustibles; the outside was covered with gold cloth, and adorned with figures of ivory and paintings. Over this edifice were several others, like the first in form and decoration, but les. On the second of these were placed the bed of state, and a great quantity of aromatic perfumes and odoriferous herbs were strewed about it; after which the knights made a procession or cavalcade in solemn measure around the pile; several chariots also drove round it, those who conducted them being clad in purple robes, and bearing the images of the greatest Roman generals and emperors. When the ceremony was ended, the new emperor came to the pile, with a torch in his hand, and at the same time, fire was set to it on all sides, the spices and combustibles kindling all at once. While the pile was burning, they let fly an eagle with a firebrand, which mounting up into the air, carried, as they credulously believed, the soul of their dead emperor into heaven, where he was ranked among the gods.

After the apotheosis, temples, altars, and images, were erected for the new-made god, and priests and sacrifices followed in endless succession.



The British Cyclopaedia of the Arts, Sciences, History, Geography, Literature, Natural History, and Biography (ed. Charles F. Partington) . London pp. 127-128.