Deification

[Guest spartacus]

Who performed the ritual of deification?

 

How was it performed ?

 

Romans seem to deify alot, so I guess it was engrained in their culture!

 

Where does it originate from ?

[Ursus]

Every Roman family honored the genius, or divine spiritual essence, of the male head of its household (paterfamilias).

 

When Caesar and Augustus claimed to be, in effect, the paterfamilias of the entire Roman race, they cajoled the Senate into granting them apotheosis. Which meant that the genius of the emperor would have its own state cult, and that individuals could honor the genius of an emperor in their domestic settings.

 

In the East the Caesars were worshipped as gods on earth. But in the West it was more along the lines that one was honoring the spiritual essence of the individual as a sort of guardian angel or protective spirit. And this grew quite logically out of ancient Roman familial religion.

 

Augustus was so popular that his genius was honored at the private hearth of many common ciitzens, and it was also honored on the crossroads where citizens were used to honoring the Lares, or local spirits, of the neighborhood. To pious Romans Augustus became, in effect, a guardian angel. ;-)

[L. AVRELIVS GARRVLVS]

The concept seems to come from the Greeks. It's called apotheosis, from the Greek words apo + theoz, sorry, the forum won't allow me to enter HTML code.

The Romans legislated this process (the Senate required two witnesses). However the deification of Romulus & Drusilla was taken for granted.

[Carla]

From what i understand deification was, on the most part, adopted as a means of propaganda by the rulers. It stemmed from Greece and Egypt.

 

Greeks kings such as the Seleukids said they were of divine ancestry and the Ptolemies and the Pharoes said that they were actually gods. Kleopatra and Caesar presented themselves as Isis and Osiris, with their son Caesarion as being the god of the universe , Horus. Thus the dynastic cult was completed.

 

Being seen as divine, or having divine favour, was a means of legitimising the rule of foreign or non-dynatic rulers. Also, was used as a means of unifying the empires.

 

Although, it is interesting to note that having divine honours did not automatically mean that they were thought of as deities the same way as Apollo or Zeus. Often, honours were given as a means of showing appreciation and respect to the rulers for benefits being granted to the cities or states.