Apotheosis



     APOTHEOSIS, that grand ceremony of Paganism, by which its votaries pretended to place a man, or a woman, amongst the number of their deities.  It was so named by the Greeks, who first practised the rite, and from whom the Romans, especially under the Emperors, largely borrowed it, as is testified by their coins. - Called by the Latins Consecratio, it is symbolised on coins under a triple variety of types, viz., either by an eagle with expanded wings, or by a lighted altar, or by the rogus, or funeral pile.  It is singular that an example of these three modes of typifying an Apotheosis is exhibited on the coins of an otherwise unknown young prince.  The funeral pile appears on gold struck in memory of Nigrinianus, the eagle on his silver, and the altar on his 3rd brass.
     "The farce of the Apotheosis has been ascribed (remarks Captain Smyth) to a taint of the Pythagorean doctrines; but it obviously originated in, what Tacitus termed 'the epidemic spirit of adulation, ' long before the Samian was born. - * * * Neither the veil, nor the portrait, which was the distinctive mark of deification among the Romans, nor the other symbols of the Apotheosis, were done away from medals, till after Constantine, when a hand from the clouds bestowing a crown was substituted." (p. 297.) - See CONSECRATIO.


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