he recognition of a
departed emperor as a god. It also indicates how much contempt might be
associated with this pretended worship. The people, says Suetonius
(_Jul. Caes._ c. 88), fully believed in the divinity of Julius Caesar,
hinting at the same time that this was by no means the case with the
majority of the apotheoses subsequently decreed by the senate. Yet we
learn from Capitolinus that Marcus Aurelius was still worshipped as a
household divinity in the time of Diocletian, and was believed to impart
revelations in dreams (Vit. M. Ant. c. 18). Antinous, the favourite of
Hadrian, was adored in Egypt a century after his death (Origen, _Contra
Celsum_, iii. 36), though, according to Boissier, his worship never had
official sanction. The ceremonies attendant on an imperial apotheosis
are very fully described by Herodianus (bk. iv. c. 2) on occasion of the
obsequies of Severus, which he appears to have witnessed. The most
significant was the liberation, at the moment of kindling the funeral
pyre, of an eagle which was supposed to bear the emperor's soul to
heaven. Sharp-sighted persons had actually beheld the ascension of
Augustus (Suet. _August_, c. 100), and of Drusilla, sister of Caligula.
Representations of apotheoses occur on several works of art; the most
important are the apotheosis of Homer on a relief in the Townley
collection of the British Museum, that of Titus on the arch of Titus,
and that of Augustus on a magnificent cameo in the Louvre.

In China at the present day many Taoist gods are (or are given out as)
men deified for service to the state. This again may be statecraft. In
India, the (still unexplained) rise of the doctrine of transmigration
hindered belief. Apotheosis can mean nothing to those who hold that a
man may be reborn as a god, but still needs redemption, and that men on
earth may win redemption, if they are brave enough. Curiously, Buddhism
itself is ruled by the ghost or shadowy remainder of belief in
transmigration--Karma.

Apotheosis may also be used in wider senses. (a) Some (e.g. Herbert
Spencer) hold that most gods are deified men, and most myths historical
traditions which have been grotesquely distorted. This theory is known
as Euhemerism (see EUHEMERUS). It is needless to say that the attitude
of those holding the Euhemerist theory is at the farthest pole from
belief in apotheosis. According to the latter, some men may become gods.
According to the former, all gods are but men; o