Apotheosis / The Divine Man

Apotheosis is the raising of a human being to divine rank. In Greek myth it was reserved for a handful of great heroes, like Heracles and the Dioscuri, who earned a place among the gods. From the late 4th century BCE, Hellenistic kings — starting with Alexander's successors — claimed divine honors while still alive, and Rome turned the idea into formal state ritual, consecrating dead emperors as 'divi' beginning with Julius Caesar and Augustus. Philosophers turned the theme inward, treating the sage's likeness to god as a spiritual rather than literal deification. The concept mattered because it defined the porous boundary between human and divine that later monotheisms would sharply police.