APOTHEOSIS (Gr. Ἀποθέωσις, Lat. consecratio). — In Rome this is the deification of the emperor after death. The origin of the rite is to be sought in Syrian Syria, where it is common to find on funerary monuments the soul of the deceased depicted as an eagle; and it is a consequence of the astrological belief widespread during the Hellenistic period that the soul, an emanation of the divine substance of the sun, returns after death to its fiery principle on the wings of the eagle, the bird par excellence of the sun. In Rome, Augustus was the first of the sovereigns to benefit from this ceremony, which became typical in the practice of his successors. His body was placed on a great pyramidal pyre in the Campus Martius. When the flames were lit, an eagle flew aloft, as if to signify that the emperor’s soul was ascending to heaven (Suetonius, Aug. 100).
The most detailed description of this rite is given by Herodian on the occasion of the funeral of Septimius Severus. He describes the pyre, formed of several cubes of wood stacked one upon another and adorned with drapery: in the second tier the corpse was laid with offerings of perfumes, fruits, and aromatic herbs. Knights and chariots bearing the images of emperors and victorious generals performed a circumambulation around the pyre, which the new emperor then set alight. “Then from the summit of the pyre an eagle is released, which, rising into the air amid the flames and smoke, carries, as the people believe, the emperor’s soul to heaven” (Herodian, IV, 2). After the apotheosis, the image of the sovereign who had become a divus was no longer carried in the funerary ceremonies of his family alongside those of other deceased members, but placed on a special chariot (tensa) beside those of the gods in public ceremonies, for example in the circus procession.
To the deified emperors individual temples were also built, until the emperor Tacitus established a common temple for all the deified emperors. A particular priesthood was also instituted, which took its name either from the sovereign (e.g., flamen Augustalis, Claudialis) or from his family (e.g., sodales Flaviales). Imperial apotheosis ceased in the Constantinian era.