Such was the case with Lysander after the victory of Aegospotami in 405 BCE: dedicated to him were statues, altars, chants, and sacred games that raised him to the status of the Olympians.
Aristotle grants that superiority in valor or virtue secures for certain people the honor of being counted among the gods (Nicomachean Ethics 7.1.2). The Hellenistic ideology of the savior-sovereign, beneficent and euergetēs (benefactor), derives directly from this concept. The Stoics would apply it generally to people who excelled in services rendered. It was the virtus (braveness) of civilizing heroes that earned apotheosis for Herakles, for the Dioscuri, and for Dionysos. Philosophers, wise men, and miracle workers (among them Pythagoras and Empedocles, and later Plato, Epicurus, and a number of others) were regarded as god-men, benefactors of humanity. The case of the young Gnostic Epiphanes, adored as a god after his death for being the founder of the Carpocratian sect, exhibits the same process.
Alexander, the Diadochi, and Hellenistic Royalty
In dedicating funeral solemnities, of which some elements (particularly eagles) prefigure certain aspects of imperial Roman apotheosis, to the memory of his friend Hephaestion, Alexander established a cult for him, ordering that sacrifice be made to him "as to a god of the highest order" (Diodorus Siculus, 17.114–115).
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