Deification
DEIFICATION. The Latin term deificatio does not appear until late in the Roman era, and then first in Christian literature, particularly in the controversies involving the Nestorians, who blamed the orthodox for "deifying" the body of Christ. In current usage, the English term deification is equivalent to apotheosis. In light of history, however, apotheosis might be reserved to refer to the consecration of heroes, of political personages, of Hellenistic sovereigns and, notably, of Roman emperors. In this article the subject will be the deification of individuals or of things generally through means that correspond to certain general tendencies of Greco-Roman paganism.
Pythagoreanism and Cathartic Deification
Since death makes the radical difference between men and gods, the problem of deification is indeed that of immortalization. In the Classical epoch, the Greeks attributed the power of immortalizing (athanatizein) to the Getae and to the Thracians through a kind of shamanism that may have involved Zalmoxis. No evidence exists of the ritual patterns of these practices, but they must have been based on a doctrine of the soul and on the existence of spiritual elites. Zalmoxis was regarded as a daimōn and as a disciple of Pythagoras. The connection is significant, since belief in metempsychosis is sometimes attributed to the Thracians.
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