ruler-cult
ruler-cultI. Greek
The essential characteristic of Greek ruler-worship is the rendering, as to a god or hero, of honours to individuals deemed superior to other people because of their achievements, position, or power. The roots of this lie in Greece, though parallels are to be found in other near eastern societies.In the aristocratic society of the Archaic age, as in the Classical polis of the 5th cent. bc, no person could reach a position of such generally acknowledged pre-eminence as to cause the granting of divine honours to be thought appropriate: posthumous heroization, rather than deification, was the honour for city-founders. The first case of divine honours occurred in the confused period at the end of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), when Lysander, the most powerful man in the Aegean, received divine cult on Samos. There are some other, 4th-cent., examples.
Ruler-cult...
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