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Defining the Divine in Rome: In memoriam S. R. F. Price
- Transactions of the American Philological Association
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 142, Number 1, Spring 2012
- pp. 41-81
- 10.1353/apa.2012.0001
- Article
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Recent analysis of the imperial cult has argued that it can be best understood in terms of the lack of a fundamental division between gods and humans at Rome worshiping a human as a god was accordingly not a transgressive act. This paper challenges this interpretation, demonstrating that gods and humans were indeed usually conceived as separate species of being. The imperial cult was thus transgressive in theory; however, it primarily operated in contexts where that could be overlooked and the worship of humans as gods accordingly appeared unproblematic.