The offering of divine honours to the king, which we saw begin under
Alexander, became stereotyped in the institutions of the succeeding
Hellenistic kingdoms. Alexander himself was after his death the object
of various local cults, like that which centred in the shrine near
Erythrae (Strabo, xiv. 644). His successors in the first years after his
death recognized him officially as a divinity, except Antipater (Suïdas,
s.v. [Greek: Antipatros]), and coins began to be issued with his image.
At Alexandria the state cult of him seems to have been instituted by the
second Ptolemy, when his body was laid in the _Sema_ (Otto, _Priester u.
Tempel_, i. 139 seq.). The successors themselves received divine
honours. Such worship might be the spontaneous homage of a particular
Greek community, like that offered to Antigonus by Scepsis in 311
(_Journ. of Hell. Stud._ xix. 335 seq.), the Antigonus and Demetrius by
Athens in 307, to Ptolemy I. by the Rhodians in 304, or by Cassandrea to
Cassander, as the city's founder (Ditt. 2nd ed. 178); or it might be
organized and maintained by royal authority. The first proved instance
of a cult of the latter kind is that instituted at Alexandria by the
second Ptolemy for his father soon after the latter's death in 283/2, in
which, some time after, 279/8, he associated his mother Berenice also,
the two being worshipped together as [Greek: theoi soteres] (Theoc.
xvii. 121 seq.). Antiochus I. followed the Ptolemaïc precedent by
instituting at Seleucia-in-Pieria a cult for his father as Seleucus Zeus
Nicator. So far we can point to no instance of a cult of the living
sovereign (though the cities might institute such locally) being
established by the court for the realm. This step was taken in Egypt
after the death of Arsinoë Philadelphus (271) when she and her
still-living brother-husband, Ptolemy II., began to be worshipped
together as [Greek: theoi adelphoi]. After this the cult of the reigning
king and queen was regularly maintained in Greek Egypt, side by side
with that of the dead Ptolemies. Under Antiochus II. (261-246) a
document shows us a cult of the reigning king in full working for the
Seleucid realm, with a high priest in each province, appointed by the
king himself; the document declares that the Queen Laodice is now to be
associated with the king. The official surname of Antiochus II., Theos,
suggests that he himself had here been the innovator. Thenceforward, in
the Hellenistic kingdoms of the East the worship of the living sovereign
became the rule, although it appears to have been regarded as given in
anticipation of an apotheosis which did not become actual till death. In
the Pergamene kingdom at any rate, though the living king was worshipped
with sacrifice, the title [Greek: theos] was only given to those who
were dead (Cardinali, _Regno di Pergamo_, p. 153). The Antigonid
dynasty, simpler and saner in its manners, had no official cult of this
sort. The divine honours offered on occasion by the Greek cities were
the independent acts of the cities.
See Plut. _Arat._ 45; _Cleom._ 16; Kornemann, "Zur Gesch. d. antiken
Herrscherkulte" in _Beiträge z. alt. Gesch._ i. 51 sqq.; Otto,
_Priester u. Tempel_, pp. 138 seq.