These claims were more credible in the ancient world than they would be today, since no vast ontological gulf separated the human from the divine: Men and women regularly became gods and vice versa. Studies have shown that the sacrifices to the emperor’s genius (“divine spirit”) were not empty rituals but the means by which the subject peoples conceptualized the power that now ruled the known world, helping them to make sense of the intrusion of Rome into their lives by drawing on familiar imagery and concepts of kingship.
