the
tomb of thy wife be looked on as the mound of the ordinary dead.
Some wayfarer, as he treads the sloping road, shall say, 'This
woman once died for her husband; but now she is a saint in
heaven.'" 72

When the meaning of the cheerful promises given to the initiates
of a more favored fate in the future life than awaited others
namely, as we think, that their spirits on leaving the body should
scale Olympus instead of plunging to Tartarus had been concealed
within the

67 Lives, Romulus, sect. xxviii.

68 See a valuable discussion of the ancient use of the terms theos
and deus in note D vol. iii. of Norton's Genuineness of the
Gospels.

69 Somn. Scip., lib. ii. cap. 12.

70 Tusc. Quest., lib. i. cap. 26.

71 We omit several other authorities, as the reader would probably
deem any further evidence superfluous.

72 Alcestis, ll. 1015-1025, ed. Glasg.

Mysteries for a long time, it at length broke into public view in
the national apotheosis of ancient heroes, kings, and renowned
worthies, the instances of which became so numerous that Cicero
cries, "Is not nearly all heaven peopled with the human race?" 73
Over the heads of the devout heathen, as they gazed up through the
clear night air, twinkled the beams of innumerable stars, each
chosen to designate the cerulean seat where some soul was
rejoicing with the gods in heaven over the glorious issue of the
toils and sufferings in which he once painfully trod this earthly
scene.

Herodian, a Greek historian of some of the Roman emperors, has
left a detailed account of the rite of apotheosis.74 An image of
the person to be deified was made in wax, looking all sick and
pale, laid in state on a lofty bed of ivory covered with cloth of
gold, surrounded on one side by choirs of noble lords, on the
other side by their ladies stripped of their jewels and clad in
mourning, visited often for several days by a physician, who still
reports his patient worse, and finally announces his decease. Then
the Senators and haughtiest patricians bear the couch through the
via sacra to the Forum. Bands of noble boys and of proud women
ranged opposite each other chant hymns and lauds over the dead in
solemn melody. The bier is next borne to the Campus Martius, where
it is placed upon a high wooden altar, a large, thin structure
with a tower like a lighthouse. Heaps of fragrant gums, herbs,
fruits, and spices are poured out and piled upon it. Then the
Roman knights, mounted on h