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“Greetings, I Am An Immortal God!”: Reading, Imagination, And Personal Divinity In Late Antiquity, 2nd – 5th Centuries Ce, Mark Roblee

Doctoral Dissertations

In City of God, Augustine entertains “personal divinity”—the idea that a person could become an immortal god. Recent scholarship has focused on the social function of such beliefs. The divine status of public figures such as emperors and martyrs has become a trope widely understood in its social and institutional dimensions. I add to this sociological understanding by inquiring into individual experience. How did a late antique person become divine? How did she understand divinity and the limits of the self? In City of God, Augustine assembles an archive that includes references to works by Platonists Apuleius, Plotinus, …