Even the most Magaddicted Maga supporter might have had doubts about Donald Trump depicted as Jesus healing a sick man with his touch, however thrillingly realistic.
The trend in Greco-Roman culture for linking mortals with gods was started by Alexander the Great in Persia. In 334 BC, Alexander took his terrifying Macedonian army into Anatolia (Turkey), where Persian power met Greek, and after nine years had conquered most of their vast empire as far as Pakistan.
He knew that there was much more to running an empire than conquering an army: one had to win over the people and that meant winning over their leaders, especially the Persian aristocracy at the heart of the governing elite. So he began wearing Persian regal dress and holding court in Persian style. He married two royal princesses, instructed his officers to look for high-born Persian wives, and generally adopted a Persian style of life, learning to hunt as Persian kings did.
But he overstepped the mark when he tried to introduce the Persian custom of obeisance to the ruler (on your knees, head to the ground). Aristocratic Persians saw that merely as a way of honouring superiors, but it suggested to Alexander’s men that he wanted to be seen as a god. Some adopted the practice, some openly refused and one laughed out loud. Indeed, some of his men began to address Alexander as ‘Saviour’, a title normally reserved for deities. How far Alexander encouraged this behaviour is not known, but it did become a title adopted by later Greek rulers of Alexander’s vast, unwieldy ‘empire’ when it broke up after his death.
Romans, however, worshipped only the emperor’s ‘genius’ while he was alive, but his divinity when he was dead (Vespasian said on his deathbed ‘Streuth! I do believe I’m turning into a god’). Now statues of Roman gods usually displayed bare legs and feet, and so did the first statue of Augustus as emperor, though otherwise as a general in full military costume. It was enough of a nudge.
Perhaps Trump driving off from the first tee at the Holy of Holies St Andrews in a bathing suit might be enough to make that point.
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