Clemens accuses Basilides of a deification of the Devil (Oast etv Ten) 8c&f30Xov), and regards as his two dogmas that of the Devil and that of the transmigration of souls (Strom.
There is no doubt that it contains an element of truth; as among the Romans the gradual deification of ancestors and the apotheosis of emperors were prominent features of religious development, so among primitive peoples it is possible to trace the evolution of family and tribal gods from great chiefs and warriors.
Pantheism is properly the deification of the law of phenomena, the universe God.
In his Christology he departed from the Lutheran and Zwinglian doctrine of the two natures by insisting on what he called the Vergotterung des Fleisches Christi, the deification or the glorification of the flesh of Christ.
Joseph Warton's idea that the story is introduced by Virgil as a protest against the Roman custom of deification is not supported by the general tone of the Aeneid itself.