Apotheosis

Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)

a deification; the placing of a prince or other distinguished person among the heathen deities. It was one of the doctrines of Pythagoras, which he had borrowed from the Chaldees, that virtuous persons, after their death, were raised into the order of the gods. The Romans, for several centuries, deified none but Romulus, and first imitated the Greeks in the fashion of frequent apotheosis after the time of Augustus Cæsar. From this period apotheosis was regulated by the decrees of the senate. It became at last so frequent as to be an object of contempt. The period of the Roman emperors, so rich in crime and folly, offers the most infamous instances of apotheosis. After Cæsar, the greater part of the Roman emperors were deified. The same hand which had murdered a predecessor often placed him among the gods. APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS (appa-lā'-che-an), also called Alleghenies, a vast mountain range in North America, extending for 1,300 miles from Cape Gaspé, on the Gulf of St. Lawrence, S. W. to Alabama. The system has been divided into three great sections: the northern (including the Adirondacks, the Green Mountains, the White Mountains, etc.), from Cape Gaspé to New York; the central (including a large portion of the Blue Ridge, the Alleghenies proper, the numerous lesser ranges), from New York to the valley of the New river; and the southern (including the continuation of the Blue Ridge, the Black Mountains, the Smoky Mountains, etc.), from the New river southward. The chain consists of several ranges generally parallel to each other, the altitude of the individual mountains increasing on approaching the South. The highest peaks rise over 6,600 feet (not one at all approaching the snow level), but the mean height is about 2,500 feet. Lake Champlain is the only lake of great importance in the system, but numerous rivers of considerable size take their rise here. Magnetite, hematite, and other iron ores occur in great abundance, and the coal measures are among the most extensive in the world. Gold, silver, lead, and copper are also found, while marble, limestone, fire clay, gypsum, and salt abound. The forests yield large quantities of valuable timber, such as sugar maple, white birch, beech, ash, oak, cherry tree, white poplar, white and yellow pine, etc. (-chi-co-la), APPALACHICOLA a river of the United States, formed by the Chattahoochee and Flint rivers, which unite near the northern border of Florida; length, about 100 miles; flows into the Gulf of Mexico, and is navigable.