APOTHEOSIS, literally deification (Gr. 6.7roO€oi v, to make a god, to deify). The term properly implies a clear polytheistic conception of gods in contrast with men, while it recognizes that some men cross the dividing line. It is characteristic of polythe ism to blur that line in several ways. Thus the ancient Greek re ligion was especially disposed to belief in heroes and demigods. Founders of cities, and even of colonies, received worship; the former are, generally speaking, mythical personages and, in strictness, heroes. But the worship after death of historical per sons, such as Lycurgus, or worship of the living as true deities, e.g., Lysander and Philip II. of Macedon, occurred sporadically even before Alexander the Great's (q.v.) conquests brought Greek life into contact with oriental traditions. It was inevitable, too, that ancient monarchies should enlist polytheistic conceptions of divine or half-divine men in support of the dynasties; "Seu deos regesve canit deorum Sanguinem," Horace (Odes, iv. 2, 11. 13, 14) writes of Pindar ; though the reference is to myths, yet the phrase is significant. Whatever part vanity or the flattery of courtiers may have played with others, or with Alexander, it is significant that the dynasties of the Seleucids (q.v.) and Ptolemies (q.v.), Alexander's successors, claim divine honours of some sort. Theoc ritus (Idyll hails Ptolemy Philadelphus as a demigod, and speaks of his father as seated among the gods along with Alex ander (on Alexander as a god, with reference to special political reasons, see Comb. Anc. Hist. VI.). Ancestor worship, or rever ence for the dead, was a third factor. It may work even in Cicero's determination that his daughter should enjoy airo6Ecxrir as he writes to Atticus—or receive the "honour" of consecratio (frag ment of his De Consolatione). Lastly, we need not speak of mere sycophancy. Yet it was common ; Verres was worshipped before he was impeached ! The Romans had, up to the end of the republic, accepted only one official apotheosis: the god Quirinus, whatever his original meaning, having been identified with Romulus. But the emperor Augustus carried on the tradition of ancient statecraft by having Julius Caesar recognized as a god (divus Julius), the first of a new class of deities proper (divi). The tradition was steadily followed and was extended to some women of the imperial family and even to imperial favourites. Worship of an emperor during his lifetime, except as the worship of his genius, was in general con fined to the provinces. Apotheosis, after his death, being in the hands of the senate, did not at once cease, even when Christianity was officially adopted. The Latin term is consecratio, the Greek auroeicooes, probably a coinage of the Hellenistic epoch, and occasionally used in a weakened sense. The squib of the philos opher Seneca on the memory of Claudius (d. A.D. S4), Apocolo cyntosis ("pumpkinification"), is evidence that, as early as Sen eca's lifetime, apotheosis was in use for the recognition of a de parted emperor as a god. It also indicates how much contempt might be associated with this pretended worship. The people, says Suetonius (Jul. Caes. c. 88), fully believed in the divinity of Julius Caesar, hinting at the same time that this was by no means the case with the majority of the apotheoses subsequently decreed by the senate. Yet we hear that Marcus Aurelius was still wor shipped as a household divinity in the 4th century, and was earlier believed to impart revelations in dreams (Vit. M. Ant. c. 18). An tinous, the favourite of Hadrian, was adored in Egypt a century after his death (Origen, Contra Celsum, iii. 36). The ceremonies attendant on an imperial apotheosis are very fully described by Herodianus (bk. iv. c. 2) on occasion of the obsequies of Severus, which he appears to have witnessed. The most significant was the liberation, at the moment of kindling the funeral pyre, of an eagle which was supposed to bear the emperor's soul to heaven. Sharp sighted persons had actually beheld the ascension of Augustus (Suet. August. c. ioo) and of Drusilla, sister of Caligula. Repre sentations of apotheoses occur on several works of art ; the most important are the apotheosis of Homer on a relief in the Townley collection of the British Museum, that of Titus on the arch of Titus, and that of Augustus on a magnificent cameo in the Louvre.
(See ANCESTOR WORSHIP.) BIBLIOGRAPHY -Kornemann, Klio I.; E. R. Bevan, art. "Deification" Bibliography-Kornemann, Klio I.; E. R. Bevan, art. "Deification" in Enc. Rel. Eth.; E. Strong, Apotheosis and After Life (1915); F. Cumont, Etudes Syriennes (1917), After Life in Roman Paganism; A. D. Nock, "Notes on Ruler-cult" in Journ. Hell. Stud., xlviii.; C. Clemen, Religionsgesch. Erkldr. d. N.T., 2nd ed. (1924), 29 ff. APPALACHIAN MOUNTAINS, the general name of a mountain system in North America, partly in Canada, but mostly in the United States, extending from Newfoundland, Gaspe peninsula and New Brunswick, 1,5oom. south-westward to Central Alabama. The whole system may be divided into three great regions : the northern, from Newfoundland to the Hudson river; the central, from the Hudson valley to that of New river (Kanawha), in Virginia and 'Vest Virginia; and the southern, from New river onwards. The northern region includes the Shickshock mountains and Notre Dame range in Quebec, scat tered elevations in Maine, the White mountains and the Green mountains; the central comprises, besides various minor groups, the Valley ridges between the front of the Allegheny plateau and the Great Appalachian valley, the New York and New Jersey highlands and a large portion of the Blue ridge; and the southern consists of the prolongation of the Blue ridge, the Unaka range, and the Valley ridges adjoining the Cumberland plateau, with some lesser ranges. The Appalachian belt includes, with the ranges enumerated above, the plateaus sloping southward to the Atlantic in New England, and south-eastward to the border of the coastal plain through the central and southern Atlantic States; and on the north-west, the Allegheny and Cumberland plateaus declining toward the Great Lakes and the interior plains. A remarkable feature of the belt is the longitudinal chain of broad valleys—the Great Appalachian valley—which in the southerly regions divides the mountain system into two subequal portions, but in the northernmost lies west of all the Appalachian ranges, and separates them from the Adirondack group.
The mountain system has no axis of dominating altitudes, but in every portion the summits rise to rather uniform heights, and especially in the central region, the various ridges and inter montane valleys have the same trend as the system itself. None of the summits reaches the region of perpetual snow. Mountains of the Long range in Newfoundland reach heights of nearly 2,000feet. In the Shickshocks the higher summits rise to about 4,0oof t. elevation. In Maine four peaks exceed 3,000f t., includ ing Katandin (5, 2 73 f t.) ; in the White mountains a number of summits rise above 5,000ft., including Mount Washington (6,293 ft.). In the Green mountains the highest point, Mansfield, is 4,4o6f t. ; and a number of other heights exceed 3 ,000f eet. The Catskills are not properly included in the system. The Blue ridge, rising in southern Pennsylvania and there known as South mountain, attains in that State elevations of about 2,000f t. ; south ward to the Potomac its altitudes diminish, but 3om. beyond again reach 2,000feet. In the Virginia Blue ridge the highest peaks are: Mary's rock, 3,523ft.; peaks of Otter, 4,001 and 3,875; Stony Man, 4,031; Hawks Bill, 4,066. In Pennsylvania the summits of the Valley ridges rise generally to about 2,00of t., and in Mary land Eagle rock and Dans rock are conspicuous points reaching 3,162ft. and 2,882ft. above the sea. In the southern region of the Blue ridge are Grandfather mountain (5,964ft.), with three other summits above 5,000 and a dozen more above 4,000. The Unaka ranges (including the Black and Smoky mountains) have 18 peaks higher than 5,000feet. In the Black mountains, Mitchell (the culminating point of the whole system) attains an altitude of 6,7 I I f t. ; Balsam cone, 6,645; Black Brothers, 6,690 and 6,62o; and Hallback, 6,403. In the Smoky mountains are Clingmans dome, 6,644f t. ; Guyot, 6,636; Alexander, Leconte, 6,612; Curtis, 6,588, with several others above 6,000 and many higher than 5,000.
In the central regions the streams heading in the Allegheny plateau run south-eastward into the Atlantic, and cut through the ranges by great gorges that are popularly called "water-gaps"; but south of New river the Appalachian ranges are drained west ward by the Cumberland and Tennessee rivers, finally reaching the Gulf of Mexico. In the northern section the water-parting lies on the inland side of the mountainous belt, the main lines of drainage running from north to south.
Geology.—The rocks of the Appalachian belt fall naturally into two divisions : ancient (pre-cambrian) crystallines, including marbles, schists, gneisses, granites and other massive igneous rocks, and a great succession of paleozoic sediments. The crystal lines are confined to the portion of the belt east of the Great valley where paleozoic rocks are always highly metamorphosed and occur for the most part in limited patches, excepting in New England and Canada, where they assume greater areal importance, and are besides very generally intruded by granites. The paleo zoic sediments, ranging in age from Cambrian to permian, occupy the Great valley, the Valley ridges and the plateaus still farther west. They are rarely metamorphosed to the point of recrystalli zation, though locally shales are altered to roofing slates, sand stones are indurated, and coals, originally bituminous, are changed to anthracite in northern Pennsylvania and to graphite in Rhode Island. The most striking and uniformly characteristic geologic feature of the mountains is their internal structure, consisting of innumerable parallel, long and narrow folds, always closely appressed in the eastern part of any cross-section (Piedmont plateau to Great valley), less so along a central zone (Great valley and Valley ridges), and increasingly open on the west (Allegheny and Cumberland plateaus).
Folding of the rocks resulted from the operation of great com pressive forces acting tangentially to the figure of the earth. Extensive and deep-seated crumpling was necessarily accompanied by vertical uplift throughout the zone affected, but once at least since their birth the mountains have been worn down to a low land, and the mountains of to-day are the combined product of subsequent uplift of a different sort and dissection by erosion. The crosswise courses of the greater rivers result from the rivers being older than the mountains, which indeed have been produced by circumdenudation. The present longitudinal valleys were determined by the outcrop of soft shales or soluble lime stones, and the parallel ridges upheld by hard sandstones or schists. Parallelism of mountain ridges and intervening valleys is thus attributable to the folding of the rocks, but the origin of the interior structure of the mountains is to be kept distinct from the origin of the mountains as features of topography.
Forests.—The region is well covered with forests yielding quantities of valuable timber, especially in Canada and northern New England. The most valuable trees for lumber are spruce, white pine, hemlock, cedar, white birch, ash, maple and bass wood ; all excepting pine, hemlock and poplar are ground into wood pulp for the manufacture of paper. In the central and southern parts of the belt, oa c and hickory constitute valuable hardwoods, and certain varieties of the former furnish quantities of tan bark. The tulip tree produces a good clear lumber known as white wood or poplar, and is also a source of pulp. In the south both white and yellow pine abound.
Influence on History.—For a century the Appalachians were a barrier to the westward expansion of the English Colonies ; the continuity of the system, the bewildering multiplicity of its suc ceeding ridges, the tortuous courses and roughness of its trans verse passes, a heavy forest and dense undergrowth all conspired to hold the settlers on the seaward-sloping plateaus and coastal plains. The confinement of the Colonies between an ocean and a mountain wall led to the fullest occupation of the coastal border of the continent, which was possible under existing conditions of agriculture, conducing to a community of purpose, a political and commercial solidarity, which would not otherwise have been developed. In contrast to this complete industrial occupation, the French territory beyond the mountains was held by a small and very scattered population, its extent and openness adding mate rially to the difficulties of a disputed tenure. Bearing the brunt of the contests against the French as they did, the Colonies were undergoing preparation for the subsequent struggle with the home Government. In the War of Independence, the American armies fought toward the sea with the mountains at their back protecting them against Indians leagued with the British.
See Topographic maps and Geologic Folios of the U.S. Geological Survey ; B. Willis, "The Northern Appalachians," and C. W. Hayes, "The Southern Appalachians," both in National Geographic Mono graphs, vol. 1.; and chaps. iii., iv. and v. of E. C. Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions (Boston, 1903).