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Among the institutions most important in softening the edges of regional differences was the cult of the emperors. In one sense, it originated in the 4th century bc, when Alexander the Great first received veneration by titles and symbols and forms of address as if he were a superhuman being. Indeed, he must have seemed exactly that to contemporaries in Egypt, where the pharaohs had long been worshiped, and to peoples in the Middle East, for similar reasons of religious custom. Even the Greeks were quite used to the idea that beings who lived a human life of extraordinary accomplishment, ...(100 of 71313 words)