There are two notable demigods in Vedic Scriptures: In Hinduism, the term demigod is used to refer to deities who were once human and later became devas (gods).

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Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. This article needs additional citations for verification. He is the son of the Irish god Lugh and the mortal princess Deichtine. The Celtic warrior Cú Chulainn, a major protagonist in the Irish national epic the Táin Bo Cuailnge, ranks as a hero or as a demigod.

the earth-dwelling gods like fauns and satyrs.

the manes and ghosts of heroes (who dwell in the lower atmosphere).

the demigods or semones (who dwell in the upper atmosphere).

410-420) proposed a hierarchy of gods as follows: In later antiquity, the Roman writer Martianus Capella ( fl.

The poet Lucan (39-65) also uses the term to speak of Pompey attaining divinity upon his death in 48 BCE. The first Roman to employ the term 'demigod' may have been the poet Ovid (17 or 18 CE), who used the Latin semideus several times in reference to minor deities. However, Dio was writing in the third century CE - centuries after the death of Caesar - and modern critics have cast doubt on whether the Senate really did this. Īccording to the Roman author Cassius Dio, the Roman Senate declared Julius Caesar a demigod after his 46 BCE victory at Thapsus. Pindar also used the term frequently as a synonym for 'hero'. Instead, those who demonstrated 'strength, power, good family, and good behavior' were termed heroes, and after death they could be called hemitheoi, a process that has been referred to as 'heroization'. In these cases, the word did not literally mean that these figures had one parent who was divine and one who was mortal.

Both describe dead heroes as hemitheoi, or 'half gods'. The earliest recorded use of the term occurs in texts attributed to the archaic Greek poets Homer and Hesiod. In the ancient Greek and Roman world, the concept of a demigod did not have a consistent definition and associated terminology rarely appeared. The Roman poet Ovid probably coined semideus to refer to less important gods, such as dryads. The English term ' demi-god' is a calque of the Latin word semideus, 'half-god'. Picture of the Väinämöinen's Play by Robert Wilhelm Ekman, 1866. Väinämöinen, the central character in Finnish folklore and the main character in the national epic Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot, is an old and wise demigod, who is possessed a potent, magical singing voice.

Demigod clothing