Outside the capital, in the city-states of the realm, as later on in the provinces subject to the Roman emperors, the reigning monarchs were alone the recipients of divine honors. The living Ptolemy, by recognizing the divinity of his predecessors, assumed responsibility for the validity of all their _acta_. They had issued their mandates (_prostagmata_) as gods; so long as they remained gods their mandates must be obeyed. The cities, on the other hand, had no concern except to legalize the orders issued to them by their living rulers, once their living rulers had legalized and thus become responsible for all orders issued by the dead. At Rome the memory of certain emperors was damned, and their acts rescinded. That was possible there because the emperor was theoretically only an officer of the Roman people. One means employed to invalidate the _acta_ of deposed rulers was to refuse to have them among their gods after their death. The Alexandrians had no such discretion. After about 306 B.C. they were subjects themselves, not masters, of the Ptolemies. In their city it was the living Ptolemy who willed his own deification, and he could withhold divine honors from his predecessor only when, as in the solitary case of the founder of the dynasty, the monarch neglected to have himself created a god during his lifetime. Since his wish was decisive, it is not surprising that he had the members of his family, his wife, sisters, children, and concubines, elevated to Olympus along with himself. Curiously enough, however, Philadelphus and his four immediate successors, while demanding that their subjects should worship them as deities, treated themselves simply as kings, and carefully refrained from describing themselves as gods even in their public communications. The fact seems to be that only by accepting the Egyptian theory of a divine incarnation could the Ptolemies find a theological ground for constituting themselves gods. This concession to native thinking the proud early members of the dynasty refused, however, to make, preferring to challenge by their own self-denial the divine honors which they required from others. With this view accords the further fact that the first Ptolemy deliberately to court a native support for his throne--Euergetes II--was also the first to sign his edicts as θεὁϛ, or "god."