Roman emperors : gods, men, something between or an unnecessary dilemma?

For a very long time the contentious issue whether Roman emperors were gods or not has negatively influenced the study of the Roman imperial cult. The majority of scholars is inclined to think that Roman emperors were either (1) mere men and their cult was an expression of political honors or (2) persons closely related with gods but never entirely assimilated to them, even though they sometimes let themselves to be depicted with divine attributes and tried to use this kinship politically. -- These two attitudes, however, do not take into account sufficiently that every concept of divinity is culturally derived and thus only exceptionally applicable in other, sometimes profoundly different cultures. The situation is further complicated by the obvious inability of scholars of religion to propose a universally accepted definition of divinity. One of the confounding factors is probably a superfluous accentuation of ontological divinity, which is unquestionably decisive in monotheistic religious traditions but largely inappropriate in cultures with polytheistic religious systems. ...