Robert Parker

The Eleans have bought Epeion for thirty talents (Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.30); the Eleans refuse to surrender the Marganeis and Skillountians and Triphylians, claiming that “these cities are ours” (6.5.2); the Eleans capture Lasion, which “of old had belonged to them, but at present was enrolled in (συντελεĩν εἰς) the Arkadikon” (7.4.12). The Spartans force the Mantineans to “dioecize their city into four settlements, as they lived in the past” (5.2.7); but after the battle of Leuctra the Mantineans refound their single city (6.5.3). In the same period many communities of southern Arcadia come together to found Megalopolis. Greek history in the fourth century, indeed in all centuries, is full of incidents such as these; and no doubt much of human history is a story of appropriation of territory, coalescence and division of communities. But the intermeshing of religious and political organisation in Greece had as a consequence that religious life was not a timeless backdrop in front of which the play of history took place. Or it was so only in a very broad sense: in the most general terms nothing changed, familiar Greek gods were still worshipped in accord with familiar Greek rituals; but at a more detailed level every re-structuring of the political order required or potentially required the reorganisation of cults, rewriting of sacrificial calendars, re-assignation of priesthoods. These processes have been very little studied, and are indeed often not accessible to detailed investigation. But for a community threatened by subjection, aspiring to liberation or contemplating synoecism the future of ancestral cults must have been one very sensitive issue. In what follows I shall look at the implications for religious life of certain types of political re-ordering, voluntary or involuntary. A comprehensive study would be a large undertaking, and I can do no more than sketch some possibilities. I shall then turn to the specific situations of some Peloponnesian cities or tribes in the fourth century. [1]

Of the 15 different types of Dependent Polis recently identified by the Copenhagen Polis Centre, [2] most need not concern us here: membership of a federation or an alliance, for instance, normally had no impact on the cults of a city even when such membership severely restricted its freedom of action in other areas. [3] Again, two cities that were distant in space inevitably conducted largely separate religious lives. But certain types of dependency did potentially have implications for religious activity.

When the Eleans claimed a kind of ownership (“these cities are ours”) over Epeion, Lasion and the other communities mentioned above, the general and plausible assumption is that the poleis in question (I use the term polis here as a shorthand: the exact status of the communities is not important) were internally self-governing but bound to follow the Eleans in foreign policy; the extent to which they were exposed to financial exactions is quite unknown. They were, therefore, the Elean equivalent to the perioikoi of Sparta and other Greek cities. [4] Unfortunately, the perioikoi even of Sparta, to say nothing of those of Argos or Thessaly, are, as is well known, among the great voiceless groups of Greek society. They must have had their own sanctuaries, festivals and presumably priesthoods too. One ambiguous text may show some Spartan perioikoi participating in a festival of Sparta itself, the Promacheia. Conversely, Spartans certainly made dedications in perioikic sanctuaries and competed in their athletic festivals. [5] But it was normal for members of one group to have these two forms of access to the shrines and cults of another group. On an optimistic view, therefore, one might suppose that the perioikoi pursued their own religious life free from Spartan interference; that optimistic conclusion would chime with the current understanding of the perioikoi as an integrated rather than an alienated and rebellious element within the Spartan state. [6] As for other perioikoi or perioikoi-like groups, nothing forbids, though nothing enjoins, the same assumption.

The dealings of Athens with Oropos and Delos, however, show that it was by no means inevitable that a dominant power respected the religious autonomy of cities subordinate to it. In the fourth century, although Delos retained a polity and cults of its own, Athenian pressure on the sanctuary of Apollo was so strong that the Delians appealed to Philip, unsuccessfully, in an effort to recover control; as for Oropos, at all times when the Athenians had possession of the Oropia they treated the cult of Amphiaraos as, in effect, an Athenian cult. [7] In the second half of the fourth century Argos swallowed up Kleonai, which became an Argive deme; the Nemean games, traditionally Kleonai’s most precious possession, were henceforth under Argive administration (though the Kleonaians apparently enjoyed a privileged relation to the games for a while), and at an uncertain date (probably in the third century) the ancient festival was even re-located from Nemea to Argos. [8] At the time of the mysterious partial union of Corinth with Argos in the late 390s, enemies of the new arrangements maintained that the Argives had taken over the running of the Isthmian games of 390; and they certainly had some role, if not an exclusive one. [9] Celebrated sanctuaries and festivals such as these are perhaps a special case, a special temptation to a dominant power. [10] On Delos the Athenians had the excuse that they were operating as members of a shadowy Amphictyony. But we cannot necessarily assume that interference occurred in these circumstances alone.

Wholesale expulsion of an existing population is a very different case; but let us note it en passant because here too important issues about the maintenance of cults arise. According to an argument attributed to the Athenians in 424 by Thucydides (4.98.2), “the rule among the Greeks is that whatever power controls any territory, great or small, also owns the shrines, which should be tended in such traditional ways as are practicable.” The Athenians rather often had the opportunity to apply their principle, when they expelled existing inhabitants and divided territory among cleruchs of their own, and often we duly find them maintaining existing cults (e.g. on Lemnos over a long period, on Aigina in the late fifth century, on Samos in the fourth century); [11] sometimes, as on Delos in the fifth century and at Oropos in the fourth, the desire to establish secure control of the sanctuary may have been a main motive for the expulsion. [12] One showcase exists in which we can observe such a taking-over of cults on a large scale: Delos, handed over to the Athenians by Rome in 166 BCE and at once emptied by the new possessors of its Delian population. The main gods continued to be honoured, but an entirely new set of priesthoods had to be created, which followed the Athenian model of annual tenure, rotating (in some cases at least) between the tribes; and changes of emphasis between cults can be observed. [13] At the organizational level, at least, this “tending in such traditional ways as are practicable” involved extensive change.

A more drastic alternative was annihilation or evacuation of a population and destruction of the city. The best-described case is the destruction of Plataea by the Spartans in 426 BCE (Thucydides 3.68.3): the Spartans built a large temple and pilgrims’ hostel beside the existing Heraion, using spoils and building material taken from the city which the goddess had once guarded. The city which most frequently adopted “le modèle de la desertification” was Argos. [14] At Asine, destroyed at a very early date, they left behind a temple of Apollo Pythaeus and there maintained an important cult. [15] But any such gestures made to the gods of Mycenae and Tiryns, overthrown and left desolate in the mid-fifth century, are not recorded. [16] When Alexander sacked Thebes in 335 he spared the Kadmeia; we are not told what happened to sanctuaries in the lower town, but he exempted sacred properties from the general re-distribution of Theban territory among his allies and we can perhaps conclude that he intended them to be available to finance continued cult (Arrian Anabasis 1.9.9). About Colophon and Lebedos, destroyed by Lysimachus between 294 and 287 partly as a punitive measure, partly to gain population for his newly sited Ephesus, little is recorded, but the “sack of Colophon” was a sufficiently terrible event to provoke a lament from the local poet Phoenix. [17] A minimum requirement imposed by piety on the victors was perhaps to attempt to preserve actual sanctuaries, or some among them, from the firebrand and the crowbar. [18] And a festival of Panhellenic standing could not readily be simply abandoned: when the Romans sacked Corinth in 146, the presidency of the Isthmian games was handed over, though perhaps after an interval, to Sikyon. [19]

An expelled population might, like Aeneas, seek to take its gods with it. When the Phocaeans fled their city before the Persian advance, they took with them in the ships “the statues from the shrines and all the dedications except those of bronze or stone, and paintings” (Herodotus 1.164.3). Did the inhabitants of Sicilian cities, so frequently forcibly re-located by tyrants, do something similar? [20] Nothing of the kind is recorded.

The prudent person will not attempt to define, or narrowly distinguish, synoecism and sympolity. The Greeks’ own use of these words and their cognates shows a bold disregard for bureaucratic precision, and the variety in what actually occurred is too great for a simple sorting into two heaps, “synoecism” and “sympolity,” to be helpful. [21] In broad terms, the phenomenon that concerns us here is the incorporation of what had been a wholly independent set of cults, or of several such sets, within a larger whole, on the occasion of a political coalescence between two or more communities. For these purposes the question whether the communities in question came together physically, partially or wholly, in an existing polis or one newly founded for the purpose, is not crucial, though in practice some population transfer would appear to have been the norm. What is crucial is the necessity that arose to re-write the ritual calendar in the new political circumstances, a necessity brought out in a model way by the opening of a decree from Mykonos to be dated to the last quarter of the third century: [22] “In the archonship of Kratinos, Polyzelos, Philophron, when the poleis were synoecized, the Mykonians decided to make the following sacrifices in addition to the existing ones and made the following corrections concerning existing ones.” Alas, no sure criterion allows us to distinguish “new” from “corrected” entries in the list that follows; [23] nor have we any evidence either about the independent ritual life of the two poleis of the island prior to the synoecism, or about their joint life after it. So the Mykonos decree altogether declines to help in answering the question that it poses so clearly. And among the very many other attested instances of synoecism, sympolity, and the like, many for our purposes do not offer so much as a starting point for enquiry: the union must have entailed changes in the cultic sphere, but we cannot begin to identify them. Synoecism sometimes occurs as an aetiological motif to explain existing cults: the cult of Artemis Triklaria, for instance, had supposedly been shared by the three villages which eventually combined to form Patrai, and a precinct of Dionysus in the same city contained three images named after the three primeval villages. [24] Here the idea of synoecism or of a time prior to synoecism is embodied in a city’s folk history and cult practice, as it was also in Athens, where there was even a mysterious festival Synoikia. [25] But such ways of envisaging the past do not help us directly to re-construct actual historical synoecisms.

Fortunately a modest number of sympolity agreements do mention cultic arrangements; the relevant data are excerpted in an appendix to this paper. And the religious systems of three poleis which underwent synoecism in the historical period (Rhodes, Megalopolis, Kos) are known well enough to give speculation at least some basis. A common situation is the “unequal sympolity,” which is in effect, whatever name it goes under, the incorporation of a small community into a much larger one. [26] Such mergers often occurred, in Hellenistic Asia Minor, at the instance of a king, but could also be motivated by the ambitions or fears of either party directly involved; the minor partner might be more or less willing. In such a situation the name that persists for the merged entity will obviously be that of the larger polis, of which the minor polis may now become a deme or something similar (the option of creating greater integration by distributing the new citizens among existing units is less common). [27] The dominant religious calendar will similarly be that of the major partner, and it is often made explicit that the newly incorporated citizens are to participate as equals in its existing rites or simply in everything to which existing citizens are entitled (Heliswasians, Pidaseans, by implication Teans in Lebedos, Magnesians, Medeonians [nos. 1, 3, 4, 5, 9 in the list in the appendix]). A corresponding stipulation whereby members of the major partner may participate fully in the rites of the minor occurs only once (Medeonians and Stirians [no. 9]). [28] More common is a guarantee that rites—some rites at least—of the minor partner shall continue to be performed (Heliswasians, Euaimonians, Pereans [nos. 1, 2, 6]); a special official recruited from the minor partner may be charged with the task (Medeonians [no. 9]), or sums set aside specifically (Pereans, perhaps Medeonians [nos. 6. 9]). Occasionally nothing is said at all about the cults of the minor partner even in a text that is complete (Pidaseans in Herakleia, and in Miletus; Magnesians in Smyrna [nos. 3, 8; 5]). Perhaps it is simply taken for granted that they will be carried on. [29]

Greek religion was both inclusive and exclusive. It was inclusive in the sense that restrictions on who could enter sanctuaries, watch sacrifices or public rites, and make dedications were not very common. On the other hand the right to share in sacrificial meat, to hold priestly office, and to conduct rites in a given cult was strictly controlled; the exclusivity in this sense of a group’s cults was integral to its identity. [30] In the case where both parties to a sympolity are admitted reciprocally to each other’s rites they both surrender that exclusivity (at least at the level of participation in sacrifice; entitlement to priesthood is not explicitly mentioned). But the loss is unequal: whereas the major partner acquires in effect a new expanded religious identity, the minor partner no longer has anything that is distinctively its own. Such simple absorption of smaller by greater must sometimes have occurred. In little Phygela, for instance, swallowed up by Ephesos perhaps in the first decade of the third century, sacrifices continued to be performed, but they were in the charge of a board of neopoiai dispatched from the big city. [31] Again, the rites of Pidasa cannot have been maintained as distinct, if they were retained at all, once its sacred revenues had been pooled with those of Heraklea under Latmos [no. 3]. On the other hand, we noted that, in sympolity agreements where maintenance of the cults of the absorbed city is guaranteed, there is normally no stipulation that these are to be opened to all; the presumption perhaps is that they will remain separate, like the rites of an Attic deme vis-à-vis Athens itself. That such separateness could be an eagerly defended ideal is shown by an inscription from Olymos. It is of the second half of the second century BCE, and thus postdates the political absorption of Olymos within the larger Mylasa by perhaps 75 years. [32] It begins by explaining that a share in the “common hiera” of Olymos belongs by descent in the male line to (Olymians and) persons, and descendants of persons, to whom right of participation has been granted by decree.

But, as it is, certain persons who have no right to participate in any of the aforementioned ways are participating in [hiera relating to Apollo] and Artemis, gods to whom not only have revenues been consecrated by the people and sacrifices and receptions are held [annually, but also all that relates] and pertains to their honour and reputation is conducted in accord with tradition; in addition, the [dêmos] of the Olymians contains [three of what were previously called tribes] and now sungeneiai, the Mosseis, Kybimeis and Kandebeloi, and in each of these there are private [sacrifices and rituals] and private revenues: certain persons who have been granted by agreement right of participation in [hiera] in the sungeneiai, [and now claim that they should also have right of participation in] the meetings of [ ], have ventured to approach the rites conducted by the Olymian dêmos, some venturing to [approach just the sacrifices, others also the offices of hierourgos] and priest and prophet, and in consequence of their shameless claim to that to which they are not entitled [many impieties have occurred against the rights of the citizens] and against the protection of the gods…

Doubtless the values of inland Caria cannot simply be transferred to Greece, but the attitude of the Lindians in the synoecized Rhodes of the late fourth century is strikingly similar: they went to court to ensure that “selections in Lindos of priests and hierothutai and hieropoioi and others with responsibility for communal matters shall be made from the Lindians themselves, as is prescribed in the laws, and persons shall not participate in Lindian sacra who did not participate in them before.” [33] The Olymians stress the financial basis of the rights that they are protecting: these cults were supported by specially designated Olymian funds. But priesthood was often a burden rather than an advantage, and the sense of group identity was also and perhaps more strongly at issue. By the agreement between Helisson and Mantinea [no. 1] the little community was to continue to receive sacred embassies announcing the Panhellenic games. It cost little to the Mantineans to make this concession, which must have helped the Heliswasians to avoid feeling that their ancient city was being wiped off the map. [34] (No actual instance of a sacred embassy visiting Helisson is recorded. Whether the sureties offered to little communities in sympolity agreements proved effective is a different issue, and one usually beyond our reach to enquire into.)

Physical transfer of divine images is only occasionally mentioned as a consequence of sympolity. The misfortune of the Myuntians is a special case: forced by mosquitoes to abandon their city, they took their sacred images and settled in Miletos (to which they were already bound by a much looser sympolity agreement). [35] According to Pausanias, apparently describing events of 362/1, Kyzikos “forced the Prokonnesians by war to become sunoikoi with them,” and transferred a statue of Meter Dindymene from Prokonnesos to the city. It was probably because the inhabitants of Trapezous fled to avoid incorporation in Megalopolis that some of their statues were transferred thither. [36] Anger at non-compliance probably explains these unusually intrusive measures.

The dynamics of a synoecism involving several poleis were very different. Usually, there was no one dominant city to whose practices the others conformed, in religion as in the rest of life; instead, a new start was made with the creation of a new city on a new site (or an existing city was expanded to an extent that constituted a new foundation). Substantial population transfer was necessary if the new capital was to thrive, but the extent to which the old towns out of which it was formed were in fact scaled down was very various. The scope of the initial synoecism of Megalopolis is a matter of controversy, and the variables are large: was the great city’s initial catchment area one of c. 1500 square kilometres, or of somewhat less than 500? [37] On a “little Megalopolis” model the population of the khôra was largely absorbed in the city, and the sanctuaries of the old communities were kept in use as extra-urban sanctuaries of Megalopolis: Pausanias has several references to sanctuaries that survived, apparently in good repair, in deserted settlements near to the city, and we can imagine that they were sometimes approached by processions from the city. [38] Pausanias speaks also (Pausanias 8.27.5–6) of repentance and resistance to the synoecism by four nearby communities which had initially agreed to it: Lykaia and Trikolonoi were brought in by force; the inhabitants of Trapezous fled; the Lykosourans were spared and apparently allowed to stay where they were “from reverence for Demeter and Despoina,” in whose hallowed sanctuary they had taken refuge. On a “great Megalopolis” model the fate of the nearby communities will be the same, but right from the start the new capital will also have controlled quondam poleis further away which were now demoted to deme status (Pausanias 8.27.7) but continued as places of habitation (and occasionally re-asserted their independence as cities); like Attic demes, they may have retained effective autonomy in cultic matters, though almost no evidence on organisation is available. [39] Whatever the situation in the 360s, some version of the “great Megalopolis” model will certainly be needed to describe the situation by c. 200 BCE. As for post-synoecism Rhodes and Kos, a thoroughly vigorous municipal life persisted, and religious activity continued to be conducted, and organised, outside the new capital cities with remarkable commitment and vigour; as we have noted, the Lindians on Rhodes were as insistent as the Olymians in Caria on excluding outsiders from their traditional cults.

The new capital cities had to create new religious calendars of their own which were not simply extensions and modifications of one already in existence. The detailed evidence on Kos and Rhodes is presented below in an appendix. In brief, simple taking-over of existing cults (i.e. existing sanctuaries) seems almost never to have been the procedure. [40] The fate of the great pan-Arcadian sanctuary of Zeus Lykaios is a kind of counter-case, since it seems to have passed into the control of Megalopolis; but it may always have been administered by an amphictyony rather than a single community. [41] In the main, rather than to take over celebrated cults in the khôra, the preferred option was to create calques of them: the clearest case is the establishment in Megalopolis of a sanctuary of Zeus Lykaios which echoed, but did not seek to replace, the god’s famous precinct on Mount Lykaion. [42] The cult of the Great Goddesses in that city was not a calque but a variation, it has been suggested, on the traditional devotion to deities of that type in the region. [43] Pan too could not be absent from an Arcadian “great city.” [44] A large statue of Apollo Epikourios was brought “as an adornment” to Megalopolis from Phigaleia, which is not even in Megalopolitan territory. [45] Similarly, on Kos, Apollo Delios, always a central figure in the islanders’ religious consciousness, continued to be separately honoured in at least one deme but was also taken up in the city. Gods already popular in the region have found a place in the city, but in the familiar Greek way a new sanctuary is simply added to those that already exist.

The argument may seem to have assumed a complacent and anodyne tenor. Nothing, it seems, need be lost: in a synoecism both the new big town and the small old towns can flourish alike. And even in an unequal sympolity the traditions of the minor partner can be respected. It is true that synoecized Rhodes and Kos were, so far as we can judge, unusually successful societies; nor were Megalopolis and Alexandreia Troas failures, though there was some breaking away from both. But the verb συμπολιτεύεσθαι, ‘to unite politically’, has an antonym ἀποπολιτεύεσθαι, ‘to withdraw from a political union’, and such disaggregations were very common, particularly but not exclusively in cases of “unequal sympolity.” One inscription even reveals the efforts of a third city acting as a conciliator between two partners thinking about divorce. [46] About the grievances of cities seeking separation we can only speculate, and there were doubtless often concrete economic or political grounds for discontent; simple nostalgia for home among relocated persons must also often have been a factor. But religious factors are surely likely to have played a part: we have seen the fears of the Olymians and Lindians about the preservation of their religious identity; as for persons actually displaced from their homes, their nostalgia must often have distilled around memories of ancestral places of cult.

It is time to relate all this to the main themes of this volume. Some connections are obvious: various Arcadian synoecisms and sympolities have already been mentioned above. At other points useful connections decline to be established. Writing a religious calendar for the new state of Messenia was just as challenging an exercise in creating tradition as was writing one for synoecized Rhodes or Megalopolis, but it was an exercise of a different kind. Again, it was neither by forced subjection nor by voluntary sympolity or synoecism that a sense of ethnic identity developed or was maintained in Arcadia and Achaea. But the world of fusion and fission described in this paper was, willy-nilly, very much the world of the communities subject in different ways to the domination of Elis. As the detailed studies elsewhere show, in the period between 425 and 350 the four poleis of the Akroreioi and some other such groups (Marganeis, Amphidoloi, Letrinoi) were at different moments subordinate allies of the Eleans (perioikoi), briefly perhaps “Eleans” incorporated into the Elean tribal structure, [47] and independent polities in alliance with Sparta or Arcadia; the poleis of Triphylia were initially perioikoi, then members of an independent federation allied with Sparta, then incorporated within the Arcadian federation; Lasion was first perioikic (but claimed by Arcadia, Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.30), then a free ally of Sparta, then a member of the Arcadian federation; the Pisatans were either discontented “Eleans” or independent, but very subordinate, allies of Arcadia.

Unfortunately the sources largely fail to reveal the differences that these successive metamorphoses may have made to religious life. Two dedications at Olympia, one made by the Amphidoloi, one jointly by the Akroreioi and the obscure Alasyes, [48] have often been taken as evidence of the new sense of freedom experienced by quondam perioikic communities which had thrown off the Elean yoke c. 400 BCE. But epigraphic and archaeological dating criteria for these dedications point rather to the fifth century, [49] and the conclusion to be drawn is therefore reversed: even when under the Elean yoke the perioikic communities were not quite crushed. Some suppose indeed that the dedications (and one by the Letrinoi which is surely archaic) attest the faint survival of an “Olympic amphictyony” like that of Delphi. [50] The great Panhellenic sanctuary must have been a central element in the religious life of the region. What is clear is that, though Elis made use of the sanctuary’s prestige in its dealings with its perioikoi, [51] it failed to create around it a community of hearts and minds; when the option of secession became available, it was taken. The Pisatans, the people in whose territory the sanctuary lay, certainly found the hand of Elis heavy in religious affairs. By the settlement that ended the Spartan-Elean war c. 400, the Spartans “did not deprive the Eleans of presidency of the shrine of Olympian Zeus, though it was not theirs of old, judging the counter-claimants [the Pisatans, as is universally accepted] to be countrymen and not competent to preside” (Xenophon Hellenica 3.2.31). Evidently then the “unequal sympolity” by which the Pisatans had been incorporated into Elis (as they seem to have been) had done nothing to recognise their ancestral claim on the sanctuary: [52] it is as if the Lindians had been deprived of the control of the temple of Lindian Athena. In 365 the Pisatans became briefly independent with Arcadian aid, and in 364, an Olympic year, “revived the ancient fame of their land and using certain ancient mythical proofs declared that the right of conducting the Olympic panêguris was theirs” (Diodorus Siculus 15.78.2; cf. Xenophon Hellenica 7.4.28). But the principle noted earlier in relation to really prestigious shrines applied here too: Pisatan independence depended on Arcadian force of arms, and the Arcadians were soon involved in the affairs of the shrine to the extent of using sacred treasure to pay troops (Xenophon Hellenica 7.4.33). Whether the Arcadians allowed the Pisatans more ceremonial precedence in 364 than they had enjoyed in Elean-conducted Olympic celebrations is not known, but in the eyes not just of posterity but even of contemporaries Arcadia, not Pisa, could be said to have the presidency of the shrine (Xenophon Hellenica 7.4.35). [53]

South of the Alpheus, the cities of the region eventually known as Triphylia, which had been brought under Elean control in Herodotus’ time (4.148.4), were liberated by Sparta c. 400 and became an independent federation allied to Sparta. [54] According to Strabo (8.3.13, 343), there had existed in “Triphylia” at Samikon, surely from of old, a “greatly revered” precinct, a grove of wild olives, of “Samian Poseidon”; “the Makistians tended it, and they proclaimed the sacred truce known as Samion. All the Triphylians contribute to the shrine.” Strabo must be anachronistic, it has been powerfully argued of late, in implying that this was an ethnic shrine of the “Triphylians”: for the grove’s standing as a regional religious centre must go back to the archaic period, whereas before c. 400 there was, it is urged, no region known as Triphylia, nor did the peoples inhabiting what later became that region see themselves as an ethnic unity. [55] The Samikon will before 400 have been a regional shrine but not an ethnic one; or, if ethnic, not of the Triphylians but of one of the sub-groups from which the Triphylians were eventually constituted, probably the Minyans. Whether this case for the “invention of Triphylia” is correct or not, one may wonder what the Elean attitude will have been in the fifth century to what was surely an important cult centre in recently subjected territory. Would they have been happy for business to continue as usual at what could easily have become a focus for resistance? Conversely, after 400 the new Triphylia can scarcely have failed to make use of the hallowed shrine. But let us note in passing that even the new Triphylia was not exempt from interference in its religious affairs, in this case from Sparta. [56] In 370/9 or shortly afterwards the Triphylians joined the Arcadian league, and no more is heard of their own confederacy: to put the matter differently, they now sought to maintain independence from Elis, their central aspiration, as members of the Arcadian league rather than through Spartan-backed independence. In ethnic terms, they either became Arcadians for the first time, or at all events surrendered one of the pair of passports (Minyan and Arcadian) that they had hitherto held. [57] Perhaps the importance of the cult at Samikon will have declined again, now that the Triphylians had definitively turned their eyes to the east. [58] Much of the history of the region may have been reflected in miniature in the history of the Samikon grove.

(1) Arcadia. Agreement between Mantinea and Helisson. [59] First half of the fourth century, perhaps 390s. Uniquely, a simple translation of the start of this document provides all the relevant information.

(2) Arcadia. Agreement of “συνοικία on equal and like terms” between Euaimon and Orchomenos, 360–350? [61] Euaimon is incorporated politically into Orchomenos (the continuing citizenship for both groups is that of Orchomenus, 42–43), and some physical relocation is envisaged: the Euaimonians swear “not to revolt” from the Orchomenians, the Orchomenians “not to expel” the Euaimonians (53–90; questions of land-holding are also treated earlier). “The hiera in Euaimon are to be conducted (?) there for ever monthly as in their present condition” (6–10: τὰ δὲ ἱερὰ τὰ ἰν Εὐαίμονι ἀ[ῒ κ]ὰ μῆν’ αὖθι κα[τάπ]̣ε̣ρ ἔχει συντ[ελῆσθαι – – -). Nothing is said in the very incomplete surviving text about rites in Orchomenus.

(3) Caria. Agreement between Herakleia under Latmos and Pidasa, 323–313/2 BCE. [62] The Pidaseans are to be incorporated within an expanded tribal system in Herakleia under Latmos, and provision is made for population transfer from Pidasa to Herakleia (19–20, 27–28); whether the stipulation that “neither city” is to retain any non-shared property (16) can be taken to prove continued subordinate existence of Pidasa is doubtful (the phrase may be retrospective). “The Pidaseans allotted (to tribes and phratries) are to share in all hiera” (10–11). Revenues of the two communities, whether sacred or secular, are to be pooled henceforth, and for six years there is to be compulsory intermarriage between the two (13–17, 21–25). Nothing is said about Pidasean sacra (enough survives of the decree to render it certain that nothing was said in a lost portion), and the decree is to be displayed in Mylasa and Herakleia (33–36), not Pidasa. [63]

(4) Ionia. Letters of Antigonos Monophthalmos to Teos concerning the sunoikismos of the Lebedians into Teos, c. 303. [64] What the king proposed was complete physical transfer of Lebedos to Teos. The surviving portion of the first letter begins with the ruling that the Lebedian representative at the Panionion should “tent and celebrate” (σκηνοῦν καὶ πανηγυράζειν) with the Teans and be called Tean; detailed religious rules had perhaps preceded.

(5) Ionia. Admission of the inhabitants of Magnesia on the Sipylos and of the fort Palaiomagnesia into Smyrnaian citizenship. Soon (?) after 242. [65] The professed aim is to ensure the loyalty of the new citizens to Seleukos II. Some limited population transfer to Smyrna is envisaged (56–59). The new citizens are to enjoy “like and equal rights” with the other Smyrnaians (44; 53; 77–78). Nothing is said about maintenance of the cults of Magnesia, though some are alluded to (84–85, cf. 61) and the document survives complete; the assumption evidently is that they will persist.

(6) Thessaly. Aetolia arbitration between Melitea and Perea. [66] 213/2 BCE. Aetolian arbitration has been sought in consequence of disputes that have arisen in a sympolity by which Perea, while remaining physically distinct, has apparently become politically a part of Melitea and under its laws. It emerges that under the sympolity the Meliteans are required to “tend τὰ κοινά in Perea” and pay for certain specific functions there, including the sacrifice of the Soteria (23–28); are other sacrifices in Perea still funded from separate Perean funds?

(7) West Locris. Agreement between Hypnia and Myania. [67] Early second century BCE. The two poleis establish a common archon and agree to collaborate in various areas, such as joint embassies; but they retain a separate identity and separate magistracies. Participation in shared activities is to occur κὰτ τὸ μέρος, καθὼς καὶ τᾶν θυσιᾶν μετέχοντι (18–19, 28–29), a phrase which is likely to indicate an uneven proportionality (e.g. one city contributing two victims to the other’s one) rather than simple alternation. [68] It does not emerge whether all sacrifices were now joint on this basis or whether the two cities retained some specific to themselves.

(8) Ionia/Caria. Agreement of Miletos and Pidasa. 188/7 or 187/6 BCE? [69] The Pidaseans are to become Milesians (10–12) and to “share in the same hiera and magistracies and everything else as other Milesians” (13–15). A fort (at least) at Pidasa will be maintained and the territory will continue to be cultivated (15–25); but “390 beds” are to be provided for Pidaseans relocating to Miletos (25–28). The Pidaseans are to retain “sacred and public properties,” but after a five year period of grace pay normal Milesian taxes on them (28–33). The Pidaseans swear by “the gods who hold their city” (63).

(9) Phocis. Agreement between Stiris and Medeon. [70] Second century BCE. The Medeonians are to become “like and equal” Stirians (10–12). A hierotamias is to be appointed from the Medeonians to sacrifice the ancestral Medeonian sacrifices prescribed in the constitutional law (νόμος πολιτικός, 19–21). Medeonians are to participate in all Stirian sacrifices, and vice versa (51–55). At the end a payment is specified to be made by the Stirians to “the phratry of the Medeonians” (76–82), apparently an indication of the new standing of the Medeonians within Stiris.

The polis of Kos on the site of the present day town on the north east coast of the island is said to have been founded in 366/5 (Diodorus 15.76.2). The ancient sources (Diodorus 15.76.2, and Strabo 14.2.19) describe the event as a transfer of population to a new site, Strabo speaking more specifically of a transfer away from an existing polis Astypalaia; but Thucydides (8.41.2) attests the existence in the fifth century of a second Koan polis on the east of the island, Kos Meropis, very probably to be located (on the basis of archaeological evidence antedating 366) on or near the site of the “new” town of Kos. It follows that what happened in 366/5 was, in urbanistic terms, a re–foundation on a greatly enlarged scale, not a new foundation, but in political terms the first unification of an island hitherto divided into at least two poleis (since Thucydides and some other sources imply that Kos Meropis no less than Strabo’s Astypalaia had been a polis prior to 366). [71] There survive extensive fragments, dated palaeographically to the second half of the fourth century, of a calendar of public sacrifices which it is tempting to suppose was produced, after some delay, to meet the needs of the newly unified state (RO 62): the very existence of such a calendar at this date outside Attica and the thoroughness with which it prescribes ritual procedures are both unusual phenomena which invite a specific explanation. A roughly contemporary text which regulates the terms of office of the priest of Zeus Polieus and coordinates the island’s cult of Apollo Dalios may have been similarly motivated. [72]

Whatever the immediate impulse for the creation of these texts, the calendar that survives is beyond a doubt that of the synoecized state at a date not long after the synoecism; the prominence in it of an elaborate ritual of Zeus Polieus is very appropriate. But to get behind the calendar to a prior organisation of Koan religion is arduous work. In some cases the calendar that emerged after the coalescence of two poleis may have been that of the more dominant of the two, modestly adjusted and supplemented, but a more radical reshaping will certainly have been required here. The dominant polis had hitherto, if we believe Strabo, been Astypalaia, but the central focus of religious life was henceforth to be Kos new town; even if we suppose that some “Pankoan” rituals had been celebrated before the synoecism (for we know that on Kos as on other islands common activities such as the issue of common coins could antedate formal political unification), it is not very likely that they took place in Kos old town. The religious life of the island had to be largely relocated, therefore. Again, in the cults of the new state the three Dorian tribes had a very prominent place. Can we suppose that the Dorian tribes had had such an island-wide role before 366, with, say, Dymanes from Astypalaia occasionally meeting with those from Kos Meropis (and whatever other poleis may once have existed) to celebrate common rites? Wherever else we meet them, the Dorian tribes are sub-divisions of a unified state, not a form of association transcending political divisions: pandymanian rites bringing together Dymanians from different poleis are not known. Or were the individual poleis each divided into the three Dorian tribes without any connection being established between those of one polis and another? But the deme Isthmiotai of Hellenistic Kos, which is generally accepted to be the old polis of Astypalaia under a new name, was divided into three tribes which were not the Dorian ones; and there is evidence for such local non-Dorian tribes elsewhere on the island. [73] It is hard to see why one polis should have had both a Dorian and a concurrent non-Dorian tribal structure. Perhaps then the Dorian tribes were first introduced in 366, [74] as a way of replicating at whole-island level the principle of tribal division familiar from the individual poleis. This was an altogether new framework for religious life if so, even if one based on more than one familiar template.

Koan religion of the Hellenistic period is very fully documented at several levels, and on the basis of this material one can try to distinguish pre-existing cults incorporated in the state calendar from others newly created for it. But here too it is hard to make sure progress. The idea that it was the synoecism which elevated Asclepius, hitherto a god of Astypalaia alone, to national and then international prominence cannot be sustained: [75]

Asclepius has no special connection with Astypalaia, nor does Asclepius’ rise to fame occur quite early enough to fit the hypothesis. A more reliable instance of a cult prominent both at Astypalaia and in the calendar of the city is that of Apollo Delios: the local cult was replicated by that at the centre, but not replaced by it. [76] A similar process can be postulated for Zeus Polieus and for Demeter. [77] Another cult found both in the city and in at least two demes is that of Aphrodite Pandemos, but here what happened is perhaps the reverse of the case of Apollo Delios: not adoption by the city of a pre-existent cult, but creation at the centre of a new unifying cult which the demes were then encouraged to take up: Pandemos can be taken to mean “of all the demes,” and offerings were made to her on the same day of the year both in the city and in the demes. [78]

The firmest general proposition that can be advanced is that the many cults of new Kos town supplemented and may also have replicated those of the old settlements but did not undermine them. At least two demes of Hellenistic Kos, Isthmiotai and Halasarna (one certainly and one possibly a polis under the ancien régime), hosted flourishing locally administered cults: the cult of Apollo and Heracles at Halasarna, for instance, remained much more prominent than, say, any deme-administered cult of Attica. [79]

When Kalymnos was incorporated into Kos at the end of the third century it became, like the old poleis, a deme. Even as a deme it appears to have maintained its old tradition of sending dedications to Delos: the deme of the Isthmiotai (quondam city of Astypalaia) did the same. [80]

In 408/7, according to Diodorus (13.75.1), “the inhabitants of the island Rhodes and of Ialysos, Lindos and Kameiros [the three existing poleis on the island] transferred (μετῳκίσθησαν) to one city, what is now called Rhodes.” Diodorus is quite wrong to imply that the three old poleis were abandoned, though the new capital did quite quickly achieve administrative and military importance. [81] Even before the foundation of Rhodes town, there had been a sense of an island identity (outside the island, for instance, the great athlete Diagoras was a Rhodian, not an Ialysian), a shared mythology, probably some panrhodian cults, and the possibility of collective political action; most scholars suppose that a formal panrhodian political structure was first created in 408, or possibly three years earlier, but an interesting case has recently been made that earlier collective action was already based on a federal structure. [82]

What is universally agreed is that the cults of the new capital were not built around those of one of the old cities or a selection from all of them. The synoecism affected the religious life of the old cities (it can scarcely be coincidence that the list of annual priests in the cult of Athena Lindia, one of many priest lists published on the island, seems to have begun in 406/5, the second year after the synoecism), [83] but not in the sense that they surrendered anything up to Rhodes town. The cult of Athena Lindia was certainly the most prestigious in the island and had a kind of panrhodian role; but neither was the cult opened out to become one in which all Rhodians participated by right, nor was there any attempt to create a new Athena Lindia in the city. The same point can be made about Apollo Erethemios of Ialysos and many other local cults. The emblem of this continuing religious separatism is a Lindian inscription of the 320s, quoted above, which honours a long list of fellow citizens who fought successfully in a court to preserve the exclusivity of Lindian cult. [84] Here Lindian prerogatives are defended by the Lindians themselves; but the original decision not to make the new calendar for the whole island an amalgam of existing rites may rather have been motivated by fears of an individual city acquiring undue prominence. [85]

A paradoxical consequence of the synoecism seems then to have been to make Athena Lindia in some ways less of a panrhodian goddess than she had been before. Priesthood had an unusual prominence in Hellenistic Rhodes, and numerous priesthoods open only to local citizens continued to be eagerly competed for in Lindos and Kameiros (the situation in Ialysos, unexcavated, is less well known). The Lindians even, extraordinarily, had their own “crowned games.” [86] Thus the cultic life of the old cities outlived the synoecism in full vigour. They seem to have been the main conduits through which local religious life was organised: a decree of the Kameirians summons together representatives of the various Kameirian κτοιναί (local sub-divisions of mysterious character) to consider (ἀθρεῖν), collectively, (and revise?) the “publicly-financed rites of the Kameirians.” [87] The one sense in which the major local cult centres had a panrhodian role is that they hosted games which might, like games organised by Rhodes itself, involve competition between the three tribes, recruited from the whole island. [88] On these and perhaps some other occasions a cult in one of the old towns might play host to all Rhodes; but such an event remained a “panêguris of the Lindians” (or Ialysians, or Kameirians), presided over by members of that community. [89]

What of the new capital? The priest of Halios in Rhodes was eventually to become the official who gave his name to the Rhodian year; the post was a pinnacle of prestige to which the ambitious might aspire after, but never before, having held one of the local priesthoods. [90] Halios had always been central to Rhodian mythology but not to cult, and everything commends the widely accepted view that it was the synoecism that first brought Halios to cultic prominence as a unifying symbol of the new state. (Some suppose that the new city was built around a modest existing sanctuary of the god.) [91] The early years of the cult, long obscure, have recently been illuminated by the discovery of a late-fifth century bronze kalpe inscribed “a prize from Rhodes from the Sun” (ἆθλον ἐγ ῾Ρόδο παρ’ ῾Αλίο). [92] It looks as if the agonistic Halieia, the island’s greatest festival in the hellenistic period, was set up more or less simultaneously with the foundation of the new city; the priesthood of Halios may well date back to the same time. [93] A festival Epitaphia is likely to have honoured the mythical “settler” of the whole island, Tlapolemus; if that identification of the honorand of the Epitaphia is correct, this is the one attested case in which Rhodes town took over a pre-existing festival: Tlapolemeia are already mentioned by Pindar, though we do not know how they were organised. [94] Many further festivals were to follow (Asklapieia, Dionysia, Diosoteria [Maiuri 19], Dioskouria, Dipanamia, Hippokathesia, Poseidania, and eventually Alexandreia and Rhomaia), [95] at many of which teams competed from the three tribes, Lindia, Kameiria and Ialysia, into which, for these purposes, the old cities had mutated; and many individual cults are attested, very prominent among them that of Dionysus in a fine precinct. [96] But fourth-century evidence is too scarce to allow any detailed reconstruction of the growth of the pantheon.

A separate but related question is that of Rhodes’ treatment of her overseas possessions. Since most of those communities (the islands, and those of the “incorporated Peraea”) constituted or formed parts of demes annexed to the three old Rhodian towns, an obvious possibility is that their rites retained the same independence as those of the Attic demes vis-à-vis those of Athens. And we duly find local priesthoods, ἀγῶνες and πανηγύρεις, subscriptions to build temples, cult regulations, and communal sacrifices and banquets. [97] Two important cults, however, seem to have been administered in some degree from Rhodes itself, that of Poseidon Porthmios on Karpathos, where ἰεραγωγοί were appointed by the Rhodian assembly (IG XII 1 1035.9–11), and that of Hemithea at Kastabos, where the scale of the fourth-century temple implies funding from the centre even if (the point is disputed: see Bresson’s commentary on his no. 44) the dêmos which issued a decree regulating the cult was that of the Bybassians and not of Rhodes itself. [98] Here then at least a partial “take over” of the most important regional cults seems to have occurred, though we have no reason to believe that it was resented. “Rhodianisation” of a different kind is visible where distinctively Rhodian cults are found in Rhodian overseas territories. It can only have been after the incorporation of Karpathos into Rhodes that the islands’ three poleis, Brykous, Arceseia, and Karpathos itself, all acquired cults of Athena Lindia. [99] Whether the impulse to introduce these cults came from Rhodes or from Karpathos itself unfortunately cannot be determined. At Thysannous a subscription was launched to build a temple Ἀθάνας [.] αμ[ , which by a plausible supplement becomes Ἀθάνας [Κ]αμ[ειράδος and thus a further example of the same phenomenon. [100] Financing by subscription must imply a certain local receptivity if so. Then there are the cults of Helios, “the Rhodian dêmos,” and the nymph Rhodos found at scattered places in the subject Peraea, but also e.g. in Kos, an island closely associated with Rhodes but never dependent upon it. [101] A “religious policy” of disseminating Rhodian cults, a rare thing indeed for a Greek city, has accordingly been postulated. But that intriguing issue cannot be pursued further here.

What place, finally, was there for “overseas Rhodians” in the religious life of the island itself? Kameiros summoned representatives of its κτοιναί in the Peraea as well as on Rhodes itself to discuss the Kameirian public cults (but the island Chalke, for reasons which are unclear, was given the option of not participating). [102] On the other hand, overseas Lindians never held the priesthood of Athena Lindia and must be presumed to have been debarred from it. [103] But overseas Kameirians participated fully in the priesthoods and magistracies of Kameiros; Lindian exclusivity seems to be the exception. [104]

Alexandreia Troas was a new city synoecized by Antigonos Monophthalmos from at least seven others (of which one, Skepsis, quite soon broke away, as did another, Kebren, later). Few of the “tributary” cities seem to have been completely abandoned, and two (Larisa and Hamaxitos) re-appear as hosts to Delphic thearoi c. 230–220; archaeology appears to attest continuing cult activity at another (Neandreia). The new city made use of the ancient sanctuary of Apollo Smintheus, in the territory of Hamaxitos, to display its documents, and building occurred in the sanctuary on a scale which implies the involvement of Alexandreia; whether administrative control was formally taken over is not established. [105]