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Barnes, J. 1999. “Introduction to Aspasius.” In Aspasius: The Earliest Extant Commentary on Aristotle’s Ethics, edited by A. Alberti, and R. W. Sharples, 1–50. Berlin.
Boudon-Millot, V. 2007a. Galien. Vol. 1, Introduction générale; Sur l’ordre de ses propres livres; Sur ses propres livres; Que l’excellent médecin est aussi philosophe. Paris.
Boudon-Millot, V. 2007b. “Un traité perdu de Galien miraculeusement retrouvé, le Sur l’inutilité de se chagriner: Texte grec et traduction française.” In La science médicale antique: Nouveaux regards, edited by V. Boudon-Millot, A. Guardasole, and C. Magdelaine, 72–123. Paris.
Bowie, E. L. 1982. “The Importance of Sophists.” YClS 27: 29–59.
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Fazzo, S. 2012. “The Metaphysics from Aristotle to Alexander of Aphrodisias.” In Ancient Philosophy in Memory of R. W. Sharples, edited by P. Adamson, 51–68. BICS 55, no. 1. London.
Frede, D. 2013. “Alexander of Aphrodisias.” In Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. N. Zalta. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2013/entries/alexander-aphrodisias/.
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P A R TVII
RELIGION AND RELIGIOUS LITERATURE
CHAPTER 38
CULT
MARIETTA HORSTER
FROM the Hellenistic period onward, there was an increase in the importance of festivals, rituals, public performances and office-holding in the context of more or less public cults and of private cult associations. This seems to be a clear trend, though it was interrupted from time to time by the effects of war. Several Roman emperors then fostered this tendency during the imperial period. Augustus supported the renewal of temple building and helped to restore the property of sanctuaries (e.g., Res Gestae 24; IK Ephesos 18b, 3501; IK Kyme 17). New festivals and new cults were inaugurated in Rome, Italy, and the provinces, and the ruler cult with its sacrifices, processions, and festivals gave a new structure to the religious calendar of many cities in the empire. However, Roman dominance had further consequences for the cultic life of Greek cities, for example the priesthood of the imperial cult, which became one of the most important positions in the larger cities, or the priesthood of the provincial council, which was reserved for the wealthiest citizens who could afford to pay for the costly festival in honor of the emperor and Roma. The Julio-Claudian emperors and the Flavians continued the pattern set by Augustus: sacred property was protected, religious rituals were observed, there was continuity in cult, and individual or municipal privileges in the context of cult and religion were recognized. In the second century, emperors like Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius financed building projects in the eastern provinces, of which the temple of Zeus at Athens is one of the most spectacular. Completely new construction of a sanctuary with a major temple is rare in the mid- and later second century and is not associated with any par
ticular source of funding (e.g., imperial, public, or private). The monumental and visual presence of the divine world is one facet of ancient religious life, while ritual and cult, staging and performing the numinous, are another. Dio of Prusa even goes so far to claim that in his lifetime, the late first century CE, sacrifices and festivals were the most important means by which Greek cities competed and won fame (Dio Chr. Or. 21.102). The number, length, and splendor of “religious” festivals and processions seem to increase again in the second part of the second century, as do reports about the generosity and extent of gifts of money and food.1 Herodes Atticus’s lavish expenditure in Athens (Philostr. VS 549) is one such example. At the Panathenaia, Atticus paid for the sacrifice of a hundred oxen to the goddess Athena and entertained the Athenians with the sacrificial feast. At the city-Dionysia, he arranged a splendid wine event for citizens and foreigners in the Ceramicus.
In addition, the international Panhellenic contests at major sanctuaries, above all at Olympia and Delphi, were among the most important occasions for sophists to appear in public and gain recognition. The “Olympic speech” was a standard part of rhetorical education, and other genres of speech were also favored at the various artistic competitions that were staged in the context of (religious) festivals.2
All this is known not only from building inscriptions, inscribed honors recording benefactions, and decrees and letters set up in stone, but also from many literary texts. Pausanias’s praise of the Greek religious zenith of archaic and classical times contrasts with his rather saturnine account of the contemporary scene in the mid-second century, with its abandoned sites, neglected cult tradition, and collapsed temple roofs in the very heart of Greece.3 However, Pausanias’s description of Greece as a land with divine presence manifest in the remains of the past, with his interest in cult, myths, and traditions, is in itself a counterbalance to his own picture of contemporary Greece, as are texts by other authors who put cult and religious movements at the heart of their writings. Christian authors, and especially those in the tradition of apologetic writings, have their first peak in this period and the first heroic accounts of individual Christian martyrs, too, were published at this time. The present chapter will not address such texts or the changes and spread of Christian cult organization; likewise, it must leave out accounts of the struggle of the Jews with the Roman authorities and the drastic consequences for their cult after the Bar Kochba Revolt was crushed in 136 CE. However, it should be noted that some scholars have seen parallels between Christian narrative traditions and sophistic texts, both those that play with ideas of thaumaturgy and those that show parallels between the plots of Jesus’s or the Apostles’ lives and those of pagan heroes like Apollonius in Philostratus.4
Furthermore, in addition to sophistic literary representations of the importance of rituals, religious offices, and cult traditions, “real-life” sophists were involved in cult organizations and held priesthoods of the imperial cult and of more or less important deities. The more down-to-earth topics, such as the imperial measures concerning cult and religion, and individual sophists’ involvement in cults, will be treated at the start of this chapter, whereas the more “sophistic” (or literary) question of the role of cults in the sophists’ texts and the role played by the sophists in the cultic and religious life of the cities of the eastern provinces will be treated at the end.
38.1 IMPERIAL MEASURES CONCERNING CULT IN THE EASTERN PROVINCES
Only a few imperial measures that concern cult and religion were of general importance and valid for the empire as a whole, or at least for one or more provinces. One measure (though of little relevance in the context of cults) is, however, significant for the general perception of the period: it was probably Antoninus Pius who introduced a ritual for the newly wed.5Ob insigniam eorum concordiam—in order to express their harmony and concord—every young couple had to sacrifice on a specific altar erected in honor of the imperial couple, at least in Rome and Ostia, and perhaps in all cities of the empire (Rémy 2005, 131). The visual, ritual, and verbal expression of the unity and harmony of a couple (dextrarum iunctio), or of a city, group of people, province, or region, or of the Roman Empire as a whole, were the main keywords of the Antonine period.6
The cult of Antinous, Hadrian’s beloved young friend, was another new feature in the sacred landscape of more than one region or province, but while it was widespread it often was not long-lived. The cult veneration had the character of a hero cult. Antinous was the “ideal” ephebe and was sometimes adapted to other heroes (like Androclos or Adonis) or divinities (like Osiris or Apollo).7 Hadrian’s role in the “encouragement” of this cult is far from clear.
The many known imperial benefactions and regulations concern in most cases only a single city, sanctuary, or cult, one individual priest, or the priesthood of one deity in one city. Among these cases, building activity is the most prominent topic, at least in the material that has been transmitted by inscriptions, biographies, or other literary traditions. Most of these reports concern Hadrian. M. Boatwright has listed the temples, shrines, and sanctuaries that Hadrian built, rebuilt, or supported with financial or material resources; about a third of all his benefactions concern building work.8 Only a few cases were entirely new constructions: in Athens the temple of (Hera and) Zeus Panhellenios (Paus. 1.18.9), and in the newly inaugurated colonia Aelia Capitolina of Jerusalem the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus (Cass. Dio 69.12.1 and others). Hadrian rebuilt the archaic temple of Apollo in Phocian Abai (Paus. 10.35.4), the extraurban sanctuary of Poseidon Hippios at Arcadian Mantineia (Paus. 8.10.2), and the shrine of Pythian Apollo in Megara, which he turned from a building of brick into one of white marble (Paus. 1.42.5). Pausanias relates that in Abai and Mantineia the older structures were preserved, a mark of the emperor’s respect for cult traditions and for the mythological and historical past of the sites. Hadrian completed the Olympieum in Athens (Paus. 1.18.9, cf. Willers 1990), and in Asia Minor and the Aegean islands he supported several construction projects connected with sanctuaries: the sanctuary of Zeus in Cyzicus,9 perhaps a (cult?) building in Metropolis (IK Ephesos 3433, cf. Mitchell 1987, 358), and in Teos the temple of Dionysus.10 This last is one of the few sanctuaries connected with the administration of the association of Dionysian technites, the important professional organization of artists who performed at many of the sacred festivals and were an indispensable guarantee of a certain standard of entertainment. But Hadrian did more: he formally took over responsibility for the oracular sanctuary of Apollo Claros for one year (Sherk 1991, 241) and, as prophetes in Didyma, for the temple of Apollo there (Boatwright 2000, 69–70). When he stayed in Pergamum, he may have helped finance the decoration of the Asclepieum in that city.11 If we can trust the Byzantine author Georgios Kedrenos, Trajan paid for the expensive temple door (púle) of the Artemisium of Ephesus (Kedr. 1.595) and Antoninus Pius added to the funding of the temple of Artemis in Termessus (SEG 41.1255).12 Pausanias noted a costly and extravagant votive offering by Hadrian for the temple of Hera in Achaean Argos—a peacock, sacred to Hera, made of gold and gemstones—but it should be noted that such gifts are not a phenomenon typical only of the second-century sophistic era, as Nero had dedicated a golden crown and a purple robe to Hera nearly a century earlier (Paus. 2.17.6). The renovation of hero shrines and tombs was another similar measure that promoted a city’s cultural and religious renown, appearance, and standing.13 For some, not only building activities but also imperial visits like those of Hadrian, or that of Caracalla to the Achilleum, may have made hero shrines a more attractive subject in contemporary literature, as seen in Philostratus’s Heroicus or in Philostratus’s Life of Apollonius, in which he makes Apollonius consecrate a new cult for Palamedes.14
The imperial cult was extended by all emperors from Augustus onward, most often in the form of permissions, grants and titles: Ephesus received a second “Neokoros” title (and temple) from Hadrian after an intervention by the priest of the imperial cult (and probable sophist
) Ti. Claudius Piso Diophantes (IK Ephesos 428), while in Smyrna the sophist M. Antonius Polemon was able to convince Hadrian to grant the city a Neokoros temple and contribute to the building expenses (Philostr. VS 532, 539–540; after Polemon’s death, his written speech was performed by another orator before the emperor).15 Coins and inscriptions show that Hadrian awarded Neokoros status to the cities of Tarsus and Cyzicus too. In the late second and third centuries, the title seems to have been widespread and it is attested in, for example, Magnesia, Philadelphia, and Tralleis, but it is unclear whether any privileges were connected with this now common grant. Another impulse for the imperial cult was given by the Panhellenion established by Hadrian (cf. Pirenne-Delforge 2008, 156–171).
As well as building activities, votives, donations, and new organizational forms like the Panhellenes, there were measures that perhaps got less publicity but nonetheless had lasting consequences. For example, Hadrian regulated conflicts over sacred land and its income for the city of Aezani and the sanctuary of Zeus (CIL 3.355 = Smallwood 2.454); in Ephesus, the goddess Artemis received the right to accept legacies and estates (IK Ephesos 274), privileges for which the city thanked its “founder” and “savior” Hadrian, even though he was not the first emperor to grant privileges to Artemis, as we know that at least Augustus and Claudius did so. These and other cult privileges, as well as permissions to hold festivals, seem to have been confirmed again, either at times when substantial changes were made (perhaps only those concerning property rights and additional costs?) or when a new emperor was on the throne. A dossier of letters with appeals and the emperors’ responses is preserved in Delphi concerning the sanctuary, sacred funds, and festivals, especially the Pythian Games (cf. Millar 1977, 450–451). Such decisions of the emperors involved embassies and, in some of the inscribed evidence and a few of Philostratus’s short notes on the lives of the sophists, we are told the names and status of these ambassadors. A more personal interest in a specific cult seems to lie behind another kind of involvement in cult: for some of the emperors who were initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries (e.g., Augustus, Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius) we know of cases concerning the Eleusinian priests that were heard and decided by the emperor.16
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