3. Twenty Years of the Divine Demetrios Poliorcetes

In 314 B.C. Antigonos I Monophthalmos (“One-Eyed”), a Macedonian general with a large army and plans to lay claim to Alexander’s empire, declared in the so-called Proclamation of Tyre that all Greek city-states should be free, ungarrisoned, and autonomous. At last in 307/6 he sent his son Demetrios, soon to earn the epithet Poliorcetes (“Besieger”), to liberate Athens. Demetrios defeated Cassander’s garrison at Mounichia and two months later, as liberator, entered Athens. He freed Athenians from Cassander, gave them back their border forts, drove the “tyrant” Demetrios of Phaleron in flight to Cassander, and restored the democracy. And, within months, his father Antigonos sent a large shipment of grain and ship timbers to Athens.

Thus began a stormy twenty-year relationship between Athens and Demetrios Poliorcetes, a relationship that brought turmoil to Athenian politics and Athenian religion.^[1] The pro-democratic and pro-independence factions in Athens must have viewed the events of 307/6 with great enthusiasm. They were freed from Cassander and his hated garrison. They again would have control of their own land and harbor. The tyrant had been deposed, and Antigonos’ proclamation and Demetrios’ actions made the restoration of traditional Athenian democracy viable. Antigonos’ gift of grain helped alleviate a chronic problem, and the ship timbers made possible a rebuilding of the navy. The prospect in 307/6 must have been for a restoration of Athens, both internally and in foreign affairs, to the conditions of the age of Lycourgos. And, should they be needed, the powerful Antigonos and Demetrios would serve as guarantors of this welcome new status. Antigonos and Demetrios were both “saviors” (sōtēres, σωτῆρες) and “benefactors” (εὐεργέται) of Athens, far beyond that which any foreign power, Macedonian or other, had been since the ouster of the Peisistratids in the sixth century B.C.

In 306 Demetrios left Athens to tend to his father’s campaigns in Asia and the Aegean. The Antigonids continued to provide financial support, but militarily Athens was on her own. She was soon attacked by Cassander’s forces, and in 304 Demetrios had to return to Athens to rescue her from Cassander’s siege. Again Athens was “saved” by Demetrios and again was deeply grateful. Her physical safety and her democracy were preserved.

In 301 the Antigonids suffered a crushing defeat by a coalition of the forces of Seleucos, Lysimachos, and Cassander at the battle of Ipsos in Asia. Antigonos, aged eighty-one, was killed, and Demetrios was severely weakened. Athens, alert to the new political situation, declared neutrality and for five years maintained amicable relations with all the Macedonian principals: Demetrios, Cassander, Lysimachos, Seleucos, and Ptolemy. In 296 Demetrios attempted militarily to reassert his control over Athens, but he succeeded in taking only Rhamnous and Eleusis. In 295/4, after a long and devastating siege of the city itself, he captured it and garrisoned Piraeus and the Mouseion Hill adjacent to the Acropolis. In 288/7 Athens revolted from him and drove his garrison from the Mouseion Hill, but not from Mounichia, Piraeus, Rhamnous, and Eleusis. Demetrios made a final attempt, again unsuccessful, to take Athens by force. Then, as part of a peace treaty with Ptolemy, he withdrew from Athens to Asia but maintained control of Eleusis, Rhamnous, Phyle, Salamis, Sounion, and Piraeus through garrisons. This was the last the Athenians were to see of Demetrios Poliorcetes himself.

On four occasions Demetrios lived in Athens for a time, in 307/6 and 304/3 as liberator, in 295/4 and 291/0 as conqueror. These “visits” serve to punctuate major religious developments during the period and provide the structure for this chapter.

As we have seen in chapters 1 and 2, in 307/6, after the liberation of Athens and the restoration of the democracy, in Stratocles’ decree the Athenians expressed their respect for Lycourgos and perhaps their aspirations for a return to the conditions of his age. There Lycourgos, nearly twenty years after his death, is honored for his and his ancestors’ pro-democratic spirit, for his economic, building, and religious activities, for his military preparations, for his opposition to Alexander, and for his honesty (for the text of the decree, see chapter 1, pp. 20–21). In all of these areas the comparison to the recently deposed “tyrant” Demetrios of Phaleron would have been obvious.

The Stratocles, son of Eudemos, of the deme Diomeia (APF 12938) who proposed this reassertion of Lycourgan values is a pivotal figure in the intertangled political and religious history of his time. He emerged immediately as a strong—probably the strongest—supporter of Demetrios Poliorcetes and set the agenda for the many honors, political and religious, that the Athenians showered upon the Macedonian general and his father. In the years 307–301 Stratocles proposed no fewer than twenty decrees that were passed by the Ekklesia and survive on stone.^[2] For fifteen, the content of the decree is known, and of these at least ten award civil honors and/or citizenship to ambassadors, friends, or agents of Demetrios.^[3] Their dates reveal that Stratocles’ political career was in hiatus during the reign of Demetrios of Phaleron, even though it had begun at least by 324/3 when he was one of the prosecutors of Demosthenes in the Harpalos affair.^[4] Stratocles was thus both initially pro-democratic and, after 307, a supporter of Demetrios Poliorcetes. His family, which can be traced back two generations, was wealthy and had performed the usual liturgies expected of the rich (APF 12938). His reputation in the later biographical tradition is uniformly bad; he had come to represent the supposed degeneracy of the Athenians who fawned upon Demetrios. Plutarch takes out on Stratocles his dislike of Demetrios Poliorcetes and the divine honors he was given at Athens. Stratocles was, according to Plutarch, “audacious” (παράτολμος), lived “licentiously” (ἀσελγῶς), and seemed to imitate the “coarseness” (βωμολοχίαν) and “loathsomeness” (βδελυρίαν) of the fifth-century demagogue Cleon in his behavior toward the Demos (Dem. 11–12; cf. 24.5).

In terms of the religious history of the time we need to distinguish between foreign influences on Athens and the reception of these influences by the Athenians. Demetrios Poliorcetes, in a sense, represents the former, Stratocles the latter. But we must remember that the divine honors for Demetrios which we shall detail were only proposed by Stratocles. They were approved by the majority vote of the Ekklesia. And those divine honors given to Demetrios in 307/6 were proposed and no doubt enacted by the pro-democratic faction in Athens.

Demetrios Poliorcetes came to Athens in June 307/6 as her liberator from the rule of Cassander and Demetrios of Phaleron, as restorer of the democracy, and as guarantor of Athenian autonomy. Here Plutarch describes the reception the Athenians gave him:

Demetrios found the mouth of the (Piraeus) harbor unbarred and sailed in. He was now in full view of all. From his ship he gave a signal for calm and silence, and when this was accomplished, through a herald he proclaimed that his father had sent him, with good fortune, to free the Athenians and to throw out the garrison and to restore to the Athenians their laws and ancestral constitution. After this proclamation was made, the majority (of the Athenians) immediately put their shields down before their feet and applauded. And, shouting, they were bidding Demetrios to disembark, calling him “benefactor” (εὐεργέτην) and “savior” (σωτῆρα). (Plut. Dem. 8.4–9.1)

Two months later, when Demetrios entered the city itself, the Athenians voted their benefactor and savior honors. The most detailed account of these honors is from Diodoros 20.46.1–4:

After Demetrios had razed the whole of Mounichia, he restored freedom to the Demos (of the Athenians) and established friendship and alliance with them. On the proposal of Stratocles, the Athenians voted to erect gold statues of Antigonos and Demetrios on a chariot near Harmodios and Aristogeiton; to award them both crowns worth 200 talents; to erect an altar and call it “of the Saviors” (Σωτέρων); to add to the (existing) ten tribes two, Demetrias and Antigonis; to perform for Demetrios and Antigonos each year contests, a procession, and a sacrifice; and to weave (Antigonos and Demetrios) into the robe (πέπλον) of Athena. The Demos (of Athens), having been destroyed in the Lamian War by Antipater, after fifteen years unexpectedly recovered their ancestral constitution.…And Antigonos, after ambassadors arrived from Athens and delivered the decree about the honors and described (the need for) grain and wood for shipbuilding, gave them 150,000 medimnoi of grain and sufficient wood for 100 ships. He also drove out the garrison from (the island of) Imbros and returned that city to the Athenians.

The honors voted for Antigonos and Demetrios were certainly grand and exceeded, each of them, honors hitherto paid to living men, but all are explicable as extensions of Athenian religious traditions.^[5] Let us look at them individually.

1. Gold (Probably Gilded) Statues Near Harmodios and Aristogeiton.

Honorary statues had, in the late fourth century, become fashionable. There were, reputedly, 360 of Demetrios of Phaleron, all but one of which were destroyed in 307.^[6] Stratocles’ decree of 307/6 provided a bronze statue for Lycourgos, and Demosthenes was similarly honored forty years after his death. The gold of the Antigonos-Demetrios group is, however, special and brings to mind the chryselephantine statue of Athena Parthenos by Phidias.^[7] The Antigonid group was to be erected “near Harmodios and Aristogeiton,” a siting usually prohibited by law,^[8] but appropriate. Antigonos and Demetrios were, like Harmodios and Aristogeiton, “tyrant-removers” if not tyrannicides, and, because of them, democracy was restored. Conon had been honored with a statue in the Agora, the first such honor after that of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, for overthrowing the “tyranny” of the Spartans in 394. In 371/0 Iphicrates, a hero of the Corinthian War, was given a bronze statue and the full range of honors accorded Harmodios and Aristogeiton. And, finally, centuries later, the statues of the assassins of Julius Caesar were erected alongside the tyrannicides.^[9]

2. Crowns for Demetrios and Antigonos, Worth 200 Talents.

Crowns in the form of wreaths, even gold ones, were regularly awarded to citizens and noncitizens alike for meritorious service in the fourth century. The honoree would then often dedicate his crown to Athena, and it would be stored in the Parthenon as part of her sacred property. Demosthenes had received such a crown worth 1,000 drachmas for his services to the state. But the cost of the gold wreaths for Antigonos and Demetrios (1,200,000 drachmas) is staggering, even in those inflationary times. The presumption may have been that Demetrios would dedicate these crowns to Athena, and thus the gold would not have left Athens but would have been transferred from the secular to the sacred treasury.^[10] Even so, one may suspect that in the original decree the 200 talents were intended to cover the costs not only of the crowns but also of the gold statues and all other honors to be paid to Antigonos and Demetrios.^[11]

3. A (Single) Altar, to be Called “of the Sōtēres.”

Here we move from honors on the human level, however elevated, to those appropriate only for a deity. By building an altar the Athenians established a cult of Antigonos and Demetrios as the “Saviors.” The altar presumes sacrifices, and sacrifices presume a priest. According to Plutarch, the priest of the Soteres was elected annually (Dem. 10.3),^[12] and that serves, if needed, as one further indication of the political nature of this cult. The Soteres were, indisputably, viewed as “gods” (θεοί), even though in the inscriptions of the time and possibly in the original decree the term θεοί was not used, perhaps intentionally.^[13]

The contests, procession, and sacrifice described by Diodoros were presumably for the annual festival of the Soteres. The elaborateness of this proposed new festival would put Antigonos and Demetrios, as a pair, on a par with the major deities of Athens—with Athena Polias and her Panathenaia and with Dionysos Eleuthereus and his City Dionysia. We shall soon see the form that this new festival was finally to take.

4. To Add to the (Existing) Ten Tribes Two, Demetrias and Antigonis.

This change^[14] required an enlargement of the Boule from five to six hundred and a major reorganization of the demes, a structure that had been unchanged since Cleisthenes in 508 B.C. There were religious effects also. Each of the ten tribes had a cult and priest of its eponymous hero, and now the new Antigonidai must have worshipped Antigonos as their eponym, the Demetriadai Demetrios. The original ten eponyms were all heroes: that is, legendary, dead mortals like Ajax and Erechtheus receiving cult.^[15] Presumably the new eponyms were thought gods, not heroes. As eponyms of tribes, Antigonos and Demetrios would each have had a priest and have received annual worship from the members of his tribe. These tribal cults were distinct from Antigonos’ and Demetrios’ combined cult as sōtēres.

5. Figures to be Woven into Peplos of Athena.

A new embroidered peplos was presented to the Athena Polias of the Erechtheum at each quadrennial celebration of the Great Panathenaia. The embroidery typically represented the victory of the Olympian gods over the Giants. The decree probably intended that among the Olympians Antigonos and Demetrios be represented for the presentation to be made in 302/1 B.C.. Here the Soteres would be imagined, like the Olympians, as overcoming the forces of evil and chaos in the world.^[16]

All of the above were classified as “honors” (τιμαί), and it is as “honors” that they are intelligible within the Greek tradition at both the human and divine levels. According to Plutarch (Dem. 8.1), Antigonos and Demetrios wanted to give freedom to all Greeks “for the sake of their own glory and honor” (ὑπὲρ τῆς εὐδοξίας καὶ τιμῆς). What was this “glory and honor” to be? “Honor” may, of course, be given to men; more important, in Greek popular religion “honor” is what, fundamentally, pious men were expected to render to the gods. Each god had one or several functions (τιμαί), and for the performance of these and for his power in these areas received “honor” (τιμή) from mortals. The god then might choose to “honor” the person or city who “honored” him. Elsewhere I have argued that this relationship of man to god was very similar to that of subjects to their king.^[17] Kings had functions to perform and the power to perform these. The subjects honored the king for these and showed their honor in the form of gifts. Essentially, in the Greek tradition the same emotion and thought are involved in the honor shown both to men and to gods, but the functions of the human and divine honoree are qualitatively different. One can honor a man for a multitude of civic, social, military, and athletic activities. One renders honor to the gods for what, basically, lies wholly or partially beyond human control: safety in war, at sea, and in other dangers; health; and economic prosperity.^[18] And one exhibits this “honor” through the gifts of sacrifice, prayer, hymns, dedications, and festivals.

It must have seemed to the pro-democratic faction in Athens that Antigonos and Demetrios were, unlike any humans before them, providing just such “divine” benefits to them: safety from the assaults of Cassander and his like; food to ensure physical health;^[19] and, with the restoration of the democracy and Piraeus, the prospect of economic good times. In addition to these traditional gifts the Antigonids were also providing “autonomy” and “freedom” of the state.^[20] Antigonos promised these to all Greeks in 314, reasserted their importance in his settlement of 311 with Cassander, Ptolemy, and Lysimachos, and had his son Demetrios deliver them to Athens in 307/6.^[21] In the fifth century Athenians had taken largely into their own hands the preservation of their freedom and autonomy, but since Chaeroneia in 338 Athenian international political status was beyond their control, determined by the actions of Macedonian generals such as Antipater, Cassander, and Antigonos. For foreign affairs the Athenians were as dependent on them as they were on the gods for health, safety, and prosperity, and the Macedonian generals alone could—as Antigonos alone did—give Athenians their precious autonomy. But we should be careful not to limit Athenian gratitude and divine honors to Antigonos and Demetrios solely to these political services. They are important in understanding the Athenian response, but also important are the safety in war, food, and prosperity traditionally attributed, in part, to the gods. It is for all of these elements—some more traditional, some relatively new in this period—that Athenians rewarded Antigonos and Demetrios with the same “honors” that they had previously given the gods: altars, sacrifices, and festivals. In retrospect this was a momentous step in Athenian religious history, but one understandable in the political circumstances and religious traditions of the time.

As Hellenists raised on Homer, Greek tragedy, and Greek philosophy, we are inclined to see the fundamental distinction between gods and men lying in the immortality of the former and all that follows from it. That is essentially a theological distinction, to be found in the literature of the archaic and classical periods. Always more central to popular religion were the functions of the various deities, whether the deities be ouranic or chthonic, divine or heroic. And it is because of similarity of function, not of physis, that Antigonos and Demetrios could be ranked among the gods. The Athenians were receiving from Demetrios and Antigonos what formerly they could expect only from their gods.

Antigonos and Demetrios were to be the Soteres of the Athenians, and the epithet Sōtēres describes, as divine epithets often did, precisely what the new “gods” provided—that is, “safety” in the physical, economic, and political realms. If, as I have claimed, the model for human piety toward the gods was the relationship of a subject to his king, it may be not coincidental that the Athenians, first of the Greeks and simultaneously with these divine honors, proclaimed Demetrios “king” (Plut. Dem. 10.3).^[22] Certainly not consciously, but in accord with their religious (though not political) traditions, the Athenians were fitting Demetrios into a model that would allow them to give him divine honors.

Despite Plutarch’s disapproval of the divine honors given to Antigonos and Demetrios, his account of them and of the times suggests that they were bestowed willingly, sincerely, and relatively spontaneously. In other, contemporary documents we see that such honors came to Antigonos and Demetrios also from varying segments of Athenian society. IG II² 3424 records a list of eleven Athenian citizens who, at their own expense, dedicated statues of the Soteres; there were originally even more contributors. The surviving remnants of the closing poem (lines 12–19) may suggest that these Athenians intended their dedication to be an example for others to follow. In SEG 30.69 of 304/3 the state undertakes to pay the prytanists of the tribe Akamantis for the costs (300 drachmas) of cattle sacrificed to the Soteres, Athena Nike, and, probably, Agathe Tyche on behalf of Athenians who were on campaign with Demetrios.^[23] Here there is discussion of the former “slavery” of the Greeks and of their current freedom and autonomy (lines 7–9). The Akamantid sacrifice to the Soteres is to be repeated each Elaphebolion hereafter as a memorial of successes reported at this time (19–23). The best preserved of these texts, SEG 25.149 of the same period, describes honors to be rendered to Demetrios by Athenian volunteers serving with him on campaign:

The select volunteers voted: [whereas,

Demetrios] the Great [previously] came into [Attica with a naval and infantry] force and [threw out] the opponents of [democracy and set free] the land of the Athenians and [most other Greeks, and now] has stood by [the Athenians] to help with an [even greater] force,

and, having overcome [his enemies, has already aligned] many cities under the kingship [of his father Antigonos, himself enduring every] danger and labor,

and he honors [those with him] and is very concerned [with their safety,] and he leads those in need of [freedom and helpfully takes part with us] in the affairs in the Peloponnesos,

and he [immediately went there with select volunteers] and threw out the [enemy] from the land,

[with good fortune] it was voted by the select volunteers [to praise because of his virtue and goodwill] Demetrios, son of Antigonos, a king, [son of a king, and to erect] an equestrian [statue of him] in the Agora next to Demokratia,^[24] and [to encourage Athenians and] the other Greeks to set up [for Demetrios altars and sanctuaries], and for those participating in the sacrifices [performed on behalf of Antigonos and Demetrios] to sacrifice also to Demetrios Soter, [presenting] the most sacred and beautiful [victims for sacrifice,] and to [proclaim the honors] given to the king by the select volunteers [so that, just as they themselves] have honored their benefactors [at their own expense, so also others] may follow and honor [them with the most illustrious] honors.

These three texts from different groups in the years just after 307/6 confirm the associations the Athenians as a group had made between their safety and freedom, Greek freedom, democracy, and the divine honors they were giving to Demetrios. The feeling of gratitude is almost palpable even on these formal, stone records. If we can trust the restorations, IG II² 3424 and SEG 25.149 even reveal a proselytizing spirit completely uncharacteristic of classical religion. SEG 25.149 differs from the others in that new honors are awarded only to Demetrios, not to his father; that agrees with the contemporary development of the cult of the Sōtēres. Demetrios was the Sōtēr present in the land and minds of the Athenians, and he quickly dominated and soon monopolized the cult he initially shared with his father.^[25]

Demetrios also received rewards like those of the gods, it seems, in the symposia of high society. Alexis (116 KA) in a comedy represented symposiasts toasting Demetrios just as they did Aphrodite and Eros.^[26] The playful spirit of this society, in which Demetrios and Stratocles themselves no doubt participated,^[27] is apparent. For the divine Demetrios Alexis was willing even to break the conventions of his genre in order to provide such topical, graceful compliments. And thus from the Ekklesia to the sanctuary of the tribal hero Akamas, from the theater to the symposium, praises and divine honors were being showered upon Demetrios.

After Demetrios’ departure in 307 Athens entered into the Four Years’ War with Cassander. Athens enjoyed some initial successes, but by 304 Cassander had established control over Boeotia and the Athenian forts at Panacton and Phyle by land and over Salamis by sea. Preparing to face a siege, Athens summoned Demetrios. Demetrios landed at Aulis and recovered Boeotia, Phyle, Panacton, and Salamis. He had again “saved” Athens and spent the winter of 304/3 there. During this time he also restored to power the party of Stratocles.

The political outlook of Stratocles and his followers appears, however, to have changed significantly between Demetrios’ first arrival in 307/6 and his second visit in 304/3. Previously staunchly democratic, they appear to have become, in the course of the exercise of and loss of their power, more oligarchic and, after their previous successes with Demetrios, strongly pro-Macedonian and pro-Demetrian. In 303/2 there was apparently an unsuccessful democratic uprising against them, an uprising resulting in the exile of Demochares (303/2) and Philippides (302/1). The extension and elaboration of the divine honors given to Demetrios in 304/3 and in subsequent years were all probably due to this oligarchic party of Demetrios’ supporters. The honors of 307/6 had, as we have seen, widely based support, but that is not necessarily true of the honors we now examine.

In 304/3 a cult of Demetrios Kataibates (“Descender”) was established at the very spot in Attica where Demetrios had dismounted from his chariot.^[28]Kataibatēs was the epithet usually reserved for Zeus, to designate the Zeus cults founded at spots hit by Zeus the god of lightening. In such a way Zeus “descended” to earth.^[29] To apply the epithet to Demetrios, for his descent from his chariot, might be viewed as a wordplay, a pun—one of several such puns we shall see applied to the cults of Demetrios. Some Athenians were, surely, deeply grateful to Demetrios, but even in their expression of gratitude they, or the ones responsible for these honors, could not, perhaps, restrain their wit.

Demetrios therefore had, on his arrival in 304, three distinct cults in Athens: as Sōtēr with his father Antigonos, as a tribal eponym, and as Kataibatēs. He was thus ranked with the major deities and heroes of Athens, with Athena Polias, Zeus Olympios, and the likes of Ajax and Erechtheus. In 304, however, unlike in 307, Demetrios appears to have taken these honors literally. He began to act, in Athens, as though he were a god. And among the divine models he might have chosen, he picked Dionysos. According to Plutarch (Dem. 2.3), Demetrios emulated Dionysos because Dionysos was the god most terrifying (δεινότατον) in warfare but in peacetime most suited for delights and graces (τρέυαι πρὸς τὴν εὐφροσύνην καὶ χάριν ἐμμελέστατον). One thinks of the two sides of the Dionysos of Euripides’ Bacchae, the god who also happened, by force at times, to win the whole Greek and much of the Asian world to his service.^[30]

On his way to Athens in 304, Demetrios had, probably for a brief time, taken up quarters in the temple of Apollo Delios,^[31] an unparalleled act in Greek religious history to this point. In Athens he chose the residence of his older sister (as he liked her to be called; Plut. Dem. 24.1), Athena Polias, and was quartered in the opisthodomos of the Parthenon.^[32] This was again an unparalleled act which could only be taken by detractors of Demetrios as gross impiety, but which followed logically from the honors the Athenians themselves had awarded the Macedonian king. Athena was, it was said, entertaining him as a xenos (“foreign guest”), but, as Plutarch describes it (Dem. 23.3), Demetrios was not a “very orderly xenos ” nor one behaving “gently as befits a virgin (παρθένω)” hostess. This new, young, handsome Dionysos reputedly devoted himself wholeheartedly to debauchery and affairs with freeborn wives and sons of the Athenians and with a bevy of beautiful courtesans.

Demetrios’ residency in the opisthodomos (not in the cella, at least) of the Parthenon and his behavior there must have shocked many Athenians, as it did Plutarch four hundred years later. That the divine honors the Athenians had awarded to Demetrios had led to this should be viewed largely as the fault of Demetrios. In his dress,^[33] in his choice of lodging, and in his behavior he chose to indulge fully in his newfound divinity. The Athenians of 307/6 could have imagined no such abominations resulting from the honors they were awarding their benefactor and savior.

Demetrios’ Athenian agents in all of this were quite likely Stratocles and his party, in part because they were grateful for the restoration of their influence when Demetrios’ returned, in part perhaps because some of them shared the symposia and courtesans that Demetrios provided. Stratocles carried the seemingly boundless honors one step further by proposing that Demetrios be treated as an oracular god: that “everything which King Demetrios bids be considered holy in respect to the gods and just in respect to men” (Plut. Dem. 24.4–5). Henceforth ambassadors to Demetrios were to be considered theōroi (as were ambassadors to Delphi), and Demetrios’ responses were to be viewed as oracles (Plut. Dem. 11.1, 13.1–2; Mor. 338A). On this very point we hear of the first Athenian opposition to the divine Demetrios. Demochares, son of Laches, of Leukonoion (APF 3716), staunchly pro-democratic, spoke against the proposal (Plut. Dem. 24.5). For this and no doubt other anti-Demetrian sentiments he was exiled.^[34] Demetrios and his Athenian supporters around Stratocles were in absolute control, and those who opposed them on political or religious grounds were clearly well advised to bide their time. The wait, it turned out, was for only three years.

In the interval, probably in 302/1, the Ekklesia voted heroic honors for three important generals and agents of Demetrios: Adeimantos of Lampsacos, Oxythemis of Larissa, and Bourichos. Each had provided valuable services for Athens in the past, and Adeimantos, a close friend of Theophrastos (D.L. 5.57), had already received a crown from the Athenians in 302 (SEG 14.58). Oxythemis had been given Athenian citizenship in 304/3 (IG II² 558).^[35] According to Demochares (FGrHist 75 F 1), these men were then given altars, heroa (hero sanctuaries), libations, and paeans. Since King Demetrios was a god (θεός), his lieutenants must be given the lesser, heroic honors.^[36] These hero cults, if ever in fact established, probably did not outlive Demetrios’ defeat at Ipsos in 301, for, apart from Demochares’ complaint, they have left no record.^[37] Upon hearing the news of these honors for his subordinates, Demetrios reportedly was surprised and commented that in his time, no Athenian “was great or strong in spirit” (Demochares, FGrHist 75 F 1). Such, perhaps accurately, was the attitude of the new deity toward his devotees in 302/1. The disaffection was shared by the devotees. When Antigonos was killed and Demetrios suffered a serious defeat at Ipsos in 301, the Athenians revolted from their divine patron and established a moderate government.

As he was returning to Athens from an expedition to the Peloponnesos, probably that expedition extolled in SEG 25.149 of ca. 303/2 (above, pp. 84–85), Demetrios turned his attention to the Eleusinian Mysteries:

And then, departing for Athens, Demetrios wrote that he wished, as soon as he arrived, to be initiated and to receive the whole initiation, from the Small Mysteries through the Epopteia.^[38] This was something not permitted and had not happened before, but the Small Mysteries were performed during (the month) Anthesterion, the Great Mysteries during Boedromion. And (initiates) celebrated the Epopteia after leaving an interval of, at the least, one year from the Great Mysteries.

After (Demetrios’) letter was read, only Pythodoros, the dādouchos (“torchbearer”), dared to speak in opposition, and he accomplished nothing. But after Stratocles proposed that they, by vote, call Mounichion Anthesterion, (the Athenians) performed the Small Mysteries at Agrai for Demetrios. And, after this, Mounichion, having just become Anthesterion, was made Boedromion, and Demetrios received the remaining rites and, at the same time, he received also the Epopteia. And for this reason Philippides (the comic poet), attacking Stratocles, wrote:

	The man who compressed the year into one month.
	and, about (Demetrios’) lodging in the Parthenon,
	The man who took the Acropolis to be a hotel
	and introduced courtesans to the virgin (τῇ παρθένῳ).
	(Plut. Dem. 26)[39]

That Demetrios, as a man, wished to be initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries is not surprising, but his request that the Mysteries be accommodated to his schedule, and not vice versa, was unprecedented. But Demetrios now, seemingly, viewed himself as one of the Athenian gods. It might seem odd that a god should want initiation into another deity’s mysteries, but as the “new” Dionysos Demetrios had the model of the “old” Dionysos. The “old” Dionysos alone of the Olympians had, according to Eleusinian lore, been initiated into these mysteries.^[40] Demetrios could also feel affinity with Demeter through his name and, perhaps more important, by similarity of function. He, like Demeter, provided the Athenians grain. In 307/6 B.C. his father had sent to Athens 150,000 medimnoi of grain; Demetrios himself was to send another 100,000 medimnoi in 295/4 (Plut. Dem. 34.4); and, no doubt, throughout his association with Athens he facilitated or controlled the shipment of the desperately needed grain from abroad. We shall soon see how the Athenians, perhaps in gratitude for the grain shipment of 295/4, tied Demetrios even more closely to the cult of Demeter.

From Plutarch’s account of this episode a bit more of the opposition to Demetrios emerges. Pythodoros, the Eleusinian dādouchos, expressed, probably in the deliberations of the Ekklesia, his opposition to the manipulation of the program of the Mysteries at which he officiated. This criticism comes, naturally, from the priestly quarter. Philippides, however, the long-standing opponent of Demetrios, on the comic stage ventured an attack not on Demetrios but on his Athenian agent Stratocles (Plut. Dem. 26 above Philippides frag. 25 KA).^[41] The witticism on the manipulation of the calendar is perhaps harmless, but there lies just below the surface of the barb about the courtesans and the virgin Athena the desecration that Stratocles’ accommodations of Demetrios had occasioned. In 302/1 the result of such criticisms for Philippides, as for Demochares, was exile.

Within a few years, however, the Parthenon was to suffer even more. In the period of Athenian independence and neutrality after the battle of Ipsos in 301, Lachares (PA 9005), an Athenian of unknown family and deme, gained political power in a civil war and became a virtual tyrant.^[42] It was to drive him out and to restore his own control that Demetrios returned to Athens in 295/4: “Again Demetrios attacked Attica, and, having gotten control of Eleusis and Rhamnous, he was pillaging the land. He captured a ship holding grain and bringing it to the Athenians and hung its merchant and captain, and, as a result, others turned away in fear. A serious famine occurred in the city and, in addition to the famine, a lack of other supplies” (Plut. Dem. 33.3). Pausanias gives a fuller account of the career and fall of Lachares:

Cassander—for he had a terrible hatred toward the Athenians—made into a close friend Lachares who, up to that time, was a leader of the Demos. Cassander persuaded Lachares to plan for a tyranny, and of the tyrants we know Lachares was the harshest in matters that concern men and the most unsparing toward the divine. Demetrios the son of Antigonos already had a quarrel with the Demos of the Athenians, but even so he did away with the tyranny of Lachares. And, as the city wall was being captured, Lachares ran off to the Boeotians. It was suspected that Lachares was well supplied with money, for he had taken down the gold shields from the Acropolis and had stripped off the removable jewelry and decoration from the very statue of Athena. For the sake of this (money) the men of Coronea killed him.^[43] (Paus. 1.25.7)

The siege of Athens by Demetrios in 295/4 forms another important episode in the religious history of Athens, as the result of both Lachares’ actions and the further honors given to Demetrios. According to Pausanias, Lachares removed the golden shields dedicated on the Acropolis and the “removable” adornment (τὸν περιαιρετὸν κόσμον) of the statue of Athena. He may have done this, as modern tyrants do, to provide a treasure for his life in exile, but he apparently used the gold and silver also to pay his mercenaries (POxy. 17.2082 = FGrHist 257a). A few pages later Pausanias, after describing Lycourgos’ contributions to Athens, says, “Lachares, having become a tyrant, stole all these things which were made of silver and gold. But the buildings were still there even in my time” (1.29.16). The comic poet Demetrios II in his Areopagites (1 KA) had a character claim that “Lachares made Athena naked.”

What had Lachares done? Quite probably, if we combine the two passages of Pausanias, he had removed and melted down all the gold and silver stored on the Acropolis. This would have included the golden shields, the jewelry and perhaps even the gold of the chryselephantine statue of Athena Parthenos by Phidias, and the many dedications recorded on the inventories of the fourth century.^[44] Centuries of precious dedications were lost, and, tellingly, the last surviving inventory of Acropolis dedications dates to 303/2.^[45] The blow to the cults of Athena Polias and other Acropolis deities must have been enormous, not so much in economic terms—for dedications such as these generated no income—but in prestige, respect, and τιμή. Athena and her colleagues were unable to protect even their own property.^[46] We shall see later that after Athens’ successful revolt from Demetrios in 288/7, there was a period of disorder for the cult of Athena Polias, and it was slow to regain its former prominence. Eventually the Panathenaia was reinstated and would continue to be celebrated throughout antiquity, but damage had been done. The Athena Polias cult represented and promoted by Lycourgos was now in decline and, apart from the Panathenaia, would remain so for some time.

In 295/4, after his expulsion of Lachares, Demetrios installed a pro-Macedonian oligarchy in Athens, and from them he received new honors.^[47] Plutarch (Dem. 12) claims that the proposer of the decree surpassed even Stratocles in his servility. Demetrios was, as often as he visited Athens, to be received with the hospitality usually shown Demeter and Dionysos. Money for a dedication was to be given to the citizen who excelled in the splendor and cost of this reception. The month Mounichion was to be named Demetrion, and the last day of the month was to be called Demetrias. Thus, henceforth, Mounichion 30 would be known as the Demetrias of Demetrion. The City Dionysia was to be, according to Plutarch, renamed the Demetrieia.^[48] According to Duris (FGrHist 76 F 14), in the theater of Dionysos, where the Demetrieia was to be celebrated, Demetrios was represented (ἐγράφετο) on the proscenium “riding on the world.”

In 304/3 Demetrios had been the xenos (guest) of Athena Polias, but henceforth, as often as he visited, he was to receive gifts of xenia from the whole state, and these gifts were to be those usually reserved for Demeter and Dionysos—prayers, hymns, and sacrifices. Demetrios’ self-identification with Dionysos was discussed previously, but here his identification with his namesake Demeter becomes obvious. He had been initiated into her mysteries, however irregularly, during his last visit, and, like her, he provided essential grain to the Athenians, especially after the devastation of the crops and near starvation caused, this very year, by Lachares and Demetrios himself. Demetrios now, like Demeter, controlled Athens’ grain supply, and like her he should be honored whenever he came to town.

In 307/6 B.C. Demetrios had arrived in Piraeus on Thargelion 26 (Plut. Dem. 8.3–5), and hence neither the month (Mounichion) nor the day of the month (the thirtieth) was named after him because of the events of his first visit.^[49] Mounichion was, however, the month the Athenians manipulated so that Demetrios could celebrate all three stages of the Mysteries in 303/2, and naming the month after him may have had a touch of humor.^[50] The new Demetrion was, according to Philochoros (FGrHist 328 F 116), to be a “holy month,” celebrated as one long festival. Demetrias, as each thirtieth day was to be named, was no doubt to be Demetrios’ monthly festival day, like those of Apollo (the seventh) and Artemis (the sixth). Unlike the sacred days of the Olympians it fell in the last half of the month, in fact at the “moonless” time usually reserved for evil spirits and regarded by the Athenians with some trepidation.^[51] Could this too have been an in-joke? There is, however, no evidence that the renaming or sanctification of the month and day was ever effected. Contemporary inscriptions retain the traditional names for both, and business continued to be transacted in Mounichion and on the thirtieth days.^[52]

The City Dionysia was, apparently, not renamed the Demetrieia, as Plutarch claims, but the name “Demetrieia” was added to the name “City Dionysia.” ^[53] A day or more of celebration for Demetrios may have been added to the traditional City Dionysia, as Habicht suggests (1956, 53), or—more likely in view of Demetrios’ identification with Dionysos—existing elements of the festival may have been remodeled to accommodate the new Demetrios/Dionysos. This amalgamation of the Demetrieia and City Dionysia was, however, short-lived, and after Athens’ revolt from Demetrios in 288/7 the City Dionysia appears again alone (without the Demetrieia) on inscriptional records (IG II² 653, 654, 657). The Demetrieia of Demetrios, as Habicht has argued (1956, 53–54), is distinct from the cult of the Soteres because it is here Demetrios/Dionysos, not Demetrios Soter, who is receiving worship. After 288/7 the Athenians continued to need sōtēria (“safety”), and a cult of the Soteres, as we shall see, survived—but with different Soteres. Clearly the Athenians were happy then to be rid of the Dionysiac Demetrios, and the Demetrieia was abandoned.

In 291/0 Demetrios returned to Athens from Leukas and Cephallenia. The Athenians, according to Demetrios’ enemy Demochares, received him with incense, wreaths, libations, processional dances, and ithyphallic poetry accompanied by dancing (FGrHist 75 F 2). One of these ithyphallic poems is summarized by Demochares and preserved by Duris of Samos (FGrHist 76 F 13).^[54] This hymn, though often treated as a unique and uncharacteristic document in Athenian religious history, is a natural product of its immediate times. We have already noted that songs were sung about Demetrios in the symposia, and we learn from Philochoros (FGrHist 328 F 165) that the Athenians sang paeans “over” (ἐπί) Antigonos and Demetrios. A competition was held for the composers of such songs, and Hermippos of Cyzicus was judged the victor.^[55] This recalls the prize the Athenians in 294/3 had decided to award the citizen giving the most lavish and costly hospitality to the Macedonian monarch (above, p. 92). If we take this song to be the song of Hermippos, which is not unlikely, then the poet was a foreigner as were most of the lyric poets writing in Athens at the time.

The opening lines of the hymn, containing probably an exhortation to begin the singing, are lost, but the rest seems complete:^[56]

1	The greatest and the dearest of the gods
	are present for the city,
	for good fortune brought together here Demeter
	and Demetrios.
5	She comes to perform the sacred mysteries of Kore.
	He is present handsome, laughing, and cheerful,
	as a god ought to be.
	It is a revered sight—his friends all in a circle,
	himself in the middle,
10	as if his friends were stars, he the sun.
	Hail, son of Poseidon, most powerful god, and of Aphrodite.
	The other gods are either far distant,
	or do not have ears,
	or do not exist or pay no attention to us,
15	But we see you present, not made of stone or wood,
	but real.
	We pray to you:
	First, dearest one, create peace, for you have
	the authority.
20	And especially punish the Sphinx that tramples over
	not Thebes but all Greece,
	the Aetolian who sits on a rock, like the old Sphinx,
	and snatches up and carries off all of us.
	I am unable to fight him.
25	It is an Aetolian characteristic to rob neighbors,
	but now they do it to those far away.
	If you will not do it yourself, find some Oedipus
	who will throw this Sphinx off a cliff or will
	make it a pile of ashes.

Duris laments, as have several modern scholars, that the Athenians, those who two hundred years previously killed a man showing obeisance to the king of Persia and who slew countless Persians at Marathon, used to sing this song not only in public but also at home.

The song is, as Victor Ehrenberg notes, “not a specimen of high poetry.” The Greek text is characterized by “simplicity and humdrum triviality” (1946, 180–81). Only the extended conceit of the Aetolians as the Sphinx gives it some life. Its primary interest to us is as a poetic expression of the attitude that at least some Athenians had developed toward the divine Demetrios over the past seventeen years. At points of emphasis, at the beginning of the song and immediately before the prayer, the actual, physical presence of the god Demetrios is emphasized, in contrast to the traditional gods who are (or whose statues are) made of wood and stone, who may or may not exist, and who, at best, are distant and pay no heed to us. Demetrios was there, in person, in Athens.^[57]

The importance of Demeter (lines 3–5) to grain-starved Athens is self-evident, and, as we have seen, Demetrios had courted association with her and her Mysteries. The friends who encircle Demetrios (8–10) are quite likely Adeimantos, Oxythemis, and Bourichos who, as new heroes, were like stars to the sun Demetrios. The solar imagery was characteristic of Demetrios’ self-established role. In the theater of Dionysos he was represented as “riding on the world” (above, p. 92), and near the end of his career he was having a cloak woven for himself that would depict the entire cosmos and the heavenly bodies, a cloak that, according to Plutarch (Dem. 41.4–5), no later Macedonian king chose to wear.

The divine Demetrios is handsome, laughing, and cheerful (lines 6–7), probably real traits of Demetrios (e.g., Plut. Dem. 2.2–3) but also virtues of a symposiast and reminiscent of the “youthful” and “sweetest king” (above, p. 85 n. 26). In the symposia Eros and Aphrodite were his fellow deities, here Aphrodite is his mother, and the lover Demetrios had no doubt demonstrated mastery of his mother’s art in the orgies in the Parthenon. In other ways too the song displays the playfulness of symposiastic literature. Two puns have been noted: the true god (ἀληθινόν) as opposed to the stone ones (λίθινον), and the Sphinx (Σφίγγα) made into an ash (σποδόν).^[58] The mating of Poseidon and Aphrodite, unique to this poem, may be explained prosaically as uniting Demetrios’ two areas of competence, the navy and sex,^[59] but taken in light of the mythological tradition Poseidon and Aphrodite form a ludicrous pair. And, as we have seen, to be called the son of Poseidon was not necessarily a compliment (see chapter 1). Such playfulness in the song, if we are not imagining it, recalls the similarly playful and sophisticated “heliomorphic” Demetrios of Phaleron, Demetrios Kataibates, and perhaps Demetrion, Demetrios’ much-manipulated Mounichion. These and the Sphinx conceit should make us wary of attributing great religious seriousness to this song, however much it was performed publicly or privately. The song was quite probably composed by a foreigner, and the lack of specifically Athenian religious traditions and deities (apart from Demeter) in it is noteworthy and in this regard may be compared to Aristotle’s hymn on Hermeias.^[60]

Critical to understanding the divine Demetrios, however, is the prayer of the song.^[61] Here, as before, Demetrios is asked to provide for the Athenians what they themselves could not: peace and, more particularly, escape from harassment by the Aetolians to the north (lines 17–29). These Demetrios with his army and navy could, if he so chose, give. In fact, soon thereafter Demetrios mounted a successful expedition against these Aetolians.^[62] The song to Demetrios did, in a primarily literary and perhaps playful way, raise pressing Athenian issues of life and death, issues that at that time could be addressed only by one greater and more powerful than themselves, only by a god more immanent and active than traditional gods.

That the “immanence” of the divine Demetrios was not just a literary cliché is suggested by the contemporary decree of Dromocleides.^[63] In 340 the Athenians had remounted on the newly rebuilt temple of Apollo at Delphi their dedications of golden shields made from booty captured from the Persians at Plataea in 479. Now, in the late 290s, the Aetolians controlled Delphi and had removed or were planning to remove these prominent dedications. Normally in such a situation the Athenians would consult Apollo through the Pythia, and, in such a matter, Apollo’s command would be decisive. But the Aetolians, hostile to Athens, controlled Delphi. The Athenians therefore turned to the new oracular god whom they had recently created: Demetrios. The decree of Dromocleides proposed that the Athenians elect a representative to go to Soter (Demetrios) and “ask him how most piously and best and most quickly the Demos could make the restoration of the dedications, and that the Demos do what he as an oracle bids (χρέση) them to do” (Plut. Dem. 13.2). The language of the decree suits only the consultation of a deity, and Demetrios here, in 292/1, was given, and no doubt took on, the oracular role of Apollo Pythios.

Demetrios similarly took on the role of Apollo Pythios in the Pythia of 290/89. For centuries this festival had been celebrated quadrennially, in the third year of the Olympiad, in Delphi, in the god’s honor. The festival included, in addition to customary sacrifices and processions, extensive and varied musical compositions featuring the hymn to the god. It had also a full range of athletic competitions modeled on the Olympic games. Like all such festivals it was inextricably tied to one sanctuary and one god. Demosthenes, in the middle of the fourth century, calls it “the shared competition of the Greeks,” and he is indignant that Philip, a Macedonian, is administering it. To Demosthenes that is an act of extreme hybris (9.32). In 290/89 the hated Aetolians controlled Delphi, and Demetrios and the Athenians apparently thought the Pythia was no longer accessible to them. Demetrios, according to Plutarch, chose to do a “very new and strange thing” (πρᾶγμα καινότατον), to hold the Pythia and its contests in Athens. He did so on the pretext that Apollo Pythios was especially “honored” in Athens as their “ancestral” (patroös) god and as the “founder of their race” (Plut. Dem. 40.4).

There were, indeed, cults in Athens of Apollo Patroös (in the Agora) and Apollo Pythios (near the Ilissos).^[64] Apollo’s close ties to Athens and his paternity of the Ionic peoples had been dramatized as early as Euripides’ Ion in the late fifth century. Some Athenians regularly traveled to Delphi for the quadrennial Pythia, and we have seen that Lycourgos was among the ten hieropoioi who supervised the sending of a special delegation (Pythaïs) to Delphi in 326/5 (chapter 1, p. 34). What is, in Plutarch’s judgment, most new and odd is for Athenians, at Demetrios’ behest, to stage the Delphic festival in their own city. It was tantamount to stealing an old and prestigious festival from a god’s own people. And, at the least, it indicates diminishing respect for the tie of such festivals to their gods, priesthoods, and places. Increasingly such agonistic festivals must be thought of in terms of international politics and entertainment, and this is the first unmistakable indication of a development that we shall see continuing throughout the Hellenistic period. There was still a bond between such a festival and the god’s cult, and this bond remained throughout antiquity, but it was not as strong as it had once been.

Clearly the divine honors given to Demetrios and Antigonos initially, in 307/6, were widely and warmly accepted by many Athenians. Those after 307/6 were proposed and carried by the increasingly oligarchic and pro-Demetrian faction centered on Stratocles. We have seen opposition or reaction to them range over the years from barbs in comedy and, perhaps, playful wording and naming of these honors to occasional public statements by individuals. Pythodoros, the Eleusinian dādouchos, unsuccessfully tried to stop the manipulation of the Mysteries, and in 303/2 Demochares in the Ekklesia spoke against the proposed honors and was exiled. According to Plutarch, even the gods expressed their displeasure:

The Athenians had voted to have woven into the peplos figures of Demetrios and Antigonos along with Zeus and Athena, and as the peplos was being escorted through the Cerameicos a strong gust of wind fell upon it and tore it down the middle. And around the altars of Demetrios and Antigonos quantities of hemlock sprouted up, a plant which otherwise does not grow many places in the land. And on the day of the City Dionysia they disbanded the procession because an unseasonably heavy frost occurred. The freezing rain fell thick, and the cold not only burned the vines and all the fig trees but also destroyed most of the grain that was just turning green. And because of this Philippides, an enemy of Stratocles, wrote these lines against him in a comedy:

	This man because of whom the freezing rain burned the vines,
	because of whose impiety the peplos was torn down the middle,
	the man who makes divine honors human,
	these things, not comedy, destroy the Demos.

The ill-omened tearing of the peplos occurred probably during the quadrennial Panathenaia of 302/1, and in 299/8 Lysimachos, a Macedonian rival to Demetrios, sent to Athens a new mast and yard for the ship carrying the peplos in the Panathenaic procession, surely to replace those damaged three years earlier (IG II² 657).^[65] This was a shrewd diplomatic maneuver by Lysimachos: a benefaction to Athens but also, perhaps, a warning to the Athenians in this period of neutrality and independence not to align themselves with those impiously honoring Demetrios.^[66]

Lysimachos’ sending of the equipment for the peplos was orchestrated by Philippides of Kephale (APF 14356), the comic poet who wrote the lines critical of Stratocles. In 283/2 Philippides was honored by the state for his agōnothesia and other contributions to the state:^[67]

Whereas,

Philippides has continually on every occasion shown his goodwill toward the Demos, and

having gone to stay with king Lysimachos and beforehand having talked with the king, brought back to the Demos a gift of 10,000 medimnoi of grain that were distributed to all Athenians in the archonship of Euktemon (299/8), and

spoke (with the king) also about the yard and mast so that they might be given to the goddess for her peplos for the Panathenaia, and these things were brought in the archonship of Euktemon, and

when king Lysimachos won the battle at Ipsos against Antigonos and Demetrios (301), Philippides buried at his own expense those of our citizens who died in battle, and he indicated to the king those who were prisoners and secured release for them, and he arranged that those who wished to campaign be registered in military units, and those who chose to leave he clothed and from his own funds gave traveling money and sent each of them, more than 300, where each wished to go, and

he asked that those of the citizens who had been caught in Asia, restrained by Demetrios and Antigonos, also be released, and

he continues to help the Athenians he meets as each one asks him, and

after the Demos got its freedom he has continued saying and doing what is beneficial for the safety of the city, inviting the king to help with money and grain, so that the Demos may continue to be free and may recover Piraeus and the forts as quickly as possible,…and

he first prepared an additional contest for Demeter and Kore as a memorial [of the freedom] of the Demos,…

It has been decided to praise Philippides, son of Philocles, of Kephale because of the virtue and goodwill which he continues to have concerning the Demos of the Athenians, and to crown him with a gold crown in accordance with the law, and to announce the crown at the contest of the tragedies of the Great Dionysia, and to erect a bronze statue of him in the theater, and that he and his eldest descendant be given dining privileges in the Prytaneion and front seating in all the contests which the city holds. (IG II² 657.8–66)

These honors were voted for Philippides in 283/2, four years after the final ouster of Demetrios Poliorcetes and “the restoration of the democracy.” The previous year (284/3) Philippides had taken on the agōnothesia (lines 38–50), and, apart from contributing his own money and administering the various contests of the dramatic and literary festivals, introduced a new contest, for Demeter and Kore, to celebrate the restoration of freedom.

IG II² 657, the honors of Philippides, well represents the nexus of religion, literature, and domestic and international politics in the period. The pro-democratic comic poet who, in his play, attacked Stratocles for impiously honoring Demetrios also courted, in exile, a Macedonian rival to the king—through him making a gesture, the sending of a new mast and yard for the Panathenaia, which, like his poetry, pointed to the impiety of the party serving Demetrios. The same man, after the ouster of Demetrios, used his agōnothesia to celebrate, in a religious setting, the ouster of Demetrios and the restoration of democracy. Religion was being used in a variety of ways for political purposes, but this certainly was not unique to this decade or to the Hellenistic age. Religion had been similarly manipulated both for and against Peisistratos in the sixth century and Pericles in the fifth. But now there was a new focus, the divine honors, clearly thought to be impious, awarded to Demetrios Poliorcetes, as well as new players, at an international level of competition. Foreign potentates were now attempting to manipulate Athenian cult.

In the overall judgment of the divine honors awarded to Demetrios, Plutarch’s verdict is a good guide:

For kings and potentates the worst evidence of the goodwill of the masses is excessive honors. The beauty of honors lies in the free choice of those who give them, but fear (of the kings and potentates) takes away trust in them. For people both in fear and in affection vote the same honors. Therefore sensible (kings) look not at statues and paintings and deifications but rather at their own deeds and activities and then either trust (in the awards) as honors or distrust them as the results of compulsion, because peoples, in the honors themselves, often hate those who receive them immoderately, ostentatiously, and from unwilling (givers). (Plut. Dem. 30.4–5)

The evidence, mostly from Plutarch, suggests that the Athenians willingly and enthusiastically gave such divine honors to Demetrios in 307/6. Thereafter, with the support of Stratocles and his party, Demetrios, it appears, did receive such honors “immoderately and ostentatiously” and began to act as the god he thought the Athenians had made him. We may suspect that the later honors to Demetrios, promoted by a small group of powerful partisans, were in fact ratified by many Athenians who were unwilling but afraid. The honors given to Demetrios became a travesty, in part because of Demetrios’ immoderate reaction to them, in part because of his supporters’ encouragement. The next government and the next Antigonid, Antigonos Gonatas, would react quite differently, and ruler cult would soon fade in importance in the religion of Hellenistic Athens.

The divine Demetrios understandably dominates the religious history of his period, but we must note also other developments of the time, most occasioned by actions of the human Demetrios. Alexander had given the neighboring Oropos and its sanctuary of the healing god Amphiaraos to Athens in 335, and in chapter 1 we surveyed the resulting burst of Athenian activity there in both a building and a festival program. After the Lamian War (322) Athens lost Oropos. In 304/3 Demetrios may have returned it to Athens, but, if so, Athens had lost it again by 287/6 and was not to regain control until the first century.^[68] After 322 some Athenians, apparently closed off from Amphiaraos’ neighboring sanctuary, founded at Rhamnous on the northeast coast of Attica their own Amphiaraion, with the new Amphiaraos eventually supplanting a preexisting Physician Hero (iatros heros).^[69] For the Rhamnousian Amphiaraos there survive an altar (SEG 33.201) and private dedications (SEG 31.177; IG II² 4452 and perhaps 4426), as well as remains of the sanctuary, all dating to the late fourth and third centuries B.C. By the late third century the sanctuary was in disrepair: the “house” had lost its door and roof tiles were broken, part of the wall had collapsed and the god’s “table” was broken, and the “stoa” was in danger of collapse. Then twenty-three Amphieraistai—all Athenians and many of them from Rhamnous, several of them military officers and soldiers stationed there—contributed money for the repairs and for sacrifices (IG II² 1322).^[70] Around 300 this Ramnousian Amphiaraion was quite small and, apparently, not a great success. It could replace the Oropian Amphiaraion for only a small group of Athenians. The loss or the threatened loss of the Oropian Amphiaraion may at least partially explain renewed interest in Amphiaraos’ rival healing deity, Asclepios. Also around 300 the central area of the City Asclepieion was remodeled with the construction of a new Doric stoa (IG II² 1685),^[71] and, for the first time, a kanēphoros (“basket carrier”) is attested for the Epidauria (IG II² 3457), a role henceforth often given to a relative of the priest.^[72]

Conditions in and access to Piraeus must have varied considerably during these twenty years. For most of the time a Macedonian force garrisoned the Mounichion Hill, and for many of the years, especially in times of hostility, Piraeus was no doubt closed off to Athenians from the city. That is reflected in the religious record. The only “state” religious event that survives on record for the period is a celebration of the Dionysia planned there in 307/6 (IG II² 456.32–33). Religious and political institutions in Piraeus must have taken a battering because from 307/6 until after ca. 261 the surviving inscriptions from the Piraeus record religious activities only of foreign, not state cults.^[73]

The Citian thiasōtai (foreign members of a cult association)^[74] of Aphrodite Ourania, whose cult was established, as we have seen in chapter 1, under Lycourgos in 333/2, continued to prosper, and in the years 302/1–300/299 they were able to stage a procession for their Adonia, to sacrifice regularly to their Aphrodite and other ancestral gods, to make a dedication to Demeter Homonoia (“Concord,” an apt epithet, given the political circumstances), and to reward their fellow member Stephanos, the breastplate maker, with crowns and forty drachmas for a dedication for his services to the association (IG II² 1261). In 301/0 another Citian thiasos, that of Tynabos, honored its (Citian) epimelētai (IG II² 1262).^[75] In 299/8 the thiasōtai of the Carian Zeus Labraundos, here first attested in Attica, were even able to complete the building of a colonnade and gable in their sanctuary, largely through the contributions of their treasurer Menis of Heracleia, himself in all likelihood a Carian (IG II² 1271). And, finally, in 300/299, a thiasos of an unknown deity, on the motion of a Cyprian from Salamis, honored the Olynthian Demetrios for his services (IG II² 1263). Each of these thiasoi had its own sanctuary, and each could employ Athenian formulaic language in its decrees, but there is no evidence that any had, as yet, Athenian members.^[76] The turmoil in Piraeus, it would seem, did not affect foreign cults as much as it did the local, indigenous state cults.

Demetrios Poliorcetes and his Athenian partisans were responsible for the turmoil in some of the major cults of the state during these years, and in the next chapter we shall examine Athenian efforts in subsequent years to repair the damage. We close this chapter of Athenian religious history, however, with two events which marked the end of Demetrios’ control over Athens in 288/7 and his departure thereafter. In accord with the times and the political situation, one has only local, the other international significance.

When in 287 Olympiodoros led the successful Athenian assault on Demetrios’ Macedonian garrison on the Mouseion Hill, Leocritos, son of Protarchos (PA 9096) first scaled the fortifications but was soon killed in the battle. “Other honors came to him from the Athenians, and they dedicated his shield to Zeus Eleutherios, having inscribed on it Leocritos’ name and his success” (Paus. 1.26.2). In 307/6 Demetrios had been welcomed to Athens and made a divine Soter in part because he brought eleutheria (“freedom”) to the city. After years of oligarchy supported or caused by the same Demetrios, the Athenians dedicated to Zeus Eleutherios the shield of a hero who fell in the battle that freed the city Athens from his domination.^[77]

On the international level the Epirote king Pyrrhos, coming at Athens’ request in 287/6 with his army to assist against Demetrios, arrived just after the departure of Demetrios. He spent only one day in the city, and, according to Plutarch (Pyrrh. 12.4), he climbed the Acropolis and sacrificed to Athena Polias. This was, in religious terms, a wholly appropriate gesture to mark the end of the rule of Demetrios. The goddess whose cult he had so abused was, on his overthrow, at last given her due honor.

Notes