4. The Calm between the Storms
From the ouster of Demetrios Poliorcetes in 287/6 to the outbreak of the Chremonidean War (ca. 267/6), the Athenians devoted attention to repairing and in some cases remodeling cults, deities, and festivals that had suffered under Demetrios. The divine Demetrios, with the help of his Athenian partisans, had insinuated himself into several major cults—for example, of Athena Polias, Dionysos Eleuthereus, and Demeter of Eleusis—and we shall see indications, primarily from epigraphical texts, that the Athenians worked to repair, to “de-Demetricize” these cults. The results were not, however, simply a restoration of the cults to their Lycourgan form. The twenty years of the divine Demetrios had their effect. Nor were reforms always immediate, in part because in 287/6 Demetrios surrendered only the city Athens: he retained control of Piraeus, Phyle, Panacton, Sounion, Rhamnous, Salamis, and Eleusis. Athens recovered Eleusis by 284/3, but Piraeus probably not until 229.[1] And, finally, the restoration of the cults was disrupted with the outbreak of the Chremonidean War ca. 267/6 and the resulting defeat and renewed subjugation to Macedonian power.
In 287/6 some cults must have been in shambles. Athena Polias had seen her sanctuary desecrated by Demetrios during his “residence” in 304/3 and her dedications stolen by Lachares in 295/4. The goddess had been ineffectual in protecting even her own property. Her sanctity had been violated and her cult, perhaps even her cult statue, stripped, all with apparent impunity. The Epirote king Pyrrhos, appropriately, commemorated the departure of Demetrios with a sacrifice to Athena Polias on the Acropolis, but this may mark not restoration but the beginning of a period of uncertainty and decline for her cult.
Demetrios had styled himself as Dionysos, and up to 288/7 the Demetrieia may have formed a major part of the City Dionysia in honor of Dionysos Eleuthereus. In 287/6 the status of the Eleusinian Mysteries, also once “patronized” by Demetrios, must have been quite uncertain. Eleusis was still garrisoned by Demetrios’ hostile troops and access to the sanctuary was probably difficult if not impossible. Piraeus was also under Demetrios’ control and after so many years of separation from the city was quite probably functioning almost as an independent city, especially in religious matters.[2] And, finally, the great festival of the Soteria, celebrated in honor of Demetrios and his father Antigonos, had to be dealt with. Was this festival to be continued or, more naturally, abolished?
Eleusis may provide an initial, straightforward correlation between religion and politics in the period. Not until after 285 was Demetrios’ garrison, now obviously hostile to the Athenians, removed from Eleusis; and it may well be, as Shear (1978, 85) surmises, that before this the Athenians could celebrate neither the Mysteries nor the biennial Eleusinia. In 284/3 Philippides, as agōnothetēs, “from his own funds sacrificed the ancestral sacrifices to the gods on behalf of the Demos and […] gave to all Athenians all the [contests], and first prepared an additional contest for Demeter and Kore as a memorial of the [freedom] of the Demos” (IG II2 657.40–45).[3] Philippides provided “ all the contests”—including, no doubt, those of the biennial Eleusinia of 284—and to the contests of that festival he added a new one commemorating Eleusis’ freedom from Demetrios.
And then, at the end of the period, in 267/6, just after the outbreak of the Chremonidean War between Athens and Antigonos II Gonatas, the son of Demetrios, the epimelētai of the Mysteries were honored by the state for making sacrifices in the Mysteries at Agrai on behalf of the health and safety of the Boule, the Demos, and the friends of the Athenians; for sacrificing at the Mysteries; and for sacrificing, at their own expense, sōtēria to Demeter and Kore on behalf of the Boule and Demos (IG II2 661). These sōtēria were, quite possibly, in anticipation of the struggle against Antigonos Gonatas. Thus both Eleusis’ liberation from Demetrios’ forces and the war against Antigonos nearly twenty years later were signaled by religious rites in a sanctuary that had suffered and would suffer more in the future under Macedonian occupation.
In 283/2 the Boule recommended to the Ekklesia that the astynomoi (“city managers”), at the time of the procession of Aphrodite Pandemos, “make ready a dove for the purification of the sanctuary, anoint the altars, pitch the roofs, wash the statues, and prepare the purple dye” (IG II2 659). The astynomoi, who had various responsibilities concerning the cleanliness and repair of public buildings and roads, were to cleanse, ritually and literally, and spruce up the sanctuary in time for the goddess’ annual festival. And they were to do this according to the “ancestral traditions.” Aphrodite might seem, par excellence, the deity of the most private affairs, and in fact the majority of dedications to her in the fourth century (e.g., IG II2 4574–86, 4634, 4635) were made by private citizens.[4] The cult of Aphrodite Ourania in Piraeus, founded by the Citians in Lycourgos’ time (above, chapter 1, pp. 30–31), remained, so far as we know, limited to Citians. But after Athens’ liberation and the restoration of democracy, new interest in Aphrodite Pandemos, Aphrodite “of all the Demos,” is not surprising.[5] Her sanctuary, shared with Peitho (“Persuasion”), was below and south of the Athena Nike bastion of the Acropolis;[6] it had been established, according to Pausanias (1.22.3), by Theseus when he united Attica. Another tradition, sufficiently well known that Philemon could allude to it in a comedy (frag. 3 KA), attributes the foundation to Solon from the proceeds of houses of prostitution.[7] The goddess thus had close ties to the unifier of Attica and a founding father of Athenian democracy, both of topical interest in the 280s. IG II2 659 would suggest that the Athenians were attempting, in 283/2, to reclaim for democratic and nationalistic purposes the deity whom, in 291/0, they had made the mother of Demetrios Poliorcetes (above, chapter 3, pp. 95–96). And we shall later see that she comes to the fore again when, in 229, the Athenians once again reclaim their independence.
The Panathenaia was the major festival of Athena Polias, celebrated annually at the end of the month Hecatombaion but every fourth year augmented (the Great Panathenaia) with the presentation of the embroidered peplos to the goddess and a full program of competitions. In the middle of the fourth century Demosthenes could claim that however chaotically they handled their other affairs, the Athenians always staged on time the Panathenaia and City Dionysia (4.35). In the decade after the ouster of Demetrios we should expect the Great Panathenaia to have been held in 286, 282, and 278. But in the decree which honored Callias of Sphettos (PA 7824) it is stated that “the Demos was about to make, [for the first time] from when the asty had been recovered, the Panathenaia for Archegetis” (SEG 28.60.64–66).[8] From the context and the nature of the arrangements it appears that plans were being laid for the Great Panathenaia of either 282 or 278.[9]
The Great Panathenaia, thus, with the “ship-cart” procession and display of the peplos and the program of games, had not been held in 286 and perhaps not even in 282; the last celebration was probably in 290. We find, too, that Athena has a new epithet, Archegetis (“Founder”).[10] And, further, Callias had negotiated with King Ptolemy of Egypt to provide the “equipment” (ὅπλα)[11] necessary for the peplos (66–70). All of this suggests some prior neglect and uncertainty concerning the cult which, at least in the age of Lycourgos, held the center position in state religion. The cost of the Great Panathenaia must have been very large,[12] but there were ways to economize and cost alone hardly seems a sufficient cause for missing one or two celebrations. If in fact the peplos was not woven for and presented to Athena during these years, that would be a break in ritual and would indicate a serious rupture in the state’s relationship with its patroness. It may have taken the Athenians some years to recover from the peplos of 302, which bore, as may have those of succeeding quadrennia, the figures of Demetrios and Antigonos. And that the peplos-displaying cart had sat idle for eight or twelve years may explain the need for new equipment.
The new epithet, Archegetis, may also suggest that now the Athenians were searching for a new definition of their patroness.[13] Given the events of recent years, the epithet Polias (“City Protector”) may have seemed inappropriate. Archegetis appears at this period linked to industry and the crafts. In 273/2 the prytanists sacrificed to her at the Chalkeia, the annual festival for the artisans of the city (Agora XV, #78.16–17).[14] The Athena Archegetis of the Chalkeia has now become the recipient of the Panathenaia. Archegetis and Polias were, of course, the same goddess,[15] but the choice of epithets may reveal a change of emphasis. Although Athena’s temple continued to be known as that “of Polias” (IG II2 686 + 687.44, at outbreak of Chremonidean War), we find no cult document using the epithet Polias until ca. 250 (IG II2 776). After 287/6 the much battered Athena was to turn her attention to the industry, not the military defense, of the city. This is not to suggest that the traditional cult practices of Athena Polias were, after 287/6, significantly altered or even that the annual Panathenaia, the celebrations of her birthday, were not held. But now we shall see a new Athena, Soteira, emerging as a partner of Zeus Soter to take over the role of protecting the city as a whole. Clearly Polias had suffered damage under Demetrios and Lachares; for a time, her role in Athens was to be more limited.
There emerges in the city cult of Athens after 287/6 Athena Soteira, first attested in 273/2 (IG II2 676), always associated with Zeus Soter. Zeus is the senior in this partnership, and we must look first to his cult. V. J. Rosivach (1987) has, I think, properly sorted out the relationship of Zeus Soter, Athena Soteira, Demetrios and Antigonos as the Soteres, and the festival Soteria after the revolution of 288/7. For much that follows I am indebted to him, but I feel less certainty than he in assigning the texts of the earlier history of Zeus Soter’s cult. Problems arise here because there were, at various times, two cults of Soter: one in the city, one in Piraeus.
The cult in Piraeus is well attested for the fourth century, and we have already discussed its nature in the age of Lycourgos (see chapter 1). When Zeus Soter emerges in the city he is certainly, as Rosivach has shown, the Zeus Eleutherios of the Stoa of Zeus in the Agora, whose cult dates at least to the early fifth century. But when did Zeus Eleutherios of the city acquire the epithet Soter? Which of our texts first unmistakably names the Zeus Soter of the city? Most of the fourth-century texts refer explicitly to Zeus Soter of Piraeus or are themselves from Piraeus.[16] Other inscriptions list him among other deities worshipped in Piraeus or elsewhere outside the city.[17] Most if not all of these probably belong to Piraeus cult. The references in speeches (Lys. 26.6; Din. 1.36, 3.15) are too brief to locate the cult. But Isocrates indicates without question that there was a statue of Zeus Soter in the Agora by 394 (9.57), and this would certainly have stood in the sanctuary of Zeus Eleutherios.[18] There was thus early in the fourth century an identification, at some level, of Eleutherios and Soter, even though Zeus need not as yet have adopted Soter as an official epithet in the city.
Lycourgos in the Leocrates of 330 speaks of the joint sanctuary of Zeus Soter and Athena Soteira in Piraeus (17; cf. 136–37). Athena Soteira and Zeus Soter emerge together in the city cult first in the honors voted for their epimelētai in two successive years, 273/2 and 272/1 (IG II2 676; SEG 16.63). Together they receive a sacrifice, a lectisternium, and, in 272/1, a procession. There is only a single priest, a male, surely that of Zeus. About this time, perhaps also in 272/1, the priest of Zeus Soter was honored by the state for sacrifices which he successfully made to Zeus Soter and Athena Soteira “for the health and safety of the Boule and Demos.” [19] The priest had also, apparently, made the Boule’s inaugural sacrifices (εἰσιτητέρια) for the safety of the Boule and Demos. That the priest sacrificed for the “health and safety” of the Boule and Demos is not particularly significant, because in this period, as we shall see, virtually all sacrifices in state cult were expressly for this purpose. If, however, the eisitētēria of IG II2 689 are those of the Boule, as it appears they are, then Zeus Soter has become very closely linked to this major institution of Athenian democratic government.
We appear to have, then, a “new” or at least remodeled cult of Zeus Soter and Athena Soteira fully established in the city by 273/2, with its annual sacrifice and lectisternium overseen by elected epimelētai and with a procession. When did it emerge and why? Its origins are fairly clear. Already in the early fourth century Zeus Soter was identified, to some degree, with Zeus Eleutherios. The Piraeus cult in which Athena Soteira was associated with Zeus Soter would provide the model for bringing an Athena Soteira into the city Zeus Soter cult. As to the reason and the time, I share Rosivach’s view that the “new” joint cult in the city probably resulted from Athenian attempts, after 287/6, to preserve the festival Soteria but to remove Demetrios and Antigonos from it. Zeus and Athena could now become the Soteres, and the festival could be celebrated in their honor.[20] Athena Polias had become Archegetis, and Athena Soteira along with her father could now assume the role of protecting the eleutheria (“freedom”) of the city. Before 287/6 Athena Polias had not done this job particularly well, and through this remodeling of cults and festivals the Athenians could reorder the divine assignments. In her new role Athena would have the assistance of—or, better, she would assist—her powerful father, who, as Eleutherios, had always represented and championed Athenian freedom. In religious terms the safety (sōtēria) of Athens would no longer depend on Macedonian Soteres. Henceforth Zeus Soter and Athena Soteira of the city would be responsible for the freedom of the city. In a sense, with these developments the primary “state” cult of Athens moved from the Erechtheum to the sanctuary of Zeus Eleutherios, from the Acropolis to the Agora, and we may count this as one of the major religious changes occasioned by the actions, desecrations, and divine honors of Demetrios Poliorcetes.
The priest of Zeus Soter in, perhaps, 272/1 made what appear to be the year’s inaugural sacrifices of the Boule (IG II2 689.20–23). If in fact Zeus Soter’s cult was just coming into an era of new authority, the cults of the Boule were perhaps being modified to accommodate him. Already in the fifth century there was a sanctuary of Zeus Boulaios and Athena Boulaia in the Bouleuterion, and the members of the Boule prayed to them as they entered the building (Antiphon 6.45). Zeus’ cult statue there was of wood.[21] Zeus Boulaios and Athena Boulaia, who are clearly a set pair, do not, however, appear amid the Boule’s cultic activity from the time of Antiphon until the Roman period.[22] It is quite likely that in IG II2 689 the pair Zeus Boulaios and Athena Boulaia had become Zeus Soter and Athena Soteira; but if so, it was only a momentary phenomenon, not to be attested again for the Boule. Rather, in just this period, Apollo Prostaterios (“Protector”) and his sister Artemis Boulaia begin to receive the sacrifices the prytanists made before the meetings of the Ekklesia and, no doubt, the Boule.[23]
Agora XV, #78 of 273/2 is a well-preserved and early example of what becomes a long series of decrees in which the prytanists of a tribe or their officials receive a crown from the state for the excellent performance of their duties.[24] Such “prytany” decrees are an important source for the religious activities of this and following centuries, and for that reason, and because of its own importance, I offer a translation of Agora XV, #78:
For those still inclined to question the vivacity of Athenian state cult in the Hellenistic period, it is worth emphasizing how much importance is attributed to the religious duties and contributions of these fifty government officials in this, one of the first and best preserved of the prytany decrees. The language of the text was to become formulaic for centuries, but such is the nature of the Athenian official prose style for all subjects. The formulaic language should not, of itself, lead us to question the importance or significance of these activities now or later.In the archonship of Glaucippos (273/2), in the fourth prytany, that of the tribe Antiochis, for which Euthoinos son of [Euthycritos] of the deme Myrrhinous was secretary, on the twenty-ninth of Pyanopsion, [an Ekklesia]. Of the presiding officers Hegesilochos, son of Cephisodotos, of the deme Piraeus and his fellow officers brought the vote. The Demos decided. Euthymachos, son of Euthippos, of the deme Xypete made the proposal:
Concerning what the prytanists of Antiochis report about the sacrifices which they were making before meetings of the Ekklesia to Apollo Prostaterios and the other gods to whom it was traditional to sacrifice, and they sacrificed also the Stenia at their own expense to Demeter and Kore on behalf of the [Boule] and the Demos, with good fortune it has been decided by the Demos:
And since the prytanists [sacrificed] the appropriate sacrifices well and generously and took care of all the other things which the laws and decrees of the Demos assigned [them],To accept the [good things] which they say occurred in the sacrifices which they were sacrificing for the health and safety of the Boule and Demos of the Athenians and of all others who are well intentioned to the Demos.
To praise the prytanists of Antiochis and to crown them with a gold crown in accordance with the [law] because of their piety toward the gods and their generosity toward the Demos of the Athenians.
And so that they may sacrifice also the Chalkeia to Athena Archegetis of the city and so that the relations [to the gods] may be good and pious for the Boule and the Demos, the Demos is to vote how much money it is necessary to dispense to them for the [administration of the sacrifice]. What the Demos decides to vote for, [the treasurer of the stratiotic fund] and those in charge of the administration are to dispense. And the revenue is to be from the money ent for decrees] by the Boule. And [the secretary for the] prytany is to inscribe this [decree] on a stone stele and erect it [in the Prytaneion. And for the inscription] of the stele those in charge of the administration are to dispense [the expense that occurs].
The sacrifices to Apollo Prostaterios and the other gods before legislative meetings are clearly already routine, and we shall return to these. Two provisions appear specific to these prytanists: that they sacrificed the Stenia to Demeter and Kore at their own expense, and that they be allocated funds to sacrifice the Chalkeia to Athena Archegetis. What little is known of the Stenia indicates that it was a women’s festival, held at Eleusis on Pyanopsion 9 and featuring a night banquet characterized by the trading of insults.[25] It is known from the fifth century (Ar. Thesm. 834, of 411), appears in this text, and then first reappears in a probable restoration of a prytany decree of 140/39 (Agora XV, #240.9–10). There may have been local celebrations of the festival, as for the Thesmophoria, but the celebration at Eleusis—no doubt the major, state one—was quite probably impossible during the Macedonian occupation. Agora XV, #78, passed just twenty days after the festival, may suggest a time of revival for this festival at Eleusis, in part through the prytanists’ generosity, after the recovery of Eleusis ca. 285. Presumably the prytanists paid for the victim that would, duly sacrificed, serve as the entrée for the women’s banquet.[26]
Only one day after the decree was passed, on Pyanopsion 30, the Chalkeia was held. The timing indicates last minute and, since the budget for the festival was still undecided, somewhat chaotic preparation. The Chalkeia, too, was an established festival of the fifth century (Soph. frag. 760 Nauck) which, in 273/2, required some ad hoc financing. The role of the prytanists in this festival, here first securely attested,[27] may have continued. The festival has been restored in a prytany decree of 118/7 (Agora XV, #253.9–10; cf. IG II2 990).
That the Stenia and Chalkeia do not appear in prytany decrees from 273/2 until well into the second century B.C. probably results not from the temporary demise of these festivals but from their being subsumed under “the traditional sacrifices” that the prytanists of the month Pyanopsion made. In most years, unlike in 273/2, the prytanists’ activity in regard to these festivals would have been routine. Only financial needs and extraordinary measures to meet them dictated their mention then.
In Agora XV, #78.6 of 273/2, Apollo Prostaterios first emerges as the deity who receives the prytanists’ sacrifice before meetings of the Ekklesia. To him are added “the other gods to whom it was traditional to sacrifice.” By 254/3 his sister Artemis, as Boulaia, has joined him in this role (Agora XV, #89.8), and henceforth they are regularly paired in the pyrtany decrees.[28] Apollo Prostaterios first appears in the Athenian tradition in a collection of oracles inserted into the text of the speech that Demosthenes prepared against Meidias in 348 (21.52–53). There are at least four oracles, coming from both Delphi and Dodona.[29] The second, seemingly from Delphi, orders the Athenians “for health to sacrifice and pray to Zeus Hypatos, Heracles, and Apollo Prostaterios; for good fortune to Apollo Agyieus, Leto, and Artemis.” [30] Heracles was, of course, worshipped throughout Attica, and Zeus Hypatos received an annual sacrifice from the Marathonian Tetrapolis in the fourth century (IG II2 1358, col. 2.13). The oracle from Demosthenes, if genuine here, makes a fourth century B.C. cult of Apollo Prostaterios likely. Given the context and the source, it is probable that this Apollo Prostaterios was none other than Apollo Pythios, the Apollo of Delphi.
It is certainly possible that the prytanists had always, or at least since the fourth century, made such sacrifices to Apollo Prostaterios but that Apollo becomes known only when the prytanists first begin to record their sacrifices in the prytany decrees. Apollo may, however, have been given prominence first now, after the Athenians in 279 reconciled with the Aetolians and reestablished, after decades, ties to Delphi.[31] One may also assume that Zeus Boulaios/Athena Boulaia, Zeus Soter/Athena Soteira, and Apollo Prostaterios/Artemis Boulaia all maintained their own, somewhat distinctive roles in the cults of the Boule and Ekklesia throughout this period; another possibility, as I suggest, is that after a period of uncertainty and rivalry between the pairs, Apollo Prostaterios/Artemis Boulaia emerge as the chief deities and the others fall into the category of “the other gods” who also receive sacrifices. If my suggestion is correct, this development would be a further indication of Athena’s diminished importance in state cult. Athena has lost her role in the protection of the state as a whole to Zeus Soter and as Archegetis was tending primarily to industry and the handicrafts. In the cults of the Boule and Ekklesia her role of Boulaia/Soteria was lost to Artemis Boulaia, the junior partner of Apollo Prostaterios. If this development, admittedly hypothetical, is correctly proposed, it can be the result largely of the maltreatment of her cult by Demetrios Poliorcetes and his Athenian supporters and by the thug Lachares.
After 287/6 the Athenians also quickly removed Demetrian elements from the City Dionysia. Demetrieia, incorporated into the City Dionysia in 295/4 (chapter 3, pp. 92–94), disappears from the festival’s name as early as 285/4 (IG II2 653.36–38, 654.41–43).[32] The City Dionysia is then attested or expected for 284/3 (IG II2 654.41–43), 283/2 (IG II2 657.61–63; SEG 25.89.12–13), 282/1 (IG II2 3079 + 668), 279/8 (IG II2 2853), 271/0 (IG II2 3083), 270/69 (SEG 28.60.92–94; IG II2 3081), and was doubtless held also in the intervening years.
But here too there may have been a change in the festival. Since the end of the fourth century it had been the practice to announce “in the competition of the tragedies” the honor of a crown given to an individual for some service or other. In the Callias decree of 270/69 (SEG 28.60.92–94) is the earliest appearance of the wording, “in the new competition of tragedies of the Great Dionysia.” [33] In 385 the production of an old tragedy had been introduced into the City Dionysia, and the practice apparently became regular after 341.[34] The phrase “in the new competition of tragedies” has been taken to mean “in the competition of new tragedies,” to distinguish it from the competition of old tragedies.[35] That may be correct, but it requires an awkward reading of the Greek. It may rather be that since 283/2, when honors were, as usual, to be announced “in the competition of the tragedies of the Great Dionysia” (IG II2 657.61–63),[36] a change had occurred. The Athenians either redesigned the competitions of the post-Demetrian Dionysia or, at the least, now first began in these texts to distinguish between the competitions of old and new tragedies. Henceforth that distinction is usually maintained.[37] In any case, “the new competition” suggests that changes, actual or conceptual, were made in the City Dionysia between 283/2 and 270/69, and this may have been the result of restructuring the festival after the removal of the “new” Dionysos, Demetrios Poliorcetes.
A further, major change occurred for the personnel of the City Dionysia by 278/7 when, for the first time, we learn of the existence of an Athenian guild or corporation of technītai (“artists” or “craftsmen”) of Dionysos.[38] In IG II2 1132.1–39 the Amphictionic Council of Delphi guarantees to these technītai safe passage and freedom from taxes and military service as they travel the Greek world to participate in festivals.
At Athens in the early period of the City Dionysia the actors and choruses of tragedy and comedy, the choruses of the dithyramb, and virtually all the chorēgoi had been Athenian citizens. The poets too, except for the writers of dithyrambs, were Athenians. Apart from the musicians all the participants were Athenians, writing and performing for their fellow Athenians, celebrating the local festival of an Athenian Dionysos. And the plays themselves, at least in performance, were indissolubly bound to the city’s Dionysiac festivals. Foreigners could and did attend the City Dionysia, however, and quite early the fame of Athenian drama and dramatic poets drew international attention. The texts of some plays no doubt soon circulated far beyond Athens. Already ca. 476 Aeschylus visited the court of Hieron in Sicily, and in 456 he returned to Gela where he died. At the end of his career Euripides was enticed to the court of King Archelaos of Macedon where, in 406, he too died. We may also recall that the comic poet Philippides of Kephale was a guest and influential friend of King Lysimachos and in 283/2 was rewarded by the Athenians for his efforts on their behalf (chapter 3, pp. 99–101). During their various visits Aeschylus certainly and Euripides and Philippides probably wrote plays and assisted in staging productions. But none of this need have had much effect, except for the loss of talent, on the religious nature of the City Dionysia in Athens.
We may suspect, however, a change of atmosphere when the actors became to a degree divorced from the audience and the community, when they became thoroughly professional and, individually or in groups, traveled an international circuit, performing in festivals of other countries or even in purely secular productions. Henceforth for them the Athenian City Dionysia was just one, however important, stop on the circuit.[39] The increasing professionalism and cosmopolitanism of the poets and actors must have made the competitions of the City Dionysia, even more than they had been in the fifth century, a source of entertainment rather than of religious feeling for the assembled citizenry. Ordinary fellow citizens, neighbors, would no longer be performing and addressing the particular concerns of their state. Other changes may also have contributed to distancing the Athenian audience from the dramatic presentations. From the times of the reforms under Demetrios of Phaleron (317–307), only one Athenian each year, the agōnothetēs, took responsibility for the dramatic competitions; no longer were twenty-eight wealthy Athenians involved, financially and emotionally, in each year’s productions. We might imagine the audience now less as participants (actual or psychological) than as spectators at an event presented by the agōnothetēs and the government. We also see that by the last quarter of the fourth century several of the prominent comic poets—for example, Alexis of Thurii and Philemon of Syracuse—were no longer born Athenians.[40]
At the end of the classical and throughout the Hellenistic period we can see tragedy and comedy progressing, if that is the word, from genres intimately tied to Athenian Dionysiac festivals to a form of entertainment suited to many occasions. At Athens it never reached the point at which it is found in Rome—where, for example, in the 160s Terence’s Hecyra could be produced at the Ludi Megalenses, the funeral games of L. Aemilius Paullus, and the Ludi Romani, during which audiences were lost to a ropewalker and bear acts (prologue to Ter. Hec.). But, as such developments were occurring outside of Athens and Athenian actors were contributing to them, the effect was no doubt felt in Athens.
Macedon’s influence was important, perhaps decisive also in this area of Athenian and Greek religion. Macedonian kings and nobility from early days clearly had a taste for Athenian drama and sought out poets, actors, and other performers. Euripides had left Athens for the court of Archelaos, and Philippides stayed with Lysimachos. By the middle of the fourth century the Athenian actors Neoptolemos, originally of Scyros (PA 10647), and Aristodemos, originally of Metapontum, were making extended stays at Philip’s court and assisting Athens in her negotiations with him.[41] As actors they apparently had the right of safe passage (Dem. 5.6). After Philip took Olynthus in 348 he held an “Olympian” festival and provided technītai for the sacrifice and the night festival, himself crowning the victors. Demosthenes (19.192–95) reports that at a symposium on this occasion, the comic actor Satyros personally and successfully intervened with Philip on behalf of some girls captured at Olynthos.[42] Demosthenes treats the performance of actors in a non-Dionysiac, non-Athenian, ad hoc occasion at the request of the king of Macedon as routine. Later, in 336, the same Neoptolemos recited lines from tragedy at the festival Philip held in Aegae to celebrate the marriage of his daughter Cleopatra.[43] After his capture of Thebes in 335 Alexander held at Dion a nine-day festival, originally instituted by Archelaos, with dramatic competitions for Zeus and the Muses,[44] and did the same after taking Tyre in 332. In the Tyrian festival the actors Thettalos and Athenodoros participated.[45] To be there the Athenian Athenodoros had skipped his own City Dionysia. Thettalos, much to Alexander’s dismay, was defeated by Athenodoros, but Alexander nonetheless paid the fine the Athenians levied on their fellow citizen for missing their festival (Plut. Alex. 29, Mor. 334D–E). Thettalos and Athenodoros as well as Aristocritos and the comic actors Lycon, Phormion, and Ariston also participated in the festival accompanying Alexander’s wedding in Susa.[46]
These are but a few examples of a new type of “religious” festival, instituted by the Macedonians, which celebrated a military victory, a marriage, or another noteworthy occasion and contained, among other elements, musical and dramatic performances. Athenian actors, apparently still as freelancing individuals, participated widely, and Athens’ measures to secure their services even for the City Dionysia were not always successful. Unlike the circulation of the plays and even of the poets, the international movement and experience of the actors would very likely have affected the atmosphere of the City Dionysia itself, changing it from the purely civic event it had once been.
By 278/7 actors and poets centered in Athens had organized themselves into a corporation. The Amphictiones of Delphi grant the Athenian technītai of Dionysos safe passage and safety for their property in times of war and peace, exemption from taxes and military service, for all time and among all Greeks, “so that the honors and sacrifices to which the technītai are assigned may be performed at the appropriate times” (IG II2 1132.15–17). The representatives of the guild to the Amphictiones were the Athenian tragic poet Astydamas and the tragic actor Neoptolemos. The text of the decree was to be set up at both Athens and Delphi, and copies of both happen to survive.[47] It is worth stressing that the avowed purpose of the decree is religious, to have technītai available for religious festivals and, more generally, “for the sake of piety toward the gods” (lines 32–33).
A Euboean decree of ca. 294–288 contains detailed provisions for a festival but makes no allusion to a guild of technītai.[48] The Athenian guild was thus probably formed in the years between the Euboean decree and 278/7. It then soon faced competition from a similar guild, the Isthmian-Nemean. The Amphictionic Council may have chosen this time to recognize the Athenian guild in order to secure its participation in the Soteria, a new Delphic festival commemorating victory over the Gauls. A guild of technītai, probably the Isthmian-Nemean, under the leadership of their priest Aristarchos of Hermione, “donated the whole competition to the god (Apollo) and the Amphictiones for the Soteria.” This festival typically required sixty technītai of various specialties, including three teams each for tragedy and comedy. The inscriptions of the Amphictionic Soteria list 251 different artists, 29 of them from Athens.[49] It appears that the guild took full responsibility for the musical competitions, providing this component of the festival essentially prepackaged for their clients. The sacrifices would be the responsibility of the client. Presumably the occasion or even the deity would make little difference to the technītai. Given the availability of the competitions as a package, it is not surprising to find several new festivals appearing in the Greek world under the patronage of rich kings in the later third century. It is noteworthy, however, that there is no evidence of such guild activity or of the sudden appearance of such new festivals in Athens. The guild of Dionysiac technītai was an Athenian export. For the City Dionysia, the ultimate origin of such guilds, Athenians evidently secured the artists’ participation on an individual basis. In this, as in other areas, Athenian state cult was conservative, lagging behind religious developments occurring elsewhere in the Greek world.[50]
Moreover, in approximately these years (278/7) the Athenians inscribed on a building in the theater records of victorious poets and actors in the Lenaia and City Dionysia from as far back as 485/4 (IG II2 2325).[51] Dina Peppas-Delmousou (1984) has associated these “historical” lists of victors, the “new competition of tragedies,” and the appearance of the technītai of Dionysos in arguing, persuasively, that after the ouster of Demetrios Poliorcetes the Athenians gave to their theater a new élan with an antiquarian flavor. As they perhaps formalized a new structure to their festival, as they celebrated, with an inscriptional record, their glorious dramatic past, the Athenians were also sending their actors in an organized troupe and individually to perform tragedies and comedies at a wide variety of public and private occasions throughout the Greek world. If Athens was, in international terms, weak politically and economically, she could still reassert, for herself and other Greeks, her literary and cultural predominance.
Itinerant actors not only circulated much of Athenian culture in the Hellenistic world; on their occasional visits to Athens they also surely brought their experience of the royal courts and of the Hellenistic world back to Athens. But in Athens of the late fourth and first half of the third century, the true entry point of what we commonly consider Hellenistic culture was the schools of philosophy. Here we find an extensive international community producing and propounding elaborate and innovative theories on the nature of the physical world, ethics, logic and rhetoric, astronomy and astrology, and the history of philosophy. From just before Athens’ liberation from Demetrios Poliorcetes to just after the Chremonidean War, the careers of major or founding figures of the four philosophical schools in Athens came to an end: Theophrastos, the successor to Aristotle as the head of the Peripatos, died in 287/6; Epicouros, the founder of the Garden, in 270; Zeno, the founder of the Stoa, in 263; and Arcesilaos, a successor to Plato as head of the Academy and founder of the Middle Academy, in 242/1. It seems appropriate, therefore, to survey here the relationship of these philosophers to the popular religion of their time.
These early Hellenistic philosophers practicing in Athens were concerned primarily with the physical sciences, rhetoric, and ethics, not with religion and religious topics per se. Hundreds of titles of their books are preserved, primarily in Diogenes Laertios, and only a handful concern “the gods” or “piety.” [52] The titles alone, of course, do not give a clear measure of their interests in religion; for example, the fragments indicate that in their books on “physics” they occasionally treated the nature of the gods. Remnants of their theories on the gods and piety do survive, and we find that the gods (or god) of the various philosophical schools differ markedly from one another but are all, like their early precursors in Xenophanes and like Plato’s Forms, immortal, immaterial, and transcendent, products of the intellect rather than of the heart. The gods of the different schools stand in distinct contrast to the deities of private and state religion of the time. This is not the place to review the various theories on the gods developed by the four schools, but a few quotations will suffice to make the point. Let us take first the Stoics of Zeno:[53]
God is a living creature, immortal, reasoning, perfect or intelligent in happiness, not admitting of anything evil, concerned with the kosmos and the things in the kosmos. He is not, however, human in form. He is the maker (δημιουργόν) of the whole and, as it were, the father of all things, both in common and in that part of him that permeates all things. And that part is called, in accord with its powers, by many names. They say he is Dia because all things exist because of (διά) him; they call him Zeus in so far as he is responsible for life (ζῆν) or he pervades life; Athena in regard to the fact that his controlling element extends into the sky (αἰθέρα); Hera because it extends into the air (ἀέρα); Hephaistos because it extends into the creative fire; Poseidon for its extension into the moist; and Demeter for its extension into the earth. (D.L. 7.147)
God is one and Nous (“Mind”) and fate and Zeus, and he is called many other names. In the beginning, being by himself, he changes all substance through air into water. And just as in generation the seed moves about, so also god, being seminal logos (“reason”) of the kosmos, is left behind in the moist, making matter productive for himself for the generation of external things. Then first he begets the four elements: fire, water, air, and earth. (D.L. 7.135–36)
Epicouros’ gods were completely remote from and disinterested in mankind, enjoying their own perfectly blessed and pleasurable life:[54]
First of all think the god is an imperishable and blessed creature, just as the common understanding of god was sketched out, and attach to him nothing foreign to imperishability and nothing alien to blessedness. Believe about him everything that is able to maintain his blessedness and his imperishability. For gods do exist because knowledge of them is clear. But they are not the type of gods that most people think, for most people do not even consistently maintain the types of gods they think of. It is not the person who does away with the gods of most people who is impious, but rather the person who attaches to the gods the beliefs that most people hold. For the statements of most people about the gods are not true preconceptions but false assumptions. (D.L. 10.123–24)
What is the life of the gods and what kind of life is spent by them? A life than which nothing can be imagined more blessed, more overflowing with all good things. For god does nothing, is involved in no occupations, works at no task, rejoices in his own wisdom and virtue, and knows for certain that he will always be in pleasures which are not only the greatest but also eternal. (Cic. Nat. D. 1.16.50–51 frag. 352 Usener)
(The Epicureans) remove the divine into a life inactive and full of pleasures, as remote as possible from gratitude and anger and from concern for us. (Plut. Pyrrh. 20.3 frag. 363 Usener)
God does not give kind services but is free from care and concern for us. Turned away from the world he does other things or, what seems to Epicouros the greatest blessedness, he does nothing, and kind services touch him no more than wrongs do. (Sen. Ben. 4.4.1 frag. 364 Usener)
Noticeably lacking in these and other contemporary philosophical discussions of the gods, even in contrast to those of Plato and Aristotle, is reference to the polis. The god (or gods) of the philosophers is not only Panhellenic but cosmic. His interest, activities, and presence lie far beyond the bounds of the polis. These gods may be completely remote from man, enjoying their own pure blessedness (Epicouros), or god may be immanent in the world through Reason, in the order of the physical world and in the reason of each individual person (Zeno). The philosophers discuss their gods in terms of the universe and the individual, not in terms of the city-state, which falls between these extremes. For these early Hellenistic philosophers in Athens, unlike for Plato and Aristotle, the polis has largely ceased to be a point of reference, in religion as well as in other matters. And that is, no doubt, in part because the polis has ceased to be a major point of reference in their own lives. Most of them, like Theophrastos, Zeno, and Arcesilaos, were foreigners who lived or had lived for decades in Athens. Only Epicouros was an Athenian by citizenship; he was born and raised on Samos but had served in the Athenian ephebe corps in 323/2–322/1. Thereupon he left Athens, to return fifteen years later, in 307/6.[55] The rather extensive records of these schools suggest that of the hundreds of students, as few as one in twenty was an Athenian.[56]
The deities of the philosophers differed fundamentally from those of ordinary citizens, but what of these philosophers’ views of proper behavior in regard to traditional religious norms and customs? Little is known, but that little suggests that these philosophers were not led by their theories or their personal inclinations to disparage or violate all contemporary standards of religious behavior. They recommended some traditional cultic acts, but they redefined the purpose and recipient of these honors. The Stoics seemingly defined piety in traditional terms and approved of traditional religious acts, although with a characteristic emphasis on Reason:
Epicouros recommended worship, sacrifice, and attendance at festivals—not to influence the gods but to show recognition of their supremely blessed nature.[57] There are, of course, in the writings of these philosophers statements and arguments contrary to contemporary practices. Theophrastos in his treatise “On Piety” made the case, with historical precedents, against animal sacrifice; Epicouros reportedly denied the usefulness of prayer and the validity of divination (e.g., frags. 27, 388, 395 Usener); and Zeno argued that cities should not erect temples and statues for the gods (frags. 146, 264–67 Arnim).Good men are god-respecting, for they are experienced in the traditional rites concerning the gods. Piety is the knowledge of the service (owed) to the gods. And furthermore good men will sacrifice to the gods and are religiously correct because they avoid offenses concerning the gods and the gods admire them. For they are holy and just toward the divine. And only the wise are priests because they have thought seriously about sacrifices, the foundings (of temples and dedications), purifications, and the other things related to the gods. (D.L. 7.119)
Such criticisms of religion by philosophers were hardly new in Athens, and these were quite mild compared to those of Diogenes of Sinope, the founder of Cynicism, in the third quarter of the fourth century. Diogenes, in the most public fora, wittily expressed his scorn for the most fundamental beliefs and practices of popular religion: for sacrifice, “it disturbed him that men sacrifice to the gods to ensure health but in the sacrifice itself feast to the detriment of health” (D.L. 6.28); for prayer, “Men ask for those things which seem to them good, not for those which are truly good” (42; cf. 37, 63); for purifications, “Unfortunate man, don’t you know that just as you cannot get rid of errors of grammar by sprinklings, so you cannot get rid of errors in life?” (42; cf. 61); for votive offerings, “When someone was marveling at the votive offerings in Samothrace, he said, ‘There would be many more, if also those who were not saved were setting up offerings’” (59); for divination, “When he saw interpreters of dreams and prophets and those who attended them…, he said he thought nothing more silly than man” (24; cf. 43); for cult officials, “When he saw the officials of a temple leading away someone who had stolen a phialē belonging to the treasurers, he said, ‘The great thieves are leading away the little thief’” (45; cf. 72); for the Eleusinian Mysteries, “When the Athenians asked him to be initiated and told him that in Hades those who had been initiated enjoy front-row seating, ‘It would be ridiculous,’ he said, ‘if Agesilaos and Epaminondas will spend their time in the mud but some worthless people, because they have been initiated, will be in the Isles of the Blessed’” (39); and, finally, for funerals, “Some say that when dying he ordered them to throw him out unburied so every beast might have a share of him, or to throw him into a ditch and sprinkle on a little dust. But according to others he ordered that they throw him into the Ilissos, in order that he be useful to his brothers” (79; cf. 52).
But of the philosophers only Diogenes seemed capable of maintaining his philosophical convictions in the face of illness and death. Even his student Bion of Borysthenes, as was recounted by the people of Chalcis, when he fell ill was persuaded to wear an amulet and to repent of his offenses against religion (D.L. 4.54).[58] Virtually all the philosophers whose last days or wills are known had or planned traditional funerals, with Epicouros, of all people, providing tomb offerings (ἐναγίσματα) for his father, mother, and brothers (10.18);[59] he, like Theophrastos (5.41) and Zeno (7.10–12), received an elaborate state funeral and tomb.
Diogenes called the performances at the City Dionysia “great spectacles for fools” (D.L. 6.24), but other philosophers found festivals at least an entertaining holiday. Epicouros, an Athenian, encouraged participation in them and claimed the wise man would take more delight than other men in state spectacles (10.120). Arcesilaos took the occasions of festivals to visit his close friend Hierocles, the Macedonian commandant of Piraeus and Mounichia (4.39).
This expatriate philosophic community, deprived of full participation in the social aspects of Athenian cult, developed their own monthly and annual celebrations. Halcyoneus, a son of Antigonos Gonatas, had received extensive philosophical education in Athens under the supervision of Zeno and his students, and after Halcyoneus’ untimely death the philosophers of all schools assembled annually to celebrate his birthday, enjoying the largess of Antigonos (D.L. 4.41–42).[60] As we have seen (chapter 2, pp. 65–66), Plato was probably honored annually on his birthday, Thargelion 7. In his own will Epicouros endowed a variety of regular celebrations: annual ones of his own birthday (Gamelion 20), for his brothers (in Posideon), and for Polyainos (in Metageitnion), and monthly meetings of the school on the twentieth, in honor of himself and Metrodoros.[61] The latter continued well into the Roman period (D.L. 10.18). Such regular gatherings, no doubt accompanied by a banquet, would provide for these foreigners a quasi-religious substitute for the monthly and annual festival days of the citizens. Significantly, the philosophers in such recurrent celebrations rendered honor (τιμή) to deceased mortals, relatives, former philosophers, and friends; the citizens in their festivals honored deities.
The overall impression is that these foreign philosophers formed a lively, vibrant, but in some ways closed society within Athens—“nests of foreigners” as Ferguson puts it (1911, 215).[62] Many were wealthy, and some, like Theophrastos and Arcesilaos, lived extravagantly and ostentatiously. Zeno and Epicouros chose relatively simple lives but accumulated fortunes. At any given time a large group of students, numbering quite likely in the hundreds, usually young, wealthy, and foreign, attended the lectures and studied with these recognized philosophers; and they moved often from philosopher to philosopher, from school to school. In the very nationalistic, if not actively anti-Macedonian decades after 287/6, these philosophers and their students had close personal and financial ties to the Macedonian successors of Alexander: to Antigonos Gonatas, Ptolemy Soter, and other powerful kings of the Hellenistic world. Antigonos and his son were both students of Zeno, and many of the philosophers and their students lived and traveled for a time with the monarchs. Their expatriate status, their wealth, their lifestyles, and their politics all would tend to isolate them from the Athenian Demos. But this did not prevent the Demos from using some of these philosophers, no doubt because of their Macedonian connections and expertise in rhetoric, as ambassadors to the various Hellenistic kings,[63] nor rich and influential Athenians from dining and partying with them.
But how, then, did their philosophical theories and criticisms of religion affect Athenian popular religion? How did the Athenians react? The strongest and most outspoken critic, as we have seen, was the Cynic Diogenes. In the first half of the third century many of his criticisms were taken up by, for example, Bion of Borysthenes (ca. 325–255), who reportedly denied that the gods existed, refused even to look at temples, ridiculed soothsayers, and mocked men for sacrificing to deities (D.L. 2.135, 4.55–56). In the late fifth century sentiments similar to those of Diogenes and Bion had brought exile from Athens to Diagoras of Melos.[64] The charge of impiety against Aristotle in 322 was, as we have seen (chapter 2, pp. 48–49), for a much less blatant offense and was surely motivated in part by anti-Macedonian sentiments. The abortive attempt in 307/6 by the orator Sophocles to have the state regulate the schools of philosophy seems largely political, a reaction against the Peripatetics’ close ties with Cassander and the deposed Demetrios of Phaleron.[65] Thereafter there is no known legal challenge to the philosophical schools on either political or religious grounds. The Athenians, in fact, seemed to have a certain affection for Diogenes (D.L. 6.43), in part, perhaps, because they were amused by his crankiness and bizarre lifestyle. One wonders if they would have shown similar tolerance for a fellow citizen. But there are also some indications that even a character such as Bion was aware of the dangers of expressing such criticisms outside philosophic circles.[66]
The evidence, mostly anecdotal and hardly conclusive, would suggest that many of the philosophers’ and particularly the Cynics’ criticisms of the gods and traditional religious practices were familiar to many Athenians, but there is no evidence that they affected, significantly or otherwise, popular belief and practice. Such criticisms had, we must remember, a long tradition in Greece, reaching back to Xenophanes in the late sixth century. Then, as in the third century, the criticisms influenced philosophical and, to a certain extent, literary thought and expression, but no impact on popular religion can be documented.
In sharp contrast to the philosophers who were mostly foreigners, almost all pro-Macedonian, and virtually isolated from Athenian religious cult stand the Atthidographers, “writers who,” to give Jacoby’s definition, “from the closing years of the fifth century B.C. down to the end of the Chremonidean War in 263/2 B.C. narrated the history of Athens and of Athens alone” (1949, 1).[67] They include Cleidemos, who published between 354 (or 378/7) and 340; Androtion, after 344/3; Phanodemos, the contemporary and collaborator of Lycourgos, ca. 338/7–327/6; Demon and Melanthios, both probably late fourth century; and the most famous and best-preserved, Philochoros, whose Atthis, or history of Athens, ended shortly after the Chremonidean War. We treat them here because the Atthidographic tradition came to an end with the death of Philochoros, just after the Chremonidean War, and because, as a group, the Atthidographers represent an influence from within Athenian society counter to the religious theories and skepticism of the foreign philosophers.
Each of the six Atthidographers was an Athenian citizen. Some were actively engaged in politics. Androtion was a member of the Boule twice (after 378/7 and in 356/5). In 358/7 he served as governor of Arcesine on Amorgos and was praised by the locals for his virtue, justice, and goodwill (IG XII 7, no. 5). After a vigorous political career he was, late in life, exiled and wrote his Atthis in Megara.[68] Phanodemos served in the Boule, was honored for his excellent services, and proposed the dedication it made to Hephaistos and Athena Hephaistia in 343/2 (IG II2 223).[69] Little is known of Philochoros’ political views, but he must have somehow stood out as an anti-Macedonian: in the late 260s, he was executed by Antigonos Gonatas for having sided with Arsinoe, the wife of Ptolemy Philadelphos, against Macedonian interests. Philochoros and, apparently, all of these Atthidographers were pro-democratic.[70]
For our purposes the religious, not the political, activities of the Atthidographers are most relevant. Cleidemos, named by Pausanias (10.15.5) as the first Athenian to write a history of Athens, was an exēgētēs, an official expounder of sacred law, especially that concerning homicide, death, and pollution. He published, in addition to his Atthis, an Exegetikon, apparently a set of practical instructions based on exegetical laws that formerly were the exclusive domain of the aristocratic exēgētai (FGrHist 323 F 14).[71] Some time before 365/4 Androtion proposed a decree concerning an inventory of sacred property on the Acropolis, including the statue of Athena Polias, processional equipment, and crowns.[72] Phanodemos was of the circle of Lycourgos, and we have already seen that in 331/0 he was honored for his legislation on the festivals and repair of the Amphiaraion; in 329/8 he was one of the ten men, including Lycourgos, overseeing the new quadrennial Amphiaraia. In 326/5, again with Lycourgos, he served on the official delegation to Delphi (chapter 1, pp. 33–34). Jacoby (1949, 78) rightly sees Phanodemos closely connected with Lycourgos’ program for the revival of Athenian state cult. The fragments of his Atthis show him interested, as Lycourgos was, in the details and history of Athenian local cults and myths. As Lycourgos’ use of such religious material in his speeches shows, the interest here was far more than antiquarian. Melanthios, perhaps as an exēgētēs, wrote a book On the Eleusinian Mysteries and Demon one On Sacrifices.
Philochoros brings the Atthidographic tradition to a culmination and an end. He was, in Jacoby’s estimation, a true scholar and a religious conservative. Apart from his Atthis, in seventeen books, he wrote twenty-six monographs covering the range of Athenian history and religion. As a practicing prophet he wrote a study On the Prophetic Art and elsewhere described rather proudly his own success in the field (FGrHist 328 F 67; cf. F 135). He wrote books also On Sacrifices, On Festivals, On the Days,[73]On Mysteries at Athens, On Purifications, On Dreams, and on several literary figures and topics—virtually all, so far as we know, centered on Athens and her institutions and history. He also, it should be noted, in his Atthis attacked Demetrios Poliorcetes for his irregular initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries (F69–70).[74]
Athenian religious history and institutions and local mythology played a significant role in most if not all of the Atthides and other writings of these Atthidographers from the fourth to the mid–third centuries B.C., with that interest apparently growing at the end of the period.[75] This would suggest that despite the ravages of Demetrios Poliorcetes and his Athenian supporters, and despite the presence of non-Athenian philosophers and their students, some of the spirit of the Lycourgan religious revolution, then exemplified by Phanodemos, was kept alive, perhaps finding its strongest exponent just before the Chremonidean War. And also, we should recall, at this same time the Athenians were celebrating their glorious literary past with the new inscriptional record in the theater of Dionysos (above, p. 122). In short, although some may judge that traditional Athenian religious beliefs and cults were being threatened from the philosophical quarter, these same beliefs and cults were receiving support, perhaps more effective because it was from Athenians for Athenians, from prominent pro-democratic citizens with experience in Athenian politics, society, and religion.
We have traced above the role of Demetrios Poliorcetes and his father Antigonos as Sōtēres and their festival the Soteria (see chapter 3), as well as the brief emergence, perhaps in their place, of Zeus Soter and Athena Soteira after 287/6. A survey of the Athenian sacrifices “for health and safety (sōtēria)” is appropriate at this juncture and reveals some trends of the period. Sacrifices expressly for “the health and safety of the Boule and Demos” are first attested for 343/2, and the Boule performed them (IG II2 223b.1–6). The proposal to honor the Boule for making such sacrifices apparently was made by none other than Phanodemos, whose role in religion and as an Atthidographer we have just examined and who was at the time a member of the Boule. In IG II2 410 of ca. 330, Dionysos, Poseidon Pelagios, Zeus Soter, and Ammon, all of Piraeus, were prayed to “for the health and safety of the Boule and the Demos of the Athenians and of the children, wives, and the other possessions of the Athenians” (chapter 1). In Schwenk #40 of 332/1 the same Phanodemos proposed a crown for Amphiaraos for his concern for the health and safety of the Athenians. Amphiaraos and, later, Asclepios (Schwenk #54 of 328/7) understandably received offerings intended to promote the health and safety of the Athenian Demos. For the next forty years we find the phrase “for health and safety” in only one decree, proposed by Stratocles in 307/6, honoring the Athenian colonists at Colophon. The Colophonian ambassadors had sacrificed “for the health and safety” of both peoples, and then made a dedication to Athena (Polias), likewise on behalf of both peoples (IG II2 456b.1–8).
From 307/6 to 287/6 Demetrios Poliorcetes was, at least officially, the Soter, and the numerous divine honors and festivals given to him were intended, no doubt, to recognize and promote his interest in the health and safety of the Athenians. We have seen above how, in his control of the food supply and of the military, he did, in fact, control just such areas of Athenian life (chapter 3, pp. 82–83). With the departure of Demetrios in 287/6 and the reestablishment of Athenian independence, sacrifices “for the Demos” and “for the health and safety of the Boule and Demos” reappear. In 284/3 the tribe Hippothontis honored a priest of Asclepios who, as was “befitting his office,” sacrificed all the sacrifices “on behalf of the Demos” (IG II2 1163.1–8). The archon of 282/1 sacrificed to Dionysos “for the health and safety of the Boule and Demos of the Athenians and for all the crops in the land,” surely as part of his management of the procession of the City Dionysia (IG II2 668). A prytany decree of 273/2 records sacrifices to Apollo Prostaterios and the other gods and the celebration of the Stenia for Demeter and Kore, all “for the health and safety of the Boule and Demos of the Athenians and of all others who are well intentioned to the Demos” (Agora XV, #78.4–11; above, pp. 113–14). This phrase, with minor variations, is already formulaic in such prytany decrees.[76] In, perhaps, 272/1 a priest is honored for his sacrifices to Zeus Soter and Athena Soteira “for the health and safety of the Boule and Demos” (IG II2 689). And, finally, in 267/6 the epimelētai of the Eleusinian Mysteries are honored for having made sacrifices at the Lesser Mysteries at Agrai for the same purpose. As we have seen, these epimelētai had also, on behalf of the Boule and Demos, sacrificed at their own expense the sōtēria to Demeter and Kore (IG II2 661). The Eleusinian deities, now after the recovery of Eleusis, receive both sōtēria and sacrifices on behalf of the whole Athenian Demos. And in the city itself, if the previous analyses of this chapter are correct, somewhat new deities—Apollo Prostaterios, Zeus Soter, and Athena Soteira, not Athena Polias—are entrusted with the nation’s protection.
But, from the inscriptions, a new element also emerges. Beginning in 281/0 taxiarchs, the commanders of the tribal infantry units, are recorded as making, sometimes at their own expense, sacrifices “for the health and safety of the Boule and Demos.” In 281/0 six taxiarchs were sent by the Athenians to participate in the Basileia at Lebadeia, and there they made sacrifice “for the health and safety of the Boule and Demos” (SEG 25.90). The taxiarchs of 275/4 were honored for making such sacrifices in Athens at their own expense, together with the generals (SEG 15.101). And, finally, the taxiarchs of 272/1 received similar honors for similar sacrifices with the generals (SEG 14.64). Such sacrifices had become, clearly, part of their job. These sacrifices for the national welfare by military officers may indicate attempts to establish or reaffirm, in religious terms, the tie of the army to the newly independent state. But, in more general terms, the independence gained by Athens in 287/6 clearly brought a resurgence of interest in sacrifices promoting the nation’s overall welfare by a number of officials to a broad spectrum of deities.
On the international scene we have seen that prominent Athenian actors, poets, and philosophers participated, either as individuals or in guilds, in various festivals throughout the Greek world. It appears that first after their liberation in 287/6 the Athenians began again to be represented as a state in some of these. In 281/0 six Athenian taxiarchs attended the Basileia, the festival in honor of Zeus Basileus, in Lebadeia. And, apparently in 282, the Athenians sent a delegation, headed by Callias of Sphettos, to the Ptolemaia, a festival that Ptolemy II created, initially, as part of the funeral celebrations of his father Ptolemy I but then repeated at regular intervals.[77] It is assumed that Athens sent delegations for each celebration.[78] It was Ptolemy II who, it will be remembered, sent “equipment” necessary for the renewal of the quadrennial celebration of the Panathenaia in 282 or 278 (above, pp. 108–109).
A critical event in the period was the Galatian invasion of mainland Greece. The Galatians forced passage through Thermopylae, which was being defended by Aetolian, Athenian, and other Greek forces. The turning point came in 279/8 when, by a combination of military, meteorological, and supernatural events the Galatians were driven back with heavy losses from Delphi. The last contingent of Galatians was finally defeated in 277 by Antigonos Gonatas near Lysimacheia on the Thracian Chersonese.[79] The expulsion of the Galatians “freed” Delphi and all Greece from an immediate barbarian threat, and we find it marked in Athens by the dedication, to Zeus Eleutherios in the Stoa of Zeus, of the shield of the young Athenian warrior Cudias, who died probably in the battle at Thermopylae (Paus. 10.21.5–6).[80] To commemorate the victory at Delphi the Amphictionic League instituted, at Delphi, new games, the Soteria for Apollo Pythios and Zeus Soter,[81] and the Athenians undoubtedly sent an official delegation to participate in these. The victory over the Galatians and Athens’ role in it apparently led to a reconciliation with the Aetolians and with Delphi. The emergence of Apollo Prostaterios in state cult may be related to these new ties with Delphi, and, in more general terms, Athenian pride in their role in the victory over the Galatians may have contributed to the surge in nationalistic religious activities we have seen in the mid-270s.
In sum, we may see the period of 287/6–267/6 as a time of cleansing, reestablishing, and reorganizing in Athenian religion. Most elements and vestiges of the “ruler cult” of Demetrios Poliorcetes were eliminated or redirected; only the two tribes, Demetrias and Antigonis, remained. In this period of independence there was a general movement back to the religious spirit of the age of Lycourgos; but, if the preceding analyses are correct, those deities who had previously failed the Athenians, like Athena Polias, lost prestige to other deities more suitable to the times, like Apollo Prostaterios and Zeus Soter. Concern and gratitude for sōtēria, in recent years the “gift” of the Macedonian king, were directed again to the gods.
Foreign influences on Athenian religion in this period are mixed and difficult to assess. Much of what we have seen is a conservative reaction, back to the time of Lycourgos, against the innovations both in cult and conception brought about by Macedonian monarchs and their Athenian partisans. The theories and criticisms of the philosophers, which certainly stood at variance with basic popular religious concepts, appear not to have penetrated private belief or state cult. Here and in later chapters we shall see that changes in state cult, and the changes they imply for private belief, will be determined largely by diplomacy and on the battlefield, not in the lecture halls.
Notes
1. On Piraeus, see Garland 1987, 50–52; Habicht 1979, 95–112. For differing views on Athens’ recovery of Piraeus in this period, see Gauthier 1979; Shear 1978, 79. For a full summary of the differing views of the date(s) of the recovery of Piraeus by the Athenians, see Taylor 1993, 214–26.
2. Garland 1987, 50. For the effects of isolation on Salamis at the time, see Taylor 1993, 226–44.
3. On IG II2 657 see above, chapter 3, pp. 99–101. Shear (1978, 85) notes that this decree honoring Philippides was passed the day before the Mysteries of 283 began.
4. Similar “private” offerings are attested in the recently discovered fourth-century treasury box of the city Aphrodite Ourania, into which Athenian girls were to deposit one drachma prior to their weddings (Tsakos 1990–91). But “public” was the statue made for Aphrodite by the demesmen of Halai Aixonides (IG II2 2820).
5. For a priestess of Aphrodite Pandemos from, perhaps, the late fourth century, see IG II2 4596. For his Colax, soon after 315, Menander apparently used as a setting a private, monthly (on the fourth day) banquet for Aphrodite Pandemos. Included were prayers, to all the Olympians, for “safety, health, many good things, and everyone’s enjoyment of the good things available” (frag. 1 Sandbach, with Sandbach’s commentary). On Aphrodite Pandemos see Pirenne-Delforge 1994, 26–34; Graf, 1985, 260–61; Sokolowski, 1964.
6. Pirenne-Delforge 1994, 26–28.
7. Ath. 13.569D–F and Harp. s.v. “ Πάνδημος Ἀφροδίτη.”
8. The restoration of πρῶτον (lines 64–65), suggested by Habicht, has been widely accepted (Shear 1978, 35). Very recently Dreyer 1996, who would have the first post-Demetrian Panathenaia in 286, has proposed the restoration τρίτον (“for the third time”).
9. The dating of the first post-Demetrian Great Panathenaia is a complicated problem, hanging in part on the date of the first Ptolemaia celebrated by Ptolemy II in Alexandria. If the first Ptolemaia was held in 282, the Panathenaia may have followed that same year, as Habicht (1992a, 70 1994, 142) argues. If, however, the first Ptolemaia was in 279, then, as Shear claims (1978, 35–39), the first post-Demetrian Panathenaia was held in 278. Dreyer (1996) has recently treated in detail the chronology of events of this period, including the restoration of the Panathenaia. He argues that the Athenians would have reinstituted the Panathenaia as quickly as possible after establishing freedom from Demetrios, i.e., in 286, and proposes a new reading of the text of the Callias decree to accomplish this (see note 8). I do not find Dryer’s arguments for a restoration of the Panathenaia in 286 compelling and will therefore leave the alternatives of 282 or 278.
The problems that Dreyer, Habicht, and Shear introduce about the two agōnothetai and the therefore likely celebration of the Panathenaia in 282 may be chimerical. The athlothetai, not the agōnothetai, were probably in charge of the Panathenaia in the 280s as they were still before 240 (IG II2 784). Cf. [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 60.1; Nagy 1978. The restoration of an agōnothetēs for the Panathenaia in 266/5 (SEG 25.186.3) is no more certain than that for the 220s (SEG 32.169.2).
10. On the relative rarity of this epithet, see Shear 1978, 36.
11. On the ὅπλα as hemp ropes used to support the mast of the ship-cart, see Shear 1978, 39–44.
12. The financing of the Panathenaia encountered a crisis ca. 354/3 (Dem. 24.26–29), and the festival’s date near the beginning of the fiscal year may always have caused difficulties. Under Lycourgos the Athenians devoted revenues from Nea (wherever that might be) to the annual Panathenaia (Schwenk #17), but in 286/5 that piece of land may not have been accessible to the Athenians. If, as Robert claims (1960), Nea was in Oropos, the revenues would have been lost by 322, perhaps recovered, but then lost again by 286/5. On the financing of the Panathenaia, see Shear 1978, 38–39; Lewis 1959, 246–247.
13. The addition of τῆς πόλεως to Archegetis in Agora XV, #78.16–17 of 273/2 may be an indication that the epithet Archegetis is not yet widely known.
14. On the Chalkeia, see Jacoby on FGrHist 325 F 18. Jacoby has argued convincingly that the Chalkeia was not the festival of Athena Ergane as usually had been assumed. For the role of Athena Archegetis it may also be significant that centuries later the Roman market was dedicated to her (IG II2 3175). See Wycherley 1957, 190.
15. Cf. IG II2 4318, which establishes the identity also of Athena Polias and Athena Ergane and casts doubt on DiVita’s arguments (1952–54) that there was, from the late fifth century B.C., a temenos (and hence cult) of Ergane separate from that of Polias. Ergane seems to reflect an aspect of the goddess more of interest to individuals than to the state. The surviving dedications to her are all from individuals: IG I[2] 561, II2 2939 4339, 4318, 4328, 4329, 4334, 4338; SEG 25.220; Hesp. 9 (1940): 58–59, #7. The unusual and two-stage association of Athena Ergane with the Panathenaia on IG II2 4338 may, perhaps, be linked to the new orientation of the restored Panathenaia. On Athena Ergane, see also Ridgway 1992, 137–139.
16. IG II2 380, 1669, 4603, 4972. See above, chapter 1, pp. 38–39.
17. Schwenk #21.CEF 13; IG II2 410.18–19, 1496.88–89, 118–19. See above, chapter 1, note 79.
18. Cf. Harp. s.v. “ ἐλευθέριος Ζεύς. ” It was beside this statue that a copy of IG II2 448, honoring a Sicyonian ally in the Lamian War, was to be erected in 323/2 and reerected 318/7.
19. IG II2 689. For the restoration of the date to 272/1, see SEG 16.64. Cf. IG II2 690.
20. If this reconstruction is correct, it would also allow the identification of the Sōtēres in Agora XV, #111.4–5 of ca. 240 and #115.12–13 of 235/4 with Zeus and Athena, not Antigonos Monophthalmos and Demetrios Poliorcetes. There would then be no evidence of an Athenian cult of Antigonos and Demetrios as Sōtēres after 287/6. See Rosivach 1987, 274.
21. Paus. 1.3.5. Pausanias saw in the Bouleuterion also statues of Apollo by Peisias and of Demos by Lyson. Both sculptors are, unfortunately, undatable, but the three statues may be a tableau of the history of the cults of the Boule, with Apollo joining and eventually dominating over Zeus, and with Demos added in the 220s (see chapter 6). We need not assume that these three deities shared the cult or were equally prominent throughout the classical and Hellenistic periods.
22. For the restoration of Zeus Boulaios and Athena Boulaia in a text of the second to first century B.C., see Hesp. 40 (1971): 96–100, #1. Artemis Boulaia is an equally possible restoration.
23. For an altar of Artemis Boulaia in the Agora near the Tholos, see Wycherley 1957, #118.
24. On these texts and their characteristics, see Dow 1937b and Agora XV. Such honors had been voted by the Ekklesia already in the fifth and fourth centuries, but only after 307/6 was the full decree, with descriptions of religious activities, inscribed on the stone. The better preserved examples of full decrees before Agora XV, #78 are #69 of 284/3 and #71 of 283/2.
25. Deubner 1932, 52–53.
26. If the restorations of Agora XV, #240.9 are correct, the victim in Agora XV, #78 was probably a cow (ἐβουθύτησαν), an expensive offering worthy of mention in the decree.
27. Agora XV, #70, which also records the prytanists’ sacrifice of the Chalkeia, is dated ca. 290–275.
28. Dow 1937b, 8. Artemis Boulaia has been restored in Agora XV, #87.11 of mid–to late third century B.C. For an altar of Artemis Boulaia, ca. 220, see Wycherley 1957, #118.
29. On these oracles, see MacDowell 1990, 270–75; Fontenrose, 1978, 253.
30. Parts of these oracles may be abbreviated forms of the oracles given also in Dem. 43.66, which concern an unfavorable portent.
31. On the reconciliation, see Habicht 1979, 87–94.
32. Habicht 1956, 53.
33. Peppas-Delmousou (1984) first recognized the significance of this phrase. τῶι καινῶι ἀγῶνι has been restored in IG II2 692.11–12 and 708.5–6, both from the first half of the third century B.C. but not more closely dated. The phrase reappears first in IG II2 682.75–77 of ca. 255/4. Henry (1992) dates IG II2 682 to 259/8, but the matter is uncertain. For later examples of the phrase, see IG II2 1299.31; SEG 25.106.37–38; IG II2 983.2–3, 891.13–14; SEG 21.435.5–6; IG II2 1223.6, 957.19. See also Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 361–62.
34. Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 124.
35. It certainly appears to mean this in later times. Compare IG II2 956.33–34 of 161/0, 957.19 of 157/6, and 958.29–30 of 153/2. For the dates, see Bugh 1990.
36. Cf. IG II2 555.6–7 (ca. 305), 646.29–31 (of 295/4), 653.37–38 and 654.41–43 of 285/4.
37. See note 33 above.
38. On all matters of actors, guilds, and the City Dionysia, see Ghiron-Bistagne 1976 and Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 279–321, to both of which I am much indebted.
39. Because the Athenians did not give the demotics or ethnics on the lists of victorious actors in the City Dionysia or Lenaia, it is impossible to determine with certainty whether foreign actors regularly performed in these festivals as they did at those at Delphi and Delos. From the catalogue in Ghiron-Bistagne (1976, 301–64, see which for references), foreign actors known to have acted in the Athenian dramatic competitions are Mynniscos of Chalcis in the third quarter of the fifth century; Aristodemos of Metapontum, Neoptolemos of Scyros, Lycon of Scarpheia, Archias of Thurii, and Aristodemos of Scarpheia from the fourth century; and from the 270s Philonides of Zacynthos, Autolochos of Aetolia, Callicles of Boeotia, and Lyciscos of Cephallenia. Some of these foreign actors came from cities neighboring Athens or with close political ties to her, and many were probably metics or naturalized citizens whose primary residence was in Athens. See Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, 176–77.
40. Foreign tragedians were common in the fifth century (Pratinas and his son Aristias of Phlius, Achaios of Syracuse, and Ion of Chios) but infrequent in the fourth (Dionysios the tyrant of Syracuse [a special case] and Phanostratos of Halicarnassos). No foreign tragic poet is recorded as winning a prize in the City Dionysia or Lenaia after 306.
All poets of Old Comedy were, apparently, Athenians, but numerous foreigners won prizes in Middle and New Comedy, including Anaxandrides of Rhodes (victories in Dionysia and Lenaia, 376–352); Alexis of Thurii (Dionysia, 347) and Philemon of Syracuse (Dionysia in 327, Lenaia in 306); from the 280s Diodoros of Sinope (Lenaia, 284) and Phoinicides of Megara (Lenaia, 285); and thereafter, in the City Dionysia of 254, Diodoros’ brother Diphilos. At least some of these foreign poets (e.g., Philemon and Diodoros) were given Athenian citizenship.
For the careers of these poets and the sources, see Mette 1977, 200–204, 211–18; Austin 1974.
41. Dem. 5.6, 18.21, 19.12, 18, 94, 315; Aeschines 2.15–16.
42. Cf. Diod. 16.55.1–4.
43. Diod. 16.92.3–5; Stob. Flor. 98.70; Suet. Calig. 57.
44. Diod. 17.16.3–4; Arrian 1.11.1.
45. Presumably this is the Thettalos who won victories in the City Dionysia in the 340s (IG II2 2318.282, 315; IG II2 2319. 4, 9, 14, 27, 29; Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 120; Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, 330–31). Athenodoros won victories at the City Dionysia in the 340s also (IG II2 2318.291, 360; Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, 307).
46. Chares, cited in Ath. 12.538B–539A. Comic actors named Lycon and Phormion won victories at the Lenaia ca. 375 (IG II2 2325.195, 198), and the Lycon and Phormion of Ath. 12.539A may be their sons.
47. IG II2 1132.1–39 and FD iii.2.#68, 61–94.
48. Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 281–82, 306–8.
49. Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 283–284.
50. It is also a conservative and nationalistic feature that, as Habicht has pointed out to me, membership in the Athenian guild of technītai was apparently limited to Athenian citizens.
51. See Pickard-Cambridge 1988, 112–20. See also Mette 1977, 159–88; Ghiron-Bistagne 1976, 53–62.
52. Of the 226 titles assigned to Theophrastos by Diogenes Laertios (5.42–50), three concern the gods, one piety, and one festivals. Of Epicouros’ forty-one titles, one treats the gods, one holiness (10.27–28). None of Zeno’s twenty titles suggests a religious topic (7.4). Arcesilaos, reportedly, “never so much as wrote a book” (4.32).
53. The fragments collected in Arnim 1903–24 give ample evidence that the theories propounded in these passages were originated or shared by Zeno himself: e.g., frags. 85, 87, 98, 102, 103, 107, 153–55, 157, 159–69, 171, 175, 176.
54. Numerous parallels to the following statements can be found in the collection of Epicurea by Usener (1887), esp. 103–4, 232–62. For Epicouros’ views of the gods and the origins of the much later charges of atheism against him, see Obbink 1989. For possible Epicurean influences in the hymn to Demetrios Poliorcetes (chapter 3, pp. 94–95), see Green 1990, 618; Marcovich 1988, 13–17; Ehrenberg 1946, 188.
55. On Epicouros’ Athenian ties, see Green 1990, 58, 618 (but one can hardly call Epicouros “in essence, as Athenian as Socrates”). On these ties and on the possibility that Epicouros deposited his writings for safekeeping in the state archives, see Clay 1982.
56. Habicht 1988b, 3 1994, 233.
57. E.g., frags. 13, 30, 157, 169, 386, 387 Usener. For Epicouros’ own participation in the Anthesteria and the Eleusinian Mysteries, see Rist 1972, 156–57. On the positive view of Epicureans about θεωρίαι in particular, see Obbink 1984. On Epicurean views of other forms of worship, see Obbink 1989; Clay 1986; Hadzsits 1908.
58. On Bion of Borysthenes, see Green 1990, 142–43.
59. On this apparent contradiction between Epicouros’ words and actions, on these offerings as the establishment of a type of hero cult appropriate to the Epicurean philosophy and for the Epicurean community, and on the possible early hero cult of Epicouros himself within the Epicurean community, see Clay 1986.
60. Habicht 1988b, 6 1994, 235.
61. On the religious nature of these celebrations, see Clay 1986.
62. Cf. Habicht 1988b 1994, 231–47.
63. For a list of such diplomatic activities and other honors, including citizenship, awarded by Athenians to philosophers, see Habicht 1994, 240–43.
64. Woodbury 1965.
65. For this incident and its causes, see Habicht 1988b, 7–9 1994, 236–37. In his speech in the case Demochares included, among a host of personal and political attacks on philosophers, also the charge of “impiety” (Ath. 11.508F–509B).
66. See D.L. (2.116–17) on Stilpo, the Megarian philosopher (ca. 380–300) who was one of Zeno’s teachers: “They say that (Stilpo) asked some such question about the Athena (Parthenos) of Phidias, ‘Is Athena, the daughter of Zeus, a god?’ And when the other said ‘Yes,’ Stilpo said, ‘She is not of Zeus but of Phidias.’ And when the other agreed, Stilpo said, ‘Then she is not a god.’ For this he was summoned to the Areiopagos. He did not deny it but said that he had argued correctly, for Athena was not a god but a goddess. Nonetheless, the members of the Areiopagos ordered him to leave the city immediately.…And when Crates asked him whether the gods rejoice (χαίρουσι) in worship and prayers, they say that Stilpo said, ‘Fool, don’t ask about these things in the street but in private.’ And Bion, when asked if the gods exist, said the same thing: ‘Will you not scatter the crowd away from me?’”
67. On the Atthidographers, see F. Jacoby’s Atthis (1949) and his commentary on the lives and fragments of these writers in the three volumes of FGrHist IIIB. For a very recent account of them, and especially of Androtion and his writings, see Harding 1994. On those Athenian and other historians particularly interested in religious affairs, see Nilsson 1967–74, 2:51–54.
68. On Androtion’s politics, see Harding 1994, passim but esp. 13–25, 178–80.
69. On Phanodemos, see Faraguna 1992, 217–18.
70. Harding 1994, passim but esp. 13, 24, 33–34, 49. On Kleidemos’ pro-democratic stance and the general issue, see McInerney 1994.
71. On Cleidemos’ Exegetikon and his writings in general, see McInerney 1994, esp. 22.
72. IG II2 216/7 + 261 Lewis 1954, 39–49. Cf. FGrHist 328 F 181.
73. The impression left by Green (1990, 597) that this work On the Days is an early example of astrology is wrong. So far as it can be determined, it dealt with which days were sacred in the calendar and why, and on one occasion (FGrHist 328 F 85) claims that if one were born on Heracles’ day of the month, one’s life might be one of service to others, as was Heracles’. This is a quite different matter from the much later personal horoscopes based on astrological schemes.
74. On Demetrios’ initiation see above, chapter 3, pp. 89–90.
75. The fragments of the Atthidographers, collected and exhaustively discussed by Jacoby in FGrHist IIIB, suggest their interests. Of the 27 fragments of Cleidemos, 16 concern solely or importantly matters of Athenian religious and mythical history (1, 2, 4, 5, 9–12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 23, 25–27); likewise 9 of the 68 fragments of Androtion (1, 2, 16, 30, 36, 55, 56, 60, 62); 15 of the 27 of Phanodemos (1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, 12, 14–20, 27); 11 of the 21 of Demon (1–3, 6, 7, 9, 12, 16–18, 20); 3 of the 4 of Melanthios (2–4); and nearly half of the 226 fragments of Philochoros.
76. Two other prytany decrees have been restored to give the same phrase in the 270s: Agora XV, #79, 80.
77. SEG 28.60.55–64. For the date and origins of the Ptolemaia, see Habicht 1992a, 70 1994, 142.
78. Shear 1978, 45–46.
79. On this Galatian invasion of Greece and on the Delphic Soteria commemorating Greek victory, see Nachtergael 1977.
80. A relative of Cudias, Cubernis of Halimous (PA 8918), about thirty years later proposed to the Athenians that they participate in the new Aetolian form of the Soteria at Delphi in honor of Zeus Soter and Apollo Pythios (IG II2 680). See Habicht 1985, 84–85; Nachtergael 1977, 192.
81. For Zeus Soter in the early, Amphictionic Soteria, see Nachtergael 1977, #1.30–33, from Cos.