Civic Priests: Cult Personnel in Athens from the Hellenistic Period to Late Antiquity

by Marietta Horster (Editor), Anja Klöckner (Editor)

Overview

Images and inscriptions on monuments can show us how priests and cult personnel saw themselves and were viewed by others, illuminating the social and political identity of these figures within their polis. Dedications and donations by cult personnel, and the honours that they earned, demonstrate their claim on the city’s attention and their financial power. The cityscape itself came to be shaped, in varying intensities and forms, by statues in honour of cult personnel, set up by relatives, fellow citizens and other groups. This set of cultural records, analysed in the studies presented here, is central to understanding how the roles of priests and priestesses were constructed in social and political terms in post-classical Athens. The approaches are both historical and archaeological, and elucidate the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and their perception, by themselves and by others, as citizens of the polis.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9783110258073
Publisher:	De Gruyter
Publication date:	11/17/2011
Series:	Religionsgeschichtliche Versuche und Vorarbeiten , #58
Pages:	255
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.06(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Marietta Horster, Universität Mainz, Germany; Anja Klöckner, Universität Gießen, Germany.

Table of Contents

Introduction Marietta Horster Anja Klöckner 1

Priests, priesthoods, cult personnel - traditional and new approaches Marietta Horster 5

Tradition ? Repräsentation - Distinction. Erne Fallstudie zu Reliefweihungen von Priestern im späthellenistischen und römischen Attika Anja Klöckner 27

The social construction of priests and priestesses in Athenian honorific decrees from the fourth century BC to the Augustan period Stephen D. Lambert 67

Pretres et pretresses d'Athènes et de Délos à travers les décrets honorifiques athéniens (167-88 a. C.) Eric Perrin-Saminadayar 135

The tenure, appointment and eponymy of priesthoods and their (debatable) ideological and political implications Marietta Horster 161

Heidnische Priester in Attika vom dritten bis zum fünften Jahrhundert nach Christus Erkki Sironen 209

Athenian civic priests from classical times to late antiquity: some considerations Jan N. Bremmer 219

Indices 237

Editorial Reviews

"This volume will thus represent an important point of reference (as well as a source of ideas) for further research on ancient Greek priesthoods, at the same time as it raises expectations for the planned second volume."
Francesco Camia in BMCR 2013.07.15

From the Publisher