THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO HOW TO MOVE A GOD: SHIFTING RELIGION AND IMPERIAL IDENTITIES IN ROMAN ATHENS A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE DIVISION OF THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY BY JOSHUA RAMON VERA CHICAGO, ILLINOIS JUNE 2018 Copyright © 2018 Joshua Ramon Vera All rights reserved. For Katharyn, άγκυρα µου Contents List of Illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii Abstract xi Introduction: Shifting Landscapes, Shifting Identities 1 Between Tradition and Transition 12 Religious Buildings or Building Religions? 22 Peeling back the Palimpsest 27 Chapter I: A Reputation for Piety 32 The Most God-fearing, as They Say: Classical Athenian Piety 33 The Possession of the Gods: The City as a Sacred Landscape 37 Shrines Made by Human Hands: The Early Christian View 41 Greater than Others in Piety: The Second-Century Perspective 47 The Glory of Your Ancestors: Imagining a Landscape 51 Equal or Opposite Reactions? 56 Whose Landscape Is It Anyway? 65 Chapter II: Memorials to Ancient Virtue 72 Imaging Athens 73 The Emergence of a Core 79 The Classical Image 84 The Heart of the City 95 The Hellenistic Image 103 The Roman Image 107 The Emergence of a Double Core 113 The Hadrianic Image 118 The Mark of the City 123 iv Chapter III: By the People, For the People? 132 Reduced, Reused, or Upcycled? 134 The Road to Recovery 137 Old Money, New Men 140 Roman Plans, Roman Hands? 145 Let Slide the Gods of War 149 A Tale of Two Staircases 161 A Tale of Two Streets 166 Office Space 180 By the People, For the People? 186 Chapter IV: Sharing is Caring 190 According to the Ancestral Way 195 To Claim Indulgence from a God 198 Operation, Negotiation, Administration 203 Only Following an Old Precedent 211 Two is Company, but also Sometimes a Crowd 217 Inscribe, Erase, Repeat 220 The Old Gods and the New 224 Sharing is Caring: Image and Cult 235 If Religio Does Not Prevent It 242 The Coalescence of New Sources for Imperial Policy and Local Identity 245 Conclusion: How to Move a God 247 Bibliography 257 v List of Illustrations Figures Figure 1: The Agora in the late 2nd century AD 57 Figure 2: The Agora and environs in the 2nd century AD: perspective 67 Figure 3: Plan of the Agora, ca. 400 BC 91 Figure 4: The Acropolis and the Agora at the beginning of the 5th century BC 97 Figure 5: Athens, 86 BC 108 Figure 6: Partial plan of Hadrianic Athens 117 Figure 7: Drain and altar in front of Ares Temple 152 Figure 8: Acropolis in the 2nd century AD 162 Figure 9: Hephaisteion stairs in the Kolonos Agoraios 163 Figure 10: The Agora and environs in the 2nd century AD 167 Figure 11: The north stoa of the Library of Pantainos, along the Broad Way 168 Figure 12: Restored view of the street leading to the Roman Market 170 Figure 13: Lintel block with Pantainos inscription 171 Figure 14: Restored plan of the Library of Pantainos 172 Figure 15: Broad Way Dēmos dedication inscription 173 Figure 16: Stoa northwest of the Agora, facing the Panathenaic Way 176 Figure 17: Aerial photo of south square and civic offices 181 Figure 18: Tile standards in civic offices 183 Table Table 1: Associations of Roman imperial family with traditional Athenian cults 226 vi Acknowledgements Reflecting on the years of my life that have been dedicated partially or wholly to this project, I am profoundly humbled to acknowledge the immensity of support that I have received from so many individuals who owed me absolutely nothing. Indeed, it seems that nearly every step I have taken since my first ancient history course as a Berkeley undergraduate ultimately has been leading me here (thanks to my first mentor, Carlos Noreña), and at some level I never could have completed each of those steps without the guidance and assistance of my advisors, colleagues, friends, and family. Such substantial debts of gratitude, incurred throughout the process across various institutions, programs, and continents, I could never properly satisfy in the few pages allotted here. Nevertheless, the reader will have to indulge me if I become a bit emotional while I make my best attempt. First, allow me to express my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to my primary advisors, Jonathan Hall and Cliff Ando, without whom this dissertation would have remained little more than a handful of disjointed observations. Beyond their respective and collective fields of expertise, the breadth of which still continue to astonish me, they each have served in various other advisory roles that are not adequately represented in the title “dissertation co-chair.” Jonathan took me under his proverbial wing from my first days on campus at the University of Chicago and taught me how to navigate my way through both the doctoral program and also the broader politics of the academy. I will remember his office as a place of refuge, where I could go for guidance regarding dilemmas across the gamut of my graduate school experiences—from anxieties about the potentially derivative nature of my ideas to frustrations with the recalcitrance vii of my more precocious students. Through a series of seminars and discussions both in and outside of the formal classroom, Cliff modeled for me not only the best methods of a professional historian, but also the best approaches for thinking and writing critically about events (both historical and current) when the sources of our evidence are particularly troublesome (on which, see the following 260 pages). His office has been a desperately needed incubator for fresh, insightful perspectives when my ideas have started to grow stale—or, for that matter, overly complacent. In this same vein, I also owe immeasurable thanks to my third advisor, Alain Bresson, without whom I surely would have missed an embarrassing number of pertinent scholarly texts in French and Italian—as well as a wealth of wisdom and insight on comparative material that informed several crucial arguments below. Beyond the dissertation, Alain demonstrated a constant level of magnanimity and positivity in all situations on and off campus that I strive to emulate (so far, with variable results). Finally, Cam Hawkins offered pivotal advice in the early stages regarding the direction of my graduate studies and my conceptualization of the dissertation project, for which I remain deeply grateful. In considering the influence of these mentors on my research and professional training, I am overwhelmed to recognize the extent to which their guidance (along with their extensive lists of recommended readings) collectively has shaped my own understanding and interpretation of the world around me, in both its ancient and modern forms. Needless to say, culpability for any error in perception, interpretation, explanation, or composition in the text below remains solely my own. The University of Chicago has provided not only the resources and funds necessary to complete a research project like this, but also a convivial community within which to endure it. viii My friends and colleagues in the History Department, Classics Department, and Divinity School have commiserated with me during the tougher seasons and also offered invaluable feedback at formative moments in the development of my work, particularly through the Ancient Societies Workshop and the Religion and the Human Sciences Workshop. Special thanks are due to the Social Sciences Division for funding the majority of my graduate studies, and especially to the family of Harry Barnard for the generous gift of the Dissertation-Year Fellowship that made possible the completion of this project. Further funding was provided by the Fulbright Foundation through a research fellowship in 2016–2017, thanks to which I was able to spend a very productive academic year in Athens collecting and interpreting much of the evidence presented below. The practical support I received from the Fulbright commission extended far beyond the financial, however, as the guidance of Nicholas Tourides, Artemis Zenetou, and their associates in the Athens office facilitated a much smoother and more enjoyable year abroad than I ever could have hoped to experience otherwise. Similarly helpful in this regard was the tireless staff of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, and I am grateful to the administrators in the facilities on both sides of Odos Souidias as well as the Agora excavation team in the Stoa of Attalos. The collegial community of the ASCSA and the exchange of ideas constantly occurring among its members deeply influenced the formulation of my arguments, and the friendships with which I was blessed during my time there helped to make it one of the most gratifying years of my life. Outside the academy, I have benefited in myriad ways and at countless moments from a supportive network of family and friends who carried me through the bleakest and most difficult phases of this process. My parents, Brenda and Edgar, nurtured my interests and passions from ix the earliest stages of my intellectual development, and their exhortation ultimately catalyzed my successful pursuit of this path. My brothers and sisters (both biological and by marriage!), as well as my second set of parents, Kathy and Bob, persistently inquired about my work even when my responses were objectively uninteresting, and yet they all ceaselessly extended their unconditional love regardless. The pride they have derived from my academic accomplishments sometimes has eclipsed my own—and often has served to bolster it. In Chicago, my dear friends and especially my GC fam never let me doubt that I actually could finish this dissertation (won’t he do it!), and they were always there to offer a hand and a hug when I needed it most.