Anatolian Studies 69 (2019): 133–154 doi:10.1017/S0066154619000085 © British Institute at Ankara 2019 Leader-gods and pro poleos priests: Leto, Apollo, Zeus and the imperial cult at Oinoanda N.P. Milner University College London, UK
[email protected] Abstract This article presents three unpublished inscriptions (nos 1–3) illustrating the public cults of Leto and of Apollo at Oinoanda. It discusses the non-participation of the Apolline priests in the city’s Demostheneia festival for Apollo and the reigning emperor, while tracing a relationship between public cults of Apollo and the imperial cult. Finally, it proposes to reinterpret a published inscription (no. 4) as being about Poseidon, rather than Apollo. Özet Bu makalede, Oinoanda’daki halkın Leto ve Apollon kültlerini gösteren yayınlanmamış üç adet yazıt sunulmaktadır (no. 1–3). Apollon halk kültü ile imparatorluk kültü arasındaki ilişki izlenerek, Apollon rahiplerinin ve hüküm süren imparatorun, kentin Apollon için düzenlenen Demostheneia festivaline katılmaması tartışılmaktadır. Son olarak, yayınlanan bir yazıtın (no. 4) Apollon’dan ziyade Poseidon’la ilişkilendirilmesi önerilmektedir. inoanda was a Graeco-Roman city of northern Lycia 930). A votive inscription to Leto (SEG 27: 935) attests the Owhose site lies on a mountainous spur called Urluca, worshipper’s concern or thanks for the birth of a child, and which juts out northwards from hills on the southern side to this extent may suggest that at Oinoanda, comparably of the fertile Seki plain, watered by the upper Xanthos to the Xanthian Leto, the goddess was the heiress to the river. Like cities in the lower Xanthos valley, western Anatolian mother-god, the source of life and fertility, Lycia and Telmessos, Oinoanda was home to a cult of the rather than the more shadowy deity of Hellenic conception Greek ‘Apolline triad’, which comprised the gods Apollo, (see Le Roy 1991: 102).