RHODIAN PRIESTS AFTER the SYNOECISM* «Greek Religion

RHODIAN PRIESTS AFTER THE SYNOECISM* «Greek religion might almost be called a religion without priests» — this is how Walter Burkert starts the chapter on priests in his survey of Greek religion in the archaic and classical periods1. One might be sur- prised as thousands of hiereis mentioned in Greek literary and docu- mentary texts come to mind — but the author’s point does not come as a surprise either. All textbooks on Greek religion emphasize that priests were not representatives of a religious sphere who shaped the life and profile of the cults in a significant way, that they were rather an expres- sion of civic life, civic magistrates, fully institutionalized within the secular life of the polis; that the office itself had nothing to do with dogma or expertise, let alone with power2. These statements are based on the important observation that a distinction between ‘sacred’ and ‘profane’ or between ‘religious’ and ‘secular’ introduces a dichotomy alien to Greek thought. At least for the pre-Hellenistic polis Aristotle is a good example. In his description of offices in the democratic or oligarchic state, for example, the duties of priests are labeled ‘different’ and are listed sepa- rately from those of the political magistrates, but ‘taking-care-of-the-gods’ is certainly the responsibility of the polis, sometimes delegated to only one priest, in larger cities also to a number of religious officials: hieropoioi, naophylakes, hierotamiai3. But does such a ‘polis-controlled-religion’ entail that ‘council and peo- ple’ were the only keys to the dynamics of processes that affected cult activity and religious life in general? In what follows I examine Rhodian priests as an example to show that priests and other cult personnel could * Versions of this article were presented as papers in Princeton and Heidelberg in Octo- ber and November 2001. I would like to thank my hosts Fritz Graf and Angelos Chanio- tis and the participants for their comments and suggestions. 1 W. BURKERT, Greek Religion, Archaic and Classical (Engl. tr. of Griechische Reli- gion der archaischen und klassischen Epoche, Stuttgart 1977), Oxford 1985, p. 95. 2 Cf. for example R. GARLAND, Religious Authority in Archaic and Classical Athens, ABSA 79 (1984), p. 75-123; M. BEARD – J. NORTH (eds.), Pagan Priests: Religion and Power in the Ancient World, London 1989; C. SOURVINOU-INWOOD, What is ‘Polis’ Reli- gion?, in: O. MURRAY – S.R.F. PRICE, The Greek City: from Homer to Alexander, Oxford 1990, p. 295-322; EAD., Further Aspects of Polis Religion, AION (archeol) 10 (1988), p. 259-274 (= R. BUXTON [ed.], Oxford Readings in Greek Religion, Oxford 2000, p. 13-37 and 38-55). 3 Arist., Pol. 1322b. 36 B. DIGNAS form a discernable and powerful group that shaped the life of the polis actively. Although their profile was largely shaped by political circumstances, the priests used a distinctively religious sphere and formed a group-identity in order to hold key positions in the Rhodian state. In times of instability and change, this religious sphere offered the scope for both adaptation and stability. The rich epigraphic material of Rhodes allows us to study the prosopography, the activities and the socio-economic background of religious officials. The Danish archaeologist Christian Blinkenberg, who published more than 700 Lindian texts already in 19414, and others have examined Rhodian prosopography intensively. It is actually possible to establish complex stemmata of Rhodian families. But there is a wide gap between rich prosopographical material and a socio-economic study. A database that would allow a systematic evaluation of the material as a whole is much desired but does not yet exist5. For the time being it seems most fruitful to combine selected prosopographical observations with the infor- mation and context of other Rhodian inscriptions. My questions are these: which factors contributed to the profile of priests on Rhodes? How did this change over time? How did the individual priesthoods of the pantheon relate? To what extent are the observations particularly Rhodian or are they representative for Greek priests in general? Rhodes is not a ‘polis’. Special circumstances characterize an island whose inhabitants shared an island-wide identity but not necessarily a local polis identity. Rhodes’ many foundation myths differ but bring out just this. Just to give two examples: Pindar’s Olympian 7, written in 464 BC in honour of Diagoras of Rhodes, the victor in boxing, emphasizes that the three sons of Helios, Camirus, Ialysus, the eldest, and Lindus held «their own separate share of cities in their threefold division of their father’s land»6. In Homer’s catalogue of ships Tlepolemus, the son of Heracles, «led from Rhodes nine ships of the lordly Rhodians», sep- arated in three divisions from Lindos and Ialysus and Camirus7. During the Peloponnesian war, in 408/7 BC, these three cities joined in synoik- ismos to form the new Rhodian state. The city of Rhodos was founded on the territory of Ialysus on the northern tip of the island. The three old cities continued to exist as poleis, they had their independent, annually 4 See n. 15 below. 5 Ellen Rice has been working on such a ‘Rhodian prosopography’. 6 Pindar, Ol. 7.69-71. 7 Homer, Il. II 652-670. RHODIAN PRIESTS AFTER THE SYNOECISM 37 elected eponymous priest and their own assembly, council (the members of which were called mastroi) and demes, which existed parallel to the corresponding state-institutions. Undoubtedly, the foundation of the Rhodian state triggered complex changes in the Rhodian pantheon, which in turn evoked short- and long-term reactions. The impact of these developments on the priesthoods both of the old cities and the entire state is revealing. The eponymous priest of the new Rhodian state was the priest of Helios (Doric: Halios), presumably chosen by lot from all citizens of the Rho- dian state. A triennial cycle ensured that the three cities were represented evenly. «The progenitor of the three eponymous heroes of the old cities was promoted to the status of the main deity of the new city»8 — or, to put it in more cautious terms: Halios represented the Rhodian state; this can probably best be seen in the hundreds of thousands of amphorae stamps that henceforth dated Rhodian wine and other goods by the priest of Halios9. The mythical tradition might suggest that this choice was the obvious one: Rhodes was Helios’ island. Diodorus has Helios save the island after a flood; the first living creatures after the disaster were the Heliadae, named after him. The author adds: «the Rhodians of later times made it their practice to honor Helios above all the other gods, as the ancestor and founder from whom they were descended»10. Diodorus’ rightly emphasizes «of later times»: surprisingly, there is no evidence for the cult of Halios in the archaic and early classical periods on Rhodes11. The idea that the earlier worship of a sun-god was continued in private cults is based on the names of Rhodian tribes, the Haliadai or Haliatadai, 8 I. PAPACHRISTODOULOU, The Rhodian Demes within the Framework of the Function of the Rhodian State, in: V. GABRIELSEN et al. (eds.), Hellenistic Rhodes. Politics, Culture, and Society (Studies in Hellenistic Civilization, IX), Aarhus 1999, p. 27-44. 9 Surprisingly, the names of the earliest amphorae stamps do not correspond to the respective section of the priest list. It is possible that the stamps have been dated too early or that the the second column of the priest list has been dated too late. A third and remark- able possibility is that at the end of the fourth century the amphorae were not yet dated by the priest of Halios. Priests in the old cities? 10 Diod. V 56.4. 11 Recently, however, evidence for a cult of Cercaphus, one of Helios’ sons and father of the three mythical founders Lindus, Camirus and Ialysus, has been found on the territory of Ialysus and dated to the late archaic period; see AD 46 (1991 [1996]), B, p. 484; I. PAPACHRISTODOULOU, Culti e santuari di Rodi, in: Atti del 31. Convegno di studi sulla Magna Grecia, Taranto 1992, p. 260; ID., Rhodos und die östliche Doris zwischen dem Ende des 6. und der Mitte des 5. Jhs. v.Chr., in D. PAPENFUSS – V.M. STROCKA (eds.), Gab es das griechische Wunder? Griechenland zwischen dem Ende des 6. und der Mitte des 5. Jahrhunderts v.Chr., Warsaw 2001, p. 256. 38 B. DIGNAS but these names may well attest myth rather than actual cult practice and go back to the early Cretan and Mycenaean tradition of Helios-cults. No month of the Rhodian calendar was dedicated to Halios12. It looks as if it was only with the synoecism that the god received a temple at the high- est point of the new city and was honoured in the penteteric Halieia13. The Rhodians created a priesthood that — so it would appear — immediately became the most ‘important’ priesthood on the island. Evidence from the following centuries confirms that this implementa- tion did not create an empty title but that the careers of many Rhodian aristocrats culminated in holding this priesthood. A fragmentary list of the priests of Halios, which probably but not securely begins with the foundation of the Rhodian state in the year 407, gives us the names and years of office of a number of fourth-century priests14. A glance at the names shows that many priests are members of the same few families. As the list does not include the demotics of the priests, we cannot say much about their precise provenance.

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