Welcoming the New Gods. Interactions between Ruler and Traditional Cults within Ritual Practice

Abstract

Among the finds uncovered during recent excavations in the small city of Aigai in Aeolis, an opistographic stele features, on its front side, a decree introducing civic and cultic honours for Seleukos I and Antiochos I. Based on the text of this decree and a few similar inscriptions, this paper discusses how Hellenistic poleis associated rulers with traditional cults as a mechanism to integrate the new gods into their religious landscape. It further appears that such associations were also a means for these poleis to articulate the rhetoric surrounding the notion of Soteria against the ideological backdrop of the liberation of cities from tyranny in the context of ruler cults.

Keywords

• aigai (aeolis), hellenistic period, religious dynamics, ruler cults, seleucids, soteria, culto del sovrano, dinamiche religiose, ege (eolide), periodo ellenistico, seleucidi