Religion in Roman Phrygia: From Polytheism to Christianity 9780520395480, 9780520395497

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The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the Joan Palevsky Imprint in Classical Literature.

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Religion in Roman Phrygia

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Religion in Roman Phrygia From Polytheism to Christianity

Robert Parker

UNIVERSIT Y OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

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University of California Press Oakland, California © 2023 by Robert Parker

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Parker, Robert, author. Title: Religion in Roman Phrygia : from polytheism to Christianity /  Robert Parker. Description: [Oakland, California] : University of California Press,  [2023] | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2022059277 (print) | lccn 2022059278 (ebook) |  isbn 9780520395480 (hardback) | isbn 9780520395497 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Phrygia—Religious life. | Phrygia—Antiquities. Classification: lcc bl2290 .p37 2023 (print) | lcc bl2290 (ebook) |  ddc 200.939/26—dc23/eng/20230510 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022059277 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022059278

Manufactured in the United States of America 32  31  30  29  28  27  26  25  24  23 10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

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c ontents

List of Illustrations Preface

vii ix

Introduction

1

1. Contexts of religious life

9

2. Priesthoods, finance, authority

27

3. Phrygian polytheism I: The gods

34

4. Phrygian polytheism II: Differentiated powers?

66

5. Heavenly and imperial gods

79

6. Consecrations and confessions at the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos

83

7. Phrygian gods and death

96

8. Christianity and paganism in Phrygia

118

9. Retrospect

163

10. The masked ball: Interpretatio and its effects

172

11. Envoi

195

Appendix A. Myths and traditions of city origins Appendix B. ‘Honoured by/consecrated to Hekate’ and related texts Appendix C. τὸν θεόν σοι, μὴ ἀδικήσῃς

203 215 220

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Appendix D. Paganism and Montanism Appendix E. The prose inscription for Epitynchanos and family Appendix F. Iconography and ‘recovering the indigenous’ Bibliography Index

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223 227 233 241 249

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illustrations

M ap

Ancient Phrygia  x fig ures

1. Dedication of Artemas to Zeus Ampeleites  2 2. Vow of Sateira to Zeus Alsenos  3 3. Dedication of Philopator to Zeus, Hosios and Dikaios, and others  35 4. Dedication of Chrestos to Zeus Chryseos  40 5. Hands raised to beseech healing of a leg  42 6. Hermas’ dedication to Zeus Alsenos for his wife Babeis  44 7. Dedication of Antipas to Hosios Dikaios from the sanctuary at Yaylababa Köyü  55 8. Funerary monument of [F?]emos and Ammion for their foster-child Beroneike and themselves  99 9. Stele of Mnennas, ‘honoured by Hekate’  216 10. Iconography of gods on coins  235

vii

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preface

My first draft was complete when the work of G. F. Chiai (Phrygien und seine Götter: Historie und Religionsgeschichte einer anatolischen Region von der Zeit der Hethiter bis zur Ausbreitung des Christentums) appeared, though I knew several previous articles of this scholar. As the title indicates, it attempts a ‘longue durée’ approach from which I explicitly draw back in chapter 10, and in other respects, too, ranges widely; my own much fuller treatment of the Phrygian evidence from the Roman period, the period when the subject is suddenly and brilliantly illuminated by inscriptions, retains, I hope, its value. Peter Thonemann’s admirable The Lives of Ancient Villages. Rural Society in Roman Anatolia (Cambridge, 2022) appeared when my manuscript was already with the publisher. Stephen Mitchell’s forthcoming monograph on the emergence of Christianity in Phrygia is eagerly awaited; how much I already owe to his work on the topic will be clear from my footnotes. Younger colleagues working on Anatolia study Turkish, as they should. I can only apologise that I first became interested in Phrygia at an age when I felt little hope of acquiring a usable knowledge of the language. For sending me offprints when requested I thank N. Eda Akyürek Şahin and Hale Güney; for invaluable help over coins my New College colleague Andy Meadows; for photographs, Justine Potts. At the University of California Press my thanks go to the ever courteous and helpful Eric Schmidt and Lekeisha Hughes, also to Gabriel Bartlett for meticulous copy-editing. I dedicate the book again, this time collectively, to the three women who have brought happiness to my life, my late mother Janet, my wife Jo and my daughter Lucy. ix

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Byzantion

Kyzikos Daskyleion

HELLESPONTINE PHRYGIA

MYSIA

Aizanoi

Sardeis

Ephesos

50

Kadoi

100

GALATIA Dorylaion

Ankyra Gordion

PHRYGIA

Dokimeion

Pessinous Amorion

KAPPADOKIA

Temenouthyrai Akmoneia Synnada Blaundos Hierapolis Laodikeia

KARIA

200 km

Nikaia

Kotiaion

Pergamon

LYDIA

0

Eumeneia

Philomelion

Pisidian Antioch Apameia Apollonia Kelainai PISIDIA

Toriaion

LYKAONIA Ikonion

Kibyra

LYKIA

N

Ancient Phrygia, reprinted by permission from P. Thonemann (ed.), Roman Phrygia (Cambridge, 2013).

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Introduction

Phrygia in the second and third centuries CE offers perhaps more vivid evidence for what has quaintly been termed ‘lived ancient religion’ (for what is unlived religion, or who has ever taken that as a subject of study?) than any other region of the ancient world; it can certainly claim primacy among Greek-speaking parts of that world with the possible exception of late antique Egypt. In contrast to Greece itself, the documents that illustrate this religion are neither literary nor primarily issued by cities or by powerful inhabitants of cities but by agriculturalists: they pray for the welfare of their families, their crops, and their cattle, and these last appear, mute and touching suppliants, in many votive reliefs: ‘lovely tawny workers, ploughers of the earth’ as an epigram describes them—to kill one was supposedly a capital offence.1 A rare window is opened into the world of what Syme called ‘the voiceless earth-coloured rustics’ who are ‘conveniently forgotten’.2 Unlike peasants in most historical periods, the farmers of Phrygia in the second and third centuries have left numerous stone memorials of themselves, both gravemarkers and also, what is crucial for our purposes, dedications to their gods. Some from central Phrygia are carved on the famous Dokimeion marble, precious and highly exportable in large 1.  ἐργατιναὶ καλοὶ ξανθοὶ γαίης ἀροτῆρες: MAMA IV 140. 6 (Steinepigramme 16/62/01; discussed by Robert, A Travers l’ Asie Mineure, 224–25); capital offence: Ael. NA 12.34. Prayers for livestock are unexpectedly rare in mainline Greco-Roman religion, though note Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.88.3, Ov. Fasti 4. 745–76 on the Parilia, and (with Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter, 265n815) the recipe for an offering pro bubus in Cato, Agr. 83. Not literary: for the paltry remains of Phrygiaka, see FGrH IIIC 833–39. 2.  R. Syme, Colonial Elites (Oxford, 1958), 27.

1

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2      Introduction

figure 1 . Dedication of Artemas to Zeus Ampeleites. Kütahya museum, SEG XXXIII 1145, photo J. Potts.

slabs, but also inevitably yielding small waste pieces that almost anyone could afford. Others from northern Phrygia used marble from the quarries at Soa, administered as a filial of those at Dokimeion. (But where there were no local workshops, the lights become much dimmer for us.) A little paradoxically, therefore, we owe much of this evidence for local life to exploitation of the Dokimeion quarries by the Roman state; the explosion of marble monuments in Phrygia from the second to the fourth century CE indeed ‘corresponds to the period of intensive Imperial quarrying in the region.’ 3 Rural sanctuaries were crammed with dedications; what were probably quite minor shrines can be known to us through dozens or even hundreds of pieces (some of them uninscribed but showing the dedicator, whom

3.  J. Masseglia in Roman Phrygia, 96; on p. 95 she stresses the ‘broad sweep’ of social statuses represented in consequence. On the quarries, see Phrygian Votive Steles, 13–14, 42; on their economic importance, see Mitchell, Anatolia, 1, 159. On the lack of local workshops, see Lochman, Studien, 185n5, on the Kotiaion region. Other possible motives for the upsurge in dedications (assertion of Phrygian identity; concurrence with Christianity) are discussed by Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter, 363–69, 444–45, 531. But most of the dedications in question are too humble to justify the former explanation.

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figure 2 . Vow of Sateira to Zeus Alsenos. Phrygian Votive Steles no. 140

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4      Introduction

the god would recognise, presumably).4 Occasionally, the contents have been excavated as a group; more often they have entered the art market through clandestine excavation and been scattered but brought back together on the page by scholarship on the basis of iconography and distinctive local epithets. Yet this enticing material is little known except to specialists. The period in which Phrygian paganism flourished so visibly to our eyes was also the period in which Christianity, introduced by the apostle Paul, took root, as early and as successfully as in any part of the Roman world. The sources seldom allow us to see the two world-views in direct confrontation, but it would be a strange limitation, a neglect of one of history’s great stories and great enigmas, not to consider how and why the new religion strangled its predecessor and tried to meet for Phrygians the needs hitherto met by Zeus and the rest of the gods. But, before turning to religion, a word first about ‘Phrygia’. Phrygia and Phrygians have been commonly spoken of from (at least) the time of Homer to this day; in Greco-Roman iconography, one could always tell a Phrygian from his cap; but what exactly is one studying in studying Phrygian religion in the Roman period?5 We are far removed from the glory days of the expansive early Phrygian Empire (eighth through sixth centuries BCE), but it left linguistic traces in the concepts of ‘Hellespontine Phrygia’6 or ‘Phrygia by the Sea’; the Roman Phrygia of this book, however, will be a landlocked region. The dominant language of inscriptions in Roman Phrygia, as in all Asia minor, was Greek, but in the late first century CE there appear inscriptions in ‘neo-Phrygian’ which are taken to attest to its survival as a spoken language. Can we then adopt a linguistic criterion? But to define Phrygia by neo-Phrygian would create a surprising result: it is unattested in much of the west and south-west of the ‘Phrygia’ of modern maps, but extends eastwards

4.  For two, see Phrygian Votive Steles, passim; for another, see SEG LVI 1513–1665, the hitherto unknown Zeus Limnenos. Uninscribed: e.g. Phrygian Votive Steles, most of nos. 90–139, nos. 218–35. 5.  For rare attempts to be explicit, for the Roman imperial period, see M. Waelkens, ‘Phrygian Votive and Tombstones’, 293–94n2; cf. Türsteine, 42–44 (unfortunately hard to follow for those lacking a good modern map, even with Tafel 109 in his Türsteine) and, usefully, Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 26–36 with Farbtafel 2 (but my Roman Phrygia reaches north to Dorylaion). 6.  Still found e.g. in Strabo 12.4.3, 563; ‘by the sea’ Hell. Oxy. 22.3. For earlier references, see Ruge, ‘Topographie’, 801; this is also ‘Lesser’ Phrygia (for the distinction, see already Xen. Anab. 1.9.7), only the inland part of which became Phrygia Epiktetos (Strabo 12.4.3, 563, 12.4.5, 564 for Epiktetos as inland; on the various designations, see ibid., 12.8.1, 571; S. Radt, in his edition, reads ἡ δὲ μικρὰ ἡ ἔφ’ Ἑλλησπόντῳ καὶ [ἡ] περὶ τὸν Ὄλυμπον to avoid a further sub-division; cf. also S. Şahin, EpigAnat 7 [1986], 136n39). The tribute-paying Phrygians in the territory of Zeleia in the late fourth century BCE (Syll. 279. 4–5) recall their early diffusion.

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Introduction    5

into their ‘Galatia’.7 If, accordingly, we extend our Phrygia into Galatia (as doubtless we should, to some degree), we are abandoning, rightly, any attempt to make use of Roman administrative divisions to define Phrygia.8 Galatia indeed raises special problems of its own. It only emerged (as a human reality, not until 25 BCE as a province) when, in the third century BCE, the incoming Celtic Galatians settled and became politically dominant, but without expelling the previous Phrygian inhabitants who still made up a majority of the population:9 a GalatoPhrygian region, therefore, within which falls Pessinous, centre of the cult of the Mother. We should obviously take account of what those alive in the relevant period judged to be Phrygian. By this criterion, the self-description under examination of one Hierax, martyred in Rome around 165 CE, shows that Iconium (nowadays assigned to Lycaonia) could still be seen as Phrygian at that date, as it had been for Xenophon (‘Phrygia’s furthermost city’) half a millennium before.10 At home Hierax would have seen neo-Phrygian inscriptions in the cemeteries. If given to Phrygia, Iconium would bring with it Laodikeia Katakekaumene a little to the north, again 7.  The confines of Palaeo-Phrygian are ‘a vast quadrilateral area, at the corners of which are Daskyleon, Boğazköy, Tyana and Elmalı’, of neo-Phrygian ‘Eskişehir/Dorylaion, Kütahya/Kotiaion, Eğridir Lake, Laodikeia Katakekaumene and the northernmost tip of Lake Tatta’ (Brixhe, ‘Greek and Phrygian’, 248; cf. Kelp, Grabdenkmal, Farbtafel 3.). Cf. L. Roller, ‘Attitudes towards the Past in Roman Phrygia’, in E. Simpson (ed.), The Adventure of the Illustrious Scholar: Papers Presented to Oscar White Muscarella (Boston, 2018), 124–39. Roller disputes Brixhe’s arguments for the persistence of Phrygian as a spoken language. In the south-east, Pisidian also comes into play: see 17n63. 8.  Phrygia was initially divided between the provinces of Asia and Galatia; ‘from the Flavian period, if not before’ an entity called Phrygia was recognised administratively as a sub-unit within Asia (Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 115, with details; for a more recent bibliography, see H. Güney, ZPE 216 [2020], 148n14), excluding, therefore, the part of Phrygia subsumed within Galatia. On the creation of a province of Phrygia and Caria by 250 CE, see Mitchell, Anatolia II, 158; Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 19n20. The division within Phrygia, between Pacatiana (centre Laodicea on the Lykos) and Salutaris (centre Synnada), came with Diocletian. Cf., on all this, the works cited in SEG LXV 936 and 1242 and the long note of A. Filippini in Ameling, Christianisierung, 418n17. On the division between Apameia as Phrygian and Apollonia Mordiaion as Pisidian, see M. Christol, REA 120 (2018), 439–64. 9.  Darbyshire et al., ‘Galatian Settlement’ (a most useful study), 78. On ‘Galatic Phrygia’, see MAMA VII ix–xvi; this is the ‘eastern Phrygia’ of LGPN V C xv–xvi, the ‘tract of land comprising the territory of Laodikeia Katakekaumene and the treeless steppe to its north, which, on various grounds, could equally have been treated as part of either Phrygia or Galatia’. For the barely visible Galatian impact on cults, see 170 below. 10.  Xen. Anab. 1.2.19; Hierax, in the Acts of Justin (G. Krüger, Ausgewählte Märtyrerakten [Tübingen, 1965], 15–17), IV 8 (and, by implication, Acts of the Apostles 14:1 with 6). So, still in 256 CE Bishop Firmilian, who attended a synod there, in his letter to Cyprian (Cyprian, Letters, 74), section 7. Cf. Ruge, ‘Topographie’, 790. This eastward extension of Phrygia is rejected by G. Laminger-Pascher (‘Lykaonien und die Ostgrenze Phrygiens’, EpigAnat 16 [1990], 1–13), who perhaps seeks an inappropriately unambiguous answer.

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6      Introduction

mostly put in Lycaonia today.11 The Hellenistic funerary inscription on Rhodes of ‘Meniskos from Phrygian Neapolis’ will also give that town in the Kyllanian plain in the south-east to Phrygia, not Pisidia.12 Unfortunately, contemporary testimony, such as that of Meniskos and Hierax, is rare. One might attempt a definition by material culture, or selected aspects of the same. But it is notoriously difficult to align material culture exactly with the self-understanding of its users. An onomastic investigation could certainly be of interest;13 but, again, a name inherited within a family need not correlate with the self-understanding of its bearer. There may be some comfort in the fact that Strabo already found Phrygia, Caria, Lydia and Mysia ‘hard to distinguish’ (δυσδιάκριτα); he speaks of certain ‘part-Phrygian’ (μιξοφρύγιος) small towns ‘which also have a Pisidian element’. The naming of an important town in the south-east as Antioch ‘by Pisidia’ is in itself a revealingly hesitant designation.14 Very likely the self-identification of inhabitants of some of these regions (and self-identification is all that is at issue) would have been hesitant or variable. Reference works arranged by province are obliged to draw firm distinctions, and the inscriptions from, say, Laodikeia Katakekaumene find themselves assigned now to Lykaonia, now to eastern Phrygia. LGPN VC finds it necessary to introduce a blurred category, absent from many entries but occasionally well-populated (see e.g. cases of Ιμαν listed as of ‘Phrygia (S.E.)—Pisidia (N.)’. Maps have the advantage over lists in that the regional identifiers can hover over the centre of each region in question, without any attempt being made to draw boundaries at the edges. I too shall hover mostly over what no one would deny to be Phrygian, while noting, and noting the status, of interesting material from the marginal areas. A word should be said about a ‘koinon of Phrygia’ which appears on coins of Apamea in the first and again in the third centuries CE. Apamea was also an assize centre—that is, a place where the provincial governor periodically held court; the assizes were a major event in the city’s calendar, occasion for a major market and for 11.  Lycaonia: so SEG, BE, Steinepigramme, following a majority ancient view (but Pisidia was also mentioned: see Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 347); east Phrygia: LGPN V C. But G. Laminger-Pascher (Lykaonien und die Phryger [SAWW 532, Vienna, 1989], 41–53), seeks to dissociate the two topics of her title; cf. previous note. 12.  Maiuri, Rodi e Cos, 97; cf. Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 41. 13.  Cf. Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 258–85, for one region. 14.  Strabo 13.4.12–13, 628–29; cf. 12.4.4, 564 διορίσαι χαλεπόν, 12.8.3, 572, citing Xanthos FGrH 765 F 15 on the mixed dialect of Mysia. Cf. LGPN VA, xii: ‘the poorly defined borderlands between Mysia, Lydia and Phrygia’. Antioch is given to Pisidia by SEG and LGPN, to Phrygia by Cohen (Hellenistic Settlements, 278). On a coin of Laodicea on the Lycus of the time of Caracalla (BMC Phrygia 317 no. 228; plate XXXVIII 2), the city stands between personifications (named) of Phrygia and Caria. Towns that in different ancient geographers do or do not belong to Phrygia are quite frequent: see Ruge, ‘Topographie’, 790–801 (even Ankyra was contested between Phrygia and Galatia: Steph. Byz. α 33); for ancient unclarity over ‘lesser’ Phrygia, see Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 28n153.

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Introduction    7

the ephebes to compete in games. Two of the individuals who issued ‘koinon of Phrygia’ coins in the third century appear on different coins as agonothetes or panegyriarchs—that is, magistrates charged with organising games. The bold proposal has been made to conflate the games associated with the assizes with games presided over by the issuers of the ‘koinon of Phrygia’ coins.15 If so, the coins tendentiously present the convergence of people from much of Phrygia on Apamea, a consequence of the assizes and thus of external domination, as an expression of ethnic feeling and an acknowledgement of Apamea’s privileged place within Phrygia (the relevant coin inscriptions in fact present themselves as being issued by ‘koinon of Phrygia, Apameans’). On that view the koinon of Phrygia is merely an ‘imagined community’, one imagined or rather invented in the interests of Apamea. Why it appears so intermittently is mysterious. But on no view is it an important institution. Defining Phrygia is problematic, therefore; but more important is the difficulty of drawing sharp distinctions between the ‘religion of Roman Phrygia’ (whether at its smallest or greatest expansion) and the religions of its neighbours. Louis Robert often warned against all attempts to generalise about Asia Minor; but, equally, no attempts to segment it neatly in social and cultural terms can succeed. Two of the gods most prominent in Phrygia, Zeus and Apollo, are prominent throughout Anatolia; Mother and Men are not quite ubiquitous, but still present in much of the peninsula. So-called confession inscriptions—ones where an individual who has fallen ill or suffered in some other way sets up a monument to acknowledge fault and honour the offended god—are regularly seen as a prime symptom of Phrygian religiosity. A typical example: ‘I Sosandros of Hierapolis came to the shared altars when I had broken an oath and was impure. I was punished. I proclaim to all not to despise (Apollo) Lairmenos, since he will have my stele as warning example.’ But many more confession inscriptions have been found in eastern Lydia than in Phrygia, and within Phrygia none in the east or even in the Upper Tembris valley which is otherwise so prodigal of inscriptions.16 Phrygia can, by contrast, claim a majority of dedications to the remarkable god or gods Hosios kai Dikaios, but Mysia Abbaitis, too, offers a good number and the cult spills over in other directions too.17 At a different level, the village is the main context and focus of Phrygian religious activity in a way unfamiliar from mainland Greece and even 15.  Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 109–17. Coins: RPC I 3136–37; II 1389; VIII unassigned, ID 20601–2 (translated by C. Marek, Geschichte Kleinasiens in der Antike [Darmstadt, 2010], 520: ‘die Apameier [richten aus] den gemeinsamen [Wettkampf] Phrygiens’; but supplying the bracketed words is hard). Games: IGR IV 788–89 = MAMA VI 180 I and II. 16.  For distribution, see the map (no page number) at the back of Petzl, Beichtinschriften. The example quoted is his number 120. 17.  On Phrygia and east Lydia, see N. E. Akyürek Şahin, Gephyra (2013), 5–6; she sees the influence going from Phrygia to Lydia. Lochman (Grab- und Votivreliefs, 204) pleads for Mysia Abbaitis as a part of Phrygia, not of Lydia at all.

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8      Introduction

some regions of Asia Minor (e.g. Caria, Lycia). But this emphasis is shared with (again) Lydia18 and also Bithynia. The cult association of Xenoi Tekmoreioi brings together devotees from south-eastern Phrygia and northern Pisidia. In the plain of Karayük in the extreme south-east, tomb violators are threatened with the wrath of the ‘Pisidian gods’.19 Not everything that will here be discussed is exclusive to Phrygia, therefore. And even within Phrygia there is local variation; not much is pan-Phrygian.20 But everything here discussed does indeed occur in substantial areas of Phrygia, whereas any generalisation about Asia Minor or even about an extended segment of it, such as ‘Phrygia, Lydia and Bithynia’, would, like the curate’s egg, be good only in parts. The timescale for the presentation of Phrygian polytheism which is the core of the book is dictated by the evidence, which comes, a few early swallows aside, from the second century and first half of the third century CE. But, in trying to answer the question of how Christianity met the religious needs hitherto met by paganism, I look onwards somewhat in chapter 9; and chapter 10 is a brief retrospect to the little that can be known about religion in Phrygia in the pre-Roman period.

18.  Note the very useful study of M. Ricl, ‘Rural Sanctuaries’; or Robert, ‘Dieux des Motaleis’, 45, ‘Ces régions (Phrygie, Lydie, Bithynie, Pisidie et Lycie avec la Kibyratide) sont saupoudrées de sanctuaires de divinités locales accessibles et familières’. On Bithynia, see F. Ferraioli, ‘Culti rurali e culti urbani nella Bitinia ellenistica e romana’, ARYS (19), 97–129. 19.  Robert, CRAI 1978 279 = OMS V 735 20–21; SEG LXII 1148–51, with note. Xenoi: 20n47 below. 20.  Note e.g. Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 186, on the absence from south-west Phrygia of funerary ‘doorstones’ and the presence of the Greek Totenmahl; see, more generally, Thonemann, ‘Anarchist History’, 36–37.

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1

Contexts of religious life

Villages, associations Where there is no church, the first question to be asked is about the various worshipping groups, the contexts within which religious activity took place. The home or household ought to be the starting place, but, rich and spectacular though our knowledge of the Phrygian extended family is, ‘the Phrygian house’ is an area inaccessible to scholarship; nothing can be said about domestic rites. Dedications at village shrines by or on behalf of members of these extended families are a different matter; they will form the bulk of the evidence discussed in what follows.1 Families aside, much the most well-attested worshipping body is the village (kome), from which at this date a ‘settlement’ (katoikia) or group of ‘settlers’ (katoikoi, katoikountes) seem indistinguishable.2 It is correctly observed that in Phrygia the dividing line between large villages and small towns (such as most Phrygian ‘cities’ were) was a fine one, demonstrably crossed by some communities and local groupings.3 1.  Οn the extended family, see the fundamental study by P. Thonemann, ‘Households and Families in Roman Phrygia’, in Roman Phrygia, 124–42; on dedications, cf. Masseglia, ibid., 121–22. 2.  Schuler, Ländliche Siedlungen, 34; note e.g. the various descriptions of the group whose dedications were found at Kuyucak, MAMA V 175–78, 182 (?), 184 (Schuler, 299 no. 41). Groups named in the form ethnikon-plus-ἐγχώριοι (e.g. Κιμελιαεῖς ἐγχώριοι) occasionally make dedications in the region of Nakoleia (e.g. MAMA V 208, 218; SEG XXVIII 1196; SEG XXXVIII 1308); P. Frei (EpigAnat 11 [1988], 22–23) suggests either a village settled on land it does not own or a group from a village settled away from the village centre. 3.  Orkistos, MAMA VII 305 (ILS 6091, in part); Tymandos, MAMA IV 236 (ILS 6090); Meiros, BE (1972) no. 461 on Haspels, Highlands, nos. 86–87 (on this place, see now S. Mitchell, Gephyra 21 [2021], 237–41); Kabalenoi (?): Schuler, Ländliche Siedlungen, 298n19. On the fine dividing line, see Mitchell,

9

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10      Contexts of religious life

But it is the villages—usually individual villages, though groupings occasionally appear4—that leave most traces of their religious life. Villages make collective dedications, and individuals dedicate for the well-being of (themselves and) their villages. ‘Village priests’ (ἱερεῖς κωμητικοί) occasionally appear; one claimed to be priest of two villages.5 How village priests operated is not clear, given that the norm in polytheism was to be a priest of a particular god, not of a community: did they serve all ‘the gods who protect’ a particular village, and, if so, does this imply that such gods had shared sanctuaries? Or is a ‘village priest’ one of potentially several priests appointed by the village, what we might call a public priest? Rather revealingly, whereas subdivisions of the cities are almost invisible in religious terms, various subgroups are active within or in close association with villages. Two remarkable reliefs illustrate the role of what the accompanying inscriptions term phratries at Thiounta, a village dependent on Hierapolis.6 Phratries in Greece were hereditary associations notionally based on kinship; we do not know whether they were that in Phrygia, too, or whether the word just meant association. A top register of the reliefs shows gods and, perhaps, the proto-Phrygian cultivator Gordios; below are three rows each consisting of eight named phratores; below them are cattle, musicians and musical instruments. One of the reliefs specifies that the phratores are honoured ‘because they held the pannychis’ (all-night rite) ‘for Zeus for eight days and provided oil for eight days’. So, they organised (paid for?) for the village feasting (the cattle), pannychides, music, competitions (which are Anatolia, I, 179–81; Thonemann, Roman Phrygia, 31–37, with the observation (35) that in Phrygia urban architecture is not accompanied by structural/economic differentiation between town and country; on the criteria for polis-status F. Kolb, Klio 75 (1993), 325–41. The koinon of the Hyrgaleis (cf. IGR IV 756), a grouping of villages, became a coin-issuing city by the third century CE (C. P. Jones, Chiron 39 [2009], 458–59); a koinon of Orondeis somehow merges with the city of Pappa/Tiberiopolis (MAMA VIII 332, 333). 4.  MAMA V 87, a dedication by the inhabitants of a trikomia; Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1977–78 no. 16, as interpreted by Schuler, Ländliche Siedlungen, 222n28, the Zeus Bennios of two villages; cf. the priest of two villages (SEG XXXVIII 1307). I. North Galatia 37 is a dedication to ‘Zeus of the Heptakomeitai’, a grouping perhaps created by an imperial estate (so Mitchell ad loc.). 5.  SEG XLIV 1037, a prayer for his own people and the village to Zeus, Men and the mother of Men (so he was, by implication, priest of more than one god); SEG XXXVIII 1307, a prayer for crops and patrons and his own people to Zeus Bronton and Saouadios (Sabazios): one god or two? Both are from the Nakoleia region, as is another (unpublished) mentioned by P. Frei, EpigAnat 11 (1988), 20n33. For other parts of Asia Minor, see Schuler, Ländliche Siedlungen, 251. Surprisingly, Phrygia offers no instances in S. Campanelli’s collection of funerary foundations in favour of villages, Mediterraneo Antico 14 (2011), 225–50. 6.  Ramsay, Phrygia, I, 142–43, nos. 30–31; Asianic Elements, 196–97 (cf. the new text SEG LXVI 1592, which intersects prosopographically with these texts: P. Hamon, BE [2017], no. 530). Robert, ‘Motaleis’, is basic here; on the Motaleis, see also Hierapolis V, 690–708. Gordios: so Robert, ‘Motaleis’, 5n16. On the onomastics, see Robert, Noms indigènes, 291–97: complete familiarity with Greek! On village associations, cf. Schuler, Ländliche Siedlungen, 224–25. For Thiounta’s close ties with Hierapolis, see SEG LXVI 1586, honours for what are evidently services in the city.

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implied by the ‘oil’) over seven days. From another village of the region, that of the Motaleis, comes a dedication to the ‘gods of the Motaleis’ by the ‘hetaireia of Arzimneis’ consisting of at least seventeen, perhaps again twenty-four men; a similar dedication by a group of ten may well come from the same sanctuary; a text ‘copied after sunset in a courtyard, amid strenuous opposition and threats of violence’ by Ramsay at Kabalar, again in the region, appears to attest a phratry recruited from two villages (Salouda and Melokome).7 A few more inscriptions show the existence, though not in detail the activities, of phratries; one dedicates to Men Plouristreon, one to Men Askaenos, another is specifically devoted to the worship of an unknown figure called Ouargasos; they are sometimes involved in setting up funerary monuments, though whether in these cases that was their primary function is not clear.8 Syngenika (kin associations) also put up funerary monuments: Phrygian funerary monuments often contain long lists of relatives (very revealing for our knowledge of the structure of Phrygian families) who honour the dead, and one might think that syngenikon is just a portfolio term for such a group of relatives. But on one occasion a syngenikon makes a dedication; and in an unpublished inscription a syngeneia is reportedly responsible for building a temple of Zeus.9 The much discussed term βεννος, on which are based βεννάρχης, βεννεῖται and the epithet of Zeus Bennios, probably indicates another such group, possibly one entrusted with a ritual act or form of celebration (of nature unfortunately unknown) of βεννεύειν.10 Some other collective terms, mostly better attested in 7.  Arzimneis: I. Mus. Denizli 43; LIMC s.v. ‘Men’, no. 140. Similar dedication: I. Mus. Denizli 44. Kabalar (for its location see the map in Robert, ‘Motaleis’, 56 or Hierapolis V, 688) Ramsay, Phrygia, I, 156 no. 64; Ramsay, Asianic Elements, 199; Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, 1 no. 78. For ‘the gods of the Motaleis’ see also 34n2. 8.  MAMA IV 230, near Tymandos, Men Plouristreon; Lane, CMRDM no. 87, Men Askaenos; MAMA X 382, nr. Synaus, funerary stele for a dead phrator which ‘we who honour (σεβόμεσθα) Ouargasos’ set up; MAMA IX 89 (Steinepigramme 16/23/12, Aizanitis) and I. Mus. Denizli 84, funerary stelai. Hetairoi set up funerary monuments: MAMA IV 299, VI 47, IX 86. 9.  Funerary monuments: I. Mus. Denizli 73 and 116 (although the qualification of the former as ‘newer’ or ‘younger’ (νειώτερον) is a puzzle); dedication: I. North Galatia 361; temple SEG LI 1842. 10.  The group interpretation, strongly commended by the nouns βεννάρχης (now again attested in Fonds Louis Robert 051_048, where Artas is, mysteriously, bennarch of the ‘god of Antenoi’) and (SEG XL 1189) βεννεῖται, the verb βεναρχέω (SEG LXVI 1414.16) and by the benefits (εὐεργεσίαι) conferred on an individual by a βεννος (SEG LXVI 1409), is advocated by Drew-Bear and Naour (‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1952–92) and accepted by H. Schwabl (Acta Antiqua 39 [1999], 345–54; on 346 he hazards an etymology); somewhat resistant to it are the verb βεννεύω (Steinepigramme 16/41/07 line 5) and money left to a village to finance a βενος (SEG VI 550; Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1955–56). Could the word have moved from indicating a ritual act to include also the group entrusted with performing it? The divine epithet ‘Bennios’ would be easier to explain on that view. The editors of MAMA X 222 tentatively revive the view that a βεννος is an object, but one could perhaps re-punctuate τῷ ‘Ερμαβεννεῖ of that text as τῷ ‘Ερμᾶ βεννει. On the distribution of Zeus Bennios, see Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1952–54; but note the βενος of SEG VI 550 (Antioch by Pisidia).

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Lydia, also occur:11 συνοδία, δοῦμος, συμβίωσις. This last becomes vivid in a dedication which runs ‘With good fortune. The symbiosis to Alsenos. [May he be?] propitious to the settlement [katoikia]. [Then in hexameters] To Alsenos ancestral great Zeus nineteen men—distinguished Achaeans—, o bright Zeus, set up an altar.’12 With its prayer on behalf of the settlement, this symbiosis reveals itself as not, or not only, a private society,13 but one involved, like the phratries of Thiounta, with the religious life of the village. We glimpse this role of smaller groups of probably more prosperous villagers within village religious life only occasionally, but it may well have been common and important. A cluster of dedications to Dionysus or Zeus Dionysus from the regions of Dorylaion and Nakoleia again reveal private associations integrated into the life of their villages: although the dedicants describe themselves as (new) mystai or new bacchoi, they also commonly identify themselves as belonging to a village and may seek favour for the village as well as for themselves: ‘the mystai of Korosea [?], new bacchoi, for themselves and for the village a vow to Zeus Dionysus’ is an example.14 These mystai were clearly not seeking to set themselves apart. (The ‘mystai of the first sacred thiasos’ mentioned below from Acmonia look like a different phenomenon.) Many villages were located on private or imperial estates. Their religious life looks much like that of other villages,15 apart from occasional expressions of loyalty to controlling officials or the imperial house.

11.  See the useful list in Ricl, ‘Rural Sanctuaries’, 92n94. Συνοδία: SEG XLIV 1063; δοῦμος: Phrygian Votive Steles 137 no. 167 (cf. P. A. Harland, Greco-Roman Associations II [Berlin, 2014], no. 119 with commentary). 12.  Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1929–31 (SEG XL 1192; Steinepigramme 16/03/02; now MAMA XI 110), from near Akmonia (for ‘Achaeans’ cf. appendix A, s.v. ‘Eumeneia’). Another case is the Φιλαμπέλων συμβίωσις of SEG LV 1418. 13.  For the private aspects of symbioseis, see the passages from Artemid. (2.12 p. 126.1 Pack; 4.44; 5.82) cited by Robert, Doc. Asie. Min., 540n13. But for the community concerns of such bodies in Lydia, see Ricl, ‘Rural Sanctuaries’, 92, citing e.g. TAM V I 144, 179, 536. 14.  Jaccottet, Dionysos, II, no. 79; cf. 76–78, 80–81; add now SEG LXVI 1581, which attests a slave as member, and where, as in Jaccottet, Dionysos, II, nos. 75 (?) and 76, the term Βακχος designates the association. Drew-Bear (Nouvelles Inscriptions de Phrygie, 35) supposed all these texts to come from a single sanctuary, which would indicate an interesting convergence from different villages; P. Frei cited by Jaccottet (Dionysos, II, 159) supposes a shared idiom but not a single sanctuary. A new dedication to Hosios Dikaios from a site north-east of Dorylaion by Κταηνοὶ Βάχιον τὸ περὶ Τύραννον is rendered by the editor (H. Güney, Gephyra 15 [2018], 103) ‘the Ktaenoi Bachion around Tyrannos’, which, if right, would imply a similar situation. 15.  See in particular I. North Galatia 29–38. Loyalty: pp. 81–82 below. Prayers for the well-being of ‘masters’ (despotai): MAMA V 185; SEG LVI 1527; ZPE 216 (2020), 150–51 no. 2.

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I turn to subdivisions of the cities. Eight (or nine) of the Phrygian cities are known to have been subdivided into tribes; more perhaps were,16 but there is all but no trace that these subdivisions operated as worshipping groups, either with cults of their own or as an organising basis for public festivals; the only clear exception is that individuals endowing a post-mortem memorial fund for themselves might use civic subdivisions to perform the commemorative acts.17 Professional guilds are attested in a few cities, most abundantly in Apameia and Hierapolis, but, again, any religious functions they may have had are almost invisible except in Hierapolis, where they were regularly involved with the tendance and crowning of graves.18 At Aizanoi two brothers (?) made a dedication to Zeus Bennios ‘for the society of gardeners at Steunos’, while at Pessinous the officials of a similar society dedicated from the common funds to Demeter Karpophoros.19 But neither text shows that the society functioned regularly as a worshipping body. At Acmonia the ‘mystai of the first sacred thiasos’ dedicated a hall and adjoining room to Dionysos Kathegemon (the god imported from Pergamum) ‘for their own use’. This is a tantalising text: it shows that there were several sacred thiasoi at Acmonia, but were they publicly recognised? And did they share a sanctuary, within which individual thiasoi had to mark out their own space? There were also mystai of Dionysus Kathegemon at or close to nearby Sebaste, but there, too, their relation to the public cult is unclear. At or near Acmonia, a group known as ‘Kouretes’, a name otherwise unattested nearer than Ephesus, has recently emerged: presumably the claim to have hosted Zeus’ birth, widespread throughout Anatolia, was here acted out in some way by a group imitating the Kouretes who danced at the god’s birth (unless the birth in question was that of Dionysus).20 In Hierapolis the 16.  Hadrianoi, Dorylaion, Nakoleia, Aizanoi, Akmonia, Eumeneia, Hierapolis, Laodikeia, Apollonia Mordiaion (?) (Kunnert, Phylen, 122–52); and several more in Phrygian Galatia (ibid., 153–63). For an overview of Phrygian cities, see Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 36–45. 17.  See page 106. Other slight traces: a citizen of Hadrianoi made a dedication to a ‘hearing goddess’ for (ὑπέρ) his tribe (I. Hadrianoi Hadrianeia 17); a tribe of Nakoleia dedicated a statue of the old man of the sea to Poseidon (Steinepigramme 16/34/12). The only attestation of a tribe in Pessinous is a dedication to Attis (I. Pessinous 21). 18.  See I. Dittmann-Schöne, Die Berufsvereine in den Städten des kaiserzeitlichen Kleinasiens (Regensburg, 2010), 223–48; T. Ritti, Per la storia sociale ed economica di Hierapolis di Frigia: le fondazioni sociali e funerarie (Rome, 2016). 19.  Aizanoi: ὑπὲρ τῆς ὁμοτεχνίας τῶν κηπουρῶν Στευνηνῶν: MAMA 9. 49, Drew-Bear and Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, 1983 no. 18; Pessinous: ἐπιμελού[μ]ενοι συ(σ)τήματος κηπουρῶν: I. Pessinous 22. 20.  Akmonia: Jaccottet, Dionysos, II, no. 84 (with discussion); Sebaste: ibid., no. 85. Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1947–49, editing this last suggest that it originated in Sebaste itself, though found ten kilometres to the north-east. Jaccottet no. 83, attesting a Dionysiac speira, is there attributed to Akmonia but probably belongs in the Upper Tembris valley (cf. 148n134). The bennos

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‘standard-bearers’ (σημιαφόροι) of the great god of the city, Apollo Archegetes, were organised as a guild; but we hear of them only in the context of commemorative celebrations for their dead members. So, too, with the ‘mystai of the phyle of Zeus’ at Amorion.21 Cities The religious life of the Phrygian cities presents itself to us much less vividly than that of the Phrygian villages, or than that of the cities on the west coast. Literary evidence barely exists before late antiquity, and the types of inscription that illuminate other parts of the Greek world—calendars,22 ‘sacred laws’,23 sales of priesthoods—are almost absent. The explanation is partly that, by the time Phrygian documents become numerous, inscriptions of these classes have become rare everywhere. Even at this date one might have hoped for a text regulating a festival in detail, such as the Demostheneia inscription from Oinoanda in Lycia, but nothing of the kind survives. The religious institution most abundantly attested in inscriptions is the imperial cult, but even here we learn much more of the high office in the cult held by individuals (or their forebears!) locally or provincially, than of the celebrations over which they presided. The imperial cult aside, we can often identify the chief god of the major, and some minor, cities,24 various agonistic festivals (but very few of any other type) can be named;25 a few civic sanctuaries of the Soenoi (comparable to the ‘Serean’, i.e. of a village, Bennos) is another obscure worshipping group within a (in this case small) city: see Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1988–89 (SEG XL 1229). Kouretes: MAMA XI 109. For the identity of the baby, see appendix A, s.v. ‘Akmonia’. 21.  Hierapolis: T. Ritti, Per la storia sociale ed economica di Hierapolis di Frigia: le fondazioni sociali e funerarie (Rome, 2016), no. 48. Amorion: REG 2 (1889), 19–20 (Laum, Stiftungen II, nos. 175–76); Kunnert (Bürger unter Sich, 26–28) takes phyle here in a non-civic sense. 22.  The little list of ‘annual libations to Zeus and sacrifices’ financed by his priest Tiberius Iulius Myndos at Hierapolis is the closest we have to an exception: SEG LI 1783 B/C 15–18 (Ritti, Epigraphic Guide, 159–65). 23.  Only the early bilingual from a region under strong Greek influence (SEG XLVII 1684), and a short rule attached to a private dedication, see I. Laodikeia Lykos 64 (LSAM 88). 24.  For example, Zeus at Aizanoi, Apollo Archegetes at Hierapolis, Dike at Prymnessos, Apollo Propylaios at Eumeneia, Apollo at Motella (e.g. SEG L 1269), Zeus Pandemos at Synnada (see commentary to SEG XL 1225). Oinoanda: SEG XXXVIII 1462. 25.  Aizanoi: the Sebasta Klaudiea (IGR IV 584, cf. 582); the great penteteric agones (MAMA IX 19; SEG XXXV 1365.17–18), which perhaps honoured the Sebastoi neoi homobomioi (IGR IV 584), unless these were distinct events; the Deia, first held in the mid-second century CE (SEG XXXV 1365.8; XLII 1187. 5–9); Akmonia: great Asklepieia (SEG LXII 1112, cf. MAMA VI 265, penteteric competitions); Antioch by Pisidia: see Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 206–8; Antioch on the Maeander: Charmideia (Robert, RPhil 3 [1929], 133–34); Apamea: numerous coins issued in name of panegyriarchs (and cf. 7n15); Apollonia: great penteteric Kaisareia (MAMA IV 152, 154; SEG LXII 1122); the Κορνούτεια θεμις (SEG LXII 1120, with note); Attouda: Pythia, Andrianteia, Olympia, Herakleia, Adrasteia (MAMA VI 76, 81, 82; cf. BCH 14 [1890], 238 no. 13; JHS 56 [1936], 79, Pythia; SEG XXXI 1103, Olympia); Cadi: Homobomia

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are named in inscriptions;26 fewer still have been identified on the ground or excavated; and a rather haphazard selection of public priesthoods chance to be mentioned in honorary inscriptions.27 The evidence of coins is problematic.28 Some suppose that any god depicted on a city’s coinage received a public cult in that city. A more cautious view will accept only gods who fall into one of three classes: those who dominate a city’s coinage, as, for instance, Dionysus, predictably, on the coins of Dionysopolis; gods chosen to represent the city on homonoia coins; gods from outside the familiar iconographic spectrum, or depicted in distinctive ways, or given distinctive epithets, and thus probably locally specific. And, by their nature, coins can barely give details of the rites and worshippers of a given god. Seldom, if ever, do enough of these items of evidence come together to create a clear and vivid picture. All those involved in the administration of a testamentary foundation set up by one Praxias in Acmonia were required to invoke as divine witnesses to their integrity ‘the theoi Sebastoi and the ancestral gods and Zeus Stodmenos and Soter Asklepios and Artemis Ephesia.’29 Whether the trio ‘Zeus Stodmenos, Soter Asklepios, Artemis Ephesia’ comes from a civic oath or is the donor’s personal choice is unknown; if the former, it is a rare attestation of a civic grouping of top or representative gods. At Blaundos, which has been taken as an Sebasta (RPC VI 4300 temp.); Eumeneia: Eumeneia Philadelpheia (Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 303n5); Hierapolis: of Sebastos, a penteteris (?), (Apolloneia) Pythia, Olympia, Aktia, Kommodeia (?), of Herakles kraterophron (?), ‘those beside Chrysoroas’ (?), Valentea (?) (Ritti, Storia e istituzioni di Hierapolis, 173–79); Kolossai: Nea Olympia Apolloniea (MAMA VI 40, a tetraeteris); Laodicea: see T. T. Duke in Studies Presented to David Moore Robinson (St. Louis, 1953), 851–57, who claims eleven (some questionable); Parlais: an unnamed themis (SEG II 745); Prymnessos: Steinepigramme 16/52/01 (honours for a herald at unnamed games); Synnada: Panathenaia Hadrianeia (SEG LVI 1687, RPC IX 886); victors in unnamed games at Synnada are honoured in Steinepigramme 16/51/02–04; Tripolis: Apolloneia Pythia, Letoa Pythia, Attalianeia Olympia: note on SEG LXVI 12. The evidence for the games at Metropolis (Sebasta Kaisareia) mentioned by Mitchell (Anatolia, I, 225n197) eludes me. Other festivals: ‘the most sacred panegyris of Apollo in the grove’ of a city in the north-west (IGR IV 555: cf. 47n47); the same city hosted a ‘hunt with dogs’ and a ‘twelve oxen sacrifice’ (ibid.), the latter perhaps in the imperial cult; the festival of Eudaimosyne (74n33). 26.  Mentioned: SEG VI 273 (Aludda [?], Hellenistic), decree to be displayed in shrine of Soter Asklepios; SEG LXIV 1313 (second century CE, Atyochorion), benefactor establishes temple of Asklepios. Identified/excavated: Apollo Archegetes and a Dodekatheon at Hierapolis (many more are known from inscriptions: 16n31); Zeus at Aizanoi; n30 below on Blaundos. 27.  At Aizanoi e.g., a large and well-documented city, MAMA IX xxx lists numerous priests and officiants in the cult of Zeus, also priests of Dionysus, ‘the founder’, and the ‘gods of the council’; SEG XLV 1708–10 has now added a priest of Artemis; there were surely more. 28.  Cf. the references in Parker, ‘Athena in Anatolia’, 76–77; add now Ritti, Storia e istituzioni di Hierapolis, 137, acknowledging that the presence of a god on a coin does not prove official cult; similarly, for empresses, Frija, Les Prêtres des empereurs, 69. 29.  IGR IV 661; Laum, Stiftungen, II 173; better text in F. Cumont, Catalogue . . . des Musées royaux du cinquantenaire (Brussels, 1913), no. 133 (broadly followed in M. McCrum and A. G. Woodhead, Documents of the Flavian Emperors [Cambridge, 1996], no. 500).

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example of the small (and so typical) Phrygian city, a temple of Demeter and another temple complex are known on the ground, and inscriptions add dedications to emperors and members of the imperial family (nos. 9–10), a life priest of Athena Nikephoros and Homonoia (the former obviously derived from Blaundos’ founder Pergamum: no. 1), an annual priest of Dionysus Kathegemon (this too Pergamene), and a dedication to Sabazios (no. 11).30 Even if we suppose just five thousand Blaundians, only a fifth of whom lived within the city, this is a meagre supply of gods. About Hierapolis, a much more important place illustrated by what is probably the richest epigraphy of any Phrygian city, there is naturally more to be said.31 Many documents attest the civic primacy of Apollo Archegetes, owner of the one identified temple, honoured on an unidentified occasion by a guild of semiaphoroi, standard-bearers. Apollo is also worshipped in or near the city under four more epithets, two Hellenic, Pythios and Aktios, two local, Lairbenos and Karios. (I speak here and elsewhere of Apollo ‘Lairbenos’ because this is the form in which that epithet appears on coins of Hierapolis; but no fewer than eleven alternative spellings are attested.32) Two local forms of Zeus, too, the Zeuses Bozios and Tro(i)os, are known from coins and (in the case of Bozios) dedications; a distinctive iconographic type is perhaps Bozios. By contrast, the epithet under which Zeus received ‘annual libations and sacrifices’ performed and paid for by his priest Tiberius Iulius Myndos is not recorded. We also hear of temples and/or priests of Demeter, Aphrodite Ourania, Dionysus Kathegemon (served by a hierophant), and probably Heracles. Men and Sarapis both represent the city on homonoia coins. Other gods (Artemis, Hecate-Selene, Hera, Athena, Poseidon, Hermes, the Dioscuri, Asclepius and his team, Nemesis) appear on coins or on the abundant remains of architectural ornaments from various buildings, the theatre above all; some, no doubt, had cults,33 but coins and decorations in themselves prove no more than that they formed part of the cultural koine which the city shared. An inscription records a decree of council and people honouring a meritorious archigallos with a statue: that aside, there is no trace in the epigraphic record of the galli who appear prominently in literary

30.  Typical: Thonemann (‘Anarchist History’, 31–34), summarizing Filges, Blaundos. Inscriptions: the numbers refer to I. Blaundos, for which see the list of abbreviations. Nos. 3–4 are bilingual versions of a joint dedication to Demeter and an Augusta. Dionysus Kathegemon: Adalya 3 (2000), 300. 31.  For documentation on what follows, see Ritti, Storia e istituzioni di Hierapolis, 99–132. For the Galloi, see ibid. and below 151; for the archigallos, I. Hierapolis Judeich, 33. 32.  Rutherford (Hittite Texts, 165) mentions but does not endorse the view that Apollo’s epithet echoes the Hittite royal title Labarna. 33.  The legend of the martyr Dorymedon, a city councillor of Synnada in the time of Probus, has him found out by refusal to participate in the public festival of the Dioscuri (155n172): very insecure evidence.

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evidence34 for the religious life of the city. And finally one should mention a ‘priest of the people’, a ‘priestess of the Dodekatheon’, a statue of the ‘goddess Euposia’, and the abundant evidence for priests in the imperial cult. I have extended this bare list to show the limits of what can be achieved; it is hard to get beyond listing, to put flesh on these bones. Such is the norm in the cities. Hierapolis itself, as it happens, offers an exception to the dryness of the bones: dramatic accounts tell of the Ploutonion with its mephitic vapours deadly to all living creatures entering therein except the privileged servants of the Mother (whose cult in the city is thereby attested), the Galloi. We hear of all this only because the remarkable physical feature of the mephitic cave attracted the attention of literary sources. But brilliant excavations have now revealed the Ploutonion with its considerable architectural elaboration.35 The complex included a ‘cultic theatre’, and a late antique source speaks of ‘initiates’. Accordingly, ‘Mysteries’ can be tentatively postulated, a genus not otherwise attested in Phrygia.36 That the cult at the famous site was elaborated in this way is very possible. But we lack the material for a precise picture of what might have happened. Several cities contained thriving and integrated Jewish communities. At Akmonia, the synagogue was built by a non-Jewish ‘god-fearer’, Julia Severa; she also served as ‘high priestess and agonothetis of the whole house of the theoi Sebastoi’. Jews probably served on city councils and might hold high civic office, as in other areas of Asia Minor.37 At Hierapolis, a remarkable funerary foundation provided for commemoration of the dead man and his family members (not necessarily Jews themselves) both at the Passover and Pentecost and also at the Roman Kalends.38 The extraordinary appearance of Noah’s Ark (Noah identified by name) on third-century coins of Apamea (a city whose byname Kibotos means box, chest) has traditionally also been explained by the influence of a Jewish community; the relocation of Ararat in Phrygia is also found in the Sibylline oracles,39 works 34.  See the following note. 35.  D’ Andria, ‘Ploutonion’. Literary sources: Ritti, Fonti, 7–15; e.g. Strabo 13.4.14, C 629–30. 36.  F. d’Andria, ‘Des Mystères á Hiérapolis de Phrygie?’, in N. Belayche et al. (eds.), Les Mystères au deuxième siècle de notre ère: un tournant (Turnhout, 2021), 103–26. ‘Initiates’: Damascius, Vita Isidori 131, ap. Phot. Bibl. 181, 242 (Damascius fr. 87a Athanassiadi), on which cf. 155n172. 37.  Julia Severa: MAMA VI 263–64, I. Jud. Orientis II 168, with Ameling, ‘Jüdische Gemeinden’, 50–51; more Jewish inscriptions from Acmonia I. Jud. Orientis II 169–78, with Robert, ‘Akmonia’, 158– 60. Council/office: I. Jud. Orientis II 172–73 (Acmonia), 186 (Eumeneia)—but it is not quite certain in any of these cases that the individuals concerned were Jewish. Cf. in general P. R. Trebilco, Jewish Communities in Asia Minor (Cambridge, 1991), with chapters on Acmonia and Apamea. 38.  I. Jud. Orientis II 196: ‘not necessarily Jews’: e.g. M. Williams in E. Matthews (ed.), Old and New Worlds in Greek Onomastics (Oxford, 2007), 178. Hierapolis has more entries (22) in I. Jud. Orientis II than any other city. 39.  Oracula Sibyllina 1. 261–82 (cf. 1.196–98); see the admirable discussion of Lightfoot, Sibylline Oracles, 101–3, 364–70, who highlights the unusual narrative aspect of the coins and considers possible

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generally believed to be of Jewish origin. But it has been pointed out that there is more abundant evidence for early Christianity in the city; Christians had no less incentive than Jews to connect their city’s byname with what for them, too, was sacred tradition, an association perhaps brought closer by the ‘brackish waters, fossilised shellfish and unstable hydrography of the Apamean district’, so suggestive of a once-flooded place.40 However that may be, myths and traditions of foundation are perhaps the aspects of Phrygian civic religion that become most vivid for us. In various cities there feature as founders or ancestors (or figures associated with the city’s prehistory in other ways) Phrygians such as Midas (free of his ass’s ears) and Marsyas, Phrygians who fought at Troy such as Otreus and Mygdon and perhaps Euphorbus (but not Trojans at large,41 except Anchises and his descendants, a special case), and descendants of Greek heroes such as Akamas son of Theseus, even at Nacoleia Heracles himself or at Iconium Perseus. The characters involved, Phrygian, Trojan or Greek, are with few exceptions familiar from Greek myth or brought into genealogical connection with those who are: this second class includes many eponyms of cities: Dorylaos, an otherwise unattested son of Heracles; Azen, son of Tantalos; Akmon, father of Mygdon; Kelainos son of Poseidon.42 Even cities named for monarchs of the historical period might acquire a ‘presources in larger-scale art. The coins: RPC VI 5706 temp., VII 1 701, VIII unassigned, ID 20588, IX 820. The neighbouring peak of the Dschebel Sultan offered itself to be identified with Ararat (Strobel, Das Heilige Land, 163–64). 40.  See Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 88–98 (who cites, 93n104, the epigram explained by C. P. Jones [BE (2002), no. 619; now SEG LXI 1145]); the phrase quoted is at 97. Lightfoot (Sibylline Oracles, 101–3) also contemplates a Christian origin (and stresses Christian elements in Or. Sib.). Ovid’s location of a different flood myth in Phrygia (Met. 8. 624–25) may indicate that mythical explanations for the watery local landscape predated the specific link with Noah: cf. A. Hollis, Ovid Metamorphoses Book VIII (Oxford, 1970), introductory note on ll. 611–724, on ‘the Phrygian flood tradition’; Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 181 (who cites the [N]annakos flood, Herondas 3. 10 with Headlam’s note; [Plut.] Parallela Minora 5 A a, Mor. 306E, self-sacrifice by Midas’ son; Nonnus, Dion. 13. 518–45 [cf. Chuvin, Mythologie . . . dionysiaque, 131–35], Priasos’ old father a survivor through piety). This aside, Ramsay (Phrygia II, 434) remarked ‘about the religion of Kelainai [i.e. Apameia-Kelainai] we have little information;’ cf. Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 100: ‘the native population of Apamea [as opposed to resident Romans], and their activities, are oddly elusive’. 41.  As noted by Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 182. Euphorbus: see appendix A, s.v. ‘Aizanoi’. 42.  See appendix A. Thynnaros at Synnada is a rare case of a figure unknown to Greek mythography, although there was also a tradition linking the city to Akamas. The eponyms of Nakoleia (Nakole or Nakolos) remain unattached to more familiar figures, but the city also claimed foundation by Heracles. (N)annakos, a Phrygian king who predicted the flood (Herondas 3.10, with Headlam’s note; Chuvin, Mythologie . . . dionysiaque, 130–31; cf. n. 40 for a possibly antecedent Phrygian flood tradition) is a figure absent from Greek mythology, but not claimed as a founder; W. M. Calder (CR 38 [1924], 113) compares the Lycaonian village name Nonokokome. The key point was not necessarily to be Greek but to be old, according to C. P. Jones in ‘Multiple Identities in the Age of the Second Sophistic’, in B. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic (Berlin, 2008), 13–21, at 20–21.

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foundation’ in the mythological period: so, for instance, Eumeneia, which, on one account, acquired its name because Hyllos son of Heracles ‘had a good stay’ (eu meinas) there. Several also joined the long list of cities in Asia Minor that put the infant years of Zeus on their coinage, apparently to claim that the birth occurred on what was later to be their site.43 The date of the various traditions is usually unknowable, though the prominence of Aeneas and Ascanius clearly betrays Roman influence; that Greek founders came more into vogue when the Hellenic league at Plataea attracted members from afar and Hadrian established his Panhellenion is highly probable.44 What is clear is that these myths acquired public resonance; many are known not just from poetic or antiquarian sources but are alluded to on coins or on public inscriptions: Heracles ‘the founder’, for instance, on a coin of Nacoleia, or a long verse inscription of Sebaste linking the city with Ganymede. A mythological origin was not de rigueur, however: the citizens of Blaundos and Peltai proudly declare themselves ‘Macedonian’ on their coins, those of Apollonia Mordiaion as ‘Lycian Thracian settlers’ (while also honouring ‘Alexander the Founder’).45 Above the level of the city, a koinon Phrygias is mentioned on three issues of Apamean bronze coins in the first century CE and again occasionally in the third century; the individual then responsible for the issue can be designated as agonothete or panegyriarch. The panegyris in question, it has been suggested, is none other than the great market associated with the annual assizes at Apamea, which had become by far the most important event in the Apamean calendar; the partial rebranding of the assizes, an instrument of Roman administration, as a panegyris of Phrygia would be a way of putting a nativist spin on an unattractive reality of empire.46 But we do not know what god the assize/panegyris might have been associated with, or what religious activities it might have contained. A group falling into no other category, finally, is the association of Xenoi Tekmoreioi, which met to honour Artemis (and perhaps Men) at a site twenty

43.  Pre-foundation: see appendix A, s.v. ‘Eumeneia’, and cf. s.v. ‘Apameia’/‘Kelainos’ and ‘Sebaste’. (Examples from outside Phrygia in Weiss, ‘Lebendiger Mythos’, 185–86.) Nothing of the kind is said of Laodikeia on the Lykos or Antioch by Pisidia. Birth of Zeus: see appendix A, s.v. ‘Aizanoi’. 44.  Kelp (Grabdenkmal, 177) claims that Nakoleia, Synnada and Dorylaion acquired new foundation myths at this date, which is credible but not, to my knowledge, demonstrable. For members of the Panhellenion (Aizanoi, Apameia, doubtless Eumeneia, Synnada, Tymbriada (?) [SEG LV 1449]), see P. Weiss, Chiron 30 (2000), 617–30; R. Godillo Hervás, Mediterraneo Antico 16 (2013), 101–22; for Antioch by Pisidia, cf. Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 220. On the Hellenic league, see E. Meyer, RE XX 2 (1950), s.v. ‘Plataiai’, esp. 2315, 2326–28; Strubbe, ‘Gründer’, 283–84. 45.  On all this, see appendix A. 46.  For all this, see Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 109–17; he notes (117) that ‘the city had no great religious festival to serve as a limiting focus for economic activity’ (whence the function fell to the assizes/panegyris instead).

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kilometers or so north-west of Antioch by Pisidia (Barr. 62 F 5).47 The fairly wealthy individuals who could afford to become members travelled to the site from, in the main, unlocated villages which lay, to judge from the small number of recognisable towns mentioned, in south-eastern Phrygia and northern Pisidia; on arrival they feasted and, at least on some occasion, performed the mysterious ritual of τεκμορεύειν. Although other sanctuaries attracted devotees from several surrounding villages or towns,48 no other has a recognised and listed membership on this scale. It is therefore frustrating that the nature of τεκμορεύειν, also performed at the sanctuary of Men Askaenos near Antioch, remains completely unknown. City and country In Phrygia, as throughout Anatolia, the question arises of the relation between the religion of town and countryside. Town versus country is one of three overlapping two-tier models, alongside Greco-Roman versus indigenous and rich versus poor, which it can be tempting to apply to the material. It is certainly the case that not every god attested in a given region will have been familiar or of interest to every inhabitant of that region at every date. A full listing of the gods found in inscriptions from the territory of Aizanoi, for instance, will include Athena Polias, the Eleusinian goddesses, and Poseidon and Amphitrite. But these three gods or pairs of gods are known in Aizanoi exclusively from a single dedication set up by in 157 CE by the very grand M. Ulpius Appuleius Eurycles, the city’s representative in the Panhellenion from 153 to 157 CE, perhaps on his return from the meeting of 157; Athena Polias and the Eleusinian goddesses look like a gesture to Athens, the site of the meeting; Poseidon and Amphitrite perhaps thanks for a safe journey home.49 A good panhellene renowned for his culture, Eurycles chose gods who were panhellenic, not local. But that conduit from the larger world led only to Aizanoi: few other Phrygian cities belonged to the Panhellenion, and even within those few its doings were of interest only to a tiny minority of top people. Again, although we can probably assume that the free inhabitants of villages were in principle citizens 47.  See, recently, Blanco-Pérez, ‘Men Askaenos’, 132–41, with a new dating schema; C. Wallner, ‘Xenoi Tekmoreioi: Ein neues Fragment’, EpigAnat 49 (2016), 157–75 (SEG LXVI 1673); G. Arena, ‘Communitá di villagio nell’ Anatolia romana: Il dossier epigraphico degli Xenoi Tekmoreioi’, in J. Demaille and Labarre, Les Associations cultuelles en Grèce et en Asie Mineure (Franche-Comté, 2021), 143–58. Labarre, Le dieu Mèn, argues that the Xenoi honoured Men as well as Artemis. On the catchment area, see Ruge, RE VA 160; Mitchell II, 16 (‘communities of northern Pisidia and southern Phrygia’ [‘northern Phrygia’ in I 239 is a slip?]); Blanco-Pérez, ‘Men Askaenos’, 141 (but ‘Tembris valley’ is a slip [?]); Wallner, op. cit., 160; Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 156, and the map in Labarre, op. cit., 155. 48.  Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 187; II, 16–17 (Apollo Lairbenos, cf. 92–99 below); Zeus Ampeleites and Thallos, near Appia (p. 41 below). 49.  So the editor, M. Wörrle, Chiron 22 (1992), 337–49 (SEG XLII 1191); Eurykles is praised in decrees of the Panhellenes and the Areopagus, OGIS 504/5.

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of the city in whose territory the village lay,50 we find no trace in Phrygia of the kind of structural integration of countryside with city familiar from Attica, whereby villagers went to Athens to attend both political meetings and festivals. But many cases can also be adduced that work against any crude two-tier model.51 The cities did not turn their backs on indigenous deities or even pretend to do so: Men and Meter are present on many civic coinages; Meter Adrastou has a priest and priestess at Attouda; and though some gods who appear in civic contexts bear panhellenic epithets (Apollo Archegetes, Apollo Propylaios, Zeus Pandemos), those of others are more singular and seemingly local—Apollo Stodmenos or Karios, Zeus Bozios or Troios.52 A citizen of Eumeneia in the third century assembled a remarkably miscellaneous portfolio of offices: lampadarches (in what cult we do not know), priest of Zeus Soter and Apollo and Men Askaenos and Agdistis mother of the Gods and Isis and the Pax Augusta.53 Confession stelai are usually seen as the supreme expression of an Anatolian village mentality, but (Apollo) Lairbenos, whose sanctuary near Motella has yielded more of them than any other site, appears, named, on the coinage of Hierapolis.54 By contrast, a sanctuary of Apollo at Çavdarlı in the territory of Prymnessos was a rather grand place, full of statuary, where even the child for whom a supplication was made could be shown as a statue. It has yielded such charming reliefs of the god with the nine muses that Louis Robert quaintly described it as ‘un morceau classique sur le sol phrygien’;55 but this morceau classique was out in the countryside. 50.  Schuler (Ländliche Siedlungen, 273) leaves this question open in regard to the rural communities of Asia Minor in general. But the evidence of katagraphai to Apollo Lairbenos (93 below) suggests that everybody was thought to belong to a polis (though without necessarily enjoying any political rights). Both among the Lairbenos katagraphai (Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 52) and the lists of Xenoi Tekmoreioi (Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 179) we find individuals who bear a city ethnic but who are said to live in a village: note, too, IGR IV 635, where a village declares itself a part of Sebaste. 51.  Cf. B. Dignas, Economy of the Sacred in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor (Oxford, 2002), 236; Dignas, ‘Urban Centres, Rural Centres, Religious Centres in the Greek East: Worlds Apart?’, in E. Schwertheim and E. Winter (eds.), Religion und Region: Götter und Kulte aus dem östlichen Mittelmeerraum (Bonn, 2003), 77–91; Levick, ‘Phrygia Outside the Polis’, passim. For a different region, see F. Millar, The Roman Near East 31 BC–AD 337 (Cambridge, MA, 1993), 19: ‘if it is appropriate to think in terms of a contrast between “Greek”, on the one hand, and “native” or “Semitic” or “Oriental” elements in the culture and social structure of the region, on the other, it is by no means clear that any such contrast coincides with a division between city and country.’ 52.  Attouda: MAMA VI 74–75; SEG XXXI 1104; pan-Hellenic epithets: at, respectively, Hierapolis, Eumeneia, Synnada (MAMA VI 370); local: Stodmenos, 15n25, Karios, 64, Bozios: RPC III 2358c (Hierapolis); Troios: RPC IV 2 2046–47 temp., VI 5491–93 temp. (also Hierapolis). 53.  IGR IV 739. 54.  His worshippers bear city ethnics from several cities of the region; but we cannot conclude that these worshippers came from the cities themselves (see the endnote to ch. 7, p. 92). 55.  Robert, Documents, 335–40, on the sanctuary east of Afyonkarahisar at Çavdarlılisar or Çavdarlı öyük (Barr. 62 E 4; SEG XXXII 1268–69, cf. XLII 1195, LIII 1515, perhaps LVII 1328–29 and

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Again, six private dedications have been found to Apollo Propylaios, chief god of Eumeneia; none is at all grand, and one is actually made by a κολαζόμενος, a person whom the god is punishing in the Anatolian fashion for an offence.56 The great temple of Zeus at Aizanoi in Phrygia has sometimes been taken as proof that the approach was one of integration between Hellenic and indigenous, not opposition: the underground chamber beneath the majestic Greco-Roman temple of Zeus was interpreted as an evocation of the nearby cave of Mother Steunene, the ancient mother now understood as the mother of Zeus.57 That theory has been challenged: nothing about the chamber suggests an active place of worship. But it has been pointed out instead that the main pillared street of the city, built in the second century CE, leads not towards the temple of Zeus but rather southwestwards precisely towards the ridge (in clear view) that contained the sacred cave; monumental graves, too, are sited on the road leading to it.58 And a coin of Aizanoi appears to show a form of Mother, who we can assume to be Meter Steunene, holding the infant Zeus amid Corybantes; votives from the cave, and the cult statue itself, perhaps depicted the same scene (a coin also shows the goat Amaltheia feeding the infant Zeus).59 By different routes, then, we reach very similar conclusions about integration. The Romanised city gazes towards Mother Steunene, who is in fact Zeus’ mother. Lochmann, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 301–2 nos. III 87–91). Note also from this sanctuary the two unpublished dedications mentioned by Mitchell, 49n60, and, above all, now Fonds Louis Robert 051_001 to 051_050; statues of children (ibid., 051_020 = 051_025, 051_027). For similar cases of rural sophistication in different regions, cf. Steinepigramme 18/09/ 01–4, a mountain sanctuary of Apollo in northern Pisidia where Epictetus is quoted. See also C. Bonnet, Les Enfants de Cadmos (Paris, 2015), 245–50, for Kharayeb in Phoenicia. 56. G. Labarre, L’ Apollon Propylaios d’Eumeneia et les theoi propylaioi’, in P. Brun (ed.), Scripta Anatolica: Hommages à Pierre Debord (Bordeaux, 2007), 283–96, at 283–84. The κολαζόμενος: SEG XXVI 1376. Other possible cases of private dedications to top civic gods: SEG XL 1225, to ‘Zeus’ from Synnada (where Zeus Pandemos was top god); LIV 1276 to Zeus Ezeanites (no provenance, but presumably the Zeus of Aizanoi). Note also a dedication to Men Akraios probably from the acropolis of Kotiaion (SEG XXVIII 1168). 57.  On the cave (important enough to be known to Paus. 8.4.3, 10.32.3), see Roller, God the Mother, 336–40 and MAMA IX xxxiii–iv; the ‘Steunenian gardeners’ (above, n. 19) are thought to have worked at it. 58.  Challenged: by K. Rheidt, Antike Welt 28 (1997), 493–94; cf. K. Jes, R. Posamentir, M. Wörrle, ‘Der Tempel des Zeus in Aizanoi und seine Datierung,’ in Aizanoi und Anatolien, 58–87; pillared street: K. Rheidt, ‘Ländliche Kult und städtische Siedlung’, in K. Rheidt and E. L. Schwander (eds.), Stadt und Umland (Mainz, 1999), 237–53. 59.  Coin: Robert, Documents, 263 (RPC Aezani IV 2 1686 temp., Commodus); votives: ibid. 268– 69; and, for a dedication from Kadoi to Zeus and Mother Steunene, 264. Amaltheia: RPC IV 2 1682 temp., IV 2 9958 (temp.), both Commodus. Cf. Aizanoi und Anatolien, 172–73. But Kelp’s suggestion (Grabdenkmal, 192–94)—that, if the pillared street in Aizanoi began at the temple of Artemis, as Rheidt suggests, Artemis and Kybele were assimilated—is not logical.

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There is also the matter of education, or aspiration to it. The most characteristic form of Phrygian funerary monument, the ‘door facade’, deploys symbols evoking the past life of the person commemorated, among which book-rolls and styluses are, for men, as common as the tools of manual labour. Such monuments spread well out into the countryside, as do verse epitaphs ultimately dependent on Homer. Most Phrygians claimed to be open to literary culture, which meant culture in Greek and familiarity with Greek gods. There are, it is true, two divine entities who are (in Phrygia)60 widely worshipped by individuals and by villages but not by cities, who are represented on no coin and served by no civic priest: these are Theos Hypsistos and Holy and Just. About Theos Hypsistos, two views compete: that this is a distinct, non-sacrificial, largely non-iconic sectarian cult; that Theos Hypsistos has no specificity, but many different local top gods can be addressed under this title, as can the Jewish and Christian god.61 The sectarian view of the cult would well explain the lack of civic dedications, but it struggles to account for the—admittedly not numerous— dedications by villages. The other view will need to argue that cities (but why not villages too?) felt it appropriate to address their traditional divine defenders by their traditional names. The matter remains obscure. As for Holy and Just, if Prymnessos could have Dike as chief god,62 there is no obvious reason why Holy and Just could not have received a public cult somewhere. A sanctuary has been discovered ‘in the northern part of modern Eskişehir’ (ancient Dorylaion); but too little information is available to show whether it lay within or merely close to the ancient city. It has yielded no public texts, but two dedicators at it indicate the city tribe to which they belonged, and one claims the title of archiereus, which would normally indicate high office in the imperial cult.63 The new sanctuary surely 60.  But at Ulpia Nicopolis in Bulgaria Holy and Just received a civic dedication on dream instructions: IGR I 568; IG Bulg II 680 (Ricl, Hosios kai Dikaios, no. 110). The lack of civic dedications to Hypsistos appears to be global, though note I. Termessos Suppl. IV 58–62 no. 6 (Mitchell, “Further Thoughts”, 208 A 82), dedication by an astynomos ὑπὲρ δήμου. 61.  On the debate, see Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 122–29. For Jewish use, see ibid. 125n59; for Christian, e.g. Steinepigramme 08/08/13 l. 5, probably 14/07/04 l. 2. I should have stressed, in favour of the ‘separatist’ position, SEG XIX 847 (Pisidia), a dedication to Highest God by a priest of Men Ouranios, and I. Milet 1138–39, where the hagiotatos theos hypsistos must be Apollo of Didyma. In Phrygia, MAMA X 443 is a village dedication; SEG XL 1251 is the most elaborate dedication (of a propylon with columns); Marek’s suggestion that the ‘best and greatest god’ of a dedication that he publishes (SEG L 1222) is the Zeus Sarnendenos attested in the region is attractive but uncertain (cf. Güney, ‘Zeus Sarnendenos’, 167). A ‘temple’ (naos) of Hypsistos is now attested in Thrace (see SEG LXIV 628). The remarkable new text from Daskyleion discussed by G. Staab (ZPE 210 [2019], 116–34) sits well with the sectarian view; but note his reference, 116n4, to three distinct ‘highest’ goddesses. 62.  MAMA VI 383, with note. Images of Dike or scales dominate the city’s coinage. 63.  See Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 189–203 for eight dedications from it; tribal affiliations, their nos. 5 and 7; archiereus, no. 3.

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shows, though we still lack evidence for a public cult, that no stain of rusticity can have attached to Holy and Just. No neat conclusion can be drawn from this discussion. Those who lived in Phrygian cities or visited them were exposed to Greek paideia in very varied degrees. We should remember that Phrygia was urbanised (or re-urbanised) late and that most Phrygian ‘cities’ were more like market towns; the borderline between ‘city’ and large village was thin and permeable, and some ‘cities’ may have been thinly populated for much of the year except on the occasions of fairs and festivals. The opposition between exploitative city and exploited countryside, familiar from modern scholarship but also well-grounded in ancient sources,64 was perhaps less acute than in some other regions. In religion, the question has in fact two aspects: the attitude of town dwellers, exposed (if in varying degrees) to Greek culture, to traditional gods; the extent to which country dwellers welcomed or even knew about gods other than the traditional. There is much here we do not know. We cannot say what the cultivated M. Ulpius Appuleius Eurycles felt about Mother Steunene, or Holy and Just, or whether in a time of personal crisis he might have felt disposed to confess a fault. Nor can we say whether a villager confronted by the soaring columns of the temple of Zeus of Aizanoi would have felt awe or alienation. But, as to the first aspect, it is clear that the towns did not, as a matter of principle, turn their backs on traditional gods: the place of Mother and Men on civic coinages shows that decisively. As for the latter, Haspels, in her study of the so-called Phrygian highlands, noted that they showed little trace of what she called ‘nonPhrygian, universal Greek deities’, and even of them only in the outer reaches of the region. Emperor cult, too, had not penetrated thither.65 We can allow, then, pockets of slow take-up of untraditional cults. But it was more a matter of indifference or inertia or ignorance than of resistance or hostility. Even in Haspels’ highlands we encounter a ‘priest of Angdisis and Asclepius’—that is to say, the most Phrygian and the most obviously imported gods of the region, a true coincidentia oppositorum.66 In religion, the slogan ‘worlds apart’67 appears too drastic. 64.  Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 165–81; G. E. M. de Ste Croix, The Class Struggle in the Ancient Greek World (London, 1991), 9–19. 65.  Haspels, Highlands, 202; Price, Imperial Cult, 95. 66.  Haspels, Highlands, 296 no. 5. 67.  Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 195–97, criticised by Schuler, Ländliche Siedlungen, 278–87 (though he admits that his counter cases seldom come from inland Anatolia). There is a certain tension within Mitchell between the ‘worlds apart’ position and his stress on the thin borderline in Phrygia and elsewhere between city and village, Anatolia I, 179–81). Note, too, in Mitchell, I, 149: ‘there was no rural limbo into which the settlements of the countryside could sink, beyond the reach of the urban centres which shaped the pattern and style of life in the Graeco-Roman world.’ That Phrygian rural cults are not purely ‘indigenous’ but have undergone some Greco/Roman influence is pointed out by G. Schörner in G. Moosbauer, R. Wiegels (eds.), Fines Imperiii—Imperium sine Fine? (Rahden, 2011), 233–35.

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Contexts of religious life    25 P L AC E S O F WO R SH I P

A particular aspect of the antithesis between town and country might be that between sacred places in the one and the other. Almost all cities, we can assume, contained one or more temples on the Greco-Roman model.68 What sacred sites outside the cities were like is harder to say. Our knowledge of this world is primarily epigraphic, not archaeological. We can, it is true, identify the actual site, or something very close to it, of a fair number of rural sanctuaries in both Phrygia and Lydia,69 but none has been thoroughly excavated; remains of cult statues have been found, as have occasional architectural fragments, but never enough for a scholar to venture a site plan. The sanctuaries of Apollo Lairbenos near Motella and of Men Askaenos near Antioch by Pisidia both hosted substantial temples, but these had a certain regional significance and cannot be taken to represent a typical local place of cult. Whether Zeus Ampeleites, say, whose sanctuary near Appia (Barr. 62 D 3) drew worshippers from several surrounding villages, was also a little grander than usual is not known. One cave has been identified and investigated, that of Mother Steunene near Aizanoi.70 It received offerings, but no built structures have been found in its vicinity except two pits of disputed function. No doubt Mother had other caves in other places in Phrygia, but none can be named. A ‘Zeus from [the] cedar’ is known, but evidence for sacred trees is otherwise much less clear than that, say, for the demon-hosting tree cut down by Saint Nicholas of Sion at Plakoma in Lycia.71 The statement that ‘each village possessed one or more 68.  Cf. p. 16 on little Blaundos. 69.  See Drew-Bear and Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, 1911n3 (the need for excavation is noted in Phrygian Votive Steles 16, 43); the useful list in Ricl, Rural Sanctuaries, 78n3, and now Malay-Petzl, Lydia, 69–70, 129, 135–36, 155–56, 175–76. See MAMA IV xiii for a site at Aljibar identified by the editors as a ‘primitive sanctuary’, and now Güney, ‘Zeus Sarnendenos’. According to P. Niewöhner (Roman Phrygia, 222), before the fifth century CE, ‘architectural sculpture had been employed almost exclusively for the monumental embellishment of the cities’. Lochman (Grab- und Votivreliefs, 96) argues that local shrines are to be imagined ‘als kleine Plätze oder schlichte Haine am Hang oder Gipfel von kleineren Hügeln ohne nennenswerte Tempelarchitektur’. Somewhat more elaborate apparently were the sanctuaries of the Motaleis and that of Apollo Kareios at Güzelpınar: see Hierapolis V, 691–93, 711–15. 70.  Steunene: cf. n. 57 above. The rural sanctuary of Apollo designated by Robert as ‘un morceau classique sur le sol phrygien’ (n. 55 above) lacked buildings, to judge from published information. Lairbenos: Ricl, ‘Katagraphai’, 169. Men Askaenos: S. Mitchell and M. Waelkens, Pisidian Antioch (London, 1998), 37–90. Zeus Ampeleites: Mitchell, Anatolia II, 18; cf. Phrygian Votive Steles, 397–400. 71.  For Zeus ‘from the cedar’, see 37n10. Zeus ‘from twin oaks’ is familiar from eastern Lydia: Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 9–12. Huttner (in Ameling, Christianisierung, 156) adduces (1) a coin of Attouda showing a lighted altar behind an impressive tree (e.g. BMC Caria, Attuda 24–25, plate X 17) and (2) the tree probably associated with Marsyas shown on a coin of Apamea, RPC IX 827; but this was something shown to tourists (cf. Plin. HN 16.240), not demonstrably an object of cult. Plakoma: see I. Ševčenko and N. P. Ševčenko, The Life of Nicholas of Sion (Brookline, MA, 1984), chapters 16–19. An earlier attack on what is apparently the same tree is shown on a remarkable coin of Myra, RPC VII 2 unassigned ID 21560. Other caves: L. Robert in Mélanges Bidez (Brussels, 1934), 799n4 (also available in OMS II).

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26      Contexts of religious life

hiera set apart from the surrounding territory and having a temple as its central part’ (my emphasis)72 makes Phrygia sound reassuringly similar to England and many other European countries, and it may be right; but the ubiquity of temples cannot be proved (of course, some are mentioned), and the claims of seemingly quite humble individuals to have built or paid for ‘temples’ suggests that structures bearing that name were not necessarily very large or grand.73 How rural sanctuaries were positioned in the landscape; how in relation to the villages which they served; how like or unlike these positions and relations were to older Phrygian traditions: these are issues which scholarship has largely still to broach.74 Let us note finally one cult site that, though not rural, is based upon a natural feature: the Ploutonion of Hierapolis, which became an elaborate complex of buildings around the entrance to a cave whence issued vapours deadly to birds but also apparently a place of healing incubation for humans, already sacred in the time of the old Phrygian kingdom.75

72.  Ricl, Rural Sanctuaries, 97. 73.  For example, SEG XXVI 1362, XXVIII 1176; MAMA VII 486, all cited by Ricl, Rural Sanctuaries, 96n127; Güney, ‘Zeus Sarnendenos’, 157–58 nos. 1–2 (her argument [165–66], that here naos referred merely to a monumental altar within a temenos, implies a strange misuse of language). 74.  But note Güney, ‘Zeus Sarnendenos’, 164–66 on that god’s hilltop sanctuary. 75.  D’ Andria, ‘Ploutonion’; old Phrygian period, ibid. 102

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2

Priesthoods, finance, authority

There is little to be said about civic priesthoods of Olympian gods. Some are held for life; some for a fixed term, presumably a year (one individual held the temporary priesthood of Zeus at Aizanoi at least ten times); a few are hereditary. Aizanoi had both a time-limited and a lifelong priesthood of Zeus, presumably under different epithets, also a life priesthood of Dionysus.1 A good number take their name not from gods but from the group they served: ‘of the ephebes’, ‘of the gerousia’, ‘of the city’.2 Why Synnada had a ‘high priest of the gods in the city’ (the person so designated was also ‘priest of Hygieia and Sophrosyne’) is a mystery; ‘high priests’ (and high priestesses) were not rare in Phrygia, but in all other cases the title was kept for persons who served or may have served in the imperial cult.3 1.  Ten times: MAMA IX 35. Hereditary: MAMA IV 265 (LGPN VC Diophantos (24), Mossyna, and 302 bis (LGPN VC Apollonios [222]), Atyochorion: presumably a close descendant of the founder (name lost) of a cult of Asclepius (SEG LXIV 1313); Ramsay, Phrygia, 232, no. 77 (LGPN VC Doulos (7), Eumeneia (territ.); cf. MAMA VIII 351 (Pisido-Phrygian borderland). Time-limited and life priests at Aizanoi: SEG XXXV 1365. 2.  City: I. Laodikeia 83.14 and 132b3; ephebes: MAMA V 205 (Nakoleia); Gerousia SEG XXXIII 1123, 13–14, LXIII 1231 (Hierapolis); demos XLVII 1729 (Hierapolis); boule and demos: MAMA VI 380 (Synnada); boule: Praxias Foundation (cf. 15n29 above; Acmonia), l 26; cf. boulaioi theoi in MAMA IX 38, SEG LXIV 1307 (Aizanoi). 3.  IGR IV 708; the note in IGR (ad loc.), ‘sacerdos maximus κοινοῦ profecto alicuius’, puzzles me. The possibility of non-imperial archiereis is kept open by Price (Rituals and Power, xvii) and Thonemann on MAMA XI 99, but Price’s counter-cases suggest that the power served by a non-imperial archiereus would either have to be obvious from the context or indicated (as in IGR IV 708, Lane, CMDM, I, nos. 168–74) by an attached genitive. The archiereis of Zeus at Aizanoi claimed in MAMA IX xxx elude me. The ἀρχιέρεια δημοτική of the late Epitynchanos inscription (SEG XLIII 943

27

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28      Priesthoods, finance, authority

Very remarkable was the accumulation of offices at Eumeneia by one Monimos, otherwise unknown: ‘lampadarches, priest of Zeus Soter and Apollo and Men Askaenos and Mother of the Gods Angdistis and Agathos Daimon and Isis and Augustan Peace.’4 Priests are commoner than priestesses, and there are exceptions in both directions to the rule of thumb whereby deity and priest are of the same gender.5 Although the pinnacle of civic ambition in religion was high office in the imperial cult, priesthoods of other gods, too, in many cities, particularly life priesthoods, were demonstrably dominated by top people;6 there are also several cases of benefactions to cults made by their priests, or leading to tenure of a priesthood.7 At Aizanoi in the cult of Zeus we find further offices: a life neopoios (perhaps appointed for a specific building operation) and an archineokoros (for life?) in charge of a team of neokoroi (sometimes designated ‘for life’).8 This proliferation of cult ministrants, unique in Phrygia, reflects the splendour of the region’s greatest temple. A different cult of Zeus at Aizanoi had a cluster of either nineteen or twenty-one ἱεροί, ‘sacred persons’, attached to it; we can guess that, though free, they were of lower status than neokoroi (since where we hear of ἱεροί in Aizanoi it is never through an honorary inscription),9 but what their role may have been in this otherwise unattested cult is one of the mysteries surrounding that mysterious status. B II; Steinepigramme 16/31/10 B) is rightly noted as ‘atypical’ by Ricl (‘Rural Sanctuaries’, 84n33): the choice of word appears simply glorifying. 4.  IGR IV 739. 5.  I. Blaundos 1 (SEG XLVI 1491), life priest of Athena Nikephoros and thea Homonoia; MAMA VI 74–75 (Attouda), Meter Adrastou has both a priest and priestess. (But not—cf. BE [1970], no. 584—IGR IV 868.) Other priestesses: SEG LXIII 1235, Demeter (Hierapolis); MAMA IV 122 (Metropolis), a ἱερασαμένη of Artemis Tauropolos, MAMA IV 165 (Apollonia-Sozopolis) a ἱερασαμένη of Artemis; SEG XXXIII 1123, LXIII 1231 (Hierapolis), priestesses of the gerousia: RPC I 3143, coin of Eukarpitic plain inscribed Apphia hiereia. 6.  E.g. Ti. Cl. Piso Mithridatianus, life priest of Zeus Kelaineus, at Apameia (MAMA VI 180. II); M. Ulpius Appuleianus Flavianus, life priest of Zeus, and his son Appuleius Eurykles, life priest of Dionysus (SEG XXXV 1365), at Aizanoi; Artemon Olympichou, priest of Zeus (MAMA IV 141; cf. LGPN Artemon [49]) at Apollonia-Sozopolis; C. Claudius Terentullianos, life priest of Asclepius, at Acmonia (SEG LXII 1112); members of the great Carminii of Attouda (on whom see P. J. Thonemann and F. Ertuğrul, EpigAnat 38 [2005], 75–86), holding priesthoods of Meter Adrastou, MAMA VI 74–75. 7.  MAMA IV 226; IGR IV 641; SEG XLV 1708, XLVI 1491, LXIV 1313; perhaps LBW 997 (MAMA IX P59). 8.  Main text SEG XLV 1719; cf. M. Wörrle, Chiron 25 (1995), 68–75, at 71–72; neokoroi: MAMA IX 34, 416, P36, P41, P99; SEG XLV 1713, 1718; for life IGR IV 585; MAMA IX 33, 88; on their social status (not the highest), see MAMA IX xxxii, n. 35. 9.  See 88 with n20 below. Other ἱεροί: IGR IV 557, a dedication by a ἱερός with patronymic to Zeus and οἱ κύριοι (meaning the emperors?); SEG LXIV 1306 B7, an epistle from a benefactor to the city’s panegyriarchs καὶ Ἑρμᾷ ἱερῷ τῷ πρὸς τοῖς δημο[σίοις γράμμασι]; SEG XXXIV 1286 (cf. LVI 1438), a ἱερός (no patronymic) dedicates an ornate altar to Asclepius.

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Priesthoods, finance, authority    29

There is also little to be said about decision-making on religious matters within the cities. We know of nine Phrygian cities that sent delegations to the oracle of Apollo at Claros, and more may have done so. One certainly and three probably Clarian responses to Hierapolis survive, the certain one relating to plague, the others too obscure to teach us much except that consultation about a range of problems was not uncommon; there survives also a probably Clarian response of stunning obscurity to a question from Aizanoi as to who was to hold the priesthood ‘of the founder’. The disputed Hierapolitan responses have been attributed to the local Apollo Kareios, which would be unique and important evidence for a domestic source of guidance; but there is no other reason to suppose Apollo Kareios capable of responses in elaborate verse of the kind in question.10 The phenomenon of ‘village priests’—an unusual concept, since normally a priest served a deity, not a place—was mentioned above. The ordinary priests found in villages (i.e. those serving particular cults, not ‘the village’) are important but in some ways frustratingly elusive figures. Only one is honoured by the village he served. We meet them most often as makers of dedications, not seldom characteristically made with, or on behalf of, the village as well as themselves; one makes his dedication ‘from the things brought’ (ἐκ τῶν προσαγομένων), i.e. offerings (in cash?). Often, too, survivors designate a dead relative as a quondam priest or priestess.11 If priestly service is important enough to be thus commemorated in an epitaph, one might expect it to have been permanent; a father and his sons can make a joint dedication as priests to Apollo, as if the post were lodged in the family, and a case of de facto succession within a family is known;12 but explicit 10.  Nine cities: Acmonia, Aizanoi, Antioch by Pisidia, Apollonia Mordiaon, Dorylaion, Hierapolis, Ioulia, Laodicea, Meiros Megale: for all these, except Hierapolis, see J.-L. Ferrary, Les mémoriaux de délégations du sanctuaire oraculaire de Claros (Paris, 2004), xx–xx. Hierapolis: Steinepigramme 02/12/01–04, all inscribed together, which works against the view of H. W. Parke (The Oracles of Apollo in Asia Minor [London, 1985], 181–83) that the last three came from the local Apollo Kareios, otherwise known only as a probable source of jejune alphabetic oracles (page 49). Aizanoi: Steinepigramme 16/23/01. 11.  Honoured by the village: SEG XXXI 1127 (I. Mus. Denizli 54), Thiounta. Dedications: e.g. MAMA V 181, ‘Aur. Asklepiades Menothemidos, priest, to Zeus Bronton and Apollo (discharging) a vow’; with/for the village MAMA V 155, 173 (?); Haspels, Highlands, 340 no. 109; cf. MAMA I 13 (but ordinary villagers were equally public-spirited; see Ricl, Rural Sanctuaries, 78n4). A variant in ZPE 14 (1974), 259–60 (BE [1976], no. 670): two sons and the wife of the priest dedicate a statue of Men for the village ἐκ τῶν προσαγομένων (SEG LVII 1328); possibly other priest’s offerings were so made, but the priest of MAMA VI 240 paid himself. Survivors: MAMA I 14, 15 (a couple: probably not Christian, according to ICG 496); MAMA IX 154; MAMA X 439 (a couple); SEG XXIX 1398; Steinepigramme 16/31/02 verse 4, 16/43/05. 12.  Joint dedication: MAMA V 149, R.4; succession: Güney, ‘Zeus Sarnendenos’, 164. Secure cases of family priesthoods are easier to document in Lydia, e.g. TAM V I 432–33, with Ricl, Rural Sanctuaries, 82–84. She notes (82n25 ad fin.) that life priesthoods are more attested in town than country. I. Mus. Konya 20 is a dedication by a couple, both life priests, provenance unknown.

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30      Priesthoods, finance, authority

evidence for village priesthoods held for life or ‘by birth’ is lacking in Phrygia, whereas a dedication to Zeus Megistos in gratitude for ‘having been priest in a good year’ is one of a (small) number of testimonies to annual priesthoods.13 Evidently the kind of influence priests might have exercised within the life of the village, the whole character of the office, will have very much depended on length of tenure. Clusters of several priests serving a single god are occasionally found, among whom one (or a man-wife couple or pair of brothers) might be ‘first priest[s]’.14 As for the mode of appointment (influenced by the city to which the village nominally belonged, or purely local?15) and the qualifications for appointment, nothing is known. A ‘confession’ inscription from the upper Tembris valley raises a startling possibility: it was set up by a woman who disobeyed a divine command and suffered for it, when, on one understanding of two key words (and accentuation of the second), she was ‘sought out as priestess’ (ἐπιζητηθεῖσα ἱέρεια). The ‘seeking’ would certainly have been divine, that being the regular source of the act of ἐπιζητεῖν in these texts. Other confessors were punished for disobeying divine instructions to perform cultic service, but could village priesthoods really be filled (even if only exceptionally) by individuals called to the task directly by the gods (presumably through dreams)? And how would such election by divine mandate relate to more routine methods of appointment? A different accentuation has her merely ‘sought out [to provide] sacrificial animals’ (ἱερεῖα). Both these views may, in fact, be wrong, since the common meaning of ἐπιζητεῖν in these texts is not simply ‘seek out’ but ‘seek out for harm, punish’.16 At all events, this is very insecure evidence for divine calling to a village priesthood. That second option would beam a small shaft of light on another dark subject, the financing of village cults.17 A dedication for crops to Zeus Sabazios by the 13.  MAMA 1 373; cf. MAMA VII 432 (I. North Galatia 308), an individual who has been priest of Zeus Megistos for the first time; dedications by ἱερασαμένοι (IGR IV 539; MAMA I 417; BCH 24 [1900], 56). 14.  SEG XIV 786 (two priests of Zeus Bronton); SEG XXXII 1271, a dedication to Commodus by ‘priests and priestesses of [Zeus] Orochoreites’ (at least three were then named); MAMA V 170, dedication by a πρῶτος ἱερεύς to Zeus Bronton; SEG XLIV 1051, a πρῶτος ἱερεύς to Zeus Kapetolios; Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 20, by a married couple, πρωτοιερεῖς, to Hosios Dikaios Helios; Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 210–11 no. 15 (brothers as ἱερεῖς πρῶτοι to Hosios Dikaios). For other priestly married couples, see I. North Galatia 37; Güney, ‘Zeus Sarnendenos’, 158 no. 2. MAMA V 149, R 4 is a dedication to Apollo by ‘Damas with his sons, priests’. 15.  Cf. Ricl, Rural Sanctuaries, 82–83. 16.  M. Ricl, EpigAnat 29 (1997), 35–43 (SEG XLVII 1751; Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl., no. 151); Ricl favours ‘as priestess’ (ἱέρεια), adducing Beichtinschriften 57 and 108 for instructions to serve the cult, but she mentions Petzl’s alternative suggestion (ἱερεῖα); in Rural Sanctuaries (99n145) she apparently goes over to Petzl, but Petzl (Beichtinschriften Suppl., no. 151) has now gone over to Ricl! For the ordinary meaning of ἐπιζητεῖν, see Shelfer, Temple as Courtroom, 109–10—but this leaves ἱερεια without a construction. On ‘confession’ inscriptions, see ch. 1 p. 7 above. 17.  This and the next paragraph are much indebted to Ricl, Rural Sanctuaries, 93–100.

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‘Kimelians who live on sacred land’ (SEG XXXVIII 1308) reveals a tract of sacred land large enough to sustain a group of villagers, but the size of the group is unclear: all the villagers of Kimelia, or a subset of them? Nor do we know whether the land belonged to the god to whom they dedicated or to another. The owner could even have been a city god.18 A different dedication confirms that village cults could own land: ‘the heirs of Papas and Gaius set up this vow [an altar] on behalf of Asklepiades son of Damas to Zeus from the Courtyard, listening god; they also gave precincts to the god on his behalf and to the village 2,010 Attic drachmas, to earn the god’s favour (εἵνεκα εἵλωα ἔχιν τὸν θεόν)’.19 The ground for the strangely unnamed heirs’ concern for Asklepiades is beyond recovery, but we see how a windfall legacy could be put to pious use. A decree from (it seems) Atyochorion confers the priesthood of Asclepius and associated gods on an individual who has built the gods a [temple] and (?) statues, and ‘given vines and workshops and slaves [?], and arranged for the gods to be served and the buildings maintained from the income they yield.’ At the date of the inscription Atyochorion was a (small) polis, but one can surely imagine a similar benefaction with similar outcome (conferral of priesthood, in perpetuity?) in a substantial village.20 Another text, doubtless also from Atyochorion, records a donation of 150 denarii, the interest from which was to be used ‘for the ox sacrifices to Zeus and to pay the poll tax of the priests’.21 Donations were evidently important (they are also known to the larger sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos), and the number is much increased if we accept that divine names of ‘Zeus Brogimarou’ type (i.e. theonym plus anthroponym in the genitive) arise from a founding donation by the mortal named in the genitive.22 Whether any system of voluntary contributions by villagers on a lesser scale existed is not known; we can imagine ‘collections’ being made for Mother. The sinconfession-propitiation nexus could certainly be steered in a direction that brought profit to a sanctuary. The texts documenting this aspect of the nexus come, it is true, from the Lydian part of the Lydian-Phrygian ‘confession zone’, but that may well be a coincidence; more problematic for the argument here is the strange restriction of confession inscriptions to a limited part of Phrygia, despite the broad homogeneity 18.  The great cult of Zeus at Aizanoi was sustained by lands donated by Attalus and Prusias: MAMA IX xxxvi–xliii. 19.  SEG XVI 753; Beichtinschriften Suppl. no. 153. 20.  SEG LXIV 1313 (cf. BE [2015], no. 655); on Asclepius at Atyochorion, cf. 27n1. 21.  Gephyra 12 (2015), 191–98; cf. BE (2016), no. 478; SEG LXV 1248. 22.  See, most recently, A. Avram, Gephyra 12 (2015), 199–230, at 203–5; Ricl, ‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 141; cf. Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 115–17. Very important here is the dedication by Brogimaros, self-described as μεγάλου Διὸς ἀρητήρ, of an altar to Zeus Brogimarou (Avram, loc. cit.; SEG LXV 1264 D [1]). Lochman (Grab- und Votivreliefs, 81, 85–86) argues from the paucity of votives that such foundations were short-lasting family affairs. New evidence suggests that references to the Zeus Bronton of named individuals are funerary: see 109 below.

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of religious outlook throughout the region. With those qualifications, let us note how confession inscriptions bear on temple finance. Derogations from a god’s property rights could be identified as causes of misfortune; appeasement could involve payment to the cult; rituals such as ‘undoing an oath’ or ‘undoing a sceptre’ might require a large fee.23 Most drastically, the gods of one Lydian sanctuary could even spontaneously ‘seek out’ (a share in) landed property (vineyards for instance) when it changed hands (through bequest or sale); the new owners sometimes, it seems, yielded to the requisition at once, sometimes only when punished.24 (Compare two Phrygian cases mentioned above: the woman who was [perhaps] ‘sought out [to provide] sacrificial animals’; the donations by the heirs of Papas and Gaius.) These questions of finance lead back to questions of authority. Whose were the influential voices in the religious affairs of a village? We can imagine that the phratries and hetaireiai that are sometimes involved in organising festivals had a say. A group of ‘elders’ has recently emerged supervising the posting of a list of donations (?) in the sanctuary of Zeus Trossou at Atyochorion.25 As for priests, their standing may appear modest: only one is honoured, and none has an eponymous role except within his own sanctuary. But it is hard not to see them as the hidden hand behind the sin-confession-propitiation nexus.26 They are seldom mentioned in these texts, where the main agents, erring humans aside, are the gods themselves. But they doubtless conducted the propitiatory ceremonies. More importantly, the offences that led to punishment were somehow diagnosed: by whom? Often the afflicted persons are said to ‘ask the gods’. The gods’ reply needs to come through human voices. Local oracles and prophets are almost unknown in rural Phrygia before the rise of Montanism.27 Whose voices but the priests’ then? Given all this, it is frustrating that the evidence for modes of recruitment and length of tenure of village priests is so slight. One would like to imagine fami23.  Derogations: SEG XLVII 1654; Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. 148; appeasement: SEG XLIX 1720; Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl.133 (references to the need [ἐκ]λυτροῦσθαι τὸν θεόν are frequent but vague [Ricl, ‘Rural Sanctuaries’, 98n137]; here it is explicit that a payment is required, to be divided three ways, to the gods, to the villages, to the priests); large fee: Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 58. 24.  P. Herrmann and E. Varinlioğlu, EpigAnat 3 (1984), 1–17 (= Herrmann, Kleinasien, 81–101), nos. 2 (SEG XXXIV 1211: inheritance), 3 (Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 17: purchase), 4 (Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 18: purchase), 10 (SEG XXXIV 1219: inheritance). 25.  SEG LXV 1248 (cf. n. 21 above). Admittedly, Atyochorion was probably a polis at this date, but would institutions have changed so drastically? Phratries: p. 10 above. 26.  See especially Belayche, in Priests and Prophets, 124–29; see also Gordon, “Confessionnarratives’, 190, on ‘the temple script’. For the involvement of a priest in a diagnostic process, see Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. 141. Priests perform, and somehow profit from, propitiation in Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. 133 (both these texts are from Lydia). 27.  MAMA IX 60 is a rare exception. Cf. 49n57 below. This is a point on which I find Mitchell’s pan-Anatolian sweep (Anatolia, II, 46 n. 272) too broad. Astrology, too, has left almost no trace: I know only Steinepigramme 16/32/02, a married couple brought together by γένεσις.

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Priesthoods, finance, authority    33

lies with well-honed skills and deeply embedded interests. But imagination is all that there is. We should also think of foundations such as that set up by one Brogimaros to ‘Zeus of Brogimaros’. Brogimaros describes himself in Homeric language as a ‘priest of great Zeus’.28 Had he been that before he founded the altar of Zeus of Brogimaros? Was the prerequisite for such a foundation existing religious authority, or an extraordinary experience, or could anyone do it? In the Acıpayam plain in the far south-west an individual claims to have served as priest of a god whose name is lost and ‘I sacrificed a white bull and the god heard me’.29 A bold claim of propinquity to a god: a further tantalising hint of the authority local priests may have enjoyed. To what extent priestly authority was resented—a confession inscription from neighbouring Lydia tells of a riot at a festival involving violence against sacred personnel30—we can only guess.

28.  See above n. 22. I. Mus. Iznik 1510 is another case where the X, in a ‘Zeus of X’ type of expression, is a priest. But in this instance the X is probably not a founder but a dead person: cf. page 109. 29.  BCH 24 (1900), 56, as supplemented by Robert (Et. anat., 371). 30.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. 145, with his comments in B. Eckhardt et al., Reinheit und Autorität in den Kulturen des antiken Mittelmeerraumes (Baden-Baden, 2020), 182–84.

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3

Phrygian polytheism I The gods

Assertions about the character of village polytheism in Phrygia are not rare; analysis is virtually non-existent. The history of religions has indeed not got very far in comparing and contrasting different forms of polytheism. Pre-Christian Phrygia was not a monotheistic society, we can all agree. But does this mean that it was polytheist in the same sense as Greece is taken to be, a society with many gods whose functions are, in theory at least, distinct and complementary? It is certainly not the case that the whole structure of the Greek pantheon, complete with underlying theological assumptions, was imported into Phrygia along with the Greek language. Anatolian gods intrude (Men above all); major Greek gods are virtually absent; a whole class of beings (the heroes) is missing. One often meets the view that, in accord with old Anatolian tradition, Phrygian gods, or some at least,1 can do anything. One may wonder, then, why multiple gods were needed. Yet individuals and individual communities certainly appeal to a plurality of gods. We have several dedications to ‘the gods of the Motaleis’ (a village): one, made by a hetaireia, shows Zeus in the top register; then, below, a goddess between two gods (the ‘Dioscures au service d’ une déesse’ schema); another, probably private, has a mounted Men.2 Such references to ‘the gods at’ or ‘who control’ a given place are quite common, even if we usually cannot identify them precisely. They co-exist with references to 1.  So e.g. Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 81, on Zeus as a god who (with Kybele) ‘alle existenziellen Bedürfnisse der einheimischen, vorwiegend bauerlichen Bevölkerung abdeckte.’ 2.  SEG XXXIV 1298 = I. Mus. Denizli 43; SEG XXXIII 1138; for ‘gods of the Motaleis’, see also SEG LXII 1204. Cf. MAMA V xxv: ‘But, despite this predominance, Zeus Bronton by no means monopolises the cults in this hill tract as a whole’; some eight further recipients are then named.

34

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figure 3 . Dedication of Philopator to Zeus, Hosios and Dikaios, and others. (c) RMN-Grand Palais (musée du Louvre)/Hervé Lewandoski.

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an individual god said to control a particular place.3 A funerary relief from the Upper Tembris valley moves down in three levels from Helios to Zeus to a triform Hekate between Men and Demeter; a dedication to ‘gods who give heed’ shows Zeus between Herakles and Hermes.4 Reliefs accompanying dedications often show more gods than are actually named as recipients of the offering.5 Oaths in Akmoneia, we noted, are to be sworn by ‘the theoi Sebastoi and the ancestral gods and Zeus Stodmenos and Soter Asklepios and Artemis Ephesia’. ‘Zeus Bronton, though all important for agriculture and as the guardian of tombs, seldom monopolises the dedications on any fruitful site’, note the editors of MAMA 5.6 These examples would be compatible with the view that Phrygians were not so much polytheists à la grecque but oligotheists, worshippers of a small team of gods; but the question of how roles differed among those gods would remain. Problems all too familiar from the study of Greek polytheism also arise here: Is a god bearing two different epithets one god or two? How does Zeus Bronton, say, relate to Zeus Orochoreites? The problem poses itself, indeed, on a new scale, since in no single region of Greece did Zeus receive anything like the (ever-increasing) plethora of epithets that he bears in Phrygia. And Mother and Men are only somewhat less polyonymous. Amid this plethora of material, it is hard to know where to start. A one-by-one parade of gods, most would agree nowadays, is not an adequate way to describe a polytheism, because what needs to be captured is the dynamic of gods’ relations to one another. But it may be a helpful starting point to set the scene. The old exhortation, ‘let us start from Zeus’, is particularly appropriate in Phrygia, because Zeus is there in his glory, owner of Phrygia’s most magnificent temple at Aizanoi but also ubiquitous in the countryside. He is already attested under almost one hundred epithets, and such is the trickle, and occasional flood, of new instances that we can be confident the century will soon be comfortably passed.7 Some of these 3.  For ‘the gods at’, see Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl., 74, index, s.v. ‘θεοί’; the same page (s.v. ‘Μείς’) contains several reference to Men as lord of particular places. 4.  SEG XL 1241 (J. Masseglia, in Roman Phrygia, 98 fig. 5.1); SEG LVII 1330 (Gephyra 4 [2007], 85 no. 55). Note too the remarkable uninscribed stele (votive [?] or what [?]) from Kotiaion, JRS 15 (1925), 167–69, no. 159 (plate XXIII), with 4 levels: (from top) Helios and Selene; Cybele between, probably, Dioscuri; probably Hekate, between dogs; a rider-god (Sozon, according to the editors; non liquet, Weinreich, ‘Sozon’, 223) with boucrania and a snake. 5.  So e.g. Steinepigramme 16/34/03 addresses Mother, Phoibos Hosios and Men Dikaios, Eye of Justice, and shows Zeus, Helios, a rider (Men [?]), Dionysos. For dedications to Apollo also depicting clusters of further gods, see Ritti, Epigraphic Guide, 103–5. 6.  On page xli. Stodmenos: page 15n29. 7.  M. Ricl (‘Inscriptions votives inédites au musée d’ Eskişehir’, Ziva Antike 44 [1994], 157–74 [SEG XLIV 1034–68]) introduced us at a stroke to the Zeuses Apphiados, Eutyches, Ilarenos, Karnandeos, Korenos, Laginos, Oloimetes (Olemeanos) and recalled the little-known Akreinenos and Sarnend(en)os (on both of whom see now Güney, ‘Zeus Sarnendenos’). Throughout the following section, where no reference is given, see the entry for that epithet in Schwabl, ‘Epiklesen’.

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cults went abroad with Phrygians working in Dacia. By far the commonest epithet, Bronton, is very widely distributed in northern and north-western Phrygia; Bennios, too, is scattered, and not in Phrygia alone; Alsenos is attested in four separate locations; Orochoreites in three; and Abozenos in two; but at the moment the majority are known from one site only, if we leave aside common panhellenic epithets such as Soter, “Saver’ which recur in different places independently.8 A large proportion, as usual (characteristically ending in -enos or -eites), derive from local toponyms, certainly or probably, or landmarks. ‘Of the Inhabitants of the Seven Villages’ (Heptakomeiton) relates him to a regional association.9 About Alsenos (‘Of a grove’ or ‘Of groves’),10, and Ampel(e)ites (‘Of vines’)11 there is debate whether they refer to a place where the god was worshipped or to a sphere over which the god had influence; this matters most in the case of Ampel (e)ites, because if the epithet refers to a sphere of influence, it stresses Zeus’ connection with viticulture, ‘He of the Vines’. Several combine the god’s name with an 8.  Dacia: Güney, ‘Zeus Sarnendenos’, 168–70; Mitchell, ‘Two Galatian cults in Dacia’, Gephyra 14 (2017), 15–21. Bronton: Barr. Directory II, 964; Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1992–2004; for the largest collection of dedications, see MAMA V, index; note too Haspels, Highlands, 164, 193–99. Alsenos: Drew-Bear and Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, 1915–31; Orochoreites: ibid., 1931–33; Abozenos: ibid., 2025, MAMA IX 54; Bennios: Drew-Bear and Naour, ibid., 1952–91; the majority: ibid. 1920n34. 9.  I. North Galatia 37. Toponyms: Ricl (‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 136–38) mentions over 20 (I would remove Semantikos, and note the different view of Abozenos in the note on MAMA IX 54), to which one might add Aezaniticus (?), Aouadios (?), Rhymios; from elsewhere in Phrygia Amorianos (Gephyra 4 [2007], 83), Anabatenos, Bourienos, Eurodamenos (?), Isindios (MAMA IV 227), Kandionenon (Gephyra 4 [2007], 83), Kelaineus, Matiokometes (SEG LVII 1327), Mossyneus, Nonouleus, Orkamaneites, Ouastoreastes (MAMA X 183 no. 5), Peltenos, Stodmenos (?), Zemeiastes; from northern Lykaonia Salarameus (MAMA XI 297). The combination of simple theos with a toponymic epithet, so common in some regions, barely occurs (one case: SEG VI 401, region of Iconium). 10.  The issue is whether Alsenos marks Zeus as ‘un protecteur des arbres et des bois’ (Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1926n55, 1937; Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 131), or god of a sanctuary/sanctuaries marked out by a grove (BE [1981], 597) or as used to be thought is a simple toponym (so Ruge, ‘Topographie’, 811; but Phrygian Votive Steles 315 no. 501 Δεὶ Ἀλσηνων is not good evidence for this; see BE (1991), 529 in favour of supposing a parasitical nu and reading Ἀλσηνῷ(ν); L. Zgusta (Kleinasiatische Ortsnamen [Heidelberg, 1984], 37–34) is non-committal.) Add now SEG LXV 1245–46. With Alsenos compare the newcomer from north-east Phrygia ἀπὸ κέδρου (H. Güney, JES 3 [2020], 49–61), “From a cedar tree”, though again one can doubt whether this indicates a tree-cult or a location; the dedicator bears a Galatian name. 11.  Robert, Documents 385, raises the possibility that Ampelites/Ampelikos derives from a place characterised by vines, and C. P. Jones in S. D. Campbell (The Malcove Collection [Toronto, 1985], 20) points out that the suffixes -eites and -ikos support this view (but he also observes that Robert’s main argument—the dedications show livestock, not vines—underestimates the link between animal husbandry and viticulture in Phrygia: cf. Nonnus, Dion. 11. 164–66, within the myth of the eponymous Ampelos); Phrygian Votive Steles, 45 and Lochman (Grab- und Votivreliefs, 87) agree, but Ricl (EpigAnat 17 [1991], 73–78; ‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 139) still renders the epithet ‘of the vine’. Orochoreites is doubtless toponymic (Robert, Doc. Asie Min., 370), despite the speculations of Lochman (Grab- und Votivreliefs, 132).

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anthroponym, which may be in the genitive (Menophilou, Apphiados, [?] Poteos, Brogimarou, Trossou), given an adjectival ending (Antigonios), or simply juxtaposed in apposition (Andreas, Euphranor): a type still not wholly clarified, but commonly taken to link the god with a mortal who founded or was commemorated by the cult.12 Sometimes a second divine name is simply juxtaposed: Zeus Dionysus, Zeus Herakles, Zeus Sabazios, Zeus Pap(i)as.13 Of the speaking names, many are familiar or reflect familiar functions: Basilikos, ‘Kingly’, Bronton, ‘Thundering’, Keraunios, ‘Of the thunderbolt’, Ktesios, ‘Of property’, Megistos, ‘Greatest’, Patrios, ‘Ancestral’, Semantikos, ‘Sign-giver’, Soter, ‘Saviour’, Thymelikos, ‘Of the hearth’ (if that is indeed the referent of the last), though it is not clear that the specificity of, say, Zeus Ktesios as a god of the household’s property is present in the two Phrygian examples.14 Pandemos, ‘Of the whole people’ (found once also in Mysia) is a borrowing from Aphrodite. His concern with agriculture comes through, more emphatically than in mainland Greece, with Anadotes, ‘Sender up’, Epikarpios, ‘Of produce’, Eukarpos, ‘Of fair produce’, Karpodotes, ‘Giver of produce’, Telesphoros, ‘Bringer to completion’ (?), Tetrao(raios) (?), ‘Of the four seasons’, Thallos (apparently ‘Young shoots’—one wonders what of), possibly Ampeleites (above) and the splendid, newly attested Hekatostites, ‘Of the hundredfold yield’; Phatnios, ‘Of the manger’, links him with animal husbandry, as do ex Aules, ‘From the courtyard’, if the Aule is a farmyard, and perhaps Galaktinos, ‘Of milk’.15 Epithets such as Agathios, ‘Goody’, Chryseos, ‘Golden’, Euchodotes, ‘Granter of prayers’, Eutyches, ‘Lucky’, Kalakagathios (on the Pisidian border), ‘Top Rank’, Ophelios, ‘Beneficial’, seem to be new creations emphasizing or seeking to evoke 12.  See Ricl, ‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 141 and 33n28 above; Euphranor: SEG XIV 778; Tro(s)sou, Gephyra 12 (2015), 195, with references. Robert (Doc. Asie Min., 370) distinguished the Zeus Andreas from the ‘Zeus plus genitive’ type and expressed bafflement about the former. 13.  Herakles: SEG LIII 1460; Pap(i)as: Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2018–21 (who also cite the evidence for an independent Pap[i]as, and indicate the restricted scope of this cult, in the north-west). Sabazios: IGR IV 889 (Ormeleis), his mystai; the introductory note to SEG LXV 1249–52. 14.  Keraunios: MAMA I 7a; Megistos: 6x in MAMA VII, and see the note on MAMA XI 313; Patrios: MAMA VI 87, SEG XL 1192 (cf. 1232), both times with another epithet; Soter: Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2014–17; Thymelikos: Drew-Bear, Nouvelles Inscriptions, 48 no. 24 (SEG XXVIII 1175), arguing for a reference to the hearth rather than the theatre; Ktesios: MAMA V 175, VI 87; in I. North Galatia 147, Steinepigramme 09/12/02 (NW Galatia), Isochrysos thanks Zeus Ktesios for a near escape from ‘your’ lightning. 15.  Anadotes: SEG XLV 1719. Thallos: Robert, Doc. Asie Min., 373, “Zeus Jeunes Pousses”, comparing for the simple juxtaposition Zeus Keraunos and (better) Dionysos Botrys. Hekatostites: Ricl, ‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 139. Ex aules: SEG XVI 753, Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. 153: probably to be associated with enaulios (i.e., Robert, Hellenica 10, 34–37; so too Phrygian Votive Steles, 48; Ricl, ‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 138) ‘de la cour des bestiaux’, rather than with the court of Olympos, as by Schwabl, ‘Nachträge’, 1454. Galaktinos: SEG LX 1480 (cf. the notes ad loc.).

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positive sides of his persona.16 The important Bennios is also a speaking epithet, though regrettably the common noun βεννος from which it derives fails to speak to us with complete clarity: perhaps it indicates a cult association of some kind. Two look outside Phrygia: Troios, if this is indeed ‘Trojan’, and ‘of the Persians’.17 Only a few directly reflect Phrygia’s place within the Roman Empire: Conditor (?), ‘Founder’, and Optimus Maximus, ‘Best, Greatest’ in Latin or bilingual dedications, Kapetolios, ‘Of the Capitol’, Dolichenos, echoing the popular cult of Jupiter Dolichenos, (and perhaps indirectly Troios, ‘Trojan’, again).18 There remains, as always, a cluster of obscura, Aseis, Bagaios, Bozios, Dagoustes, Egainetas, Kersoullos, Moraldos, Rhymios (?), Zemeiastes.19 No epithet points directly to the healing power which nonetheless Zeus demonstrably exercises under many titles. The plethora of epithets fascinates, of course. But they are not necessarily the key to understanding a given worshipper’s conception of the god. When a speaking epithet is created (a moment almost never observable by us), it must convey a conception in the mind of the creator. But thereafter, for some at least, it simply becomes the name by which the god of the sanctuary in question is known. Misfits between the specialism suggested by a speaking epithet and the good sought from the god bearing that epithet are common. Prayers are addressed to Zeus Basilikos, ‘Kingly’, ‘about cattle and all my family’, to Zeus Bronton, ‘Thundering’, ‘about my son Anikios’, to Zeus Saouadios (i.e. Sabazios) ‘about crops and the well-being of my patrons and all my family’, to Zeus of the Persians, Thundering and Lightening ‘about Trophimos’ ox/cow’; a bronze worker turns to Zeus Thallos, ‘Young Shoots’, ‘about his shoulder’, a prayer to restore or improve sight is made to Zeus Olympios.20 The benefits sought from Zeus Alsenos and Zeus Petarenos in their shared 16.  Agathios: MAMA IX 52, with note (and now Gephyra 23 [2022], 116–19 nos. 14–18); Chryseos: Vollkommer, ‘Zeus in Anatolien’, 382n124; Euchodotes SEG XXVIII 1175; Eutyches SEG XLIV 1049; Ophelios I. Hadrianoi Hadrianeia 10. 17.  Bennios: cf. 37n8. “Of the Persians”: SEG XXVIII 1186 (cf. TAM V.1.267). Troios: coins of Hierapolis, RPC IV.2. 2046–47, VI 5490–93 (all temporary). 18.  Conditor (?) MAMA IX 8; Optimus Maximus: BCH 28 (1904), 199 no. 27, perhaps I. Mus. Denizli 35; Kapetolios: SEG XLIV 1051; Dolichenos (in Latin): SEG LIV 1292. Is the unusual dedication to Zeus Stratios Megistos by a beneficiarius in northern Lykaonia (MAMA XI 311) an attempt partially to calque Optimus Maximus? 19.  Bozios: RPC III 2358c (Hierapolis); SEG LXVI 1591. Kersoullos: cf. H. Schwabl, ‘Zum Kult des Zeus in Kleinasien’, in G. Dobesch and G. Rehrenbock (eds), Die Epigraphische und Altertumskundliche Erforschung Kleinasiens (Vienna, 1993), 329–38, at 334–38, suggesting a link with Zeus Kerdylas (Lyc. Alex. 1092); cf. Kerdylion nr. Amphipolis. Moraldos: SEG XXXII 1272. Zemeiastes: see BE (1970), 196, and now I. Sultan Dağɩ I 45, 93. Not attested in historical Phrygia, but perhaps an old Phrygian theonym, is Syrgastos: A. Avram, Colloquium Anatolicum 15 (2016), 27–30. There are also some broken epithets, e.g. SEG LVI 1435. MAMA XI 312 Akouseos is suggested by the editors to be a variant on ἐπήκοος, who hears. 20.  MAMA V R. 8 (p. 150); MAMA V R. 9 (p. 151); SEG XXXVIII 1307; SEG XXVIII 1186; Phrygian Votive Steles, 366 no. 601; ibid., 335 no. 541.

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figure 4 . Dedication of Chrestos to Zeus Chryseos: (c) MA 4288 Musée du Louvre, Dist. RMN-Grand Palais/Thierry Ollivier.

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sanctuary (or nearby sanctuaries) near Phyteia are indistinguishable, as is the iconography of dedications to them; so too for Zeus Ampeleites and Zeus Thallos near Appia.21 A significant minority of dedications are made to a Zeus without epithet. Whatever specific function an epithet may point to, the god so worshipped remains Zeus with his whole range of powers, not that function alone.22 Many of the cults are known only by name. But among the cases where more evidence is available, it is not easy to discover differences in the conception of the god on the scale, say, of the difference between the Zeuses Olympios and Meilichios of mainland Greece. The common depiction on votive reliefs or altars or busts is as a forward-facing bust with long, curly hair, beard and moustache. His right hand is placed horizontally across his chest, and its prominence and often unnaturally large size have been taken to indicate the power of the ‘hand of god’; it is objected, however, that Phrygian mortals, too, on their funerary steles tend to have unnaturally large hands, marking them perhaps as hard workers. This schema is applied to the Zeuses Orkamaneites, Alsenos, Bronton, Syreanos, Andreas, Thallos, Ampeleites, Antigonios and perhaps others as well.23 Less commonly (except on coins, a different iconographic category) Zeus appears as a standing figure; Zeus of Aizanoi, who holds an eagle in his right hand, is a notable example.24 A dedication to Zeus Trosou is an isolated instance of a Phrygian Zeus depicted in the familiar ‘Anatolian riding-god’ schema (possibly by ‘iconographic 21.  Phrygian Votive Steles, 23–24, assumes single shared sanctuaries for both pairs of gods, but Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 88, has Ampeleites close to Andreas ‘am Hang des Erikli Daği’ (so too Barr. 62 D 3), Thallos apparently unlocated; ibid. 126 he speaks of separate sanctuaries near Phyteia of the Zeuses Alsenos, Petarenos, Orochoreites. For other apparent cases of different epithets in a single sanctuary, see Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1938n96. Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 87 claims as the only distinction between Ampeleites and Thallos that grape clusters occur only on dedications to Ampeleites (he states the opposite on 86n157, by a slip); but even that distinction seems to be based on a single dedication to Ampeleites showing grapes (Phrygian Votive Steles, no. 582; nos. 389 and 401 have grapes but no epithet). 22.  As in Greece: see L. Gernet and A. Boulanger, Le génie grec dans la religion (Paris, 1970), 226. 23.  See Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1942; Vollkommer, ‘Zeus in Anatolien’. The same artist may depict the Zeuses Bronton, Ampelikos, Thallos: MAMA X 290, commentary. ‘Hand of god’: so Robert, consistently, and others: for references, see Phrygian Votive Steles, 373–74; also DrewBear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1943n119. Phrygian mortals as hard workers: Phrygian Votive Steles, 374, tentatively; J. Masseglia in Roman Phrygia, 103, 107, confidently. The dedication Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1942 no. 11, pl. V, has a large hand beside the god’s bust; whether this is a rare variant, or as the editors suppose representation of a healed human organ, is unclear. On a series of uninscribed Zeus busts from the province of Bilecik in the north-west, see N. E. Akyürek Şahin, Gephyra 11 (2014), 121–71. See in general Vollkommer, Zeus in Anatolien. 24.  See e.g. K. Rheidt in Aizanoi und Anatolien, 171–72. For the Zeus Kersoullos of the Hadrianoi region see Schwabl, n. 19 above; for Papias Zeus Soter Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2021–22; for Zeus Abozenos, ibid., 2024; Zeus Bronton SEG XIV 781; Zeus (?) without epithet MAMA I 414; MAMA IV 267 with plate 55.

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figure 5 . Hands raised to beseech healing of a leg. Phrygian Votive Steles no. 39, from the joint sanctuary of Zeus Alsenos and Petarenos.

contagion’ from Apollo).25 Attributes/symbols/indications of functions that very frequently occur somewhere on the monument are eagles; garlands; yokes of oxen; boucrania (serving as abbreviated symbols for yokes of oxen);26 grape clusters; ears of wheat; mixing bowls and amphoras, with or without a vine emerging from them;27 thunderbolts. The favoured selection among these attributes does indeed vary somewhat, as does style of depiction, to the extent that a particular anonymous instance can sometimes be attributed with high plausibility to a particular sanctuary. Zeus Thallos and Zeus Ampeleites, in their shared sanctuary (or nearby sanctuaries) near Appia, for instance, are regularly shown with livestock in great abundance, not just the standard yoke of oxen but also cows with calves, mares with foals, occasional horses, rams and donkeys; artistically, too, the dedications from this sanctuary are of distinctively high quality.28 Zeus Bronton never appears 25.  MAMA IV 268; Delemen, Rider Gods, no. 394. 26.  Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2006–7. 27.  Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2009–10; see Haspels, Highlands, 358 no. 154 (with fig. 640) for an excellent specimen. 28.  Phrygian Votive Steles nos. 388–484, 579–606; Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 279 no. II 344 with abb. 73; cf. N. E. Akyürek Şahin, Olba 11 (2005), 193, fig. 1a.

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with such a plethora of animals, and is much more likely to be associated with a thunderbolt. But the boucrania, single yokes of oxen, grape clusters, mixing bowls and even agricultural implements that are shown on his monuments prove his close association with agriculture.29 Some local specialisations are, it is true, suggested by the votives. We see this in the contrast between the two best-documented and best-studied pairs of cults: on the one side those of the Zeuses Petarenos and Alsenos near Phyteia (Barr. 62 E 4); and on the other the Zeuses Thallos and Ampeleites near Appia (Barr. 62 D 3). Although the votives addressed to the members of each pair are virtually indistinguishable one from the other, the votives addressed to the two pairs differ markedly: human body parts suggesting healing are very common in votives to Petarenos and Alsenos (often, too, a votive shows nothing but one or more worshippers, as if to put them under the god’s protection), whereas those to Thallos and Ampeleites are, as already noted, dominated by splendid depictions of livestock.30 But even in votives to Petarenos and Alsenos the place regularly occupied by a human can be filled by an animal, and twice it is made explicit that the dedication is made ‘for sheep [or goats]’; conversely, a smith can approach Zeus Thallos ‘about his shoulder’; a votive to the same god shows an arm, one to Zeus Ampelikos a foot.31 Is every Phrygian Zeus potentially a healer? Body part votives are offered to him under four other titles: as Orochoreites, in a sanctuary either shared with Petarenos and Alseios or very close to theirs (so some ‘contagion’ might be suspected), as Tulissou or more probably Trossou in the territory of (?) Atyochorion, as Abozenos near Orkistos, and as Orkamaneites in the territory of Akmoneia; but one of the legs offered to this last is accompanied by confession of an act of perjury, so this is not so much, or not merely, a god who heals as one who punishes when offended but can be appeased.32 On the other hand, the abundant material from the rural sanctuary of Zeus Limnenos near Nakoleia includes no body part votives; 29.  On the iconography of Bronton, see MAMA V xli–xliii; Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2004–12. A reader for the University of California Press rightly points out that ‘these decorative forms can also symbolize ritual, e.g. boukrania allude to cattle for sacrifice, grape clusters and mixing bowls to wine poured as libations or drunk at a festival meal’. 30.  Phrygian Votive Steles, 42; cf. Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 87, 131. Alsenos seems to have specialised in eye diseases: Phrygian Votive Steles, nos. 11–28—unless the eyes shown are those of the seeing god. 31.  By an animal: Phrygian Votive Steles nos. 297–335. ‘For sheep’: Phrygian Votive Steles nos. 305, 336; shoulder ibid., 601; arm SEG LIV 1283; foot Phrygian Votive Steles, no. 426. 32.  Orochoreites: Phrygian Votive Steles nos. 527 and 531; Trossou: MAMA IV 266 (cf. refs. in Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 1–2; Beichtinschriften, no. 1 is a confession where Zeus Trossou is the offended god); Abozenos: SEG XLIII 936, cf. LVII 1320; Orkamaneites: SEG XXXIII 1118–19 (1119 = Petzl, Beichtinschriften, no. 102; for Orkamaneites and confession cf. ibid., 103) and perhaps SEG XL 1195; for the god cf. refs. in SEG LVII 1321.

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figure 6 . Hermas’ dedication to Zeus Alsenos for his wife Babeis. Phrygian Votive Steles no. 44, from the joint sanctuary of Zeus Alsenos and Petarenos.

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nor are any found among the yet more abundant—indeed, overwhelmingly abundant—votives addressed to Zeus Bronton from many sites. (A broader problem in identifying healing gods will be addressed later.) The two other pervasive and multi-epitheted gods of Phrygia are Men33 and Mother. But, in contrast to Zeus, they bear few functional or otherwise speaking epithets. A majority are certainly or probably local; some are ‘ktistonyms’ (names in the genitive of humans in some way responsible for the cult); some are obscure but convey no plain Greek meaning. Men’s only speaking epithet in Phrygia is in fact Ouranios, ‘Of heaven’; quite often he appears without an epithet. He does not receive his best known epithet Tyrannos; nor is he dubbed (as so often in Lydia) ‘ruler’ or ‘possessor’ of a place. His roles, again so prominent in Lydia, as healer, but also as avenger of ritual and moral transgressions, disappear from view in Phrygia (though he is once assimilated to Dikaios of the Hosios and Dikaios pairing); the scholar who notes this credits him there rather with care for soteria, safety, well-being, individual and collective.34 But that care is shared with every other god of substance . . . He is an easily recognised figure, with his Phrygian cap, a crescent moon appearing behind his shoulders, often a staff/sceptre in his left hand and a pine cone in his right; sometimes he is mounted, and little statuettes of him on horseback are particularly common.35 At the great centre of his worship near Antioch by Pisidia worshippers perform to him the still mysterious rite of τεκμορεύειν. Very frequently it is stressed that they do it not, as in the common formula, ‘for’ (hyper) but ‘with’ other persons, as it might be wife, children, brother(s), threptoi (non-kin brought up in the household, often de facto slaves). But this does not exactly make the god a ‘protector of the family’.36 I spoke above of Mother, but is this legitimate? Who is she? Mother Cybele is one thing, it has been argued; local mothers, however identified (whether by a toponymic adjective, or ‘ktistonym’), are another: since a given region can contain 33.  For epithets of Men, see Lane, CMRDM III 67–80; Labarre, Le dieu Mèn, 36–44; Ricl, ‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 143. Two stones attesting supposedly ethnic epithets, Gallikos (Lane, CMRDM I no. 90) and Italikos (ibid., no. 93), are of problematic reading or interpretation or provenance. Men Motelleites of Lydia (TAM V 1 348) is associated by Robert (see the note on TAM V 1 348) with Phrygian Motella: interesting extra evidence for the cults of Motella, and the popularity of one of them, if he is right. For epithets of Mother (now very incomplete), see Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, 312–14; there are several addenda e.g. in I. Mus. Konya, 3–15. On Zizim(m)ene, probably the commonest, see note on I. Mus. Konya, 7. 34.  Labarre, Le dieu Mèn, 45–49. Lane, CMRDM, I, no. 90, a problematic text, is, if Phrygian, the one trace of the transgression-appeasement nexus in connection with Men in Phrygia. Hosios and Dikaios: Ricl, ‘Hosios kai Dikaios’, no. 25; cf. her page 92. 35.  Mounted: Delemen, Rider-Gods, 57–64. 36.  Labarre, Le dieu Mèn, 50. This picks up Lane’s idea, Corpus Monum. Menis III, 59, that such is Men’s role in Attica; but Attic votive reliefs typically show families—there is nothing specific to Men in that.

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dedications both to Cybele and various local mothers, they are distinct, and presumably it will not just be that Cybele is distinct from the local mothers but also that these latter are distinct among themselves.37 The object we seek to grasp shatters into innumerable pieces in our hand. Against this claim it can be observed that many of the local mothers are named not just Mother plus toponym, but more specifically Mother of the Gods plus toponym—the variation between the two forms looks random. But surely there was only one Mother of the Gods. Again, there is scarcely a more familiar iconographic type, in Phrygia as elsewhere, than the enthroned goddess wearing a polos flanked by two lions. It is true that the dedications to local mothers tend not to portray her, and the statuettes of the seated mother tend not to name her, but it is hard to doubt that they share a common referent.38 The different forms of naming bleed into one another, so that even Angdisis can be qualified as Mother Goddess or Mother of the Gods.39 One exception to homogeneity in iconography must be allowed. A dedication to Tetraprosopos, ‘Four-faced’, from the Upper Tembris valley shows four female figures standing in a row; two other dedications from the region of Dorylaion name her, respectively, ‘goddess Tetraprosopos’ and ‘Mother Tetraprosopos’; and several others show the four figures without naming the dedicatee.40 A different conception of ‘Mother’ surfaces here. A similar row of four females appears about thirty kilometres south-west in the territory of Akmoneia, on a dedication to Meter Theon Kasmine.41 The epithet ‘Four-faced’ is unique among epithets for the Mother in bearing a clear Greek meaning, and might for that reason count as a special case, but Meter Theon Kasmine in other respects sounds like a perfectly standard local mother, and in a different dedication in fact appears as a single figure (though standing) between lions in the normal way.42 This emergence of a mother multiplied by four, sometimes marked out as exceptional by an exceptional name but once at least hidden under a familiar veil, is disconcerting, but 37.  So Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1944. 38.  The two new dedications to Meter Kranomegalene recently published by N. E. Akyürek Şahin (Arkeoloji ve Sanat 125 [2007], 67–74 [SEG LVIII 1506–7]) in fact bear depictions of familiar type. On a standing type, see n. 42. 39.  E.g. MAMA VI 395, 397–98 (Haspels, Highlands, 297–98 nos. 6, 8, 13), alongside many to ‘Angdisis’. 40.  MAMA XI 131 (where see Thonemann’s commentary); MAMA V 101; SEG XIV 782; and from eastern Phrygia Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, no. 48. For several nameless examples, see MAMA X 53; N. E. Akyürek Şahin, Arkeoloji ve Sanat 133 (2010), 27–38 (on page 36 she brings in the disputed ‘Tetrakore thea’ of Steinepigramme 14/07/06 verse 11) and Mediterranean Journal of Humanities 2 (2012), 1–9. Among those that she cites, MAMA VIII 374 (anomalous, because apparently funerary), like Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, no. 48, extends the distribution of the type significantly.. 41.  MAMA VI 245, as discussed by Thonemann in his note on XI 131. He cites further evidence for Kasmine; add SEG LVII 1336–37 (unfortunately all lack iconography). 42.  Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, no. 104.

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also, on present evidence, unique. At all events we cannot distinguish the activities and functions of different mothers. They differ perhaps as much and as little as Zeuses who bear different epithets. I continue, therefore, to speak of Mother,43 with the same reservations and qualifications as when speaking of ‘Zeus’. She is particularly prominent in the so-called highlands of the north. At a sanctuary in ‘Midas City’ (Yazılıkaya) that goes back to the Hellenistic period, she reappears, in the Roman Empire, under her old Phrygian name Angdisis.44 A monument close by speaks of ‘Mother Areyastin’ in old Phrygian, and nearby Metropolis is one of two Phrygian towns named for her; some thirty kilometres north-west she has a sanctuary on the peak of the highest mountain of the region, the Türkmen Baba.45 But there is another Metropolis further south, and we have already heard of the cave of Mother Steunene near Aizanoi. Another open air cult site of Mother has been found near Aizanoi, this time five kilometres to the south; it has offered, in terracotta form, a remarkable new image of the goddess, standing (this the chief novelty) between two boys, one of whom perches on a lion.46 She is everywhere. Apollo is the leading god of three cities, Eumeneia, Hierapolis and Motella, and enjoys a ‘most sacred panegyris in the grove’ at a city in the north-west.47 The sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos near Motella is among the most important nonurban religious sites in Phrygia; he is frequently named Helios Apollo Lairbenos, a direct assimilation to Helios found here only in Phrygia, though an association between them is not rare.48 The sanctuary is notable on two further grounds 43.  As does Ricl (‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 142–43), with a full listing of epithets from that region. 44.  She bears this name or a variant of it also (some more distant instances aside) in northern Lykaonia (MAMA XI 279, with note) and northern Pisidia (MAMA VIII 396; I. Mus. Burdur 2; Robert, A travers l’ Asie Mineure, 239), as well as, remarkably, in a civic cult of Eumeneia (IGR IV 739); she gave her name to the Angdisseion, the mountain of the mines at Dokimeion, as named on a coin of the city (Robert, A travers l’ Asie Mineure, 236). 45.  Yazılıkaya: Barr. 62 E 3; Haspels, Highlands, 188–89 with inscriptions 1–17 on pages 295–302 (Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, nos. 148–66); Arezastis: Haspels, Highlands, 79–80; Türkmen Baba: Barr. 62 D 3; Haspels, Highlands, 194 with inscriptions 115–23 on pages 342–45 (Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, nos. 187–92); Metropolis: BE 1972 no. 463. 46. G. Ateş, in Aizanoi und Anatolien, 49–55. Ateş interprets the many votive fragments as remnants of a dump from a different site close by, but a dump which itself became a place of worship. He takes, 53, the new standing Mother as an iconographic survival of indigenous Matar images from the early Phrygian period, when she is always shown standing. Steunene: p. 22 above. 47.  Propylaios at Eumeneia, Archegetes at Hierapolis; for ‘Apollo who stands before (προεστώς) the city of Motella’, see Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 37 K 46 and 40 K 50. Grove: IGR IV 555 (MAMA X p. 186 no. 23), a civic decree found at Hasanlar, issued by Ancyra Siderea (if a dubious supplement in 1 is correct) but assigned by PHI to Hasanlar: Tiberiopolis and to Tiberiopolis (territ.) by LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Menelaos’ (35). He has a priest (as Soter), predictably, at Apollonia-Sozopolis (SEG LXII 1130). 48.  In particular, Helios and Apollo often form a triad with Hosios Dikaios: Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Newly Published’, nos. 20, 21, SEG LXIII 1225. Cf. Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 91–92.

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(discussed more fully later):49 as a place where many individuals, slaves and free, were ‘registered to’ (καταγράφω) the god and became henceforth his ἱεροί; as a place where individuals afflicted because of an offence against the god made public acknowledgement of their fault through ‘confession inscriptions.’50 It is unique within Phrygia on the first count, and offers much fuller evidence than any other Phrygian sanctuary on the second (the attestations are much more numerous in Lydia, though almost all fall within a very small area). Another possible speciality of Apollo concerns the wolf. At a sanctuary of Apollo Alsenos in the Doiantos pedion, some fifteen kilometres north-west of Akmoneia, he appears as a rider god above an animal or animals, of unfortunately doubtful identification: on two reliefs showing two animals the editors hesitate (are they sheep or wolves? —remarkable ambiguity!), but on one with a single animal they plump firmly for wolf.51 From the region of Dorylaion we have a dedication to Apollo Lykios showing, below the text, two quadrupeds, again of contested interpretation;52 also a dedication to Hosios Dikaios with, on one side, a relief of a young god (Apollo?) over a slender animal which no one has so far denied to be a wolf.53 A dedication to Apollo by a man for his son from the area of Laodikeia Combusta in the east has, on the side (not illustrated), what is said to be ‘a wolf seated on a pedestal’;54 again, from east Phrygia, a dedication hyper (on behalf of), a boy ‘torn by wolves’, shows what, for once, we can be sure to be two examples of that animal at their ugly work, but it has lost its dedicatee.55 One could wish it were clearer whether, in a given case, we are dealing with sheep, dogs or wolves! If wolves, part of the story must be a play on one understanding of Apollo’s epithet Lykios, as deriving from lykos, ‘wolf ’. On the basis of the prayer for the boy savaged by wolves, one could go on to see the god as a protector against the savage beast (though, as noted, the stele in question was not demonstrably dedicated to Apollo at all). We do not, however, get beyond tantalising possibilities.

49.  See ch. 6. 50.  On this class of text, see page 7. 51.  Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1933–37, with their planche IV, on SEG XXVI 1359 (plain Apollo), ibid., XL 1190 (Apollo Alsenos), Robert, Hellenica III, 55 (plain Apollo, attributed to this site by analogy). They are now Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, nos. 300–302; she identifies the animals as dogs, and argues (47–49) that this Apollo was associated with hunting. 52.  MAMA V 87: wolves for Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1939, but definitely not for the MAMA editors ad loc. Ricl, ‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 144n179, mentions ‘an anepigraphic votive relief in the Eskişehir Museum showing the god accompanied by two wolves’. Fonds Louis Robert 051_009 definitely shows him with dogs. 53.  MAMA V 11 with 11 B on pl. 16 (Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’. no. 21). 54.  MAMA I 9 (LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Meiros’ [67]). 55.  MAMA I 286 (LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Sousou’ [7]). On the back a radiated divine head appears ‘on the cornices’ above the head of an ox: highly compatible with Apollo, but not proof.

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Although some Phrygian communities occasionally consulted Apollo’s prestigious sanctuary at Claros,56 there is little trace of the god exercising his familiar prophetic role within Phrygia itself.57 Modest guidance was made available to all by two publicly displayed ‘alphabetic oracles’ at Hierapolis, presumably ascribed to Apollo Kareios who is named in one.58 One picked a letter, and the verse beginning with that letter, out of twenty-four alphabetically arranged, was the god’s advice: theta, for instance, gave a verse beginning tharraleōs, ‘confidently’: ‘confidently undertake your enterprise and accomplish it’. This rough and ready procedure was obviously not very responsive to individual needs. Three hexameter responses inscribed on stone in the city have also been, very conjecturally, ascribed to Apollo Kareios, despite the lack of evidence that he offered responses in this form.59 More securely, two unpublished texts from Apollo’s sanctuary at Çavdarlı in the territory of Prymnessos attest dedications to him made in response to oracles (presumably from some local source); two more found in the region and also mentioning oracles may have the same origin.60 If the source was that sanctuary itself, its attraction for worshippers would become easier to understand; the reliefs of the Muses that it contains may charm, and certainly illustrate the god’s relation to music, but they do not in themselves indicate a power or function to draw in the faithful. The dedicants evidently felt that they had got good value from the god, but the kinds of question posed, and method of answering them, escape us. From the north come two dedications, one made ‘as you [presumably Apollo] commanded by your

56.  For probable consultants (Aizanoi, Hierapolis, Laodikea on the Lykos, Iconium), see J. L. Ferrary, Les mémoriaux de délégations du sanctuaire oraculaire de Claros (Paris, 2014), II, 125, fig. 005; for cities that sent choruses (Aizanoi, Akmonia, Laodikeia on the Lykos, Antioch of Pisidia, Iconium) or engraved records of visits to the shrine without mentioning choruses (Dorylaion, Meiros Megale, Apollonia Mordiaion, Iulia), see ibid., 123 fig. 003. 57.  There was an office of prophetes in the cult of Apollo Xyreos in the Aezanitis, as in the same god’s cult at nearby Hadrianoi (MAMA IX 60, with note; for Apollo Axyros in Lydia cf. HerrmannMalay, Lydia, no. 46, with note); what precisely he did is unknown. The priest and prophet at Metropolis (MAMA IV 121) is largely supplemented. Two dedications to the apparently oracular god Zeus Kersoullos of the far north-west (Barr. 62 B 2) are by Phrygians, one from Ankyra Sidera some sixty miles south-west of the sanctuary (Gephyra 17 [2019], 242), one by an Aezanitan probably living away from home near the sanctuary (I. Hadrianoi Hadrianeia 4; cf. Gephyra [loc. cit.], 243); neither mentions an oracular consultation. On delegations to Claros from Laodicea, see Ferrary (previous note), I 152–57. He accepts Robert’s view that the youthful prophet of Apollo Pythios who heads them was a prophet only as the city’s representative at Claros. Why Ariobarzanes dedicated I. North Galatia 154 to Apollo Pythios Epēkoos is not revealed. 58.  SEG XXXV 1387, XXXIX 1377b; J. Nolle, Kleinasiatische Losorakel (Munich, 2007), 253–65. 59.  Steinepigramme 02/12/02–04, so ascribed by H. W. Parke (The Oracles of Apollo in Asia Minor [London, 1985], 181–83), whom F. Guizzi (SEG LXIV 1321) supports. 60.  Unpublished (still): Mitchell, Anatolia II, 13n22 (one of these is now Fonds Louis Robert 051_003); two more: MAMA IV 49(a) and BCH 17 (1893), 289 (cited in MAMA loc. cit.).

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oracles’, another explicitly ‘on command of the god Phoibos’: perhaps two more local oracles.61 As for healing, another traditional function, the evidence scarcely goes beyond a single dedication from Eumeneia, where Apollo Propylaios is thanked for (if we accept the editor’s readings) ‘keeping me free from pain in my side’. The sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos has yielded just one body part votive (there is one, too, from his sanctuary at Çavdarlı); in the main, Apollo there healed only when somebody confessed to him a fault. A reference to ‘Mysteries’ of Apollo is isolated; perhaps it means no more than ‘rites’. Around Hierapolis several Apollos cluster: Archegetes, Lairbenos, Kareios. A worshipper actually dedicated a statue of Apollo Alexikakos (one more type!) to Lairbenos.62 We can attempt, not with great confidence, to distinguish them iconographically;63 but to divide out functions between them is impossible. One could never, however, mistake a Phrygian Apollo, always a young figure, often a rider, for a Phrygian Zeus, or vice versa.64 Apollo’s sister Artemis has a very modest place. Some civic priesthoods are known,65 but there is little sign that she was much turned to by peasants; we can note, however, that she has two epithets based on village names, a sign of some acceptance, and that she possibly receives one healing votive.66 She comes into her 61.  I. Mus. Iznik 1508, from Barr. 62 C 1; H. Güney, ZPE 216 (2020), 148–50 no. 1, from Barr. 62 F 2; the editor of the latter compares I. North Galatia 47, a dedication made Ἡλίῳ Ἀπόλλωνος κατὰ κέλευσιν from roughly the same region. 62.  Eumeneia: SEG VI 213. Body part: SEG LIX 1494; Fonds Louis Robert 051_015. Mysteries: SEG LVII 1342; nr. Prymnessos. A confession inscription to Apollo Lairbenos (Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 108) similarly mentions a failure to attend a ‘Mystery’. Alexikakos/Lairbenos: MAMA IV 275a; Fonds Louis Robert 051_030 (cf. 032) from Çavdarlı is apparently also addressed to Alexikakos. 63.  See the endnote to this chapter. 64.  For Apollo as rider (particularly common in northern Lycaonia and northern Pisidia), see MAMA XI 365 with note. A dedication to Apollo (Colloquium Anatolicum 18 [2019], 55–64) depicts a rider with a moon symbol above to the right: indication of a joint cult of Apollo and Men (so the editor, H. Güney) or an error? He sometimes has a striking bouffon hair-style, as e.g. in Robert, Doc. Asie Min. 339 fig. 28, Fonds Louis Robert 051_048 (an interesting five figure scene requiring further explication). 65.  She has a priestess in (Southern) Metropolis (as Tauropolos), MAMA IV 122, and Apollonia/ Sozopolis, MAMA IV 165 and BCH 17 (1893), 256 no. 36; in Aizanoi a life priest and temple (SEG XLV 1708, cf. 1710; MAMA IX 180 P 71); in Laodikeia a thesaurus and statue (I. Laodikeia Lykos 5. 36; SEG LXII 1239). A katoikia apparently dedicates to her with her brother (Ramsay, Phrygia, 608 no. 499). But the cult at Prymnessos supposedly attested by the ‘martyrdom of Ariadne’ of that town in fact belongs to Perge in Pamphylia: P. J. Thonemann, Chiron 45 (2015), 156–57. The striking votive to a standing goddess touching with either hand a small female worshipper (MAMA VI 411) is taken by the editors as Artemis, for no obvious reason. 66.  Dedications: (understand the location given as ‘region of ’ in each case): by a family MAMA X 344 (Kotiaion); by men REG 3 (1890), 65 no. 12 (Temenothyrai or Akmoneia); Steinepigramme 16/34/05 (Dorylaion) (to commemorate eudranie of goddess and own piety); SEG LVII 1339 (Dokimeion [?]); JHS 17 (1897), 282 no. 41 (Tiberiopolis, two men); by women: SEG VI 173 (Akmonia), to Artemis Asteleane; SEG XV 802 (Prymnessos?) to Artemis Euladrene; SEG LIV 1288 (Dokimeion), possibly for

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own only in the far south-east, as patroness of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi;67 what she had to offer them is unfortunately unknown. Apollo’s mother Leto also has a modest and geographically restricted role, in the south-west around Sebaste and the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos; at that sanctuary a stoa is dedicated to Mother Leto and Apollo Lairbenos, named in that order, and a confession inscription flatteringly acclaims her as able to do the impossible.68 But to designate her as Apollo’s mother is only to catch part of, perhaps even to distort, the force of the double name Mother Leto. She is evidently also an instance of the mother plus epithet or theonym pairing that is so familiar. Mother Leto is also found in (eastern) Lydia, where other ‘Mother plus theonym’ pairings (e.g. Mother Hipta, Mother Anaitis)69 occur; her cult is an aspect of the partial east Lydia—south-west Phrygia religious koine. The most notable Phrygian document of the cult is a votive from Sebaste addressed to her, the protective Nemeseis and sacred Nymphs in gratitude for ‘being saved from a great illness’; the afflicted part, a leg, is shown.70 A note on Sozon, a speaking name meaning ‘Saving’, who appears in a handful of texts. In Phrygia, as elsewhere, Sozon has an ambiguous relation to Apollo: iconographically indistinguishable from him, once (in verse) appearing as an epithet of Apollo (Letoides Sozon), but more often as, or as if, an independent figure.71

healing (68n9 below); Eastern Provinces 343 no. 22 (cf. following note); SEG XLIII 947 (unknown); dedicator of unknown sex MAMA IV 49b (Synnada). In her brother Apollo Lairbenos’ precinct she has statues and an altar (SEG LVIII 1513, 1520). 67.  Barr. 62 F 5. References to Artemis in the Xenoi Tekmoreioi lists (cf. Blanco-Pérez, ‘Mȇ n Askaenos’, 134): W. M. Ramsay in Eastern Provinces (319 no. 2, 331 no. 6, 334 no. 13); two more texts from the same location attest (ibid., 343–44 no. 22) the epithet Satipreizene, and (ibid., 344–45 no. 24) a priest of her. Ramsay (ibid., 375 [perhaps on the basis of the supposed archigallos of Artemis in 343–44 no. 22 (cf. Bru, Phrygie Parorée, fig. 23a)]; for a more cautious text, see Sterrett, Wolfe Expedition, 380) declared her ‘a mere variety of the Phrygian Cybele’; Bru (Phrygie Parorée, 154) agrees, adducing a relief (his fig. 23b) from the village whence most of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi inscriptions come showing Cybele and, below, a deer. 68.  Stoa: Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 8 D 5; Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 122. MAMA IV identify her in the goddess seated, with a footstool, between two birds on their no. 295. Strobel (Montanisten, 213) speaks of a stone in Uşak Museum (‘Nr. 30, 60, 71’), with relief of a snake, dedicated to Mother Leto, ‘die in der Nacht Orakel erteilt’. I have not traced this important document. 69.  Paz de Hoz, ‘Die lydischen Kulte’, 31. 70.  MAMA XI 70; Thonemann’s note (ad loc.) gives all the other evidence for the cult. 71.  See in brief Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 90. For the Phrygian evidence, see MAMA IX 57–58; Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, nos. 289–90 (the latter by an ex-priest); Steinepigramme 16/55/01 (Letoides Sozon); MAMA 1.8b (by his priest); Fonds Louis Robert 051_014 and 036 (?) (from a sanctuary of Apollo); J. Nollé, Gephyra 6 (2009), 68–70 on coins of Themisonium inscribed Lyk(ios) Sozon (e.g. BMC Phrygia, 419 nos. 5–6; RPC VI 11035 [temporary]) and ibid., 64–68 on a coin of Eriza (RPC IV.2 11595 temporary). In Lycaonia we meet Zeus Sozon, SEG XXXIV 1321.

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Dionysus has a distinctive niche, though less in the cities than in the country.72 The cities first: in Aizanoi, Attouda, and Antioch by Pisidia he has a priest/high priest, in Hierapolis even a hierophant;73 the title he bears in both Attouda and Hierapolis, (Pro)kathegemon, suggests that the cult was created under the influence of the Attalids, who founded Dionysus’ city, Dionysopolis. A coin of Apamea/ Kelainai shows a bust identified by inscription as ‘Dionysos Kelaineus’. The god also had a role in the foundation myth of Sebaste, darkly revealed to us in an obscure poem.74 Of civic rites and festivals we know nothing; but the ‘mystai of the first sacred thiasos’ of Akmoneia and the hierophant of Hierapolis show the possibility of distinctive forms of organisation (perhaps he had a thiasos also in the Roman colony of Antioch by Pisidia).75 And that is what is revealed outside the cities by the several dedications by groups of mystai or ‘new mystai’ or ‘new bacchoi’ found in the regions of Dorylaion and Nakoleia.76 (Again the puzzle arises of a phenomenon that is not pan-Phrygian.) Dionysus offers, then, a distinctive form of association (sometimes termed σπεῖρα,77 a term for a religious guild), though one that is still well integrated within village life (since the mystai regularly name their village and may pray for it); in contrast to these collective dedications, those

72.  Concerning Dionysus, see Drew-Bear and Naour (‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1944–49), who refute the old view that he was largely kept out of Phrygia by the pre-existent ecstatic cult of Cybele. 73.  Aizanoi: MAMA IX 34 4–6; SEG XXXV 1365.26–27 (for life), ibid., XLII 1188b; Attouda: SEG XXXIV 1289; Antioch by Pisidia IGR III 299, a life priest (cf. MAMA VIII 333 from Pappa/Tiberiopolis on the Phrygia/ Pisidia borderline)—the priesthood of Liber Pater in a Latin inscription (unpublished [?]) in the garden of the museum at Yalvaç (REA 108 [2006], 610n118) presumably belongs to the same cult; Hierapolis SEG XLI 1202. From Akmonia dedications to ‘Dionysus and the emperor’ suggest a strong public presence: MAMA VI 240, BCH 17 [1893], 273 no. 65 (MAMA VI 148 no. 150a.). In Sanaos (?) he shared a priesthood with Pantheos; see BCH 11 (1887), 64–65 no. 39. The agon mystikos celebrated at Ankyra by the ‘artists of Dionysus and Emperor Hadrian the new Dionysus’ in 128 CE (IGR III 209; I. Ancyra 141) sounds like a special case. 74.  Steinepigramme 16/01/01. Apamea: RPC IV 2 8053 (temp). 75.  Akmonia: above, page 13; Hierapolis: SEG XLI 1202. Antioch: see H. Bru and U. Demirer (REA 109 [2007], 41–43), who propose to make the dedicator of ILS 1017 not Thiasus lib(ertus) (following Mommsen and most subsequent scholars) but thiasus Lib(eri) (cf. n. 73 above); further speculative developments (a link of Antioch’s River Anthios with the Anthesteria [?]) in Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 119–24. 76.  Above, 12n14. ‘Evidence, no doubt, of an old local cult in these hill villages’, for Haspels (Highlands, 201); but did habitation in this region go back very far? The Ταναιτηνῶν νεανία(ι) who dedicate MAMA VI 360 (Upper Tembris valley) hyper an emperor’s victory and long life to Zeus Dionysus may be a similar group. The iconography of the epitaph SEG XXXV 1390 (region of Kotiaion) suggests that one of the dead may have been a Dionysiac mystes. Note, too, JRS 15 (1925), 163–64 no. 154 (with plate XXII), a small altar from the Kotiaon region decorated with Dionysiac scenes on three sides including named depictions of Lycurgus and Dryads. But the mystai (god unnamed) of MAMA IV 167 far to the south-east (Apollonia-Sozopolis) look distinct. 77.  Jaccottet, Dionysos, no. 81, left side; 83. 9–10.

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by individuals are a rarity.78 What happened when the mystai of a village assembled is unknown (just one text shows them involved with the funeral of a member);79 nor do we know the criteria for admission. Nothing about the god they worship distinguishes him from the Greek Dionysus.80 Their concerns, as far as we can see them, are with this life; for all that they may have hierophants, their prayers are for their own and the village’s well-being. Male bonding, amid the pleasures of a restrained conviviality? Alongside this function, apparently exclusive to Dionysus, let us note one that he lacks. No prayers are made to him hyper the crops or the vines; he lacks81 the epithet kallikarpos, ‘of fair fruits’, given to him in other regions. Grape-clusters adorn the monuments set up by his mystai, but it looks as if the god who makes the vines grow is Zeus. The only hint that Dionysus is concerned with viticulture comes, enigmatically, from scenes on little altars dedicated by these groups which show a human driving goats away from grape-vines.82 That aside, Dionysus appears as patron of the product, wine, not the agricultural process that creates it. The god or gods Hosios (and) Dikaios (henceforth often HD) receive well over a hundred dedications in Phrygia, and are particularly popular in the north-west; two hoards of dedications, evidently from single sanctuaries, have been found in the regions, respectively, of Kotiaeion (Yaylababa Köyü) and Dorylaion.83 He/they are Protean figures. In Mysia Abbaitis84 he is usually a single figure, the (great) (theos) Hosios kai Dikaios, portrayed as a horseman. But at the sanctuary at Yaylababa Köyü they are consistently two young, standing long-haired figures, 78.  I have only MAMA IV 51 (fragmentary; Synnada region); ibid., V 168 (between Dorylaion and Nakoleia), and from the Pisido-Phrygian border region MAMA IV 229, IGR 4. 895 (Milner-Hall 58 no. 124.1), from Phrygian Lykaonia MAMA XI 282. Of the other cases cited by S. G. Cole (EpigAnat 17 [1991], 48), see n. 76 for MAMA VI 360 and n. 73 for Akmonia; BCH 11 (1887), 353 no. 10 (Kolossai) is fragmentary but the context is civic. Jaccottet, Dionysos, no. 76 is individual, but within the context of an association. 79.  Jaccottet, Dionysos, no. 83. A funerary stele showing a young man holding grapes has been taken as that of a mystes (Steinepigramme 16/22/99, with commentary); the accompanying inscription says nothing of this in what survives. Steinepigramme 16/34/24 raises a similar issue. 80.  S. G. Cole (EpigAnat 17 [1991], 47) speaks of ‘not simply a matter of isolated Dionysiac figures and isolated Dionysiac terms, but a whole complex of practises, representations and terminology that has been imported into Phrygia by the second century.’ 81.  If we exclude I. North Galatia 155, by a perhaps rather grand Ariobarzanes who also dedicates unusually to Apollo Pythios (ibid., 154). 82.  See Jaccottet, Choisir Dionysos, II, no. 81 with commentary. 83.  Yaylababa Köyü: Barr. 62 C 3; Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, nos. 47–78; nr. Dorylaion: Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, nos. 1–17. The several publications by Ricl cited in what follows are basic for the cult (some corrections in Lochmann, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 91–93, 198–207, 285–89); Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 216–20, usefully collect the evidence that has accrued since; their items A 1–10 are from Phrygia. 84.  Not as usually stated Lydia: Lochmann, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 204.

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wearing short-sleeved tunics and long cloaks thrown back over the left shoulder, and sometimes holding hands: Dikaios on the left (as seen by a viewer) often holds a pair of scales in his right hand; Hosios on the right a staff in his left. The same double iconography is found elsewhere in Phrygia, though much less regularly.85 But a single figure is also found, most commonly a bust, with or without solar crown and staff, or a haloed horseman, or a standing naked figure with solar crown. Although this single figure sometimes appears on monuments which, in the inscription, name Hosios alone (another variant!),86 he is also not infrequently found even when the dedication names both Hosios and Dikaios;87 a single figure, whether horseman or bust, appears to be the norm in the new sanctuary at Eskişehir/Dorylaion. It looks, then, as if even within Phrygia there was vacillation as to whether HD was one god or two. Feminine forms, Hosia Dikaia and Hosia, occur once each; Hosia Dikaia is ‘blessed Mother’ (of HD, or just a title of respect?).88 The two deities most regularly associated with HD, whether in dedications or iconography, are Apollo and Helios; once Hosios and Dikaios are said to be messengers of Apollo.89 HD can also lose its/their specific identity. The adjectives are, infrequently, applied as a pair (also singly, which matters less) to other gods: to a collective of hosioi kai dikaioi gods90 or to individual gods: a verse dedication is made to ‘Mother of the Gods, Phoibos Hosios, Men Dikaios, the eye of justice’; another verse dedication to ‘Letoides Sozon and Helios basileus’ goes on to describe them as ‘most 85.  Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 79; add Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 212– 13 no. 17. Lochmann, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 206 notes that full body depiction of gods is not the norm in the upper Tembris valley; but his conclusion that they were seen less as gods than as personifications is not compelling. 86.  So Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 81–82. Dedications found in a village near Eskişehir honoured Hosios, alone, as ‘greatest god’ (Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 217 nos. A 9–10; eidem, Gephyra 20 [2021], 179–82 nos. 1 and 2). 87.  Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 46; Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Nouveaux Monuments’, no. 3 (where the inscription too makes him singular); Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 197 no. 5, 200–201 no. 7; Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Newly Published’, nos. 28, 58. But Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 191 do not recognise Hosios Dikaios in the single figure. For Phrygian texts which apparently make him singular, see Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 92; Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 94. Iconographically, SEG LXIII 1225 is an unambiguous case, unless we accept the view of A. Coşkun (Gephyra 19 [2020], 116) that the figures shown are worshippers. To the south-west in the Kibyratis HD was the newborn son of Heracles (SEG LXIII 1307; Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 220 A 23). 88.  Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Newly Published’, no. 25; Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 32. 89.  Apollo and Helios: Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 91–93 (later publications add more); messengers: Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Nouveaux Monuments’, no. 1. 90.  Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, nos. 26 (these are, according to Ricl’s reading of the iconography, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 82, Apollo, Tyche, Asclepius and Nemesis), 28 (ὅσιοι only), 96; Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 213–15 no. 18.

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figure 7 . Dedication of Antipas to Hosios Dikaios from the sanctuary at Yaylababa Köyü. Kütahya museum, Inv. 9526, Phrygian Votive Steles no. 522, photo J. Potts.

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just’ and ‘holy’ gods;91 and dedications to Apollo Hosios and Dikaios, Helios Hosios and Dikaios, and the Hosios and Dikaios (supplemented) god Apollo, appear to apply both adjectives to a single god.92 The boundary between HD, Apollo and Helios was evidently fluid. But the predominance of dedications made to HD simpliciter weighs heavily in favour of the view that in some perceptions, at least, they are a distinct entity93 and not a different god (most obviously Apollo/ Helios) in disguise. One might doubt whether a dedication to Helios Hosios Dikaios Apollo was conceived as made to one god or three (in asyndeton) but for the accompanying relief, which clearly shows three.94 And at least two inscriptions put an ‘and’ between the names of HD and that of Apollo or Helios.95 It is hard to identify a distinctive specific sociological or functional niche occupied by HD. Dedications were made to them by both individuals and sub-polis communities.96 They are unknown to civic coinage, and the scattered find-spots support the view that this was predominantly a rural cult; but the shrine near Dorylaion attracted worshippers who announced their membership in the town’s tribes, and even an archiereus in the imperial cult.97 The division, then, was not absolute. Despite their names and iconography, a specific relation to justice is only occasionally visible: a funerary inscription invokes HD and the sun to avenge whoever retains property deposited with them by the dead woman; and a monument figuring, though not naming, HD was dedicated by two persons confessing to an act of oath-breaking.98 We can note, too, their common association with the (all-seeing) sun and with Apollo, himself sometimes identified with the sun. But,

91.  Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 25 (Steinepigramme 16/34/03) (but the relief shows different gods!); ibid., no. 95 (Steinepigramme 16/55/01). 92.  Apollo H and D: Güney, ‘Hosios and Dikaios’, 104–6 nos. 2–3 (Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 216, A.4–5); Helios H and D: Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Nouveaux Monuments’, no. 2; Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 211 no. 15; H and D god Apollo: Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 206 nr. 11. The view that different gods are being addressed without connectives in these cases is difficult in the first two, impossible in the third (if correctly supplemented). For a possible Helios Dikesios, see 62n124. 93.  So rightly Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 75; for earlier opinions, see ibid., 75n14 94.  SEG LXIII 1225 (Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 216 A 2)—though cf. n. 87 above. 95.  Unambiguously Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 29 (Steinepigramme 16/34/02); Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 204–5 no. 10; ibid. 216 A 6 is by supplement only. 96.  Mostly villages, though A. Coşkun (‘Dionysiac Associations among the Dedicants of Hosios kai Dikaios’, Gephyra 19 [2020], 111–33) seeks to adjust the picture: Ricl (‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 48 [as corrected by H. Malay, SEG LV 1418]) is a certain case of an association and the Κταηνοὶ Βάχιον τὸ περὶ Τύραννον (H. Güney, Gephyra 15 [2018], 103) a probable one, though the latter implies also a village connection if Κταηνοί is an ethnic. 97.  See 53n83 above. Predominantly rural: cf. Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 72. 98.  Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, nos. 88 (I. North Galatia 242), 91.

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paradoxically, the link with justice is clearer outside the Myso-Phrygian centre of the cult.99 The most popular goddess after Mother appears, unexpectedly, to be Hekate, often given the epithet Soteira, ‘who saves’. A series of texts from the Tembris valley record the ‘consecration’ (καθιερόω, less often ἀφιερόω) by their relatives of (dead) persons who have been ‘honoured by Soteira Hekate’. Once it is said that a man consecrated his wife to Soteira Hekate though she had not, as far as we are told, been ‘honoured’ by her hitherto (no. 3 in appendix 2 below). A simple example now in Munich (no. 1) reads Ἀμίας Μνένναν τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδραν τιμηθένταν ὑπὸ Σωτίρης Ἑκάτης κατιέρω[σ]εν καὶ Ἀπο[λλώνι]ος καὶ Μάν[λ]ιος υἱοὶ α[ὐτοῦ], ‘Amias consecrated her husband Mnennas who was honoured by Soteira Hekate; so too did his sons Apollonios and Manlios.’ Fine multilevel reliefs with a triple Hekate at the centre regularly accompany the record of these honourings.100 Other gods receive such consecrations and bestow such honours, but much less frequently than Hekate: Zeus and Apollo honour once each (nos. 9 and 11), one boy is consecrated to Apollo (no. 10). We read of them on funerary monuments, but one late and exceptional text (no. 8) speaks of honouring ‘first by Hekate, secondly by Manes Daos Heliodromos of Zeus,101 and thirdly by Phoibos Archegetes oraclegiver’, summarised as ‘by the immortal gods’. The same text speaks of the dead man as having been initiated by the ‘fair public priestess, Ispatale of fair name, whom the immortal gods honoured within and beyond our boundaries; for she redeemed many from evil torture’. Though puzzling, the text shows that the honours were granted by the gods while the recipient was still alive.102 What they were we can only guess. A. D. Nock argued that the meaning ‘must probably be “having received special grace from . . .” The grace might be the reception of prophetic dreams, or other supernatural gifts.’103 A document published after Nock wrote (no. 9) has shown that a boy who died at 99.  See Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, nos. 102, 104, 10, and for protection of tombs 103, 111; Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Newly Published’, no. 35 (Steinepigramme 08/06/06), 43–45; Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 220 A 26; SEG LX 1366 (?). HD, Helios and Apollo: e.g. n. 88 above. For the link of the sun with justice, see e.g. the inscription from Dorylaion, L. Robert, RPhil (1939), 203 (= OMS II, 1356). For a magnificent radiate figure, presumably Apollo as Helios, from Çavdarlı, see Fonds Louis Robert 051_19. 100.  See appendix B. Note too, though not funerary, JRS 15 (1925) 167–69 no. 159 (plate XXIII), where Hekate (?) is central on a multi-god relief (cf. 36n4). 101.  Cf. appendix E n. 5. The text is SEG XLIII 943 B I. 102.  So does no. 2 in appendix B below. 103.  ‘The Honoured of Hekate’, JHS 45 (1925), 100–101. Nock noted what is now TAM V 1 282, Ὀνησίμην τὴν ἱέρειαν οἱ θεοὶ ἐτείμησαν, but pointed out that the verb there presumably has its common sense in funerary contexts of ‘saw to the funeral of ’: Onesime, a priestess, was ‘buried at the expense of the temple funds’. In a new epitaph from Bithynia (SEG LXVI 1389) a knowledge of ‘astral divination’ is presented as a form of honouring by god.

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the age of nine could already have been ‘honoured by Apollo’. That, if anything, strengthens his position, since young people could certainly have visions of gods but were unlikely to receive honours in any other way. But it is a mystery why it was Hekate in particular who so regularly touched mortals with this grace. The sense of ‘consecrate’ in these texts (only exceptionally, as in the two cases marked in bold above, is a recipient named to whom the consecration is made) is also a problem. Even outside these texts, Soteira is Hekate’s most popular Phrygian epithet; she bears it, inter alia, on a coin of Apameia.104 Phrygians may have approached her about their ordinary concerns for family and livestock; a relief addressed to her shows a yoke of oxen and was presumably meant to bring them benefit. It is not then clear that Hekate Soteira’s role in the epitaphs derives from an association with the underworld (for instance as a positive counterpart to the ‘Black Hekate’ occasionally invoked in curses, in this region as elsewhere),105 still less from eschatological hopes of ‘salvation’. Without an epithet Hekate is a popular recipient of vows on behalf of family members.106 The ‘Black Hekate’ of curses aside, no terrors attach to the Phrygian Hekate. Some twenty-five dedications to (Theos) Hypsistos are known, all individual except one by a village.107 Whether these relate to a distinct figure or are an anony104.  Soteira: she receives a dedication south-west of Kotiaion (Phrygian Votive Steles, no. 519 = SEG XLIX 1808, assigned to ‘Appia, territory, ?’, in LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Zeuxis’ [5]), had a priestess in the territory of Kidyessos (so LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Appes’ [22], on SEG LVII 1343), and was so named at Akmonia (probably: ‘Phoibos and the Saviour Goddess’, MAMA VI 241). Coin of Apameia: BMC Phrygia, s.v. ‘Apameia’, 110, pl. xi. 1. Relief: Phrygian Votive Steles, no. 519. 105.  Ricl (‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 135n33), citing Strubbe (Arai epitumbioi, 181–82, 190, 204, 222 and SEG LVI 1477); but note IGR IV 621, he will face the anger of ourania Hekate. 106.  MAMA IV 2 (Prymnessos [?], LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Mamme’ [8]), by a woman, hyper children; SEG XLIII 940 = Gephyra 4 (2007), 93 no. 69 (Kotiaion), a woman hyper Auxanon; SEG LVII 1344 (‘Dokimeion, territ. [?]’, LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Artemon’ [85]), a man hyper his son; Lane, CMRDM 89 (Hasanlar: territory of Tiberiopolis), a woman dedicates (apparently) an image of Asclepius to H. and Men hyper a child. Other evidence: SEG LVI 1439 (Aizanoi: not in Steinepigramme), a dedication to golden koura and H., in response to a dream, in verse; Klio 10 (1910), 241 (Amorion, territ., LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Paramonos’ [1]), dedication by a male to Hekate Euantetos; JRS 15 (1925), 167–68 no. 159 with pl. xxiii, a multi-panel uninscribed relief from the region of Kotiaion; SEG LIII 1522, Tembris valley, ca. 220–30, stele with a bust of Zeus over oxen, dedicated to Hekate; JRS 16 (1926), 88 no. 218 with fig. 38 (SEG VI 1780), an altar to Hekate ‘in accord with an oracle’ by a village in the territory of Eumeneia (or Sebaste). Hekataia: MAMA XI 132, Upper Tembris valley, a statuette of Hekate Triformis, similarly MAMA X 171 from nearby, MAMA VI 402 from Emirdağ. Hekate triformis also appears on coins of six cities: Head, BMC Phrygia, index, p. 439, and perhaps on Phrygian Votive Steles, no. 592, and see now a splendid votive relief from Hierapolis, F. D. Andria in C. Özgünel et al. (eds), Essays in Honour of Cevdet Batburtluoğlu (Istanbul, 2001), 51–58. 107.  See S. Mitchell, ‘The Cult of Theos Hypsistos’, in P. Athanassiadi and M. Frede (ed.), Pagan Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Oxford, 1999), 81–148, at 141–42, and ‘Further thoughts on the cult of Theos Hypsistos’, in Mitchell and P. van Nuffelen (ed.), One God: Pagan Monotheism in the Roman Empire (Cambridge, 2010), 167–208, at 204–5.

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mous form of reference to a variety of local top gods is, as we noted above,108 controversial. Despite the healing prowess of Phrygian Zeus, and other gods to a much lesser degree, Asklepios found a place. A decree from (it seems) Atyochorion confers the priesthood of Asklepios and ‘the gods established with him’ on an individual who has built the gods a [temple] and (?) statues, and ‘given vines and workshops and slaves (?), and arranged for the gods to be served and the buildings maintained from the income they yield.’ At Akmoneia, a grandee is attested as ‘life priest of the most manifest god Asklepios and agonothete of the great Asklepieia’. The god had entered the cities, then, and indeed represents Akmoneia (where there is a tribe Asklepias) on homonoia coins; on ordinary coins, too, he and his team are very common. A finely phrased late Hellenistic decree from (?) Aludda shows a temple of Soter (i.e. ‘who saves’) Asclepius already then serving as a place of display for civic decrees. How he healed, whether the practice of incubation arrived with him, is unclear; it is not attested. Dedications by individuals and from outside the cities also occur, particularly in the north and north-east, though not in great numbers; on present evidence Zeus was still the most important extra-urban healer.109 Several familiar Greek gods appear more frequently iconographically than in dedications. Heracles is rarely named except in secondary association with Pap(i)as, or Zeus Pap(i)as, in the restricted region of north-west Phrygia where that god appears; once, still in that region, he shakes Pap(i)as off, south of Appia he once becomes Zeus Herakles, and thrice appears in the east, in the territory of Laodicea

108.  See p. 23. 109.  Cities: Atyochorion: SEG LXIV 1313 (cf. MAMA IV 302bis). Akmoneia: MAMA XI 101 (SEG LXII 1112); see the note ad loc. for other evidence on the god at Akmoneia; tribe: Kunnert, Phylen, 136–37. Aludda: SEG VI 273 (dated by Ramsay, Phrygia, 608 no. 497, cf. 586–87, ‘as early as 50–100 B.C., perhaps even earlier’). Note too I. Pessinous 20: ‘gratitude of the Pessinountians to Soter Asklepios’. Soter Asclepius had a life priest at Antioch by Pisidia in the early third century CE: SEG LIV 1370. Individuals: SEG LIV 1289, area of Dokimeion; SEG XV 799, Prymnessos (?) (LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Patron’ [3]); SEG XXVI 1362, territory of Amorion, base of a statue of Asklepios, with inscription by an individual who ‘made the temple (naos) with the images’; Phrygian Votive Steles 251 no. 387 ab, no provenance, by a priest.; I. Ancyra 191–94 (192 is by a centurion); Fonds Louis Robert 051_018 (SEG XLII 1195.2), a statue in the precinct of Apollo at Çavdarlı. North and north-east: SEG XLIV 1036, Dorylaion (?) (LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Nounas’ [12]); Échos d’ orient 9 (1906), 359 no. 10, area of Dorylaion, by a Corinthian banker; SEG LVI 1676 and E. Erten, Cedrus 6 (2018), 266, area of Nakoleia; SEG XXXIV 1286 (cf. LVI 1438), Aizanoi, a ἱερός dedicates an ornate altar; MAMA IX 61, territory of Aizanoi (‘kyrios A. Soter and Hygieia, gods who listen’); H. Güney, ZPE 216 (2020), 152 no. 4, a woman hyper ‘her breath’ with snake reliefs, and I. North Galatia 31, 127 (these three all A. Soter); MAMA XI 366 (northern Lykaonia, with Hygieia: cf. the statuette, ibid., 373). CMDRM 89 as interpreted by K. Buresch, Aus Lydien (Leipzig, 1898), 152, is the dedication of a statue of Asklepios to Hekate and Men. Coins: Head, BMC Phrygia, index, 435 (Asklepios), 441 (Hygieia), 445 (Telesphoros) (this last unknown on inscriptions and, Phrygian Votive Steles, 374–76, votives).

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Combusta and of Hadrianoupolis.110 On coins, by contrast, he is widespread, as a figure or engaged in one of his mythological exploits; and he is sometimes shown in dedications to other gods.111 Hermes, too, is familiar as a visual image,112 sometimes shown more romano with his money bag, but never (as it seems) receives dedications except one in the far east at Lystra. The Nemeseis appear once as joint dedicatees of a healing relief, more often in depictions.113 The Dioscuri are fairly common on coins, and the iconographic type of the ‘Dioscures au service d’une déesse’ occurs here and there; but in some, at least, of these cases the Dioscuri have ceded their place to other gods.114 A dedication at Apameia to the ‘great

110.  Restricted region: above, 41n24. With Papas or (Zeus) Papias: MAMA V 182, ibid., 154 R 18, (as Aniketos) CIG 3817 (adduced in Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2018); without, JHS 8 (1887), 504 LXXIX [MAMA V 181.8] (as Aniketos, by a village, followed by Mother); Zeus Heracles: SEG LIII 1460 (Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 290, II 527, with figs. 77–78). Laodicea: MAMA I 12 and MAMA VII 3 (with depiction); Hadrianoupolis: MAMA VII 131 (where the editors [xxxiii] take the grapes and corn sheath to mark him as ‘a giver of increase’; so too Calder on MAMA I 12). The dedication to Hercules restitutor by a Roman (MAMA IV 231, Tymandos region) is a special case. 111.  Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 24 with pl. 3 (bottom register of a relief, with Hermes); SEG LVII 1330, with Zeus and Hermes, on a dedication to theoi epēkooi; cf. 102n23, 116n86 for Heracles and Cerberus on funerary reliefs. Coins: BMC Phrygia, index, 440; Nakoleia acclaims him as ‘Founder’ (ibid., 340.9). With Linus, on a frieze: MAMA VI 247; on a sarcophagus fragment, MAMA IV 363; a fine statue, Fonds Louis Robert 051_11, 16, 40, 48. 112.  For four examples on reliefs, see L. Robert, RPhil (1939), 204–5 (OMS II 1357–58); add I. Mus. Denizli 32 (I. Laodikeia Lykos 63), and 33, the relief from Thiounta, Ramsay, Asian Elements, 196–97, figs. 1 and 2, and the dedication by a priest to Apollo at Çavdarlı, Fonds Louis Robert 051.029; he is also frequent on coins—BMC Phrygia, index, 440. Lystra: MAMA VIII 1; note also AnatSt 18 (1968), 70n12 from the region of Mistea (Barr. 65 G2). We see here the influence of Pisidia and Lycaonia, where he received many dedications: cf. for Pisidia N. P. Milner and M. F. Smith, AnatSt 44 (1994), 74–75; for Lycaonia Denkmäler Lykaonien, 72–73 no. 146 (a priest dedicates to Zeus Bronton and him), Steinepigramme 14/07/01 l. 2 (oracular instruction to honour him). He is mentioned in connection with an oath sacrifice in I. Laodikeia Lykos 64. 113.  See e.g. the dedication to Apollo from the sanctuary at Çavdarlı (Robert, Doc. Asie Min. 339 fig. 29). Relief: MAMA XI 70, where see Thonemann’s note; cf. BMC Phrygia, index, 443. Note too I. Pessinous 25–26; SEG VI 413 (Iconium). 114.  F. Chapouthier’s Les Dioscures au service d’une déesse (Paris, 1935) is a classic study of the type. ‘Ceded place’: so, certainly, in I. Mus. Denizli 43, where one figure is Men, and perhaps, by analogy, in the unclear I. Mus. Denizli 44; MAMA VI 409 is also unclear, and Ricl (‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 79, against Chapouthier 26–27 no. 4) plausibly detects Hosios and Dikaios in her no. 20 (doubts about the identification also in LIMC, s.v. ‘Dioskouroi (in peripheria orientali)’, 597 no. 15.) The schema appears also in JRS 15 (1925), 167–69 no. 159 (plate XXIII), where the goddess is Mother, and Ramsay, Asian Elements, 275 (Chapouthier 74 no. 67, LIMC III 1 [1986], s.v. ‘Dioskouroi (in peripheria orientali)’, no. 125) where the goddess is Artemis of Ephesus. Coins: Robert, Carie, 140n3. A festival of the Dioscuri features in a martyr legend set in Synnada (cf. 155n172—Dorymedon), a town that shows the pair on its coins: Huttner, ‘Christianisierungprozesse’, 161n135.

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Samothracian gods’ by a man ‘saved at sea’ clearly comes from someone who had travelled beyond the bounds of Phrygia.115 This parade of deities is almost over. Papas/Papias appears in a restricted area in the north-west, sometimes in a combination as Pap(i)as Zeus, occasionally alone.116 The rivers Hermos and Sangarios (called Poseidon Sangarios) are also honoured in that region; in the north-east the one honoured simply as Potamos (River) is probably the Tembris.117 Whether interest in Poseidon at Dorylaion, where at least one tribe dedicated a statue to him, was primarily shown him as father of rivers (cf. Poseidon Sangarios) or as earth-shaker is unclear; a Sibylline oracle speaks of Dorylaion as his city, but appears to envisage him ‘tearing it up by the roots’. For Strabo it is ‘reasonable’ (εἰκός) that he should be honoured by inhabitants of Apamea, inlanders though they are, because of volcanic activity in the region; presumably, then, he was so honoured. He is absent from the rest of Phrygia, and slightly present in Phrygian Lykaonia.118 Among other natural forces, Helios coalesces with Apollo Lairbenos near Motella, consorts with Hosios Dikaios (as an overseer of justice) elsewhere,119 and is a constant presence on monuments; Men’s relation to the moon is marked everywhere by the crescents on his shoulders; it becomes explicit at Antioch by Pisidia where, changing gender along with language, the moon is addressed by Romans as Luna.120 Plouton and Kore appear at the Ploutonion in Hierapolis, and nowhere else except (most often Plouton without Kore) in Phrygian Lykaonia. 115.  Ramsay, Phrygia, 458 no. 289; the case might be different with the dedication to ‘Great Gods’ from the Phrygia/Pisidia border (MAMA IV 228), given the presence of the Dioscuri in that border region (MAMA VIII 346) and their prominence in Pisidia. Pan I know only from MAMA XI 111 and the relief on I. Mus. Konya, 35 (wrongly seen by the editor as a dedication to Ares: cf. LGPN VC s.v. ‘Ἀρηίφιλος’.) 116.  Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2018–21. MAMA V 213b is a strikingly crude relief addressed to Papas. 117.  Poseidon Sangarios is approached ὑπὲρ βοῶν, SEG XXXII 1273. Hermos: SEG VI 80. Potamos: I. North Galatia, 33; Barr. 62 F 2. In northern Pisidia (Barr. 65 F 2) the river Eurymedon was honoured within a sanctuary of Mother: SEG XXXV 1409 (on the sanctuary cf. SEG LV 1447–49). 118.  Steinepigramme 16/34/12, statue of the old man of the sea dedicated by a tribe (cf. ibid., 16/34/11, Poseidon’s tribe); Oracula Sibyllina III 401–9 (quoted by Steinepigramme on 16/34/12); but Ricl (‘Cults of Phrygia Epiktetos’, 144n182) recalls coins of Dorylaion associating Poseidon with the River Tembris. AM 2 (1897), 353 no. 3 (MAMA V 182 no. 80) is a modest private dedication to Poseidon from Dorylaion. The youth whom Poseidon, holding his trident, killed beside the Tembris (MAMA X 177; Steinepigramme 16/31/05) is supposed by Steinepigramme to have drowned (no comment in other editors), but an earthquake is also possible. Strabo: 12.8.18, 579. Phrygian Lykaonia: I. Mus. Konya, 41–42 (the latter a vow hyper livestock); SEG VI 408. 119.  N. 92 above. Independent dedications are rare: I. North Galatia 47 is a dedication to Helios on order of Apollo; MAMA V 169 KB.7 is a dedication to Helios and Apollo, unless it is a ‘man and god’ text (cf. p. 107; rejected by L. Robert, RPhil (1939), 206n6 too peremptorily.) 120.  See Lane, CMRDM, III, 57–58; B. Levick, AnatSt 20 (1970), 49–50; Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 84n27. Chrysippus as cited in Philodemus, De Pietate used the example of Selene and Men to prove that gods were neither male nor female: for the text, see E. N. Lane, ZPE 117 (1997), 65–66.

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As gods of the underworld, they are given a place at Hierapolis because of the deadly mephitic vapours coming up from the world below. Demeter has a temple at Blaundos, a civic priestess at Hierapolis, a life priest (apparently in a joint cult with Men) in Antioch by Pisidia, and she receives one solitary private dedication (no provenance).121 Ares, despite his prominence in north central Lykaonia, is unknown. Sabazios occurs occasionally in combination with Zeus as Sabazios, once on his own.122 Theos Nikator (i.e. Seleukos I), ‘the Rhodian god’ (i.e. Helios again), the Nymphs, Helios Mithras and Hestia occur once each.123 Dike is the chief goddess of Prymnessos but barely known elsewhere; Tyche is scarcely visible; Nemesis is only at Hierapolis. Sophrosyne is honoured in the paring ‘Hygieia and Sophrosyne’ at Synnada.124 Finally, of the three goddesses whose beauty was supposedly judged by the Phrygian shepherd Paris, major figures in the Greek world, Athena had a cult as Nikephoros at Blaundos on the Lydian border but receives no dedications;125 Aphrodite had a temple (as Ourania) at or near Hierapolis, as well as a joint priesthood (with Meter Adrastou) held by a grande dame at Attouda far in the south-west (very close to Aphrodisias),126 but again receives no dedications; Hera is unknown, except on coins (that exclusion applies to the whole triad). Wearisome though this parade may have seemed, it was much shorter than an equivalent for Greece would have been. Lesser gods are rare, and there are, above all, no heroes (if we except a cult of the ‘founder’ attested rather late at Aizanoi)127. 121.  Filges, Blaundos, 140–98; SEG LXIII 1235 (so Linder, Mythos und Identität, 153, is wrong to suppose a conflation of Demeter and Meter at Hierapolis); Lane, CMRDM, I, nos. 161, 164–67 (but Demeter has dropped off in nos. 168–74); SEG XXVI 1387. Note too I. Pessinous 22, a dedication to D. karpophoros on behalf of a society of gardeners. Plouton and Kore: SEG LXV, introductory note to 1249–52 (attesting a priest), ibid., 1249, 1253; cf. D’ Andria, ‘Ploutonion’. Lykaonia: I. Mus. Konya, 29–31 (Plouton as horseman), IGR 3. 1473, MAMA VIII 4; with Kore, I. Mus. Konya, 37. At Perta some 55 kms east of Laodikeia Katakekaumene a σακερ (i.e. sacerdos) dedicates to Demeter and Plouton (MAMA VIII 260). 122.  Ares: I. Mus. Konya, 14 (but the inscription, no.36, evoking that note honours Pan, not Ares: see n. 115). Sabazios: as Zeus Sabazios, above n. 13; alone, I. Blaundos 11. 123.  MAMA IV 226; MAMA X 447; MAMA VII 5; MAMA X 449; IGR IV 554 (Tiberiopolis, territ., LGPN V.C, s.v. ‘Menelaos’ 35). Whether theos Achaios (Robert, Doc. Asie Min., 392–94) is Phrygian is uncertain. 124.  Prymnessos: MAMA VI 383 with note; but in Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 24, which had been read as addressed to Sun [and] dikai (L. Robert, RPhil [1939], 203 = OMS II, 1356), C. P. Jones (ZPE 214 [2020], 37–38) now proposes reading ῾Ηλίῳ Δικησίῳ. Tyche: ASAtene 41/42 (1963/64), 415, image dedicated by a man with tria nomina at Hierapolis; Agathe Tyche, with Zeus, MAMA IV 267; ‘Tyche favourable to the colony’, IGR III 309 (Tiberiopolis). Nemesis: SEG LXV 1250–51. Sophrosyne: IGR IV 708. Pantheos appears once in N. Lycaonia (I. Mus. Konya, 20). A god Theion, best known from Stratonicea in Caria, apparently occurs once or twice: see MAMA I 9a with note (L. Robert, Anatolia 3 [1958], 114–15 [OMS I, 412–14]). 125.  I. Blaundos 1 (cf. 16n30). 126.  JHS 56 (1936), 237–38, a strategos who was neokoros of Aphrodite Ourania; MAMA VI 75. 127.  Steinepigramme 16/23/01. Ouargasos of MAMA X 382 was identified as a local hero by its first editor Buresch; a minor god is just as likely.

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Diversity comes through the multiplication of epithets for a small cast of major gods, although, as we have seen, it is unclear to what extent different epithets indicate different powers. Occasionally the sharp contours defining a divine figure became blurred, or that figure acquires unexpected connections. Hosios (and) Dikaios, we have seen, is particularly fluid: one god or two? distinct divine figures, or aspects of other gods? Occasionally, too, a feminine Hosia (and Dikaia) accompanies them. (But the text that makes Hosios Dikaios, remarkably, a ‘newborn child’ of Heracles comes from the Kibyratis, not from Phrygia, and the one from Phrygia that speaks of Hosia Dikaia as ‘blessed mother’ (μητρὶ μακαρίᾳ) may be according her a general title of honour rather than indicating her as mother of Hosios Dikaios, or of anyone else.)128 A dedication from the Dorylaion region associates Men with an unnamed mother of Men (also found in Lydia).129 Associations between gods—divine partnerships, shared dedications130—are important when regular. But I have failed to observe significant regularities in the Phrygian material (outside the family of Apollo). In particular, there is no sign of stable male-female pairings, divine couples. Mother has no husband, Zeus no wife. They seldom appear together even as a non-conjugal pairing. The influence of gods from outside Phrygia (if we exclude those with Greek names, and the god of the Jews) is strikingly small. Just a few traces of the old Persian domination survive.131 The Roman presence in Apamea, Prymnessos, Hierapolis, Dorylaion and Akmonia is reflected in decrees of those cities passed by ‘boule and demos and the resident Romans’ or something similar.132 But among Zeus’ myriad Phrygian epithets, only a handful are borrowed from Jupiter, and there is no trace of the Capitoline triad. The Roman settlers at Antioch by Pisidia sometimes addressed Men as Luna, with a remarkable change of gender, but that is an 128.  Respectively, Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Newly Published’, no. 42, cf. ibid., 567, and 25. 129.  SEG XLIV 1037; cf. Paz de Hoz, Die lydischen Kulte, 36. The identification of Mother with Artemis found in Lydia (Steinepigramme 04/21/01- denied by Merkelbach [ad loc.], but see the iconographic assimilation in Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, no. 485) seems not to be found in Phrygia. 130.  Cf. de Hoz, Die lydischen Kulte, 81–86, ‘Kombinationen von Gottheiten’. Her main conclusion is that ‘indigenous’ and ‘Greek’ gods seldom mix; but I am reluctant to use those categories. The editor notes that the combination of Zeus Bronton and Mother in I. North Galatia 54a is the first attested. I find little support for Levick’s claim (‘Phrygia Outside the Polis’, 112) that ‘Deities already versatile had powers reinforced by association, Mên and Demeter a potent combination’; only at Antioch by Pisidia do Men and Demeter combine (see n. 121 above). Only occasionally does Angdisis have company in the dedications from the Highlands: see Haspels, Phrygia, 199–200. On Leto and Apollo Lairbenos, cf. p. 83. 131.  Cf. page 166. 132.  MAMA XI 99 (decree, remarkably, of ‘Greek and Roman women’), IGR IV 632 (Akmonia [?]), IGR 675 (Prymnessos), 779 and often (Apamea), 818 (Hierapolis); G. Mirbeau, Échos d’ Orient 10 (1907), 77–78 no. 2 (Dorylaion); cf. Thonemann, ‘Anarchist History’, 30–31. Five Romans already held civic office in Apamea in 45/46 CE: IGR 792. IGR IV 713, I. Blaundos 17 is a dedication by the Romans and (foreigners) resident ἐν Νάει (on this place, see Filges, Blaundos, 15–16).

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illustration of the point that the Romans tended to make do with the gods they found (though in this case translating the theonym)133 rather than importing their own. An import from Rome that was highly popular through most of the Greek East was the Kalendae; we know it to have been celebrated by some and perhaps all residents of Hierapolis,134 but we can only guess its appeal in Phrygia to have been much wider. Egyptian gods figure on the coinage of almost thirty Phrygian cities, and Sarapis even symbolizes Hierapolis on homonoia coins of the reign of Valerian (the theatre hosted a colossal statue of the same god), but the only priesthood known is that of Isis held by a Eumeneian who was also priest of six other gods, and no single dedication to an Egyptian god has been found.135 E N D N O T E : A P O L L O S AT H I E R A P O L I S

Apollo Archegetes is the main god of Hierapolis,136 but several further Apollos are important in the city and vicinity. The connection of Apollo Kar(e)ios137 with Hierapolis is established by Apollo of Klaros’ instructions to Hierapolis to honour Apollo Kareios; by two alphabetic oracles of Apollo Kareios displayed in the city; by an unfortunately headless statue of a young standing god in short chiton found in the theatre at Hierapolis and identified by an inscribed base as Apollo Kareios; and by a dedication by Apollophanes to Apollo Karios showing a double axe between ears, found two kilometres east of Güzelpınar, around ten kilometres north-east of Hierapolis. These suggest attributing to Hierapolis also an unprovenanced dedication by Glykonianos to theos Karios, showing a rider with topknot and double axe approaching a goddess; it resembles a broken relief from Hierapolis, and, less clearly, an unprovenanced statuette of a riding Apollo with topknot, dedicated by Neikas to Apollo.138 Ritti suggests that the young god with topknot, double axe and 133.  Note also a dedication Μητρὶ Μάγνῃ (Mater Magna) I. Pessinous 171. 134.  Cf. 135n79, and, on the festival globally, Graf, Roman Festivals, index, s.v. ‘Kalendae Ianuariae’. 135.  See RICIS II 466–68. Contrast RICIS II, 477–80 for evidence from Ancyra, doubtless due to Roman influence. MAMA VI 318 (Akmonia) commemorates Naevianus Philosarapis or son of Philosarapis, but the Roman name Naevianus suggests the family was not of Phrygian origin. But Tripolis ad Maeandrum remarkably depicts ‘Sarapis Zeus’ (inscription) on its coins: RPC IX 796–77. 136.  Ritti, Storia e istituzioni di Hierapolis, 110–11. He is also honoured at Çavdarlı, Fonds Louis Robert 051_036. 137.  The epithet Kareios is scanned triple long in Steinepigramme 02/12/01 line 16 but short long long in the lot oracles (next note). 138.  Apollo of Klaros: Steinepigramme 02/12/01 line 16. Alphabetic oracles: Ritti, Fonti, 129–37. Headless statue: ibid. 129–30, SEG XXXV 1385; Ritti, Epigraphic guide, 172 no. 40; G. Bejor, Hierapolis, Scavi e richerche III: Le Statue (Rome, 1991), 8 no. 3. Apollophanes’ dedication: SEG XLVII 1734; I. Mus. Denizli 41; Ritti, Epigraphic guide, 195 fig. 79; for the findspot, see the map (I. Mus. Denizli, viii), just north-east of 8 = Hierapolis. Glykonianos’ dedication: SEG XXVIII 1569, XXXIV 1647 (EpigAnat 28 [1997], fig. 15.2); Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, 174–75 no. 312. Broken relief: EpigAnat (1997), fig. 15.1.

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grape-cluster on the fifth frontoncino of the Severan theatre at Hierapolis might be Apollo Kareios.139 The relief from east of Güzelpınar attests a mountain sanctuary of the god which has now yielded further inscriptions, several of them honouring local officials; one mentions a ‘hecatomb’ offered to (unexpectedly) Apollo Archegetes, one was set up under supervision of ‘the Molmeizeis’ (a phratry?).140 On the relation of Apollo Kareios to Hierapolis, see further appendix A, s.v. ‘Hierapolis’. An Apollo in long chiton and mantle, holding a lyre, often appears on Hierapolitan coins and is one of the types that represent the city on alliance coins.141 Head designates him ‘Apollo Kitharoedos (Archegetes)’, and the identification as Archegetes may be justified by a (non-radiate) bust of Apollo with juxtaposed lyre which bears the inscription Archegetes (RPC 3:2351–52). A standing Apollo with lyre sometimes appears on the reverse of a coin the obverse of which shows a radiate bust inscribed Lairbenos (e.g. RPC 5, 2:9992 temp., 6:5467 temp.). That juxtaposition might suggest a deliberate contrast between Apollo under two guises. On the other hand there is no difference between such a radiate Lairbenos and an equally radiate inscribed Archegetes (RPC 3:2358G obverse); a consistent iconographic distinction proves elusive. The hecatomb offered to Archegetes in the sanctuary of Kareios was mentioned above. A bipennis often appears on Hierapolitan coins, whether alone, carried by a standing or, very frequently, a riding god.142 On stone monuments the bipennis is associated with both Lairbenos143 and Kareios (above), who can both also be shown riding, whereas in surviving monuments Archegetes neither rides nor holds the bipennis. A bust of Lairbenos on coins, identified by inscription, is radiate,144 whereas the rider is not. It may follow that the rider- god of the coins is Kar(e)ios. And in fact a coin of the city from the reign of Philip I shows a standing figure in a quadriga, holding a bipennis in his left hand, identified by inscription as Karios.145

Neikas’ dedication: SEG XLV 1753 (EpigAnat [1997], fig. 16). A. Ceylan and T. Ritti (EpigAnat 28 [1997], 63) on stylistic grounds dissociate two further unprovenanced rider reliefs (SEG XXVIII 1570–71; Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, 172–73, nos. 306–7) and express doubt about two reliefs with double axes found near Apollo’s sanctuary in Hierapolis (Ritti, Fonti, 136). 139.  Ritti, Fonti, 135; for the frontoncino, see ibid., fig. 24b. 140.  SEG LXII 1182, 1188–94, 1196–97; hecatomb: no. 1191. 141.  RPC I 2931, 2933 etc.; alliance III 2356; IV 2 2678 (temp.). 142.  Alone: e.g. RPC I 2930, 2958; standing: e.g. RPC I 2956, 2956A, III 2358G; riding e.g. RPC I 2957, 2970; also on obverse I 2973A. 143.  Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, 169 nos. 298 and 299. 144.  RPC IV 2 9991–93. A. Ceylan and T. Ritti (EpigAnat 28 [1997], 62) leave it undecided whether the rider is Lairbenos or Kareios, and raise the possibility that ‘we should distribute the representations between the two gods’. 145.  RPC VIII unassigned ID 20712, where it is wrongly identified as Zeus Karios; apparently missed by Ritti in Hierapolis V 728.

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4

Phrygian polytheism II Differentiated powers?

The gods studied in the previous section have different names, and, a few ambiguities aside, different iconographies. No one will confuse Apollo, a young and often mounted figure, with either stately Zeus or Men in his Phrygian cap and the crescent moons on his shoulders. But do they and other gods differ in what they offer their worshippers, in powers? We can approach the problem through a characteristic feature of dedications from some parts of Anatolia, Phrygia in particular: the intended beneficiary, or the benefit sought when a vow was made, is often indicated by the preposition hyper, ‘for the sake of ’, less often peri, ‘concerning’: to X (a deity) hyper Y (persons or things the deity is asked to protect or benefit). So, for instance, Apollo son of Epinikos hyper his oxen to Zeus Bronton a vow (εὐχήν). (MAMA V 152) Meiros son of Tata hyper his son Tata (makes/pays) a vow to Apollo, on instructions. (MAMA 1:9) The people of the Malkaitenoi hyper the well-being (soteria) of their cattle a vow to god Papias. (MAMA 7:303) The Masikenoi hyper their crops and all their own people/ property (τῶν ἰδίων πάντων) to Thundering Zeus a vow. (MAMA 5:126) Iason son of Zeuxis peri his own cattle and the village to gods Zeus, Herakles, Papias a vow. (MAMA 5:182) Andreas of Kotiaion, blacksmith, to Zeus Thallos a vow peri his shoulder. (SEG 33:1155) Thus, after hyper/peri, we find ‘(his/her) crops/children/named individuals/cattle/ property/ safety of self and family/ village/ (rarely) a body part’. We might call these 66

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hyper dedications.1 The hyper clause makes them much more revealing than the ordinary votive, where we can only guess at the particular benefit or concern that motivated it. But, before exploiting that advantage, we should ask when these votives were made. In the examples given above, which are typical, the word ‘vow’ occurs in the accusative (εὐχήν), the verb governing it to be understood. According to the logic of vows as we normally understand it, the physical dedication honouring the god should represent the discharge of an earlier oral, conditional vow: ‘if you grant me such and such, then I will dedicate . . . ’ once the benefit requested has been received. One spends money on the dedication in gratitude, not in hope. The verb to be understood would therefore be ‘discharged’. The formulation of the benefit, however, is often so general that it is hard to see how it could ever count as having been definitively granted: if one prays for ‘the health and safety of all one’s own’ without a time limit, when can one ever know that the request has been fulfilled? In such a case it might seem better to see the dedication as prospective, an offering made in hope. But that would require us to imagine the Phrygian ‘vow’ working according to a logic all of its own. It is easier to suppose that a time limitation in the original oral undertaking (‘keep us safe for a year’) was omitted as unnecessary when the offering was brought. A tiny minority of texts which speak of the offering being brought ‘in gratitude’ or ‘discharging’ a vow support the normal understanding of the process.2 I revert to the concerns which the vows reveal. They are made hyper: a. People: the dedicator him/herself; a named individual(s); unnamed relatives (children, above all); the dedicator’s masters; the whole village (demos, katoikia); a society; the emperor; or a combination of some of these.3 The formula is very often expanded from ‘hyper X’ to ‘hyper the soteria’ (safety/ well-being) of x. The problem of determining whether such vows were precautionary or were responses to actual illness will be discussed below; probably some were one thing, some the other. b. The crops, ripening of crops (καρποί, καρπῶν τελεσφορία); abundance (εὐθηνία, πολυθηνία). c. Livestock: usually oxen, occasionally4 more generally domestic animals (θρέμματα) or quadrupeds (τετράποδα). Here, too, ‘the soteria of ’ can be added. 1.  The standard form underlies a version in metre, Steinepigramme 16/34/02. On different senses of the preposition in dedications, see Jim, ‘Problem of Hyper’. 2.  MAMA IX 69 and (if a plausible supplement is correct) 55; cf. MAMA VI 399 (Steinepigramme 16/41/06). Punishment for failure to discharge a vow is common in the confession inscriptions (Petzl, Beichtinschriften,. 45, 62, 65 etc.), though only in one of that minority which come from Phrygia (Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. no. 152). 3.  For two very elaborate cases, see SEG XL 1232–33. 4.  E.g. Haspels, Highlands, no. 135; SEG LXIV 1346. In Phrygian Votive Steles, no. 609, unusually, dogs are added.

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d. (Less commonly): property (ὑπάρχοντα). An accompanying relief may indicate particular objects of concern (most commonly oxen5). A common formula hyper ‘all my own’ (ὑπὲρ τῶν ἰδίων πάντων) is ambiguous, perhaps intentionally, between ‘all my own household’ and ‘all my own property’(grammatically either is possible);6 so it is unclear whether the many instances belong here or in a. But perhaps the extreme Phrygian commitment to the extended family group (‘all my people’, πᾶσι τοῖς ἐμοῖς, as one funerary stele puts it) 7 makes the personal view more likely. These categories are often combined in a single dedication. A complete list of hyper dedications would contain hundreds of items, very possibly over a thousand. a. is the largest class, but there are scores of examples of b. and c. too. They are addressed to a wide variety of gods.8 A difficult question is whether healing should be introduced as a separate function. Zeus, we have seen, was a healer at some sites and under some titles though not necessarily everywhere. The easy proof lies in the body part votives dedicated to him. No other Phrygian deity except Mother Leto, once, demonstrably receives body part votives (there is also a doubtful case for Artemis),9 and it might seem, therefore, that he has almost a monopoly. But for several reasons that conclusion may be too simple. Asclepius had a place in Phrygia and was undoubtedly believed to heal (what else could he do?), even in default of the particular proof furnished by this type of votive, or any evidence for incubation in his Phrygian cult. Two deities popular in Phrygia, Men and Hosios Dikaios,10 receive body part votives in Lydia, and have not necessarily lost their healing powers as they cross the border. 5.  Chiai (Phrygien und seine Götter, 264n812), citing Phrygian Votive Steles nos. 389, 391, 392. 6.  In Steinepigramme 16/34/02 it is rendered ‘alle Ihrigen (und alles Ihrige)’. 7.  A stele (unpublished?) in Afyon museum, J. Masseglia in Roman Phrygia, 111 fig. 5.8. 8.  In alphabetic order: Apollo, Asclepius, Dionysus, Hekate, Helios and Dikai, Herakles Aniketos, Hosios Dikaios (and blessed mother Hosia Dikaia), Hypsistos, Men (with 3 epithets), Mother (in about 10 guises), Mother Leto, Poseidon Sangarios, Sozon, Theos pantodynastes, Zeus (with almost 30 epithets), and some composites: Helios Apollo Lairbenos, Papias Zeus Soter, Zeus Dionysus, Zeus Herakles, Zeus Herakles Papias, Zeus Saouadios. I do not think the precise statistical analysis that detailed tabulation would allow would be reliable, when the chance discovery of a single minor sanctuary can yield so much new material. 9.  Olba 9 (2004), 139–40 (SEG LIV 1288, Dokimeion): a pair of eyes are shown, but the text speaks just of a euche. Leto: MAMA XI 70; perhaps the thank-offering from Apollo Lairbenos’ shrine to Leto for ‘making possible the impossible’ and mentioning a medical problem (Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 122; Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, D 18) is comparable. 10.  Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 8 (though the text speaks vaguely of a euche for a son); note also the references to sight in ibid., 16 and 15 (?), and the thank-offering ‘for my partner’ in Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios: Newly Published’, no. 4. Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 3, ‘for their children διὰ τὴν περίπνυαν’ (apparently a disease) might be precautionary.

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More serious are two further considerations. Is it useful or possible to distinguish a god who simply heals from a god who sends disease when offended but removes it when propitiated? If not, the gods honoured with confession inscriptions must also count as healers; and in fact not a few such inscriptions display body parts.11 The difficulty is illustrated by two votives dedicated to Zeus Orkamaneites. Both show legs, but one simply discharges a vow while the other admits a fault.12 So the Zeus who punishes when offended but can also heal is the same Zeus as the one who (as it may seem) simply heals. By this reckoning, Apollo Lairbenos, the great recipient of confession inscriptions in Phrygia, will also become a healer (even though no body part votive given to him is known). Healing was also dispensed in the Ploutonion at Hierapolis, if we accept that the benefit offered by the extraordinary cult practised there was healing by incubation.13 A second complication is this. As we have seen, innumerable votives are addressed to a wide variety of gods ‘on behalf of ’ or ‘concerning’ the dedicator him/herself, or a person or persons identified by relationship to the dedicator or by name, often expanded to ‘the safety/well-being’ (soteria) of the person or persons. In itself the formula does not show whether the vow originated as a prophylaxis (or prayer for general well-being and prosperity) or whether the person(s) interceded for was/were already suffering. In some cases the prophylactic interpretation is clearly preferable: ‘for my children’ (or ‘cattle’), unlikely all to be ill at once, or ‘for the village’, or ‘for my property’, a thing not subject to disease. (As noted above, the very common formula ‘for all mine’ is grammatically ambiguous between ‘all my people’ and ‘all my things’.) But votives made ‘for the safety of X’ or just ‘for X’ are occasionally accompanied by a depiction of a body part, and show that these formulae could refer to actual healing. And many votives showing body parts say no more by way of text (if they say anything at all—many do not) than ‘vow to X’.14 If we allow that vows made ‘for (the safety of) X’, and even plain ‘vows’, may have related to health even where no body part is depicted, it becomes

11.  See F. van Straten’s list in H. S. Versnel, Faith, Hope and Worship, 135 (foot of page), and now J. Potts in J. Draycott and E.-J. Graham (eds.), Bodies of Evidence. Ancient Anatomical Votives (London, 2017), 20–44; the one Phrygian example is MAMA IV 283. 12.  SEG XXXIII 1118–19 (cf. 43n32). 13.  So D’ Andria, ‘Ploutonion’, 123–24. 14.  For the safety (of X)’: SEG XLIII 936, to Zeus Abozenos; Phrygian Votive Steles, 38a. ‘For X’: Phrygian Votive Steles, 31, 44. ‘Vow to X’: many examples among Phrygian Votive Steles, 11–69. A few are more explicit: ‘hyper his/her own body’ or hyper/peri a named body part: Phrygian Votive Steles, 601 (cf. 340); T. S. F. Jim, ‘The Problem of Hyper’, GRBS 54 (2014), 617–38, at 619n8. H. Güney, ZPE 216 (2020), 152 no. 4 is to Asclepius Soter ὐπὲρ ἰδίου πνεύματος: probably a breathing problem, though the editor points out that a vaguer ‘for her life’ is possible. The restoration in MAMA XI 316 to give a prayer to Theos Hypsistos ‘for health’ is confessedly very insecure. For Lydian examples of hyper prayers where the further context clearly indicates disease, see e.g. TAM V 1, 252, 457.

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impossible to identify a class of specialised healing deities at all in Phrygia: any god could be approached ‘for safety/well-being’. On the basis of these categories, and points that emerged earlier about particular gods, we can now ask in what ways, if at all, the main Phrygian gods differed one from another in function; that they differed in iconography is not in doubt. To start again from Zeus, he (to treat him as a single god) emerges as something very close to a universal god. He receives prayers in all the classes a.–d. in great numbers (his statistical dominance is enormous), and is a full-blown healer under at least some of his epithets. He is also almost the only recipient of a form of dedication/commemoration virtually unique to the Dorylaion/Nakoleia region of Phrygia (there are just two assured cases for another god, Apollo):15 a tombstone addressed in the dative to him and the dead person. As for possible restrictions to his capabilities, specialities in which he has no or little share, we noted that the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos alone hosts records of individuals made over as ἱεροί to the service of the god, and that Lairbenos is also the main Phrygian recipient of confession inscriptions. The first singularity might suggest that manumission (or its Phrygian variant) was the exclusive province of Apollo. One sanctuary of Zeus, however, not of major importance, had about twenty ἱεροί attached to it, so it seems possible that the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos was distinctive in the way it recorded ‘registrations’, not in the institution itself. It is indeed an anomaly that ‘registration’, on the basis of our evidence, happened at just one shrine; those ‘registering’ there came predominantly from the south-west, and if the institution met a need one wonders how that need was met elsewhere in Phrygia. As for acknowledgement, by confession, that one is being punished by a god for an offence, it occurs, on a much smaller scale in our documentation, at four other Phrygian sanctuaries16 (the two identifiable belonged to Apollo Propylaios and Zeus Orkamaneites). The puzzle is, again, whether and, if so, why, the singular institution is so locally restricted; but the case of Zeus Orkamaneites (to say nothing of the many other gods involved with it in Lydia) shows that Apollo was not the only Phrygian god savage against erring mortals, but willing to be appeased. The relation of Apollo Lykios/Alsenos to wolves, we can concede, is not one shared by Zeus, even if its relevance in lived experience is unclear and can scarcely have been of major importance. It also seems safe to acknowledge to Dionysus a role not shared by Zeus as figurehead of societies of mystai and no doubt of associated festivities. But his role in making the grapes glow purple he has ceded to Zeus.17 15.  Cf. p. 00 n. 00. The Zeus in question is almost always Bronton (MAMA V xxxv n. 1); add now SEG XLIV 1069 (2), Zeus Dagoustes, who is close to Bronton: cf. SEG XLIV 1069 (3). 16.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 2, 102–4; SEG XLVII 1751. 17.  Lykios/Alsenos: page 48 above. Dionysus: page 52.

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Such are the very few possible gaps in Zeus’ roster of competences. Are other gods equally omnicompetent, or nearly? All the gods addressed in hyper dedications receive many in class a. Potentially more revealing are classes b. and c. (d. is unhelpful because of the ambiguity mentioned above—whether it refers to property, a separate function, or is just a different formulation of a.) Gods other than Zeus who are approached for crops are Sozon (once, from just three hyper dedications made to him), Hosios Dikaios (once, out of more than twenty, combined with a prayer for the village and the dedicators themselves) and Mother (once).18 The range of agricultural gods will be extended if we allow that an agricultural symbol (corn ears, grapes) on a monument points to a specific competence of the god concerned: so, for instance, with corn ears on dedications to Theos Hypsistos.19 Gods other than Zeus approached for livestock are Mother (thrice), Papias (thrice, sometimes linked with Zeus and Herakles), Hypsistos and, unexpectedly, Poseidon Sangarios.20 Some negatives perhaps emerge. The fifteen or so hyper dedications in which Apollo is sole or joint honorand all fall into class a., as do the eleven of Men.21 In his sanctuary at Çavdarlı statues of small boys whom he was apparently asked to protect (or thanked for having protected) were dedicated to Apollo.22 It may seem, then, that (in Phrygia) Apollo and Men care only for humans, not crops or cattle. That would be an important conclusion, because it would refute the belief that any Phrygian god can do anything. But it is less than secure, because the total number of hyper dedications in which they are involved is so limited. And some of the positives do not fit neatly into broad general assumptions about the power of 18.  Sozon: MAMA I 8 (where he is called panepēkoos); the other hyper dedications are SEG XXVI 1357; I. Mus. Konya 16. Hosios Dikaios: Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 37. Mother: Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, no. 40 (Schepelern, Montanismus, 113–14, brings together rather miscellaneous texts to establish an agricultural role for Mother which is not in fact strongly emphasised in Phrygia.) 19.  See the instances cited by Drew-Bear and Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, 2036–37 and e.g. MAMA X 261. Grapes are a pervasive symbol, e.g. in MAMA V 7 (Meter), 10 and 148 (Hosios [and Dikaios]), 74 with note and 134 (Zeus Bronton), MAMA VI 241 (Phoibos and the Soteira [Hekate (?)]). 20.  Mother: Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, nos. 48 (‘for men and beasts’, to Mother Tetraprosopos), ibid., 178 (MAMA V 213, by a village); Haspels, Highlands, 335 no. 99. Papias: Once alone (MAMA VII 303), once, with Herakles Aniketos, as Papias Zeus Soter (Drew-Bear and Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, 2018), once with Herakles and Zeus (MAMA V 182). Hypsistos: MAMA V 212. Poseidon: SEG XXXII 1273. Note also SEG LVII 1330, theoi epēkooi. 21.  Outside Phrygia, Lane, CMRDM no. 37, from Lydia, is for a donkey. In Steinepigramme 16/31/01 Apollo claims responsibility for crops. But this is Clarian Apollo speaking to a community in the Upper Tembris valley, not necessarily a locally accepted view. Note, however, Lochman, Studien, 302 no. III 102, abb. 120 (SEG LIII 1472), what seems to be Apollo holding a dangling string of fruits (but illustrating a dedication to Zeus Alsenos!). 22.  Fonds Louis Robert 051_020 (= 025), where a reference to a son’s soteria is legible; ibid., 051_027 is similar but the inscription illegible. 051_041, a fine marble vessel, is also for a son’s soteria; note too 051_012 middle as read by Carbon.

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particular gods: what have Sozon and Hosios Dikaios to do with crops, or Mother and Poseidon Sangarios with livestock? These cases lend some support to the view that, for Anatolian peasants, any god could do anything, even if not every function is attested in every case. One negative does, however, emerge with some clarity. Not one of the five greatest goddesses of mainland Greece receives a hyper dedication—not Artemis, not Athena, not Demeter, not Aphrodite, not Hera. Another negative, linked to the one just mentioned, is very striking. One of the factors shaping Greek polytheism is a connection between particular gods and particular segments of society: its most obvious expression is the category, known to the Greeks themselves, of ‘women’s gods’. No such gender-related specialisation is visible in Phrygia. Mother has no special attraction for women, nor do Zeus and Men repel them. Nor is Mother especially a patroness of children, despite the little figures sometimes shown with her on reliefs, cult servants rather than suppliants.23 One can contrast here the sanctuary of Mother Phileis at Philadelphia in nearby Lydia,24 where female dedicants are twice as common as male despite the predominance of males among dedicators in most other contexts. On present evidence, Phrygian women had no specialised divine helpers in all the dangerous and life-changing experiences through which women were guided by particular goddesses in Greece; Eileithyia is unknown. More generally, the relation so familiar in Greece between gods and key life experiences of both sexes is absent or invisible. A rare Hellenistic text from Apamea speaks of ‘ephebes and boys performing Hermaia and Herakleia’ in that city, a typical expression of socialisation of the young through ritual in the Greek manner. Ephebes, groups of ‘young men’, and gymnasia are still found in (at least) some cities in the imperial period, but no trace of the characteristic age-related rites remains even in the cities, still less in the countryside. Possibly some of the associations that existed in villages (phratries, hetaireiai, mystai) were restricted to specific age groups of men,25 but on the female side we cannot even venture such a guess. From Antioch by Pisidia comes a list of at least sixteen women identified not just by a father’s name but often by a grandfather’s and even once by a great-grandfather’s: young women, it is inferred, who were 23.  See Kelp, Grabdenkmal, Taf. 59. 1–3; on page 205 she characterises them as paredroi. 24.  TAM V III 1557–1618. By contrast, among dedications to Meter (as sole recipient) in the Phrygia section of Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, I count nine by men (plus thirteen to Angdisis), five by women. 25.  Apamea: MAMA VI 173. Ephebes: MAMA IV 154 (Apollonia Mordiaion); MAMA V 205 (priest and leader of the ephebes, Nakoleia); MAMA VI 261, 165 (Akmonia); IGR IV 790 (Apamea). Neoi: MAMA V 205 (Nakoleia); MAMA IX 179 P 38 (Aizanoi); I. Hierapolis Judeich 32, 117 (they have a synedrion); IGR IV 657 (Acmonia: neoi and hymnodoi); IGR IV 709 (Synnada: neoi philosebastoi); SEG XXXI 1106 (unknown). IstMitt 25 (1975), 351 no. 1 (Aizanoi, 49/48 BCE) provides for funeral escort by both ephebes and neoi. Associations: note especially the Ταναιτηνῶν νεανία(ι) who worship Zeus Dionysus: above 52n76.

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active in some cult.26 A tantalising hint of what in general we miss: not just functional differentiation between different gods, but also the role of gods in giving shape to individual lives, and to society as a whole. Alongside these negatives, one positive emerges: the apparently unlimited power of Zeus. But that constatation brings back the question raised earlier: what need is there of many gods, if one can do everything? Apollo, for instance, looks quite different from his father, but has no demonstrable power distinct from Zeus’. Joint dedications to Zeus and Apollo, the senior god always named first, do in fact occur.27 Some gods may have had fewer powers than Zeus, but almost none could demonstrably do anything Zeus could not (though to Dionysus we allowed a special niche). Geography may provide a partial explanation. In regard to Zeus and Apollo, for instance, the Zeuses Bennios and Bronton dominate the northern countryside, and the god has a great temple in Aezani, while to the south Apollonia, Eumeneia, Motella and Hierapolis all have Apollo as their chief god, while other Apollos cluster confusingly in the region of the latter, Lairbenos chief among them. But the distinction is not absolute, both gods having left many traces in the other segment of the country.28 The cults of other gods have ‘hot spots’, regions of especial frequency: Mother (often as Angdisis) in the highlands of the north, Hosios Dikaios in a somewhat larger region of the north-west. And many local particularities, presences or absences, can be seen: the absence of confession inscriptions east of Apamea, for instance, or the apparent restriction of ‘consecrations’ to the shrine of Apollo Lairbenos near Motella, or the ‘honourings’ by Hekate Soteira of the Tembris valley. Despite these local variations, however, everything suggests that every Phrygian villager had a choice of gods close to hand. From the village of the Sereanoi at Kuyucak, for instance, come dedications to Zeus Bronton (eight times, twice associated with a mortal, once with a Bennos); Zeus Bronton and Apollo; Zeus, Herakles and Papias; Zeus Ktesios; Zeus Basilikos; Men Ouranios and Apollo; Hosios and Dikaios (three times), Hosios and Dikaios, Hosia and Apollo; theos Hypsistos; Meter Kallippou.29 To some extent, we can explain redundancy in terms of a new Hellenic layer being superimposed on a (hypothetical) indigenous substratum. Most obviously, 26.  I. Antioche Pisidie Ramsay 27 (SEG LVI 1693). Perhaps the cult of Artemis of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi (Barr. 62 F 5), suggests Bru (Phrygie Parorée, 154). 27.  MAMA V 173, 181; SEG XXVIII 1175 (all from Phrygia Epiktetos). SEG LIII 1472 is a dedication to Zeus Alsenos which shows Apollo! 28.  For Apollo in the Dorylaion/Nakoleia region, see the index to MAMA V 193; SEG XXVIII 1173–75, 1179; SEG XLIV 1034–35; XLIX 1839; in the Aezanitis, MAMA IX 60, SEG LVI 1441. 29.  See MAMA V 175–86, and pp. 149–52 nos. R.6—R.13 (R. 7 is now SEG XXVIII 1174); SEG XXVIII 1183. The editors of MAMA V, p. xxv, admittedly identify Serea as a place where ‘the variety of worship is particularly rich’, but ‘particularly well-documented’ would be equally plausible.

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we can imagine the much-vaunted Panhellenic healer Asclepius being introduced to the cities and moving out into the countryside; his relation to older healers, Zeus above all, would be comparable, mutandis very much mutatis, to the relation of Western to traditional medicine in many African societies.30 The fleeting appearances of Athena and Aphrodite in cities can similarly be ascribed to members of an elite with Hellenic aspirations; the dedication by the grand M. Ulpius Appuleius Eurycles to a string of Greek gods otherwise unknown at Aizanoi is a very revealing document.31 But there remains a hard core of frequently attested gods with overlapping functions: Zeus, Mother, Men, Apollo, Hosios Dikaios, theos Hypsistos (if accepted as a separate figure) and (somewhat less common) Hecate. We might then try to section off Hosios Dikaios and Theos Hypsistos as expressions of newly emerging religious tendencies, though that argument is not without its difficulties. But that still leaves Zeus, Mother, Men, Apollo and some lesser figures. So far the sources can take us. What factors created this plurality of gods without specialised functions, what dictated the choices made among them by individual worshippers, I see no way of determining. We cannot reach that micro-historical level. One potential point of difference between gods, quite separate from function, has, however, been neglected thus far: that of ritual. How one experienced the god in ritual must have shaped attitudes and expectations. But no rich menu of choices is presented to our gaze—whether because there was no such menu, or because our sources have no reason to reveal it, is not clear. Of a festival calendar tracking the changing seasons in religious terms, something familiar from almost any religious system one can think of, there is no trace. Almost the only festivals we can give names to, athletic and imperial festivals in the cities aside, are, bizarrely, the Jewish Passover, Christian or Jewish Pentecost, and the Roman Kalends, mentioned as occasions for distributions in a funerary foundation from Hierapolis.32 They are surely unlikely to have been very important in the countryside. Beyond them, there is just a festival of Eudaimosyne, Happiness, Well-being, attested in Acmonia and Orkistos; we hear of it from one funerary and one charitable foundation, as an occasion, respectively, for feasting and ritual in commemoration of a dead donor, and of food distributions to the populace.33 Rituals for Men differed, we know, from those for other gods in the importance given to the offering table, 30.  I note also the dedication of a statue of Asclepius to Apollo at Çavdarlı: SEG XLII 1195.2 (Fonds Louis Robert 051_018 and 050). 31.  See 20n49. 32.  See p. 106. 33.  Praxias foundation (above, 15n29), line 5; W. H. Buckler, ‘A Charitable Foundation of A.D. 237’, JHS 57 (1937), 1–10, A 11–12, 23–24, B 20–21. In the ‘Charitable Foundation’ only -osyne is preserved, whence Graf (Roman Festivals, 33) prefers Euphrosyne; the sense changes little, and the Praxias foundation supports Eudaimosyne.

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and in his preferred sacrificial victim the cock; he could also be a recipient of the mysterious ritual of τεκμορεύειν.34 This last was evidently a powerful ritual experience, one that bound families together and deserved commemoration by an inscription; but we do not know that it was specific to Men, being attested for him at one site only, and for Artemis at another. At Antioch by Pisidia he hosted a certamen gymnicum and agones,35 but that merely shows how at a major site a god could not escape the pressure to provide games. The best evocation of a non-urban festival comes from the elaborate pictorial stele from Thiounta mentioned earlier; it attests pannychides involving feasting (cattle are shown), music (musicians and instruments are shown) and competitions (oil is mentioned) which took place, remarkably, over eight days. No doubt, ‘wine-drinkings’ (οἰνοπόσια) and ‘mixing bowl’ rites (κρατῆρες) were also common.36 But there was usually no reason for these village festivities to be recorded, and they largely elude us. A particular puzzle concerns the rites of Mother. An image of dancers swirling in honour of Mother to the sound of flute and cymbal and kettle-drum is familiar from Greco-Roman literature; so, too, is that of the maddened Gallos sacrificing his manhood to the goddess. Asia Minor is indeed, in the Greco-Roman perception, the heartland, the fons et origo, of ecstatic religion. Two authors of the Augustan period speak of excited rites or initiations being performed for Mother ‘in all Phrygia’. Plutarch writes that ‘the Phrygians’ believe that ‘the god’ (Attis?) sleeps in winter and awakes in summer, and that they perform bacchic rites of ‘putting to sleep’ and ‘waking up’.37 But such rites have left remarkably little trace in actual Anatolian documents, and ‘the tympanon, the most common instrument of the Graeco-Roman Kybele, does not appear in Phrygian representations of the goddess’.38 (Auto)-castration, both secular and religious, has a long tradition in Anatolia, and Galloi and Archigalloi are quite widely attested (mostly from their

34.  Table: B. Levick, ‘The Table of Mên’, JHS 91 (1971), 81–84, on what is now SEG LVII 1398. A τραπεζοπλησία for an unnamed non-Greek goddess is now attested in the lex sacra from Marmarini, CGRN 225 B 44–48: cf. Kernos 29 (2016), 247–49, and, for cocks, ibid., 225. τεκμορεύειν: page 20. 35.  Lane, CMRDM, 164–74 and esp. 178. 36.  Cf. BE 1970 no. 511, p. 438, though the many οἰνοπόσια from the upper Maeander there mentioned elude me; I know the word in Phrygia only in MAMA IV 265. 9. Thiounta: see page 10. From Ahmetler village on the border with Bithynia see I. Mus. Iznik 1503, which attests a village βουθυσία. On village festivals in general, see Schuler, Ländliche Siedlungen, 267–72. 37.  ὀργιάζουσι, Strabo 10.3.12, 469; ὄργια καὶ τελεταί, Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1.61.4 (cf. 2.19.5, Phrygian excesses absent from Roman cult of Mother); Plut. Is.Os. 69, 378E. 38.  Roller, God the Mother, 110; an exception should be made for coins (Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 204); and note the tympanon and (probably) rattle depicted on the grave of an archigallos: Waelkens, Türsteine, 753 (I. Pessinous 64.) For her little human paredroi, cf. n. 23 above. Cf. now Y. Ustinova, ‘Imaginary Phrygians: Cognitive Consonance and the Assumed Phrygian Origins of Greek Ecstatic Cults and Music’, JHS 141 (2021), 54–73.

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tombstones);39 but the evidence for them in Phrygia is limited, and we know nothing of a great festival comparable to that of Atargatis at Syrian Hierapolis, or of Cybele in the Roman West,40 at which potential Galloi were induced to strike the fatal blow. As for Attis, mythical prototype of the Gallos, though he had already received a dedication, with Agdistis, in the Piraeus in the fourth century BCE, he is never visible as a god in Phrygia; rather, Attis is the title of the chief priest of Mother at Pessinous, and may have been used more generally as a priestly title in her cult.41 At Pessinous, we hear of a ritual of mourning for ‘Attis’: it originated, it has been suggested, in mourning for human Atteis, the chief priests (as we have just seen) of the goddess and the symbolic heirs to the long-vanished Phrygian monarchy; it only secondarily passed to the young lover of Mother.42 How to judge the evidence from Pessinous is delicate. Phrygian by origin, Pessinous had been Galato-Phrygian since the mid-third century BCE, and in the late first century CE the goddess was served by a mixed board of five Phrygian and five Galatian priests (all called Attis); Roman influence in the city was also strong. One might argue 39.  Literary sources tell how in 190 BCE Galloi (Polyb. 21.6.7, Livy 37.9.9) had urged Roman generals to spare Sestos and in 189 (this time identified as ‘from Pessinous’, Polyb. 21.37.4–7; Livy 38.18.9– 10) prophesied victory for them. For epigraphy, see Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae I, 331, index of religious grades. For Phrygian galloi/archigalloi, see MAMA I 2; I. Pessinous 64; I. North Galatia 206, with references. On castration in Anatolia see Bremmer, Greek religion and culture, 289–90. 40.  Cf. J. L. Lightfoot, Lucian, On the Syrian Goddess (Oxford, 2003), 60–62, 500 (noting the lack of a Phrygian parallel); Bremmer (previous note) suggests the festival at Pessinous. Mitchell (AnatSt. 32 [1982], 107) cites the procession in the Life of Theodotus of Ancyra, 14, to wash the statues of Athena and Artemis in a lake and argues that ‘the events correspond precisely with accounts of the last day of the great spring festival of Cybele and Attis, known as the lavatio’. If accepted despite the different deities concerned, the parallel only attests the festival for Ancyra. 41.  L. E. Roller, ‘Attis on Greek Votive Monuments; Greek God or Phrygian?’ Hesperia 63 (1994), 245–62, at 246: ‘No god Attis appears on any Phrygian monument’ (on Attis as title ibid., 254–55). Cf. Roller, God the Mother, 243n17; Borgeaud, Mère des Dieux, 59–60. The subsequent identification of MAMA XI 12 as ‘a votive bomos to Attis’ is accompanied in MAMA XI by (?). But I. Pessinous 21 (imperial) is a dedication to him. Piraeus: IG II 4, 2 1337. As examples of monuments showing Attis in Phrygia Lochmann (Grab- und Votivreliefs, 212–16) adduces Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, nos. 93, 103, 140 (this last = Waelkens, Türsteine, 228) and tombstones depicting the so-called ‘Attis funéraire’: this does not (pace his observation on page 197) prove cult. MAMA VI 369 is very questionably seen by the editors as showing ‘Cybele in dalliance with Attis on a couch’. Aetiologically, the colour of the marble of Synnada was explained from the blood of Attis: see Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure, 228–36. Attis has recently appeared as a divine power with Mother in curse tablets from the Latin West (R. Gordon, in A. Mastrocinque and C. G. Scribona [eds.], Demeter, Isis, Vesta and Cybele: Studies . . . Gasparro [Stuttgart, 2012], 195–212): this is not conclusive for Phrygia. 42.  Roller (God the Mother, 250–52), citing sources for the mourning, which Arrian in a corrupt passage (Tactica 33.4) appears to see as deriving from Pessinous (for rites at Pessinous, see also Diod. Sic. 3.59. 8); Roller is not followed by Bremmer (Greek religion and culture, 288). S. Berndt-Ersöz (‘The Anatolian Origin of Attis’, in M. Hutter and S. Hutter-Braunsar [eds.], Pluralismus und Wandel [Münster, 2006], 9–40) is very speculative, but stresses the lack of early evidence from Anatolia.

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that the rites of Mother reveal the Phrygian element in the Galato-Phrygian compound (for Mother belongs to Phrygia more than to Gaul), but it is strange if so that the Phrygian element should be so much stronger in Galatian Phrygia than in Phrygia uncompounded.43 There was nothing orgiastic about metroac rites in Phrygia, it has been concluded.44 Yet there were Galloi in Phrygia. Strabo records that the vapours of the Ploutonion at Phrygian Hierapolis were deadly to all but castrated (ἀπόκοποι) Galloi, and two centuries later an honorary decree of the same city honours an Archigallos for his role in setting up a statue. And, crucially, a funerary stele from Kotiaion now in the Getty appears to show a Gallos holding the knuckle-bone studded whip known from literary sources as an instrument for self-chastisement used by Galloi.45 So these wilder forms of orgiastic cult were not unknown in Phrygia; and the suggestion that what made Galloi acceptable to the sober Phrygians was their selfimposed chastity46 may lose its appeal, if they were, after all, involved in such unrestrained rites. It does not follow, nor is it likely, that in every village where Mother was worshipped there, too, Galloi performed their wild dances; to that extent the quieter vision of the Phrygian mother is justified. There remains the problem of distinguishing the gods. The rationale of the Greek pantheon whereby, ideally at least, each god had its own delimited and distinct sphere or mode of action does not apply; the sprawling competence of Zeus refutes it. The countermodel one sometimes finds proposed—any god can do anything—is not demonstrably correct (though most gods are multi-competent, only Zeus is clearly omnicompetent), and anyway leaves the psychology of the worshipper a mystery: what need for a plurality of gods, or rather (for the question 43.  But the theory that derives Galli from the Latin for Gauls is contested by Bremmer (Greek Religion and Culture, 285–86). Mixed board: I. Pessinous 17–18 (OGIS 540–41); cf. Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 48–49. An archigallos at Pessinous: Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 753 = I. Pessinous 64; near Ancyra, I. North Galatia 206. 44.  Drew-Bear and Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, 1945. They speak in fact of ‘local mothers’, in opposition to Cybele, but, since the point of their argument is to deny that Dionysus was kept out of Phrygia because there were orgiastic cults there already, they are committed to a blanket denial of such rites in the region. 45.  See M. Cremer’s brilliant short study, ‘Die Hand des Gallos’, EpAnat 8 (1986), 103–6; Cremer also publishes a funerary stele showing a be-ringed hand, denoting a Gallos, from the same region. The whip: Apul. Met. 8.28.2; Anth. Pal. 6. 234.4 (Erucius X, Gow-Page, GP); clearly shown JHS 80 (1960), pl. 8. 1. The tomb of, inter alios, an archigallos at Pessinous (above, n. 43), shows a tympanon and castanets. Strabo: 13.4.14, 630; for Cybele at the sanctuary, see the archaic relief of a double-flute player, D. Andria, ‘Ploutonion’, 103. Archigallos: I. Hierapolis Judeich 33; Vermaseren, Corpus Cultus Cybelae, 76. 46.  Roller, God the Mother, 253–54. She takes (194–96) the famously strict regulations for a cult society from Philadelphia (LSAM 20; TAM V III 1539; CGRN 191, on which see now M-P de Hoz, EpigAnat 50 [2017], 93–108) as indicating a link between Mother and high standards of sexual morality; but in my reading, Angdistis’ role in that text is as a guardian of documents, not the society’s main deity.

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‘what need for a plurality?’ betrays a monotheist bias) what dictates the individual’s choice of one god rather than another in a particular case? We cannot drill down to the level of personal choice, to see whether individuals had personal favourites among the options available to them. It was not that village A favoured god X and village B god Y: individual villages, we have seen, might claim the patronage of several gods. Some of the apparent redundancy is owing to the overlaying of imported on indigenous gods—most obviously, the addition of Asclepius to earlier healers. More broadly, the process whereby Greek names and, to some extent, Greek identities were, from the third century BCE onwards, imposed on pre-existent gods must have complicated their profiles. Theos Hypsistos and Hosios Dikaios are, some would argue, latecomers revealing new ethical ideals. But there is little sign that, even if one could peel away all these late or imported layers, what remained would reveal a more easily recognisable pattern. About different rituals in the cults of different gods, and the different emotions aroused by them, we are largely in the dark; even the frenzies associated with Mother in the Greco-Roman imagination prove largely elusive. We are left with local and individual choices and preferences that we can observe but not explain.

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5

Heavenly and imperial gods

A decree from Acmonia praises its honorand for his piety to both ‘the Heavenly [Οὐράνιοι] and the Imperial [Σεβαστοί] gods.’ An oath in the same city is to be sworn by ‘theoi Sebastoi and ancestral [πάτριοι] gods’ and three further named gods. Gods fall therefore into two recognisable, though not incompatible, classes— Heavenly or ancestral, and Imperial.1 Individual dedications in a civic context which combine a named Greek god and a Sebastos or collectivity of Sebastoi are quite frequent; often they come from priests of the Olympian gods concerned.2 The scope of devotion to the imperial gods has now to be considered. Within the civic epigraphic record, the imperial cult is so prominent that one can almost speak of predominance. About as many holders of the post of archiereus or archiereia (in the imperial cult) in the various Phrygian cities can be identified as can priests and priestesses of ‘ancestral gods’;3 and if one then adds in the Phrygians who held like office in the provincial imperial cult, the balance swings down on the imperial side. It was ‘probably the most important cult in the province of

1.  SEG LVI 1490. 6–7; IGR IV 661. 22–23; cf., at Hierapolis, Tiberius Iulius Myndios’ dedication to ‘Zeus Olympios and ancestral gods and emperor Caesar Trajan Hadrian Sebastos and the whole house of the Sebastoi and the people of Hierapolis’ (SEG XLI 1200). 2.  E.g. SEG VI 179, Sebaste, XLV 1708, 1719 (both Aizanoi); MAMA IV 309 (Motella); IGR IV 640 (Acmonia [?]). MAMA IV 292 (Dionysopolis) is a rare dedication by a priest to Augustus (not described as god) not accompanied by an Olympian. 3.  Frija, Prêtres des empereurs, 268–73. No comparable list for priesthoods of ancestral gods exists; my claim is based on my notes. For temples, see Price, Rituals and Power, 264–65.

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Asia’;4 as a focus of loyalty it far overshadowed the cult of the goddess Roma. For its operation in detail in the various cities, we have only fragments of information. A priestess of, probably, Augustus and Livia at Tiberiopolis (?) is praised for a ‘twelve bovine [δωδεκάβοιος]’ sacrifice; Aizanoi held a ‘public festival’ with thanksgiving sacrifices in celebration of a victory of Septimius Severus; an ‘image-bearer’ known from Aizanoi presumably carried statues of emperors or their family in processions;5 the gladiatorial games attested in nine or so cities, and doubtless held in many more, will have been by put on by civic high priests in the imperial cult, this being the vehicle that brought the ugly entertainment to the East;6 and various agonistic festivals were (re)named for emperors (some jointly with Olympians, some exclusively). So much celebration of the splendour of being a high priest, and so little detail about what actually happened! But that just reflects the character of imperial epigraphy. The sheer visibility of the cult in the cities, where images of the emperor assailed the viewer on every side, can scarcely be overestimated. Individuals might pay for such statues, and even make dedications to an emperor.7 Two altars found at the door of a house in Hierapolis ‘for Apollo archegete and the lord [kyrios] emperor’8 might attest a requirement well attested elsewhere, to accompany passing processions in the emperor’s honour by private sacrifice. Below the civic level, evidence for collective involvement in imperial cult, quite abundant in Lydia,9 is absent from Phrygia. Even the locations where statues of emperors are attested tend to be more than ordinary villages. It is unclear whether, on the occasions when Orkistos erected statues of Marcus Aurelius and then Commodus (the latter designated ‘god’), it was formally a village; if a village, it was a village with unusually elaborate institutions, and later under Constantine became (or, on its account, became again, after unjust annexation by Nacolea) a city. 4.  Price, Rituals and Power, 130. But note his stress on pages 164–65 (on temple building) and passim that it did not threaten the cult of the Olympian gods. On Roma, see R. Mellor (ΘΕΑ ΡΩΜΗ, 74–76), who notes the Phrygian evidence to be sparse: IGR III 320 and MAMA IV 142 (Apollonia Mordiaion); IGR IV 741 (Eumenia), 793 (Apamea); OGIS 479 (Dorylaion, linked with the ‘goddess Senate’); MAMA VI 53 (Tripolis). 5.  IGR IV 555. 22–23 (on the provenance of this text, see 47n47 above); IGR IV 566; MAMA IX 131. 6.  Robert, Gladiateurs, 140–59 (add now MAMA XI 3); the responsibility of high priests is explicit at Laodikeia, Hierapolis, and Temenothyrai (I. Laodikeia Lykos 73; Robert, Gladiateurs, no. 117; Ritti, Epigraphic guide, 184–86 no. 45; IGR IV 617; Robert, Gladiateurs no. 127). For the link between gladiators and imperial cult, see Arr. Epict. Diss. 2.24.23; Robert, Gladiateurs, index 352 s.v. ‘Grandsprêtres’; Frija, Prêtres des empereurs, 159–63. Cf. Robert, Gladiateurs, 262: ‘La société grecque a été gangrenée par cette maladie venue de Rome. C’est un des succès de la romanisation du monde grec.’ 7.  MAMA VI 251; IGR IV 868–69 (on 868 cf. BE [1970], no. 584; 869 is due to a tribunus militum); statues: e.g. IGR IV 671, 673; MAMA IV 11, 125. 8.  Ritti, Epigraphic guide, 88 no. 14 with fig. 34; for such regulations, see Price, Rituals and Power, 112n74. 9.  Price, Rituals and Power, 84. But Talloen, Cult in Pisidia, 343 finds little trace in Pisidia.

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Another community on the katoikia/polis borderline, Meiros, honours the wife of Gallienus with a statue. Tymandos was a village when it honoured Antoninus Pius and later Caracalla with statues, but it was a village with pretensions, one that eventually secured city status.10 Sanaos in the south-west was probably a city when a fine for tomb violation was made payable to it for spending on ‘honours to the Emperor’. The ‘demos of the Eulandreis’ which erected a statue of Marcus Aurelius was situated on an imperial estate. But no such special explanation is available for a dedication to the third-century emperor Philip the Arab by a ‘katoikia of the most glorious city of Sebaste’; and with this we pass from statues to one of the few instances of actual cult honour outside cities.11 There are also two dedications to emperors by individuals living in a katoikia, one to Severus Alexander preceded by the god Dionysus, one to Hadrian alone.12 Surprisingly, the priests and priestesses of (Zeus) Orochoreites in the region of Dorylaion club together to make a dedication to Commodus.13 Commoner, but still not common, are hyper dedications by individuals (less often groups) which add something imperial (health, victory of emperors) in the subject line of petitions to gods: so for instance, ‘x vows this to Zeus Megistos for the everlasting survival and victory of the most excellent emperors and for the crops and the safety of the populace’;14 occasionally the petition is made simply for the imperial beneficiary/ies.15 A significant 10.  MAMA IV 235, SEG LIX 1519; city status MAMA IV 236 (ILS 6090); cf. H. Bru et al., ‘La constitution civique de Tymandos’, Anatolia Antiqua 17 (2009), 187–207 (ed. pr. of SEG LIX 1519). 11.  The statues at Orkistos: MAMA VII 304 and MAMA I 416 (IGR IV 550); for its institutions, see the charitable foundation JHS 59 (1937), 1–10; Constantine: MAMA VII 305: see on the issue W. Ruge in RE s.v. ‘Orkistos’, 1092–95. Meiros: Haspels, Highlands, nos. 86–87; cf. BE (1972) no. 461. Sanaos: IGR 872, with Robert, OMS III 1430n24. Eulandreis: IGR IV 679; cf. Strubbe, Imperial Estates, 243–48. Sebaste: IGR IV 635. Note too IGR IV 552, a statue of Trajan set up by the gerousia of the Goloienoi (551 is s statue of Tiberius set up by an individual from there), a community assigned to Mysia in LGPN V.A s.v. ‘Kleandros’ (27), and of doubtful status. Note also JRS 18 (1928), 27 no. 241 as read by Drew-Bear and Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, 1988–90, which gives a dedication hyper Trajan for the bennos (a worshipping group?) of the small polis Soa. MAMA XI 157 is a complicated case, because of the erasures. In its present form it records a statue of Septimius Severus set up by a newly created small polis, Diokleia; before that, if Thonemann’s reconstruction is roughly right, a statue of Commodus set up by the Moxeanoi, a large non-polis rural collectivity. SEG LXII 1205 comes from a village, that of the Motaleis, but the honours were proposed by a councillor of Hierapolis. 12.  MAMA VI 240 (an altar surrounded by columns); IGR IV 624. SEG LXVI 1591 is a dedication to Zeus Bozios and Claudius by a dedicant now lost, from the territory of Hierapolis. 13.  SEG XXXII 1271. 14.  W. M. Calder, JRS 2 (1912), 252 no. 7; cf. IGR IV 592 (Haspels, Highlands, no. 31), 604 (by a woman), 684; MAMA X 157; SEG XL 1232–33; SEG LXIV 1346 (by a community, the Aurosenoi); SEG XXXIV 1395 as plausibly supplemented. 15.  Haspels, Highlands, no. 51; IGR IV 548 (by a local grouping); MAMA VI 360 (by ‘the youth of the Tanaitenoi’); MAMA V 197 and 198 (both in Latin). Note too the statues of Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, both described as theos epiphanestatos, Haspels, Highlands, no. 93 (dedicators not named).

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proportion of these ‘hyper’ dedications demonstrably come from dedicants bound in some way to the imperial house: tenants of imperial estates, workers on them, imperial freedmen.16 And these hyper dedications are prayers to a god for an emperor, not prayers to an emperor as god. But a few direct dedications by persons in this category of ‘imperial dependents’ are found.17 A few statues, then, in ‘upwardly mobile’ villages; a few dedications by individuals, mostly those with some tie to Rome or the imperial house; no sign at all of regular collective cult. Price, whose classic study set the importance of the imperial cult in a new light, none the less emphasised that ‘there was another world of local culture, especially in the countryside, to which the imperial cult remained alien’. Price explained the absence in terms of a lack of communal organisation. The emperor entered only where ‘cults acquired a communal organisation and borrowed sufficient traits from the cults of the dominant Greek culture’.18 It is certainly the case that the higher a village rose on the scale from kome or katoikia to polis, the more likely it was to display devotion to the emperor in some form; the revealing cases of two borderline communities, Orkistos and Meiros, were mentioned above. On the other hand, many villages certainly had communal organisation of some kind but neglected the emperor; a sense of village solidarity, shown in collective dedications or dedications ‘for’ the village, is one of the most conspicuous features of Phrygian life. Occasionally, it is true, villagers in extremis addressed a petition directly to an emperor; two third-century examples are Phrygian, including one of the most famous, that of the Aragouenoi to the two Philips.19 But both came from villages on imperial estates, so with an inbuilt relation to the emperor. What other villages lacked is perhaps a sense of engagement in the political process centered ultimately in Rome. Thousands of dedications made to a wide variety of gods show Phrygians praying for the wellbeing of self, family members, crops and animals. One could not pray to an emperor for those pressing concerns; in relation to an emperor, the only possible prayer, poised between a prayer to and for him, was ‘may he conquer, and live for ever’. But he impinged on village life too little for such a prayer to be necessary.

16.  IGR IV 592 (Haspels, Highlands, no. 31), a μισθωτής of imperial property; SEG XL 1232, an imperial freedman; JRS 2 (1912), 252 no. 7, probably by a worker on the imperial estate on which Eulandreis was situated (n. 11 above; Strubbe, Imperial Estates, 243–48); Haspels, Highlands, 51, an imperial slave; IGR IV 684, a Roman, with a prayer for Romans; MAMA V 197 (an imperial verna); the language of SEG LXIV 1346 and IGR IV 548 (our kyrios/kyrioi) also suggests dependence. 17.  MAMA I 24 and perhaps 19 and 23, MAMA IV 55 (these four all in Latin), 24a; IGR IV 712–13 = I. Blaundos 9, 17 (these two by Romans). 18.  Price, Rituals and Power, 79, 98. 19.  MAMA X 114; and from Takina, SEG XXXVII 1186. A dispute between Anossa and Antimacheia was heard before three procurators (W. H. C. Frend, JRS 46 [1956], 46–56; SEG XIII 625); both villages probably belonged to the Eulandra imperial estate (Frend, loc. cit., 49).

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6

Consecrations and confessions at the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos

This chapter will treat evidence from the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos (and Leto), perched conspicuously on a hill above the left bank of the Maeander at the apex of the great bend: this was Phrygia’s most important extra-urban religious site, and the source of two remarkable categories of document characterised in 1887 by D. G. Hogarth, the site’s first investigator, as ‘a curious memorial of the religious life of this pastoral district in the period immediately antecedent to the general spread of Christianity through Phrygia by the labours of St. Abercius.’1 The site was littered with architectural fragments, and foundations remain of an Ionic temple (27 by 12 meters) and of a second smaller building containing stone benches. How to weigh the relative importance of Leto and Apollo at the site is a problem. A stoa dedicated to both names Leto first, but the vast majority of inscriptions from the site mention Apollo only. We would dearly like to know which of the two the Ionic temple was dedicated to . . .2

1.  ‘Apollo Lermenos’, JHS 8 (1887), 376–400, at 391. On the site, see MAMA IV xv, with plates 8 and 9; Strobel, Das Heilige Land, 208–16; Ricl, ‘Katagraphai’, 167–68; Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 3–4; and the new inscriptional evidence cited below. Strobel (Das Heilige Land, 215–16) speaks, I do not know how reliably, of burials all around the hill and pilgrims staying in caves and dwellings in the steep wall of the Maeander valley opposite. 2.  Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, D(edicazione) 5. Strobel (Das Heilige Land, 213) guesses it belongs to Leto; but his view (210), that Leto derives from the neolithic mother goddess Cybele, Apollo from ‘the god of heaven [Himmelsgott] Atys, simultaneously her son and lover’, is a throwback to the religious history of an earlier age.

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84      Consecrations and confessions

A single dedication has been dated, but on the basis of letter forms only, to the Hellenistic period;3 nothing else goes back before the late first/early second century CE. The sanctuary may always have been under the control of the nearest polis, Motella, though Hierapolis felt able to name the god on its coins. A ‘village’ which the author of a confession inscription went through when impure perhaps belonged to it.4 Although extra-urban in location, this was (pace Hogarth) no typical rural shrine. It contained, we have seen, a sizeable temple; it attracted visitors from all the surrounding towns, and dedicators adorned the precinct with statues (‘victories’ and others), a stoa, gilded roof tiles.5 The humble dedications so characteristic of typical rural shrines have left little trace of themselves, if they ever existed. Most authors of inscriptions of whatever type identified themselves by a city ethnic, partly perhaps because the clientele was not merely local, partly to be formal, partly because one class of inscriptions here was a record of a legal transaction. The question whether these inscribers who identified themselves by city ethnic were in fact city residents will be discussed in an endnote; up market though the shrine was, such a predominance of townsmen and shortage of villagers would be surprising if so. C O N SE C R AT IO N S In the year 268 (183/84 CE) on the [] of the month Audnaios we, Alexandros and Grisphos sons of Apollonios from Motella, write down [καταγράφομεν] their own home-bred slave [τεθρεμένον] Apollonios to the most manifest god Apollo Lairmenos as sacred and free, no mortal having power over Apollonios because thus we have decided. If anyone contests it, he shall pay 2,500 denarii to the god and 2,500 to the emperor’s fiscus.6

This is an instance of the first of Hogarth’s two types of ‘curious memorials’, katagraphai. These are inscriptions found in or near the sanctuary, about ninety in number, recording some form of transfer or assignment of human beings to the god. The verb used for the process is normally καταγράφω, a common meaning of which in legal contexts is ‘transfer ownership’ of something; two texts helpfully 3.  SEG LIX 1494. Dated texts range from 108/9 (SEG LVIII 1511) to 257 (Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 45–48). 4.  On Motella v. Hierapolis, see Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 55–56. Since then, SEG LVIII 1530, where Motella receives a fine, shows it clearly still in control; this text is unfortunately undated. Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 205, supposes an involvement of Hierapolis to be necessary to explain the scale of building. Village: Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 112. The ‘place’ mentioned for similar reasons in other confessions (ibid., 106, 109, 110, 116; cf. 115, 124) may have been the sanctuary itself. 5.  Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 19–20; add now SEG LVIII 1511–13; LX 1444–46. On the catchment area, see endnote. 6.  K 29 (SEG XLV 1727). Here and in what follows the K number refers to the numeration of katagraphai in Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’.

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precede it with two further verbs (ἐκχωρέω and παραχωρέω, both meaning roughly ‘cede’) which make plain that the assignment to the god is preceded by a surrender by the person previously having authority. Occasionally the process is also described as an act of ‘giving’. The persons so assigned are regularly threptoi/ tethremmenoi—literally, ‘ones nurtured’ (in the house), or, much less commonly, douloi, ‘slaves’—a distinction probably without a difference, since threptoi were apparently slaves. Only once is there a possible suggestion that the slave was to remain bound to his/her master in a ‘staying with’ (paramone) relation;7 the case is so isolated that this obscure text should probably be understood differently. This procedure was, in effect, manumission in the sense of release from a human master, though some obligations to a new divine master remained. There is no sign that freedom had to be paid for.8 Alongside these manumissions of slaves stand a significant number of cases where parents cede their own children (or, less often, other family members cede their relatives) to the god. The persons ceded to the god became, if already free, ἱεροί, ‘sacred’, but, if previously slaves, ἱεροὶ καὶ ἐλεύθεροι, ‘sacred and free’.9 We therefore have a secure illustration of one route by which individuals could acquire the mysterious status of ἱερός, ‘sacred’. One text reveals that the assignment of an ex-slave to the god had been preceded by a civic manumission ‘through the offices at Motella’, and we can suppose this to have been the norm. Those surrendering family members regularly explain the act as done on divine instructions, κατὰ ἐπιταγὴν τοῦ θεοῦ (‘on the god’s instruction’) or κατὰ (θεῖον) ὄνειρον (in accord with a divine dream);10 those manumitting slaves 7.  K 9, on which see the editor’s comments on page 60. Καταγράφω: Ricl, ‘Katagraphai’, 187–88. Surrender: K 46 and 44 = SEG L 1269 and 1272. Giving: K 44, 52 = SEG L 1270, 1272. Douloi: SEG XLV 1733–35 (K 34–36); SEG LVIII 1527 and 1529. Threptoi as slaves: Ricl, ‘Donation of Slaves and Freeborn Children to Deities in Roman Macedonia and Phrygia: a Reconsideration’, Tyche 16 (2001), 127–60, at 156–58. 8.  R. Zelnick-Abramowitz (Not Wholly Free (Leiden, 2005), 208n52) mentions (not with specific reference to Phrygia) the view that consecration-manumissions required no payment but adds ‘I believe, however, that most, if not all, manumissions were paid for by the slaves’. 9.  Children etc.: Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, pp. 58–59; SEG LIX 1502–4. Already free: K49 = SEG L 1268. ἱεροὶ καὶ ἐλεύθεροι: ἱερός is recurrent in these contexts; ἐλεύθερος is rarer, but see K 29, SEG LVIII 1520, 1527, and the bans on re-enslavement in K 31 and SEG LVIII 1520. Ricl (‘Donations’, 156n116) suggests that free persons dedicated by relatives may have lost citizenship; she notes that ‘Of all the parents and grandparents conveying their children and grandchildren to Apollo, only the two ἱεροί in K8 and K11 are without an ethnic-name’. But we cannot know which ἱεροί became such by donation from free parents and which by manumission, and the latter class would not normally acquire ethnics anyway. 10.  Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 56; SEG LIX 1502 and 1504 are two new counter cases, but do not prove that no such motive was present. A little different are cases where individuals are not ‘written down’ by relatives but themselves called to service (neglect of such a call may lead to illness): Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 57 (Lydia) and perhaps 108 (Apollo Lairbenos: cf. Ricl, ‘Society and Economy’, 91 n. 93: the offence was a refusal ποσελθεῖν καὶ παρεστάναι τῷ μυστηρίῳ καλούμενον). Civic manumission: SEG LVIII 1527.

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also, but less frequently, adduce the same motive. Where unfree persons are ceded to the god, it is often said that relatives of the owner have agreed to the act; just once we hear that a free individual has agreed to his own consecration (by his brother). Sanctions are threatened against anyone challenging the validity of the donation, whether of slaves or free.11 It has recently emerged that slaves could become suppliants at the sanctuary of another Apollo, Apollo of Hierapolis, presumably in protest against ill treatment by their masters. Analogy suggests that a slave whose protest was upheld (by local magistrates?) might have become property of the temple.12 This would have been a different source of ἱεροί. The question arises of what it meant to be ἱερός, and about this the documents recording the act of transfer are silent; it was common knowledge. By analogy with other sanctuaries where forms of manumission occurred—above all, that of the Indigenous Mother of the Gods at Leucopetra in Macedonia—we can guess that ἱεροί were required to perform some form of service in the sanctuary on certain ‘customary days’.13 They were, therefore, tied to the locality for life (no mechanism to cease being ἱερός is known), and several ἱεροί in turn donate threptoi or, in one case, a grandchild, to the god; in one case the donors are a ἱερός-ἱερά married couple.14 As this evidence shows, marriage and property ownership were open to them. Several confession inscriptions found in the shrine were set up by ἱεροί. Their offences are not clear, but offences against other shrines (not, however, set up by self-designated ἱεροί) suggest some possibilities: a Lydian confession was set up by an individual who ‘missed days’ (ἐνλιπέσθε ἡμέρας), possibly a failure to perform due service on ‘customary days’; another speaks of breach of a vow to ‘stay with’ (προσμεῖναι) the god.15

11.  Relatives of owner: e.g. SEG LVIII 1532; SEG LIX 1501; SEG LX 1441–42. Free individual: SEG LIX 1503. So too in the one known case of consecration of a free person at Leukopetra: I. Leukopetra 47. Sanctions: Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 63–67. 12.  F. Guizzi, Historiká 7 (2017), 120–21. Guizzi translates a crucial clause ‘Non sia consentito al supplice (di intentare azione per) violenza, né (muovere) accusa, né (portare in) giudizio’; I think the clause rather forbids such action against the suppliant. Analogy: Ach. Tat. 7.13.2–3. For asylum-seekers becoming katochoi in Egypt and elsewhere, see L. Delekat, Katoche, Hierodulie und Adoptionsfreilassung (Munich, 1964), 48–85; this source of ἱεροί is not visible for Larbenos. 13.  I. Leukopetra 12 and passim. Cf. the presence of hierodouloi at a heorte in the confession inscription Herrmann-Malay, Lydia, 84, Petzl, Beichtinschriften. Supplement, 145. 14.  K 8 (grandson), 11 (this too perhaps a child), 43; SEG LVIII 1521 (couple). 15.  Their offences: Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 109, 117–18. The ἱερά of 117 was ‘forced by him’: perhaps violation of a temporary sexual abstinence required of ἱεροί/ ἱεραί (from a different sanctuary cf. perhaps 5.12–14). In 123 the offence concerns eating unsacrificed meat, but it is not certain that the offender is a ἱερός. Other shrines: Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 16; Malay-Petzl, Lydia, 131 (Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. 164).

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The larger question about the life of ἱεροί is whether there was a ‘temple economy’ within which ἱεροί worked, or whether, certain occasional duties aside, the ἱεροί were free, and obliged, to make a living away from the shrine.16 The only direct evidence on this point comes from three donation deeds in which property (an ἐργαστήριον) is made over to the god at the same time as a person. Very likely the god also owned some land.17 But whether the god’s property and needs were sufficient to support and occupy his ἱεροί full-time is doubtful; so, too, whether free persons would have been willing, even on divine command, to surrender their relatives to full-time service of the god. A special question arises about slaves made over to the shrine when very young. Ages are very rarely given, but among those that are, two out of three are minors; and if the analogy with the sanctuary at Leukopetra is again valid, we can suppose that a majority were young. Euripides’ Ion is a famous literary example of a child who grew up in a sanctuary, and there is scattered inscriptional evidence for such cases.18 An abuse is known at Ephesus—the proconsul Paullus Fabius Persicus sought to put a stop to it—whereby public slaves bought children for small sums and ‘consecrated’ them to Artemis; they would be fed at her expense but work for themselves. But would such a usage, known from what was perhaps Asia’s greatest temple, also have been possible in the much humbler circumstances of Apollo Lairbenos? Perhaps, rather, those donated young lived on to maturity, notionally now free, in the houses of their quondam masters.19 It is obviously relevant to these questions to ask how many ἱεροί a sanctuary might have attached to it at a given time. No answer is usually possible, but on a 16.  Cf. Ricl, ‘Society and Economy’, 87–91, esp. 89: when she writes ‘many were probably employed in menial jobs in and around the sanctuary . . . some perhaps even hired out to work outside the sanctuary for private persons and earn wages’, she assumes that the relation of ἱεροί to the god was exactly comparable to that of ordinary slaves to a master (‘hired out’: their labout is not their own); and this can be doubted. Ricl herself, ‘Donations’, 140 n. 49, points to the finding that Egyptian hierodouloi were ‘free Egyptians engaged in agriculture, trade and handicrafts’. Mitchell (Anatolia I, 194) says that hieroi ‘presumably’ worked full-time for the god. 17.  But the assertion of F. Bömer, Untersuchungen über die Religion der Sklaven in Griechenland und Rom, II (Wiesbaden, 1960), 108: ‘Es darf als sicher gelten, daβ nach kleinasiatischer Weise zum Tempel eine ἱερὰ χώρα gehörte und die Gläubigen halbfreie Leibeigene [serfs] waren’, scarcely seems justified for the date in question. Similar assumptions are made by H. Oppermann in RE Suppl. V (1931), s.v. ‘Lairbenos’, 521–35, at 535, followed by Strobel, Das Heilige Land, 211. Property made over: K 43, SEG LVIII 1522 and 1524. 18.  Ricl, ‘Donations’, 135n26; cf. eadem ‘Threptoi’, 109. The analogy with oblation of infants to monasteries (Ricl, ‘Threptoi’, 109 n. 116) is interesting, but monasteries had facilities that most pagan temples did not. Ages of those donated to Apollo Lairbenos: K 46, ‘about 11’; K. 50, ‘about 5’, against SEG LVIII 1529, ‘about 30’. 19.  Cf. I. Leukopetra, 52: ‘la plupart des affranchis, sous leur nouvel statut, continuait à vivre et travailler chez leurs anciens maîtres’. Paullus Fabius Persicus: E. M. Smallwood, Documents Illustrating the Principates of Gaius Claudius and Nero (Cambridge, 1967), no. 380 col. VI 17–22.

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flat marble slab (an offering table?) dedicated to Zeus Olympios Kersoullos by a collectivity of ἱεροί in the territory of Aizanoi ten names are preserved, all with patronymics; the editors calculate that there were nineteen to twenty-one in all.20 The natural presumption is that they were ἱεροί of the god to whom they dedicate, not, it seems, the great Zeus of the Aezanitans, but a different Zeus originally located at Hadrianoi to the north-west. Can this otherwise unknown Aezanitan cult really have fed and employed twenty full-time servants? C O N F E S SIO N S

The other class of ‘curious memorial’ found at the site is the so-called ‘Confession Inscription’ (a much-contested term,21 since confession is only a preliminary to proclaiming the power of the god, but one with a clear referent). Around twenty come from the site, including one addressed not to Apollo but to Mother Leto. A simple example is ‘I X son of Apollonios of Motella confess (ἐξομολογοῦμε), having been punished by the god because I chose to stay with my wife. So because of this I proclaim to all that no one should disregard the god, since he will have my stele as warning. With my wife Basilis.’22 Something bad, probably illness, has happened to the son of Apollonios, and by a process not stated (dream? oracular consultation? or perhaps most commonly advice of a priest?) he has identified its cause as a ritual offence, ‘staying with his wife’ (sexual relations at the wrong time?). The next stage is not mentioned here, but probably he then vowed to set up a stele if he recovered; our text would then show that he did recover and is the fulfilment of the vow. (Less probably, he set up the stele while still afflicted in hope of a cure.) The offences mentioned in the confessions from Apollo’s sanctuary are almost all direct offences against a god (if we count a broken oath under that rubric); most are against ritual rules, though one woman admits dramatically to ‘bringing soldiers to the shrine, wanting to take revenge on an enemy’—that is, introducing Roman troops where they did not belong.23 One Chresimos, who was punished in the person of his ox, is a reminder of vital peasant concerns. I mentioned above the problem of why καταγραφαί are wholly confined to the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos, as are (within Phrygia) confession inscriptions. In regard to confession inscriptions, their great centre is Maeonia, fewer than fifty miles north-west of the sanctuary, and here we find disputes between villagers 20.  C. Lehmler and M. Wörrle, Chiron 36 (2006), 79–82 no. 137 (SEG LVI 1436). 21.  See e.g. Chaniotis, ‘Ritual performances’, 115–18. 22.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften 111. Those from the site are ibid., 106–24 and the scrap Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. 150. For the probable role of priests, see p. 32. 23.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften 114, with Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 156–57. Beichtinschriften 106 tantalisingly but obscurely mentions an offence relating to ἐλευθερία, i.e. probably something relating to a καταγραφή; also a theft. Chresimos: Beichtinschriften 113.

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sucked into the crime and punishment schema; an offended person can seek to set divine punishment in motion by ‘raising a sceptre’ or proclaiming a curse against the neighbour who has wronged him. This procedure is not known in Apollo’s sanctuary; nor is it known from the small scatter of such texts from elsewhere in Phrygia; nor is there any trace of the picturesque Maeonian purification rituals involving three or twice three animals.24 (Nor, incidentally, do inscribed curses, defixiones, survive, with a single exception.)25 Confession inscriptions of any kind are absent from eastern Phrygia and barely present even in the Phrygian highlands and Phrygia Epiktetos,26 those regions otherwise so awash with evidence of piety. The institution is then, apparently, more limited in scope where it occurs in Phrygia than in Maeonia, and absent altogether from large areas of Phrygia. But the problem those observations raise is just a sub-aspect of the problem of the relation of confession inscriptions to the religious assumptions of the rest of the Greek and Greco-Anatolian world. No proposition is more frequently repeated throughout that world than that the gods punish those who break their rules, in the long term if not in the short, in the person of descendants if not of the offenders themselves (even if ‘in the person of the offender’s ox’ may be an Anatolian speciality). Ritual regulations displayed in sanctuaries sometimes threaten those who transgress them with an ἐνθύμιον,27 a religious scruple, a worry that a bad consequence may follow. But offended gods can always be propitiated. Thus, theologically, so to speak, the world of the confession inscriptions is just the ordinary world of traditional piety. What is distinctive in Maeonia and western Phrygia is the very concrete activation of those assumptions as a way of dealing with misfortune. The afflicted persons are not just vaguely suspicious that their illness is the result of a religious transgression; to secure healing they are encouraged to identify and atone for a specific offence in a very public way. To be cured by Asclepius at Epidaurus, one was not required to do this; nor, so far as we know, was that required within Phrygia itself of the person who vowed an offering to Zeus Alsenos if cured. It is very curious that the strong interpretation of disease as punishment, the intense fear of the gods that it implies, should be so localised in restricted areas of Lydia and Phrygia. A doubt arises: is it not possible that in other cases, too, where, for instance, a dedication is made without reference to any offence, a ‘crime, punishment, expiation’ nexus underlay it in the mind of the dedicators but was by 24.  Three animals: Petzl, Beichtinschriften 5, 6, 55; Suppl. 131, 142. Sceptre: Beichtinschriften Suppl. 89 s.v. ‘σκῆπτρον’. But Beichtinschriften 123 speaks of a difficult cure involving ‘purifications and sacrifices’. Confessions from sanctuaries in Phrygia other than Lairbenos’: Beichtinschriften 2, 98, 102–5; Suppl. 151–53. 25.  Audollent, Defixiones, 20 no. 14 (IGR IV 806). 26.  Highlands: just the scrap Petzl, Beichtinschriften. Suppl. 152; Epiktetos: ibid. 151 (known only from a report from ca. 1555 [!]), and 153 (not a typical confession). 27.  R. Parker, Miasma (Oxford, 1996), 252–53.

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them suppressed out of shame?28 But the point of the confession inscriptions is precisely speaking out, not covering anything up. A difference would remain in public behaviour, even if it is not so great in the recesses of the psyche. Unless this is to overrate the importance of the stele . . . A public testimony to the god’s power could have been rendered in a way that left no physical trace. At this point we have to confess our inability to know. A N O T E O N P H RYG IA N R E L IG IOU S E X P E R I E N C E

To attempt to describe the religious experience of any distant civilisation is a bold, perhaps a presumptuous, endeavour. But the evidence from the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos evidently brings us close in two ways. The consecration of family members to the god was regularly done ‘on the god’s command’ or ‘in accord with a dream’, expressions that are probably synonymous; manumission, too, might receive the same explanation.29 A family member (presumably not the one most directly concerned) dreams a dream which can be seen as an instruction to consecrate, and decides to make it known: we can only guess at the discussions that might have ensued, and the motives that might have come into play. Much will depend on the unknowns noted above attaching to the life of a ἱερός/ἱερά: did the family lose their productive capacity (but that ‘loss’ could be seen in another light as release from the obligation of feeding them)? Or was their commitment to the sanctuary confined to a restricted roster of ceremonial duties? In the latter case the motivation will be nothing but religious, and the consequences much less drastic; in the former it would on one view, again, be purely religious, and involve a much greater sacrifice; but a sceptic might detect a prudential aspect if the family economy would fare better unburdened of the consecrated member. With confession inscriptions we encounter religious experience still more in the raw:30 the belief that by a breach of religious rules one has put one’s life in direct danger. Again we have only a fragmentary view of what would have been more extensive case histories. To what extent was medical treatment attempted before having recourse to confession? When that failed (if attempted), why did some afflicted persons merely vow an offering to a healing god in the event of a cure, while others followed the confession route?31 And how, in the latter case, was 28.  As suggested by Chaniotis, ‘Ritual Performances’, 118 of SEG LVII 1224, where Poplianos ‘duly pays’ with ‘praise and thanks’ a stele ‘demanded’ of him by Zeus of the Two Oaks in Lydia. 29.  Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 56. 30.  But for a warning about the possible gap between what is recorded and the actual motives of those involved, see Gordon, ‘Confession-narratives’. 31.  Very interesting comparatively is the Lydian sanctuary of Artemis Anaitis and Men Tiamou, where confession inscriptions and simple gratitude for cure inscriptions co-exist: TAM V. 1. 317–32. But Chaniotis (‘Ritual performances’, 188) writes ‘we may suspect that the background of many thanksgiving

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the relevant ritual offence identified? (We never hear of a wrong diagnosis!) Probing by a seer to identify sources of guilt is a well-attested phenomenon in comparable situations in other cultures,32 but the mechanisms escape us here, though it is hard not to suspect some role for the temple priests. About the great occasion when confession was made, too, our picture is vague. Some texts from Maeonia imply a public ritual with a considerable element of theatre. One from the Upper Tembris valley also implies publicity: after much god-imposed suffering, the erring lady ‘went to the place and set up her ex voto [euche] with her daughter . . . the ex voto for herself and all her own and the people that assembled, for the good.’33 I take the occasion to bring together some other scattered phenomena that get us a little closer to religious experience than the blunt fact that a certain Phrygian discharged a vow to this or that god. Not a few dedications were made ‘on the orders’ (κατὰ κέλευσιν or κατὰ ἐπιταγὴν) of a god; once, apparently, even the council and people of Acmonia dedicated in obedience to such instructions.34 The source may occasionally have been an oracle, but demonstrable Phrygian cases are confined to two sites, and the normal vehicle was undoubtedly a dream.35 The offenders who set up confession inscriptions had also sometimes been nudged in this direction by dreams. Exactly what led to cult foundations where the god’s name was joined with that of a mortal in the genitive (‘Zeus Brogimarou’) is unclear. Admonition in a dream is one obvious possibility, alongside a spontaneous decision to act; but one Phrygian text that speaks of the mortal in question being ‘struck/smitten’ suggests more dramatic possibilities (a daytime revelation? punishment?).36 Festivals must have been a prime occasion when the pious could experience the gods as near at hand; but, as we saw, about festivals we are woefully dedications in these regions may have been divine punishment, glossed over by the authors of these texts’. 32.  Cf. e.g. D. Zeitlyn, ‘Finding Meaning in the Text: the Process of Interpretation in Text-Based Divination’, JRAI 7, no. 2 (2001), 225–40 at 225: ‘The relationship of client and diviner makes dialogue central to any adequate account of divination’. Numerous citations to that effect can readily be assembled from the anthropological literature. 33.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. 151. Theatre: Chaniotis, ‘Ritual performances’. 34.  Acmonia: Ramsay, Phrygia, 637 no. 529 (MAMA VI 149 no. 169). A PHI search yields some twenty dedications made ‘on orders’, though admittedly this is a small proportion of all Phrygian dedications; cf. Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter, 295–98. 35.  Cf. MAMA V xli. Of the possible oracular responses they mention, their Z.B. 12 (now I. Mus. Iznik 1508) is from Bithynia, Ath. Mitt. 30 (1905), 412 no. 1 as now read is irrelevant (I. Prusa 44), JHS 19 (1899), 81 no. 46 = I. North Galatia 47 (from the Choria Konsidiana, Barr. 62 F 2) may be a case: apparently a dedication to Helios on command of Apollo. This last has been joined by a clear case from the same region; the sanctuary of Apollo at Çavdarlı in the territory of Prymnessos also yields clear cases (for both, see 49–50nn60–61.). 36.  SEG LVI 1434, with Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 115. Confession inscriptions and dreams: Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 11.5, 106.11; Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl., 143.1–3.

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ill-informed. I know just one case where a Phrygian acknowledges that his prayer has been answered (there are several in Lydia, by contrast): the priest of a god whose name is lost declares, ‘I sacrificed a white bull and the god heard me (μοι ἐπήκουσεν)’.37 But a prayer answered (in some sense) should underly the innumerable votives that simply present themselves in the form ‘X to Y [in discharge of] a vow [euche]’. A N N E X E : A N U R BA N O R RU R A L C L I E N T E L E ? C I T Y E T H N IC S A N D V I L L AG E R S

The consecrations of individuals (καταγραφαί) and the dedications from the sanctuary display an unusual feature.38 A clear majority of inscribers identify themselves by an ethnic, which is almost always a city ethnic. I count twenty-five from Motella (and two surprisingly from Motellokepos/oi,39 an older name?), twelve from Hierapolis, three each from Dionysopolis and Atychorion (one of the latter the wife of a Hierapolitan, SEG 58:1526), two each from Tripolis and Blaundos (one of these also a citizen of Motella, K 1), and a joint citizen of Eriza (apparently: Ἐρρεζηνός) and Laodikeia (K 44); one identifies himself as ‘from the Hyrgaleitic plain’ (SEG 58:1513)40. Against this I count, excluding slaves and hieroi, who by definition lacked ethnics, some twenty inscribers who give no ethnics, of whom six are women and two pre-Aurelian Roman citizens. Even among authors of confession inscriptions from the site41 we find four Motellans and one each from Blaundos and Hierapolis; it is true that eight confessions from the sanctuary, thus a majority, lack the ethnic, but in confessions from elsewhere ethnics barely occur at all.42 The contrast with a typical Phrygian rural shrine is very conspicuous, where ethnics of any kind are rare and such as occur are almost always those of villages, not cities. Thus we find only about thirty dedications indexed as bearing 37.  Robert, Et. Anat. 371. Lydia: TAM V 1 453 (Petzl, Beichtinschriften 61), 455, V 2 1306, SEG XXXIV 1220, XLIX 1550, LVII 1195; more broadly, Jim, ‘Problem of Hyper’, 635. 38.  My numbers are based on the Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, supplemented by SEG LVII 1392, LVIII 1511–35, LIX 1494–1513, LX 1440–46. In my text ‘K 1’ is Katagraphe 1 in their listing. I am most grateful to Georgy Kantor for advice on this note. 39.  E. Akıncı Özturk, C. Tanrıver, EpigAnat 41 (2008), 105–6 no. 19 (SEG LVIII 1511), showing (as noted by the editors) that the supplement in Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, D 11 should be [Μοτε]λλοκηπείτης. But D 20, just a decade later than SEG LVIII 151, has Μοτελληνός, so if Motellokepoi was the older name there was almost overlap. Özturk and Tanrıver (loc. cit.) treat Motellokepoi as ‘a village or district around Motella’. 40.  A community in its own right: C. P. Jones, Chiron 39 (2009), 445–61, at 458–59 (SEG LVIII 1536). 41.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 106–24, plus (?) SEG LVIII 1519 (not accepted in Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl.) 42.  I know only Petzl, Beichtinschriften 79, 105, and Petzl, Beichtinschriften Suppl. 139.

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toponyms among the 609 contained in Phrygian Votive Steles (pp. 397–40),43 and among them barely one that certainly derives from a city; the picture in other rural shrines yielding dedications by the score or even hundred is very similar.44 καταγραφαί inscriptions are records of legal transactions, even if the legally valid document was not the stone but an original on perishable material in the archives in Motella. This may have been a factor encouraging the use of ethnics, which then spread to other classes of inscription; another was the shrine’s broad catchment area. Even so, what is very surprising is the complete absence of village ethnics. Possibly the villagers lurk among that minority of inscribers who fail to give an ethnic; the predominance of town dwellers among all those who inscribe will be very surprising if so, even allowing for the fact that, in order to make a slave over to the god by καταγραφή, one had to be wealthy enough to own one. An alternative view is that all, or at least most, free Phrygians, even if they lived in villages, were formally citizens of the town in whose territory the village lay,45 and in the somewhat formal context of this shrine so described themselves (though a minority left themselves unlocated).46 In favour of this view we can appeal to the ‘living in X’ formula added to the ethnic of four Hierapolitans. X is in two cases certainly a village, once lost, and once Mossyna.47 The question arises whether the place ‘lived in’ is one to which the quondam Hierapolitan has moved, or rather the specific place within Hierapolitan territory in which he lives. In the latter case we can suppose that many of the other inscribers at Apollo’s shrine were also village dwellers, who did not, however, find it necessary to signal the fact. 43.  The dedication without provenance by a foreigner from Byzantium (486) is a special case. The only certain city ethnic is Kotiaeus (601, not indexed); Brianenos (253) is from a village, Gordenos (579) uncertain (see next note). 44.  I note seven village ethnica among the 150 or so texts, many admittedly unusably fragmentary, from the sanctuary of Zeus Limenos (SEG LVI 1513–1665); in eighty or so in the museum at Afyon (Gephyra 4 [2007], 59–115), just one, 63/64 no. 6, Γορδηνός (village or city [?]; C. Brixhe, BE [2010], no. 550; cf. previous note); among seventy in the museum at Eskişehir, none (SEG XLIV 1034–68, SEG LXII 1152–76). 45.  I owe the qualification ‘or at least most’ to Georgy Kantor, who points out that imperial estates are generally thought to have been outside polis territory (though he refers me to the doubts expressed by A. Dalla Rosa, in L. Cavalier et al., eds., Auguste et l’Asie Mineure, 101–16) and that some villagers may have been non-citizens, as apparently in Bithynia (see I. Prusias 17.13–14, 19–21, and his note in K. Czajkowski et al. [eds.], Law in the Roman Provinces [Oxford, 2020], 201n59). 46.  An almost certain case of a dedicator who omitted a location to which he was entitled is SEG LVIII 1520, which cross-refers to an ἀνάθημα πατρικόν, probably that made by a man who identifies himself as ‘from the Hyrgaleitic plain’, SEG LVIII 1513 47.  K4 (Mamakome), 28 (Masakome), SEG LVIII 1512 (Mossyna), 1528 (lost). On Mossyna, see W. Ruge in RE s.v. ‘Mossyna’. Robert, ‘Motaleis’, 53–55, locates it at Sazak where Buckler and Calder (MAMA IV xiv) saw abundant remains and where MAMA IV 265 was found; there also was IV 292, a dedication to Augustus. The ‘living in’ formula also appears in K 44—referring to a joint citizen of Eriza (?) and Laodikeia living in Nanylos.

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The ‘living in’ formula is otherwise attested in the region in the lists of Xenoi Tekmoreioi, where it is repeatedly applied to persons primarily identified as from Synnada, and a little less often as from Ioulia (about fifteen and about five times respectively); the place lived in is always a village. Synnadeans and Ioulians listed without the ‘living in’ addition are very few. Here, then, the force of the formula is unmistakable. We cannot suppose a mass migration of the men of Synnada and Ioulia: the village they live in is being indicated. A dedication to the Zeus Kersoullos of Hadrianoi made by a man described as Ἀνκυρανὸς (cf. Barr. 62 A 3) κώμης Αοριασσης (Gephyra 17, 2019, 241–42, no. 2), ‘of Ankyra, from the village of Aoriasse’, is a slightly different way of indicating both polis and village; it may bring with it a dedication to the same god by Ἄτταλος Ἀττάλου Αἰζανείτης οἰκῶν ἐν Ολγειζηῳ, ‘Attalos son of Attalos of Aizanoi, living in Olgeizeios’, though other views of that phrase have been taken.48 The two cases attested at the Apollo Larbenos shrine of Hierapolitans living in villages fit comfortably into that model. The Hierapolitan living in Mossyna does not, if we accept the received view that Mossyna is a polis: to downgrade it to a village would be rather a bold step.49 There remains one very puzzling text, a καταγραφή from Apollo’s sanctuary by Αὐρη(λιος) Τατιανός Κιβαλες οἰκῶν ἐν Μοτελλοις, ‘Aurelios Tatianos Kibales [or of Kibale], living at Motella’.50 The editors take Κιβαλες as an adjective indicating origin, an ethnikon, distorted from Κιβαλιος. An ethnikon is what is to be expected before οἰκῶν ἐν, but, morphology aside, it is very hard to believe in an otherwise unattested polis in the region; it looks more likely to be a personal name. Whatever Κιβαλες may be, οἰκῶν ἐν Μοτελλοις is an unambiguous instance of the οἰκῶν ἐν formula followed by the name of a polis, joining the apparent case of a Hierapolitan living in Mossyna. It looks, then, as if, of the two possible ways of understanding the οἰκῶν ἐν formula mentioned above, we have, in these two cases, to accept that it indicates a person originating elsewhere but currently residing in the place named.51 An inelegant solution, given the number of instances where the other understanding is certainly correct! Considerable obscurity remains. But if we allow, as the most probable view, that ‘Hieropolitan living in [for example] Masakome’ is a more formal version of what in another context would be ‘Masakometes’; and, if we further allow 48.  I. Hadrianoi Hadrianeia 4; but M. Wörrle and C. Lehmler (Chiron 36 [2006], 81) take Attalos to be living ἐν Ολγειζηῳ as a metic. 49.  But W. Ruge (in RE XVI 176–77, s.v. ‘Mossyna’) raises the possibility that it was not independent. 50.  E. Akıncı Özturk, C. Tanrıver, EpigAnat 43 (2010), 47–48 no. 7 (SEG LX 1443). LGPN (V.C s.v. ‘Tatianos’ [52]) treats ‘Kibaleis’ as a sub-district of Hierapolis (on the basis of this text alone). 51.  I note that the verb used for the Hierapolitan resident at Mossyna (SEG LVIII 1512) is, I think uniquely in such expressions, the compound κατοικῶν, which may imply (cf. LSJ s.v. ‘κατοικέω’ 2, ‘esp. of non-citizens’) a change of residence.

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that many of the (e.g.) Motellans attested in the shrine may, in fact, have been ‘Motellans living at X [a village]’, two consequences will follow: first, that most free villagers were formally citizens of towns, however little that status may have meant in practice; and second, that the clientele of Apollo Larbenos need not, despite the ethnics, have been predominantly urban (though the relative splendour of the dedications certainly points to wealth).

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7

Phrygian gods and death

No literary text speaks explicitly about Phrygian attitudes to the afterlife. But three types of source allow us to try to approach them: prose funerary inscriptions, in particular the ‘god and man’ type (what this is will be explained below); verse epitaphs; and the iconography of funerary monuments. (I attempt no inferences from the mere physical form of funerary monuments. When these are extremely grand, so-called ‘temple tombs’, for instance, they encourage us to think of ‘heroisation’. But without textual support, or archaeological evidence of cult, this is guesswork.)1 To begin with the last, such monuments took various forms, most of which teach us nothing about beliefs in different regions.2 The most revealing for our purposes are ‘graves with a door facade’, with a wide but not universal distribution in Phrygia3 (some regions, therefore, were deprived of any comforting message they may have carried). ‘Graves with a door facade’ covers a variety of structures, the differences between which are largely unimportant for our purposes: the crucial feature, whether a stand-alone stele or embedded in a larger structure or carved from a 1.  As, for instance, with the intra urbem ‘heroon’ at Aizanoi, Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 55. 2.  Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 47–65. But some motifs discussed below in relation to doorstones appear with, it seems, the same force on other types of monument: the eagle for a man (MAMA IX 88, 138–39, etc.); the fruit basket for a woman (MAMA IX 129); the eagle/ fruit basket pairing for a couple (MAMA IX 115, 136); eagle and bird on a basket for a couple, J. Nollé ZPE 60 (1985) 130 abb. 7, Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, 2223, abb. 118; MAMA X 354 and 132 (?). 3.  See Kelp, Grabdenkmal, Beilage 4, with 82 and 97; they are absent above all from the big cities of the Maeander valley, Laodikeia, Hierapolis, Apameia, Eumeneia. Kelp argues, 215, cf. 80, 94, 100 and passim, that ‘Die Grabtypen mit Türfassade sind . . . Ausdruck der sozialen Identität der aufsteigenden städtischen Eliten des 1. Jhs. n. Chr. [who then abandon them] und der aufstrebenden “Mittelschichten” im 2. Jh. N. Chr.’

96

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rock face, is a stone imitation of a door or group of doors, with panels that are usually elaborately decorated with symbols evoking the activities and virtues of the deceased. In what follows I shall use the conventional ‘doorstone’ for all these types. Above the door typically appears a field (tympanon or lunette) containing figures (but in some regions more symbols evoking the activites of the deceased, as in the door panels); a variably positioned inscription may identify the dead and the relatives who prepared the monument.4 The symbolism of the door has been much debated, but something close to consensus has emerged that it does not evoke the gate of the underworld; rather, the door is a pars pro toto evocation of a free-standing grave monument in the form of a house (or temple).5 The figures in the field above the door may be busts of the dead person(s), but may also be a lion or lions—sometimes a pair shown goring another animal, or an eagle, sometimes accompanied by a smaller bird perched on a (wool?) basket (chosen, it has been suggested, because a female eagle is impossible to represent iconographically).6 Sometimes there is a basket of fruits, sometimes, as noted, symbols evoking the deceased’s life. (In all this there is regional variation, but not, I hope, affecting the main argument.) Chronologically, animal depictions come first, and, after a period of coexistence, give way to busts. One has only to look at two door facade graves side by side, one showing busts in the field above the door, one animals, to wonder whether the former make explicit what the latter had indicated metaphorically; and this suspicion is supported by occasional inscriptions such as ‘Goundiane daughter of Diokles dedicated as a lion her husband Nesis’; ‘set up as an eagle’ also appears.7 (Such is the literal translation of the words in question. One could make the animals into mere protectors, perhaps a more familiar role, by rendering ‘dedicated a lion for her husband’, but that supposes an unexampled construction.)8 Although these explicit texts come from regions neighbouring 4.  For an iconographic summary, see Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 75–80. For symbols evoking activities in the upper field, see most of those in Waelkens, Türsteine, Taf. 45–66, covering e.g. Nakoleia, Dorylaion, Temenothyrai, Akmonia. They can come anywhere: Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 77. 5.  Waelkens, Türsteine, 17–19; Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 182; but Kelp (Grabdenkmal, 90) tentatively revives the ‘door to the underworld’ theory. 6.  Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 211 with n. 19 (citing e.g. his II 51 and Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 237); for a magnificent example see Nefer [sales catalogue of Galerie Nefer, Zürich] 4 (1986) 26 no. 44 (SEG XXXVII 1173, Lochman Grab- und Votivreliefs, II 78 and his cover illustration). Wool basket: such is Lochman’s assumption, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 211, and is supported by his II 110 (Waelkens, Türsteine, indexes instances partly under ‘Korb’, partly under ‘Wolle, Korb’). A Christian doorstone, Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 276, substitutes two doves. 7.  MAMA VIII 308; MAMA XI 369; cf. Sterrett, Wolfe Expedition, 153 (Isauria: here the lion, in a posture of ‘recently awakened attention’, is on a sarcophagus lid); I. Boubon Kokkinia 58. On all this, see Robert, Ét. anat., 391–98. 8.  In Lycaonian funerary monuments we find humans not figured by lions but standing, in miniature form, between their legs or perched somewhere on their bodies, presumably for protection.

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Phrygia, not Phrygia itself, it is striking that the animals concerned, lion and eagle, are the same as those so prominent on Phrygian doorstones; and, on the whole, where in Phrygia an inscription allows us to know the number of the dead, a monument for a single dead person seems to show a single animal, a monument for two, two. Exceptions and hard cases are, however, not rare: one eagle or lion for two dead persons; an eagle (not the song bird on a basket) or even a lion for a woman; two lions for one man (or even woman); eagle and bird on basket for one woman.9 A full account of the possibilities would be wearisome. One stone for a single woman shows a pair of lions flanking a bird perched on a basket.10 The bird is doubtless the woman but the lions seem to have resumed their well-known role as protectors. Lions as protectors are indeed so familiar in Anatolian funerary art that, at first glance, one can often take this to be their role even in cases where, according to the argument above, they should be representing the dead. Perhaps it was so understood in some cases. But sometimes, in monuments where the lions accompany a couple, they are clearly portrayed as male and female, the female having teats.11 Here, then, a conscious analogy with the dead is hard to doubt. Let us set aside doubts and hard cases, and allow that the bird or lion in the field above the door frequently evokes the dead person. What will follow? Lochman, who argues that the door format suggests a temple, not a mere house, supposes that representing the dead in this guise ‘raises them into a divine sphere’: as lions, they become companions of Cybele, the goddess so often shown between lions; as See MAMA XI 372, with references ad loc.; SEG VI 780 (as discussed by Robert, 395–97) is a textual allusion to such positions. Particularly bizarre is the tiny human in a lion’s mouth, JRS 14 (1924) pl. III (10b). Funerary lions are mentioned, without being identified with humans, in BCH 25 (1901), 335 no. 30 (N. Galatia), I. North Galatia 238 and SEG VI 431 (Lycaonia). 9.  One for two: e.g. Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, I 175, II 19, 55, 110, Waelkens, Türsteine, nos. 255, 272 (eagle); MAMA IX 480; Waelkens, no. 52 (lion). Eagle for woman: Waelkens, nos. 50, 236 (cf. 207, where there is also a basket, as in MAMA X 4 [where there is probably a bird on the basket]), MAMA IX 287, MAMA X 81; lion (performing a kill!) for woman: JRS 18 (1928), 32 no. 247; Waelkens no. 397; MAMA IX 335; but contrast MAMA IX 349, a woman represented by a lioness with teats. Two lions for one: Waelkens nos. 225, 393, 394 (two lions over prey for one woman!), 693. Lochman’s claim (209) that ‘ein einzelner Adler oder Löwe nur auf einem Männergrab anzutreffen ist, während ein Tierpaar die Stelen eines verstorbenen Paares ziert’ over-simplifies; Waelkens (Türsteine, 12) observes that a single lion is invariable in Aizanoi, and suggests ibid. that it is only in the eastern part of Central Phrygia that animals stand for humans. Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 386 = MAMA XI 92 is a remarkable triple door for a single man: the three tympana show eagle, vessels and lion. 10.  Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 234. The ‘bird on a basket’ can appear by itself on a doorstone for a woman, e.g. MAMA X 117, 141. 11.  E.g. MAMA IX 428; beautifully seen in Sammlung Ludwig nos. 259–60 (Lochman, ‘Grabsteine’, 465–72; cf. Lochman, ‘Normierte Identität’, 392–93 with abb. 3 and 5). But for fairly clear cases of protective lions (a role mentioned outside Phrygia in Steinepigramme 01/06/01 and probably 01/20/40), see e.g. Kelp, Grabdenkmal, Taf. 19.1–2, 31.2, and perhaps 2.2–3. Pfuhl and Möbius (Grabreliefs, II 526) caution against attempts to interpret the imagery too precisely.

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figure 8 . Funerary monument of [F?]emos and Ammion for their foster-child Beroneike and themselves. SEG XL 1243; Sammlung Ludwig, Antikenmuseumbasel Basel, photo museum.

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birds (one an eagle), companions of Zeus. In support of this thesis comes a doorstone in the tympanon of which we see a female figure, whose long hair should make her a goddess, flanked by two lions, one male, one (because lacking a mane) female.12 (The inscription, if there was one, has unfortunately been lost with the bottom part of the stone.) Here, then, ex hypothesi we see a dead couple with the goddess they have now joined. But the goddess, if such she is, so appears only in one doorstone out of many; why is she normally omitted, if she is the key to the scene’s comforting eschatological message? Not ‘elevation into a divine sphere’ but a much vaguer glorification, by comparison with glorious animals, may be what the iconography hints at. An epigram from the Kotiaion region first published in 2018 makes it explicit that the ‘image of a lion’ was set on a young man’s tomb because he was ‘like a lion among men’.13 It is admittedly odd, on that view, to find a woman compared to a lion. What we find in another way of presenting a couple, where the man is an eagle and the woman a songbird perched on a basket (for wool?), is less surprising. This ‘bird on basket’ type often appears in the panels of doorstones that evoke the past life of the dead person and occasionally on funerary monuments of other type, and must in some way evoke a feminine excellence (she sings while she spins?):14 perhaps, then, when it is paired with an eagle in the field above the door, neither figure points to the future but both suggest gendered excellences (power and domesticity) in the life now past. On one small Phrygian stele 12.  Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 211, on his II. 18 (abb. 14). On this, see also Kelp (Roman Phrygia, 86) who sees it as a unique citation of an older monument. In the stele MAMA 1 113 the editors see a goddess and a lion; the goddess is unclear in the photo. The tympanon and castanets on Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 753 (Kelp, Grabdenkmal, Tafel 31.2 [I. Pessinous 64]: it is topped by a superb lion) are a special case: one of the dead was an archigallos. I leave aside Lochman’s further and rather forced suggestion (‘Grabsteine’, 506) that, since the lions also evoke, when they devour an animal, the power of death, they show the dead in control of their own destiny. Despite such occasional disagreements, Lochman’s forceful arguments for the animals as symbols of humans (most recently in ‘Normierte Identität’, 392–93) underly my discussion. 13. G. Staab, Gebrochener Glanz (Berlin, 2018), 255 (171/72 CE). Staab (ibid., 121–24) cites further epitaphs where the lion figures the courage of the dead man; Gephyra 21 (2021), 186–89 no. 4 is a new case. The epigram I. Mus. Denizli 139 explicitly compares the strength of the dead man to a lion, shown in the now lost relief; but he was probably a gladiator, if we accept Pleket’s surely correct understanding of line 2 in SEG LVIII 1553 14.  J. Nollé, ZPE 60 (1985), 131n4; JRS 15 (1925), 158–59 nos. 143–46; Gibson, Christians for Christians, no. 10. In Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, no. 2114 (Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 244) it is bottom right to an eagle top left (a very rare case of an eagle appearing in a panel; for an instance of eagle amid everyday objects in a plainer stele, see Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, no. 2222). In Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 233 it perches on the frame of the lunette in which the dead couple appear; in Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, no. 581 (J. Nollé, ZPE 60 [1985], 131–32 abb. 10, Taf. VIIIb), said to come from Altıntaş, it is between the heads of a standing couple; and on one of the ‘Hekate stelai’ from the upper Tembris valley in a row of everyday life symbols above the gods (Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, no. 2089). Singing while spinning: E. Gibson, ZPE 28 (1978), 3.

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(not a typical doorstone) a couple stand in a doorway, and on each of their heads a bird perches. It is hard not to see here the departing soul—but whither it will go is not indicated.15 A further image found in the field above the door is an upright basket of fruits or vegetables of some kind: it sometimes accompanies a single dead woman, but more often pairs with an eagle (occasionally a lion) on a doorstone for a couple, particularly in rather grand double monuments with two doors and two lunettes. (There is, as usual, at least one anomaly, a double door monument for a man and wife with fruit baskets in both lunettes.)16 Its significance has been little discussed, and the common designation ‘basket of fruits’, which might suggest something like a cornucopia, is misleading: it is madness to store most types of fruit in an upright basket, where decay will spread unnoticed. Probably, then, these are pomegranates, with their tough skins.17 What the image evoked is very unclear. Pomegranates often occur in funerary contexts, but usually singly, like the pomegranate disastrously eaten by Persephone; that myth would anyway not make the fruit a symbol of return from death, rather the opposite. Moderns often speak of the pomegranate as an emblem of fertility because of its many seeds, but no ancient source supports this connection explicitly.18 In one version of the myth of Attis (that of Arnobius), it is true, Attis’ mother is impregnated by putting a pomegranate in her bosom; but in Pausanias the object in question is an almond.19 And in both myths we are dealing with a single pomegranate, not a basketful. Nonetheless, the least bad option may be to suppose that the pomegranate basket evoked ‘woman as fertile womb’—that is, another image of female excellence: the symbolic link between many-seeded plants/abundantly reproducing animals and 15.  Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, no.1137. Note too the single bird on a fruit (?) between the couple in Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, no. 605. 16.  Single dead woman: Waelkens, Türsteine, nos. 104, 202; MAMA IX 225, 241 and often; couple (in a double monument): Waelkens, nos. 75, 102 (a triple door this), 112, 125, 198, 205; MAMA IX 341, 347, and often; IstMitt 20 (2001), 313 no. 2a (surely a basket for ‘fruit’, not, pace Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 76, wool); couple (on a single door monument) Waelkens nos. 90, 227; lion (ibid., 82 [in MAMA IX 434 an eagle pairs with a mirror]). Anomaly: Waelkens no. 110; but in Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, II 59 the two baskets (‘wool baskets’, for Lochman, which one can doubt) probably refer correctly to the donor’s already dead wife and daughter, even though he intended to be buried with them eventually. 17.  So (but not in reference to Phrygia) T. L. Shear, “A Roman Chamber-Tomb at Sardis,” AJA 31 (1927), 19–25, at 22: ‘the wicker baskets hold pomegranates, the fruit of Demeter and Persephone’; he cites G. W. Elderkin, Kantharos (Princeton, NJ, 1924), 26ff. (non vidi) for the view that the kalathos with pomegranates as a ‘sepulchral symbol’ goes back to the Minoans. The leaves shown in Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 405 can plausibly be claimed as pomegranate leaves; cf. too the depictions of MAMA VI 298 and 299. In MAMA IX 218 as drawn the basket also contains flowers. A reader for the press wonders whether the objects shown in the baskets are skeins of wool rather than pomegranates. 18.  On all this, see the sceptical article of J. Engemann, RAC XII (1983), 690–718. 19.  Arnobius 5.6; Paus. 7.17.11 (cf. H. Hepding, Attis [Giessen, 1903], 37–41). The tree arises in both versions from the severed male genitals of the originally bisexual Agdistis.

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human fertility was certainly familiar to the ancients,20 even if not made explicit in respect of the pomegranate. The interpretation is fragile indeed; but so would any other be. It can find weak support in a rare variant where a vine growing out of a pot perhaps stands for a woman.21 On any view, the eagle-fruit basket pairing does not encourage an eschatological reading: if the man undergoes apotheosis as an eagle, what fate awaits the woman portrayed as a basket?22 Mythological scenes are very rare. A tall stele depicting a dead man has, below his feet, a rape of Persephone witnessed by Demeter and by the so-called ‘mourning Attis’, an enigmatic figure earlier and more fully known, despite his Phrygian origin in myth, from Italy and the Balkans. ‘Attis’ appears again with (probably) the mourning Demeter at the base of a doorstone in the lower panel of which we see (as occasionally elsewhere) Heracles dragging away Cerberus; and, in another, ‘Attis’ is doubled (in facing compartments of the door), as often in Dalmatia.23 Once an ‘Attis’ pulling a sheep by the horn (while holding a cornucopia in his other hand) balances a Heracles dragging Cerberus in the bottom panels of a doorstone.24 It is hard to see in these scenes of grief and loss (only the last mentioned is at all positive) any comforting suggestion. Nothing in his myth links Attis with rebirth; the possibility of a resurrection is attested, outside Gnostic speculation, only late (in the early fourth century CE) and spasmodically.25 That negative conclusion can be extended to the doorstones more generally. Their dominant concern is celebration and commemoration of the dead persons. 20.  The classic text is Σ Lucian p. 276.18–21 Rabe, which speaks of the use at the Thesmophoria of pine branches (should this have been pine cones?) because of the plant’s prolificity (τὸ πολύγονον), and piglets because of the size of the litters (τὸ πολύτοκον). 21.  MAMA IX 403, 467, 484. 22.  For Waelkens the eagle signifies apotheosis, the basket perhaps ‘the fate of Persephone’ (MAMA IX xlix, referring back to his Türsteine, 47); but how can a basket do that? 23.  See Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 212–16 on his nos. II 100 and 192 (abb. 32 and 42); for a doubled mourning Attis III 60 (Waelkens, Türsteine no. 699 Taf. 89); cf. Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 88–91. An ostotheke from the region of Iconium has a rape of Persephone: SEG LVIII 1642. 24.  Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 228: work of a sculptural school notable for unusual symbolism (JRS 15 [1925], 156–58 on their no. 144; on the school, see Waelkens, Türsteine, 90–92); Heracles and Cerberus appear together also on Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 233 (accompanied interestingly by a claim that the dead of this tomb are now with the gods, Steinepigramme 16/31/02); Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, nos. 605, 2101–2. 25.  Borgeaud, Mère des Dieux, 131–35, endorsed by Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 89. This is an objection to Lochman’s interpretation (Grab- und Votivreliefs, 214–15, on his Abb. 155) of the unique roundel of a sarcophagus cover which shows two pine branches set on bases, flanking a goddess on a base who holds unidentifiable objects up high in both hands. Via the two branches (doubling again!) of pine, a tree often associated with Attis, Lochman would make of him a symbol of ever recurrent vegetation and thus of rebirth. The chronological objection aside, this mysterious and isolated depiction cannot be taken as a key to a widely diffused eschatology. Gnostic speculation: the Naassenes ap. Hippolytus, Haer. 5.8.24–25.

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Such is manifestly and uncontroversially the point of the objects of (perhaps idealised) everday life seen in the panels: wool baskets, mirrors, combs, pruning forks, books and the rest of them. Here the dead are evoked by what they used. In the field above the door panels, the dead are presented as what they were, either directly through busts or metaphorically through comparison with noble animals. Gods have almost nothing to do with it.26 Just that missing element, however—namely a god—is found in the ‘Hekate stelai’ and related monuments of (mostly) the Upper Tembris valley. These were mentioned in chapter 4 in the context of the mysterious status of being ‘honoured by Hekate’ and, occasionally, by other gods. The honour, I argued, was received while still alive. But it is through their funerary stelai that we learn of individuals so honoured.27 All such stelai speak of the burial as a ‘consecration’ (καθιερόω, less often ἀφιερόω); all, except the late and exceptional case of Epitynchanos, include, or, where broken, may have included the depiction of the god who did the honouring (so usually Hekate), sometimes with other gods;28 some add a dative, indicating the god to whom the dead person is consecrated. Two texts speaks of the dead person as being consecrated to Hekate Soteira (καθιερόω) and Apollo (ἀφιερόω) respectively (3 and 10), though without reference to any prior honouring.29 These are monuments that fall well outside the normal: the recipients have been honoured by a god, or are now consecrated to a god, or both, and gods appear, exceptionally, in prominent positions on their tombstones. We can, alas, only guess how this special status was earnt and what it was believed to entail. Only Epitynchanos, in the exceptional late text, is spoken of as (having become?) ‘immortal’. It is sometimes said by moderns that those who had served the gods as priests were particularly liable to be so picked out. But only in a small minority of cases is this demonstrable. In Thrace, it has been noted, a dead woman claims to 26.  MAMA VI 248 (‘Akmonia’), the triangular top of a broken relief showing Men (twice) and a radiate god, is taken as a grave relief by Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, no. 2107 (MAMA is noncommittal): unusual if so. MAMA XI 257 too is taken as funerary by the editor but can easily be votive. The grave stele JRS 18 (1928), 36 no. 253 fig. 12 (Upper TembrisvaIley), the upper register of which is said to show a god in a chariot, is declared by the editors ‘without parallel’. 27.  Cf. page 57 above. Τhe detail ‘still living’ in appendix B no. (2), the verb ἐτείμησαν in (3), and the age specification in (9) make the funerary character of these texts certain. 28.  In (10) in appendix B it is Apollo, in (11) Zeus. The rider in (9), unfortunately not illustrated, is taken by the editor as the dead man, but could surely be Apollo. 29.  The strange appearance of Zeus Ktesios in TAM V I 285 (Δία Κτήσιον Τατια Παπιαν τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδρα, Τειμοκράτη[ς] τὸν πατέρα, Καρποφόρος τὸν θρέψαντα κατειέρωσαν) may hide something similar, though literally it seems to indicate that Papias was ‘consecrated as Zeus Ktesios’ (so Cook [Zeus, II, 1067], who takes it as ‘a striking vindication of my view that Zeus Ktésios was but the buried ancestor of the clan’). For use of the verb ‘consecrate’ (and occasionally ‘dedicate’, ἀνατίθημι) in relation to the dead, without identification of the god to whom the consecration is made or reference to honouring, see 219. In these cases there is no corresponding iconography.

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have become, precisely, Hekate.30 Thrace has generally been thought to have close cultural connections with Phrygia; but no such explicit assimilation of a dead person to Hekate is attested in Phrygia, and some of those honoured by her, or consecrated to her, are in fact male. Doorstones are the most characteristically Phrygian form of funerary monument (whether or not the type originated there), but there were many others— necessarily so, since a doorstone was expensive. Most of the others—stelai, bomoi, plain travertine sarcophagi—yield nothing iconographic for our purpose, but two should be mentioned. In the south-west the well-known type of ‘banqueting reliefs’ is common:31 a person or persons recline on a couch, perhaps holding a wine cup, with dainties on a table before them and (perhaps) a spouse seated in attendance at the foot of the couch, and children or servants also present. Several such reliefs have an inscription such as ‘Menander [the dead person], hero, greetings to the passer-by’ (variants are common on tombs of other types too in the region). In its distant origins this iconographic schema belonged to the heroes of Greece as worshipped in cult, and, when it passed to the ordinary dead, it may initially have been an attempt to raise them to that status; but, by the date of our monuments, it is very unclear that any such significance remained in the schema.32 As for the word ‘hero’, we can grant to recent scholarship that in some contexts, even at this date, it can mean more than ‘the late’, not that it necessarily does. Its use (and of ἡρωίς, ‘heroine’) is less common in Phrygia than in some regions,33 but there is no sign that it is reserved for persons of special distinction. Funerary monuments, humble though they may be, are routinely called heroa in Phrygia. There is no Phrygian instance where there is any suggestion that the ‘hero’ retains special powers, and, as we have noted (62), the whole class of cultic heroes is absent

30.  Paz de Hoz, ‘Prayer to the Deceased?’, 150, on IGBulg I 345. Epitynchanos: Steinepigramme 16/31/10 A. 31.  I. Mus. Denizli 64–81, provenance usually unknown but probably from the region of Hierapolis; Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, nos. 1607, 1630, 1634, 1787, 1973, 2005, all assigned ‘to the region from Attouda to Kolossai’ or Dionysopolis or Hierapolis; the one outlier is Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, 1494 (MAMA V 48, Dorylaion [not in Waelkens, Türsteine]), which is not of the usual type. The message to passersby: I. Mus. Denizli 66, 68, 77, Pfuhl and Möbius, Grabreliefs, 1634. Variants, with or without ‘hero’: I. Mus. Denizli 83, 96–97, etc. (fifteen or so cases in I. Mus. Denizli). The relation between text and image is often very loose, e.g. in I. Mus. Denizli 76, where a couple are shown banqueting but the dead person according to the text is their son. 32.  At Rome, famously, a relief of this type is accompanied by an Epicurean message, so the banqueting depicted is this worldly: Zanker and Ewald, Living with Myths, 154 ill. 143, with CIL VI 17985a, cetera post obitum terra consumit et ignis. On the type, see J. Fabricius, Die hellenistischen Totenmahlreliefs (Munich, 1999); C. M. Draycott and M. Stamatopoulou (eds.), Dining and Death (Leuven, 2016). 33.  Occasional examples e.g. in MAMA IX. Recent scholarship: F. Graf, Nordionische Kulte (Rome, 1985), 127–35; C. P. Jones, New Heroes in Antiquity (Cambridge, MA, 2010).

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from Phrygia. That the word implies even a faint hope that the ‘hero’ has joined the heroes of myth in some blessed location is very uncertain. So-called Asiatic sarcophagi were produced at Dokimeion, among other places, even though, as the name indicates, they are not exclusive to Phrygia. A leading student characterises them as ‘heroic’ or ‘heroising’, both in form and decoration;34 and certainly no one can deny the splendid pretensions of the so-called Tomba Bella, a temple-like structure containing an Asiatic sarcophagus, of Hierapolis.35 But such glorification attaches as much to what the dead persons were as to what they would become; there is no sharply defined eschatology here. The two Dioskouroi are popular figures to frame the long sides of Asiatic sarcophagi, including one from Synnada:36 a hint at their own (partial) triumph over death, or just heroic dignity? On the short sides often appears, particularly on Phrygian examples, the portal of the tomb (‘door’ again), to which attendants may bring offerings:37 on the example from Synnada, for instance, an altar blazes before the door, a woman leads an ox towards to it, a male stretches out an arm whose hand (now lost) possibly held a libation bowl. An evocation, then, of funerary cult on a lavish scale (entailing a banquet for living survivors?) that the occupant of the tomb was to receive. That monument is one of the few items of evidence for commemorative funerary cult in Phrygia.38 Of offerings brought at the actual interment we hear, paradoxically, from two Christian monuments, where the dead persons mention having duly received ‘gifts’ from their native place (the village?) and from their relatives

34.  Wiegartz, Säulensarkophage, 23–25, 64–65, 138–40; on 78–79 he makes the questionable association (cf. 102 above) between Attis figures who sometimes appear and rebirth. Production at Dokimeion: M. Waelkens, Dokimeion: die Werkstatt der repräsentativen kleinasiatischen Sarkophage (Berlin, 1982). A synoptic view of sarcophagi found in Phrygia is hard to obtain, many remaining apparently unpublished; a promised monograph in the series Antiken Sarkophagreliefs has not appeared. Morey, Claudia Antonia Sabina, remains valuable. 35.  Now honoured with a monograph: I. Romeo, D. Panariti and R. Ungaro, Hierapolis di Frigia VI, La Tomba Bella (Istanbul, 2014); for the sarcophagus, see I. Romeo in that work, 183–241. For Hierapolis note too O. Frate, ‘I sarcofagi in marmo della Necropoli Nord’, in F. d’Andria (ed.), Hierapolis di Frigia I (Istanbul, 2007), 457–70; on page 463 she mentions the 1474 uninscribed travertine sarcophagi from the same necropolis. The argument of Zanker and Ewald, Living with Myths, about Roman sarcophagi can be transferred to the Asiatic variety: some of the imagery could receive an optimistic interpretation, but all was open, no meanings were imposed. 36.  Morey, Claudia Antonia Sabina, ills. 32, 37, 61, 65, 116; Synnada: MAMA IV 82 II figures a and e (as listed on page 27). 37.  Morey, Claudia Antonia Sabina, ills. 41, 59, 67 (‘most of the examples so far have been found in Phrygia’), 70, 71 for the portal; for offerings 21, 26, 55 and (Synnada) MAMA IV 82 A III (27); on the motif, Wiegartz, Säulensarkophage, 70–72. 38.  For possible archaeological traces, see Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 61 (triclinium graves perhaps originally designed for Totenkult at Blaundos); 69 (libations in N. necropolis of Aizanoi).

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or contemporaries.39 Of subsequent commemoration we also hear through the foundations set up by the rich, in Hierapolis above all, to preserve their own or their kin’s memory. A sum called ‘garland money’ (στεφανώτικον) is left to an established body, such as the boule or gerousia or segments of these bodies or, very commonly, professional associations, from the interest of which the dead person is to be ‘garlanded’ annually (occasionally more often) by members of that body, who will receive a payment, often discreetly not mentioned, for their trouble. Sometimes the burning of πάποι, apparently an aromatic of some kind, appears; a wish in one text that participants may ‘have a good time’ (εὐφρανθῶσι) is taken to imply a banquet.40 Banqueting is mentioned again in a foundation from Acmonia, which, like another from the same town, attests the probably Roman practise of bringing roses (ῥοδίζειν) to the tomb.41 (But one of the Acmonian texts ends with the Jewish or Christian ‘Eumeneian formula’: cultural mixing, of which more below!). The tendency for the day specified for the garlanding at Hierapolis to fall in month eight may also suggest influence of the Roman Rosalia. The most remarkable of the many such texts from Hierapolis prescribes crowning at three ‘festivals’ (ἑορταί), ‘Unleavened Bread’ (i.e. Passover), Kalends and Pentecost—that is (probably) two Jewish festivals and one by origin Roman. Equally remarkable is a text from Amorion according to which the ‘mystai of the phyle of Zeus’ are to commemorate a dead donor ‘at the annual commemorative days at the Mithrakania’42—unique evidence for the survival of the name (at least) of a Persian festival in the region. The tendency, then, was to tie the crowning not to the anniversary of death but to a day or festival of broader appeal to the group concerned; in one of the texts from

39.  A. Wilhelm, Akademieschriften zur griechischen Inschriftenkunde II (Leipzig, 1974), 364 (from SBBerl 1932, 820) on what are now Steinepigramme 16/31/83 B lines 7–18 and 16/31/93 D lines 13–14. 40.  See T. Ritti, Per la storia sociale ed economica di Hierapolis di Frigia: le fondazioni sociali e funerarie (Rome, 2016), with some fifty examples (cf. SEG LXVI 1598–1646). πάποι: her nos. 19 and 23 (the commentary to ICG 920 flirts with an implausible alternative, taking the genitive as subjective: ‘Verbrennungszeremoniell der Großväter’); banquet, her no. 25 (SEG LIV 1323). Robert’s plausible προσφαγιάζοντες (Et. anat. 306–8) in Laum, Stiftungen 175.12 (Amorion: n. 43 below) introduces animal sacrifice there too. Note too εὐωχία in Laum, Stiftungen, no. 178 (Apollonia). στεφανώτικον elsewhere: I. Laodikeia Lykos 84–85; MAMA 6. 42 (Kolossai). 41.  On the Greek Rosalia, see C. Kokkinia, MusHelv 56 (1999), 204–21. Acmonia: IGRR IV 661 (cf. 15n29 above); I. Jud. Orientis II no. 171 (Ramsay, Phrygia, 562 nos. 455–57; Laum, Stiftungen, 174), with the Eumeneian formula, on which see 123; that the roses of the former were for the Rosalia is not demonstrable, so cautiously Kokkinia, 215, but very plausible: so Robert, Hellenica, XI–XII 410–12. 42.  ‘Unleavened Bread’ etc: I. Jud. Orientis II no. 196, Ritti, Hierapolis fondazioni, no. 24; cf. Graf, Roman Festivals in the Greek East, 84–85. There are both Jewish and Christian Pentecosts, but context recommends the Jewish in this case. Mithrakania: Laum, Stiftungen, 175. 11–12, ταῖς κατὰ ἔτος [ἐ]θίμοις ἡμέραις το[ῖς] Μιθρακά[ν]οις προστα[φ]ιάζ[οντες (προσφ̣α[γ]ιάζ[οντες [?] Robert, Et. anat., 306–8).; cf. p. 166.

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Acmonia it was to fall on the ‘day of Eudaimosyne [Happiness] in the month [unfortunately undatable] Panemos’.43 So much for the rich. But humbler Phrygians, too, were extremely familyminded. One cannot doubt that their kin showed similar respect to the tombs of Phrygians who lacked the means to set up such foundations.44 But we do not have the literary sources that in Attica, for instance, attest such tendance so abundantly. I turn to what I called above ‘god and man’ texts, of which some seventy survive.45 A rather detailed discussion becomes necessary to avoid over-simplification. (The impatient may prefer to pass quickly forward to p. 115). ‘God and man’ texts are monuments which name both a dead mortal (or a mortal envisaging death) and a god, who, with very few exceptions, is Zeus Bronton.46 They are almost confined to the region around Dorylaion and Nakoleia, with a few outliers to the north in Bithynia:47 that is, the regions where the cult of Zeus Bronton is 43.  On timing at Hierapolis, see Ritti, Hierapolis fondazioni, 624–25. Only once is it explicitly set on the deceased’s birthday: Ritti, Hierapolis fondazioni, no. 20. Akmonia: IGRR IV 661 (cf. n. 41) line 5. There are two modest west Galatian foundations, I. North Galatia 78, for libations by the donor’s children; ibid., 257, for burning a lamb/sheep by the donor’s heirs for the council κατὰ τριακοστήν (a particular thirtieth, surely, not monthly, as I. North Galatia, ad loc.). 44.  W. M. Calder writes (JRS 10 [1920], 54) the following: ‘to judge from the archaeological remains, the one feature in the gradually decaying paganism of Anatolia which retained a firm hold on the reverence of the people was the cult of the dead . . . The family tomb, or συγγενικόν, was the οἶκος wherein the dead had their home; the anniversary of death was the occasion of communion between the dead and the living in sacrifice and feasting; the door of the tomb, often represented on the actual monument, and occasionally called θύρα was the passage of communication between this world and the world of the dead. Stringent regulations, under legal sanction, were made for the protection of the grave.’ 45.  For recent discussions, see Chiai, ‘Totenkult’ (cf. eundem, Phrygien und seine Götter, 272–74); Paz de Hoz, ‘Prayer to the Deceased?’; both reject the position of MAMA V (on which see below). If MAMA XI 248 is a case, it is geographically isolated (Kinna, in the far east). Christian inscriptions that combine a euche of the living with commemoration come from a different region, Synnada (MAMA IV 102, Ramsay, Phrygia II, 735 no. 665). 46.  See MAMA V xxxv n. 1, where one apparent Apollo, MAMA V 169 KB.8, is noted; add now SEG XLIV 1069 (2) Zeus Dagoustes (who is close to Bronton: SEG XLIV 1069 (3), Gephyra 23 (2022), 104 no. 2 (Zeus Agathios), and SEG LVI 1441, Apollo; but not (following note) Mother Zimmene. Kunnert, Phylen, 134n523, speaks of two unpublished epitaphs from Dorylaion that carry dedications to Hosios Dikaios; but the texts have now been published, and turn out to be dedications, not epitaphs (Akyürek Şahin and Uzunoğlu, ‘Neue Weihungen’, 197 no. 5 and 200 no. 7). 47.  MAMA IX 51 (cf. Drew-Bear and Naour, Divinités de Phrygie, 1992n309) and SEG LVI 1441 (to Apollo) are rare examples from Aizanoi. MAMA VII 515 is claimed as a case from far away in eastern Phrygia concerning ‘Mother Zimmene’. But the texts quoted ad loc. for συγγένικον meaning tomb now appear, differently and better interpreted, as I. Mus. Denizli 73 and 116. MAMA XI 248 (Zeus Megistos) might be an eastern case, but lacks the normal concluding εὔχην. Bithynia: I. Mus. Iznik 1088, 1093 (?), 1094, 1105; SEG LXII 985, 996, and 988–90 (?), 1002 (these last four have the form ‘to the Zeus Bronton of [a mortal]’, discussed below). JHS 17 (1897) 283 no. 46 (MAMA X 185 no. 5, Tiberiopolis) is a variant: τέκνα πατρὶ καὶ θεῷ τιμήν. The commentary on I. Mus. Iznik 1088 gives a generous selection from Phrygia. MAMA V 20, Steinepigrame 16/34/21 is a rare case in verse.

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very abundantly attested. They coexist with monuments containing singly the two elements that they combine, dedications to Zeus Bronton and commemoration of the dead. The dead person is normally just named, but in three texts replaced by ‘soul’ or ‘souls’ of (my father, or a name).48 A simple example of what I will call type a runs ‘Hermes for his sister Chrysion and Zeus Bronton a vow’ (Ἑρμῆς ἀδελφῇ Χρυσίῳ κὲ Διὶ Βροτῶντι εὐχήν).49 (Or one might render this, ‘Hermes for his sister Chrysion, and for Zeus Bronton a vow’.) There can be more than one dedicator, and more than one dead person honoured; in about a fifth of cases μνήμης χάριν, ‘in memory’, is added after the name of the mortal commemorated. The ‘and’ joining the two names is occasionally omitted; so too, but very seldom, the concluding word εὐχήν, accusative of euche, ‘a vow/prayer’. These forms (type a) where the mortals commemorated (or prayed to) come first are much the commonest. In type b the order of god and mortal is reversed50 (and the connecting ‘and’ occasionally omitted), and euche either moves forward in the sentence (‘for the god a vow and for a mortal’)51 or is omitted. In both these types the word ‘vow’ is closer to the name of the god than of the mortal. But in some Bithynian examples the vow is associated equally with god and mortal, as in ‘For Zeus Bronton, Archelas and Klemes for Nestor and for Chrysion set up as a vow’ (Δὶ Βροντῶντι Ἀρχέλας κὲ Κλήμης Νέστορι κὲ Χρησίῳ ἰς εὐχὴν ἀνέστησαν).52 In both these types the god is named but the petition made to him, or gift for which he is being thanked, is not specified. Type c adds the specification in a hyper/peri clause of familiar Phrygian shape, as in ‘Karios son of Bolos with his children concerning themselves and their own for Zeus Bronton a vow and for his wife Appe’ (Καρ ̣ικὸς Βώλου σὺ[ν] τ ̣έ ̣κ ̣νοις περὶ ἑαυτῶν κὲ τῶν ἰδίων ̣ Διὶ Βροντῶντι εὐχὴν ̣ κὲ Ἀππη συνβίω). Here and in some other cases the mortal is tagged on at the end.53 But the elements can be mixed up in a variety of permutations, usually attested just once each. ‘Menander son of Kapiton and Ameias for their housebred slave Teimon, and Apollonios and Dionysios for the one bred with them, 48.  Haspels, Highlands, 347 no.128: Έρμης Άμεντανοΰ [?] συν γυναικί Άπφία κέ τέκνοις Διί Βροντώντι εύχήν Νεάρχου ψυχῇ; MAMA V 174 Z.B. 82 Τειμόθεος Ἀσκληπᾶς πατρὸς ψυχῆς καὶ Διὶ Βροντῶντι εὐχήν; SEG XXXII 1275, cited below in the text. 49.  MAMA V 184 II no. 4. (The reference system in the lists in MAMA V is a marvel of unclarity, but PHI makes the texts in question readily available.) 50.  In one verse example (MAMA V 20; Steinepigramme 16/34/21) the god’s primacy is stressed (‘For Zeus first of all and for Attikos . . .’) 51.  E.g. Αὐρηλεία Νίκη μετὰ τέκνων Διὶ Βροντῶντι εὐχὴν κὲ Ἀντιόχω ἀνδρὶ ἀνέστησαν, MAMA V 181 no. 35. 52.  I. Mus. Iznik 1105; similarly 1094, but κατὰ ἐπιταγήν not εὐχήν in this case, and 1088 (an example of my type [c]). Note too AM 24 (1899), 443 no. 38: Δὶ Βροντῶτι καὶ Παπνιῳ καὶ Μάκῳ Κόμοδος καὶ Μαρκιανὸς κατὰ κέλευσιν τοῦ θεοῦ ἀνεστήσαμεν βωμόν. 53.  MAMA V 229; cf. MAMA V 85, apparently 231; BCH 20 (1896), 107 no. 1 with note in the commentary to MAMA V 220.

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hyper their own to Zeus Bronton’ (Μένανδρος̣ Κ̣[α]π ̣ίτωνος καὶ Ἄμείας ̣ Τείμωνι θρεπτῷ, καὶ Ἀπολλώνιος καὶ Διονύσιος συντρόφῳ, ὑπὲρ τῶν εἰδίων Διὶ Βροντῶντι) is one possibility.54 Presumably type c, by specifying the content of the vow, merely makes explicit what was left unsaid in types a and b, since a vow must be about something (and was clearly not for the death of the person commemorated!). A fourth type d has recently emerged in Bithynia and in a sanctuary at Ahmetler on the borders between Bithynia and Phrygia. In this, dedications are made ‘to the Zeus Bronton of ’ a person or persons named in the genitive; that is to say, there has been a shift from ‘Zeus Bronton and X’ to ‘Zeus Bronton of X’.55 Initially, two views were canvassed about such texts: the person or persons named are dead, and so we have indeed a type d in which the link between god and dead person has been intensified in the direction of assimilation; alternatively, the person named (perhaps still living) is particularly associated, perhaps as founder, with a cult of Zeus Bronton (and the type becomes irrelevant in the present context). This second view finds good parallels in Phrygia and elsewhere, but it requires us to suppose that three different ‘Zeus Bronton founded (?) by X’ cults (where in one case X is a woman) existed in a restricted area of Bithynia. And a case such as ‘Rouphas and Meilesios dedicated this on instructions [κατὰ ἐπιταγήν] to the Zeus Bronton of Alexander and Asklepiodotos and Trophimas’ works strongly for the first view, given that multiple cult founders are unlikely and that a relief over the text shows three male busts, surely in commemoration of the dead. That is one of several dedications of this type made κατὰ ἐπιταγήν, in obedience to divine instructions.56 Thrice it is made explicit that children are dedicating to the Zeus Bronton of parents: so, for instance, ‘To the Zeus Bronton Pithios of Markos and Sextos, Diokles and Markos sons of Markos, and Markos son of Sextos, dedicated this on instructions with their brothers’.57 On the other hand, in the instance cited just before this, Rouphas and Meilesios give no indication that they are related to Alexander and Asklepiodotos and Trophimas (and there are other like cases),58 whereas, in the more familiar ‘god and man’ texts, 54.  CIG 3810 (MAMA V 181 no. 1). For others, see MAMA V 182 no. 116; I. Mus. Iznik 1088; Haspels, Highlands, 351 no. 136. 55.  SEG LXII 988–90, 1002, to which are now added nos. 2, 7, 8, and 9 (this last the one quoted above) in Öztürk et al., ‘Zeus Bronton in Ahmetler’; no. 8 similarly bears two busts and is addressed to the Zeus Bronton of two persons. The editors note (172) that I. Mus. Iznik 1509 and 1510, also addressed to the Zeus Bronton of an individual, are also from Ahmetler, and Mat Carbon refers me to I. Mus. Iznik 1104 from no great distance. The ‘cult founder’ view was taken by N. E. Akyürek Şahin in her edition of what are now SEG LXII 988–90, 1002 (for the type, cf. 31n22 above); for the other, see B. Puech (AÉpigr 2012 [2015], note on no. 1450), who refers back to ibid. 2011 (2014) no. 1264 on SEG XXXVIII 1272. 56.  Rouphas etc.: Öztürk et al., ‘Zeus Bronton in Ahmetler’, no. 9; for ‘instructions’ cf. ibid., nos. 2, 5, 7; I. Mus. Iznik 1509, 1510. 57.  Öztürk et al., ‘Zeus Bronton in Ahmetler’, no. 7, cf. 2, SEG LXII 989. 58.  SEG LXII 990, 1002; Öztürk et al., ‘Zeus Bronton in Ahmetler’, nos. 4, 8; I. Mus. Iznik 1509, 1510.

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relationships are made explicit. Two separate dedications are made to the ‘Zeus Bronton of Babou’, one by her children, one by apparently unrelated persons.59 The problems raised by monuments of types a–c come, of course, from the unusual combination of god and mortal as beneficiaries, and from the blend of a commemoration and a vow. Are they primarily epitaphs, or primarily dedications, or are some one and some the other (not a very appealing compromise, given their shared characteristics)? And how can the timescales of a vow and a commemoration be combined? On the normal understanding, a monument representing itself as a ‘vow’ is the discharge of a conditional promise once the condition has been fulfilled: ‘save my child/keep us all safe for a year, and we will make a dedication to you’. But a grave marker would normally be set up at the time of death, which is unpredictable. The problem disappears if we take the vow to be prospective: on the occasion of a death, the relatives make a vow for the future.60 Why it might have been the norm to make a vow in such circumstances is obscure. To make one stone serve two purposes? Thrift, thrift, Horatio. . . . A more serious objection is that vows normally appear on stones when they are fulfilled, not when contracted. To postulate the opposite may be thought to be cutting the Gordian knot. Still, this option would remove many of the difficulties rehearsed in what follows. Most texts of all these types are made by one person for another. But there is also a first person form, such as ‘Apollonios son of Apollonios with his partner Ammia while still alive for their own people [ὑπὲρ ἰδίων] a euche to Zeus Bronton’.61 The phrase ‘while still alive’ is crucial: it proves that the monument is to serve as Apollonios and Ammia’s grave marker. As it seems, they are at the same time discharging a vow made for the well-being of their family to Zeus, and preparing a tomb marker for themselves: the one stone serves both purposes. Here we can see clearly. But this first person case does not help with the more familiar third person type. To revert to ‘Hermes for his sister Chrysion and Zeus Bronton a vow’, one will not readily believe that Hermes has erected the stone in discharge of a vow and in expectation of Chrysion’s demise. Poor Chrysion is already dead. There is also a question about location. Were these stones originally set up in graveyards, or in sanctuaries? Archaeology until very recently had provided no 59.  SEG LXII 988, 989. 60.  Paz de Hoz, “Prayer to the Deceased?’, argues for this view on the grounds that thanks for a vow fulfilled should be expressed in the form kata euchen (apparently unknown in Phrygia; euches charin occasionally occurs; hyper euches is predominantly and perhaps exclusively Christian). But on the traditional understanding of euchai one brings a gift when a euche is fulfilled, not when uttered; and such is the usage in the confession inscriptions (e.g. Petzl, Beichtinschriften, 45, 62, 101). So the formula euchen looks like brachylogy for (discharging) a euche. 61.  MAMA V 175 Z.B. 86. For this first person type cf. cf. n. 66 below. A problematic new text (H. Güney, ZPE 216 [2020], 154 no. 5) states that x and y have made the tomb for themselves while still alive (as often) and then introduces a dedication to Zeus Bronton (in a context not yet deciphered).

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answer, the monuments, as so often in Phrygia, lacking any precise find context. To judge from the words alone, those of type a are grave markers: the mortals come first, and often we find an elaboration very characteristic of Phrygian grave stones whereby different members of the bereaved specify their relationship to the dead, x and y for their father, z for his brother, and so on.62 Those of type c, by contrast, have, as we have seen, hyper dedications of normal Phrygian type embedded within them, and may bear decoration characteristically associated with the god (so e.g. the crater on MAMA 5:229). Even so, both analogy with (a) and practicalities suggest that they too (and with them those of class (b) should be grave markers: to provide two carved stones for dead kin would have been a heavy expense for ordinary Phrygians. If so, the question of where they were located acquires new urgency, since burials within a sanctuary would violate the Greco-Roman norm of keeping gods and the dead apart.63 The finds from Ahmetler (type d above), first published in 2020, do, at last, have an archaeological context: they apparently come from a sanctuary of the village of ‘Pronnaeitai’,64 where dedications are also made to Zeus Basilikos, Zeus Soter and a Zeus Bronton not associated with human individuals.65 So ordinary dedications could coexist in the same precinct with dedications to the Zeus Bronton of dead persons. The Ahmetler finds are, however, atypical, possibly even irrelevant, since they are dedications not to Zeus Bronton and a mortal but to the Zeus Bronton of a mortal. Although they surely relate to dead persons, it is not established that they are grave markers at all; one, at least, of the two dedications made to Zeus Babou66 clearly was not. For our purposes here, the key question is the association of dead mortal with god: does this mean that the mortal has been raised to a divine level, or, if not that, is at least a recipient of prayer? The robust denial by Cox and Cameron, the editors of MAMA 5, a volume awash with such texts, is still worth quoting.67 They were reacting against the theory of Ramsay that ‘the gravestone in Asia Minor was properly itself a dedication to the god (normally the most prominent local deity), in whom the subject of the epitaph had been or would presently be merged.’ 62.  So e.g. MAMA V 18. In MAMA V 157 two extra dead are added (later?) at the end, as noted by Chiai, ‘Totenkult’, 142. But ‘Timotheos (and?) Asklepas of (for?) their father’s soul and to Zeus Bronton a vow’ (Τειμόθεος Ἀσκληπᾶς πατρὸς ψυχῆς καὶ Διὶ Βροντῶντι εὐχήν) (MAMA V 174 Z.B. 82) must count as unusual, if a grave marker, since the father is not named. 63.  Ramsay, in History and Art of the Eastern Roman Provinces, 273–76, argued this to have been the case. But note the comment of Robert (Hellenica XIII, 27): ‘Sur ce sujet, “dieu et défunt”, Ramsay a répété inlaissablement des affirmations gratuites d’une fantaisie insurpassable.’ N. P. Milner (AnatSt 54 [2004], 47) even speaks of ‘cemetery cults’ in a different region; cf. T. J. Smith, AnatSt 47 (1997), 20. 64.  Also spelt in other ways. 65.  Öztürk et al., ‘Zeus Bronton in Ahmetler’. 66.  SEG LXII 988, 989; there are also two dedications to the ‘Zeus Bronton of Askles’, one by his son, one by persons not demonstrably related to him (Öztürk et al., ‘Zeus Bronton in Ahmetler’, nos. 2 and 4). 67.  xxxiv–xxxviii.

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Surprisingly, they pondered the possibility that some apparent dedications were ‘intended to serve also for single or family tombs’ (even without any indication of that function). But on the status of the dead they were firm. That they are commemorated, not prayed to, is suggested by the occasional use of μνήμης χάριν [in commemoration] and the fact that where the dedicatory and funerary elements are explicitly combined, εὐχήν [vow], whenever used, is appended to Zeus Bronton and never to the deceased, while in a number of cases (e.g. 85, 229, 230) the dedication seems, by the order of the words, to be confined to Zeus Bronton. There are only two cases where the dead might appear to be included in the dedication (Z.B. 21 [I. Mus. Iznik 1088] and 58), and in these the departure from the normal usage is probably due to clumsiness in composition.

They note that graves of the region in question are never protected by fines and seldom by curses, and they suggest that ‘the explicit dedication of the grave to the god was here thought to be the most effective means of rendering it inviolable’. Against these points it may be argued (a) that in a sentence such as ‘Hermes to his sister Chrysion and Zeus Bronton a vow’ (Ἑρμῆς ἀδελφῇ Χρυσίῳ κὲ Διὶ Βροντῶντι εὐχήν) it is linguistically just as natural, perhaps more natural, to take both datives as dependent on εὐχήν than to link εὐχήν with the god alone; perhaps dedicators who omitted μνήμης χάριν (the majority) saw the matter differently from those who included it; and (b) the number of exceptions to Cox and Cameron’s point about the positioning of εὐχήν has increased. In ‘Ariston for the sake of all his own people to Zeus Bronton a vow. Ariston son of . . . to his (grand?)mother a vow’ (ρίστων ὑπὲρ τῶν ἰδίων πάντων Διὶ Βρ ̣οντῶντι ̣ εὐχήν. Ἀρίστων Α[. . .]πιλα̣ιου ἰδίᾳ μάνμῃ εὐχήν), a space on the stone divides the two prayer/vows; even without that the second is clearly addressed to Ariston’s dead mamme. In ‘To Zeus Bronton Theoxenos son of Maximos having made a vow to his father’s souls along with his own people set up the vow’ (Διὶ Β̣ρ ̣[ο]ντῶντι Θεόξενος Μαξίμου ψυχαῖς πατρὸς σὺν τοῖς ἰδίοις εὐξάμενοι ἀνέθηκαν εὐχήν), ‘to his father’s souls’ replaces the simple name (under influence of Dis Manibus?) but is again dependent on ‘having vowed a vow’; the main face of the altar on which it is inscribed shows a figure (Maximus?) above Zeus Bronton. ‘Brogimaros son of Epikrates to Brogimaros’ Zeus and Kyria [or ‘Lady’] a vow, and as a monument for himself ’ (Βρογιμαρος Ἐπικράτου Διὶ Βρογιμαρου καὶ Κυρίᾳ εὐχὴν, καὶ αὐτὸς ἑαυτῷ μνημόσυνον) is a third case if, as is plausible, Kyria is taken as a woman’s name and not as a title of honour, ‘Lady’, for the consort of Zeus Brogimarou.68 In 68.  Ariston: Haspels, Highlands, 339 no. 103; Theoxenos: SEG XXXII 1275, Chiai, ‘Totenkult’, 155 fig. 1. Brogimaros: SEG LXV 1264 (A). Note too I. Mus. Iznik 1105, adduced by Chiai, 150, Δὶ Βροντῶντι Ἀρχέλας κὲ Κλήμης Νέστορι κὲ Χρησίῳ ἰς εὐχὴν ἀνέστησαν. For Kyria as a woman’s name in the Brogimaros text, see Paz de Hoz, ‘Prayer to the Deceased’, 141, though for parallels for the other view, see Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 139n34.

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type c the various interweavings complicate judgement, but in ‘Diophanes son of Onesimos and Onesimos for all their own people to Zeus Bronton and [their?] father a vow’ (Διοφάνης Ὀνησίμου καὶ Ὀνή̣σιμος ὑπὲρ τῶν ἰδίων παντων Διὶ Βροντῶντι καὶ πατρὶ εὐχήν) we have uncomplicated word order and again prima facie a euche addressed both to mortal and god. As for the Bithyno-Phrygian type d, where the Zeus Bronton ‘of ’ a dead person receives honours, we have come back surprisingly close to Ramsay’s conception, quoted above, that ‘the gravestone in Asia Minor was properly itself a dedication to the god . . . in whom the subject of the epitaph had been or would presently be merged.’ (Note, however, that no text of that class so far represents itself as the discharge of a vow; they seem rather commemorative of dead persons.) Arguably, then, these few cases of euchai to mortals should encourage us to take in the same way the much larger number where the mortal may, but need not, be associated with the euche. Euchai to the dead become commonplace on this view. There remain, however, the cases mentioned above where the mortal is explicitly dissociated from the god and mentioned merely ‘for the sake of memory’. There are also monuments which have been set up by still living mortals for beneficiaries including themselves: so, for example, ‘Aurelios Diodoros with his partner Tyche while alive for themselves and Zeus Bronton a vow’ (Αὐρ. Διόδωρος μετὰ συνβίου Τύχη ζῶντες ἑαυτοῖς κὲ Διὶ Βροντῶν[τι] εὐχήν).69 They cannot be making a prayer, or discharging a vow, to themselves. Let us allow, however, that in some cases, perhaps often, the euche was addressed to the dead as well as to Zeus Bronton. What follows about the status of the dead? Those keen to elevate it may quote here one text of the type we are discussing, ‘To Zeus Bronton, a vow, and to father god’ (Δ̣ὶ ̣Β̣ρ ̣ο ̣ν ̣τ ̣ῶ̣ν ̣τι εὐχὴν καὶ πατρὶ θεῶ), and some of different type, ‘Tateis honours her husband Metras who has become a god’; ‘to Zotikos my son, god, in memory’.70 Such language was then possible. There are also the Bithynian cases (type d above) where a dedication is made ‘on instructions’ to the Zeus Bronton ‘of ’ a person or persons to whom the dedicator is not demonstrably related. But in the overwhelming majority of cases there is no hint that the dead person has any lasting powers. It has been suggested that the

69.  JHS 5 (1884), 256 no. 7 (MAMA V 184 list III.4); cf. BCH 45 (1921), 558 no. 5; MAMA V 231, 172–76 Z.B. nos. 56, 57, 61, 68, 85, 86; MAMA V 182 nos. 115 and 119; History and Art of the Eastern Roman Provinces, 275n4. 70.  Father god: MAMA V 232; Metras: SEG XXXIV 1300; Zotikos: MAMA VII 479. Cf. MAMA IV 362 (verse; not in Steinepigramme); GGA 159 (1897), 411 no 61 (prose, with an iambic inset claiming the dead woman has become a god); all this from Waelkens, Privatdeifikation, 263–64. He also adduces MAMA X 185 no. 5 τέκνα πατρὶ καὶ θεῷ τιμὴν, which is presumably just a variant of the ‘god and man’ type. But the claim of Chuvin (Chronique, 263) that Phrygians were particularly liable to acclaim the dead as, in a certain sense, ‘gods’, appears exaggerated.

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dead were seen as intermediaries between mortals and gods;71 but no text speaks in these terms. That forebears, without being gods, can nonetheless benefit their descendants is a common belief: Athenians, for instance, prayed to their dead to ‘send up good things’, without in the least doubting that they were dead humans, not immortal gods. We need not credit the Phrygians with any stronger belief than this. But let us not downplay the interest of these prayers to the dead, if that is what they are, too much. ‘Extra’ busts (i.e. distinct from representations of the dead named in the inscription) sometimes appear on funerary stelai; they may represent members of the same extended family group who had died earlier.72 Athenians prayed to their dead but did not make dedications to them acknowledging their aid. It looks as if Phrygian engagement with their dead may have been stronger. A verse inscription reads, ‘Here live my parents inside the high-roofed (cave?), speaking true [or good] words from the oracular inner place’.73 Apparently, then, an ‘oracle of the dead’. But the case is isolated. All too much about the blending of addressees in these monuments remains mysterious. We can hope that new finds will eventually shed more light on the Bithynian intensification (type d) whereby the dead person apparently blends into Zeus Bronton or acquires a Zeus Bronton of his own. In regard to type a, Cox and Cameron suggested, as we saw, that the god is added to secure his protection for the tomb (since the curses which otherwise have that role are not found in these cases). A down-to-earth explanation of this kind is attractive, not least because it might explain the geographical distribution: not pan-Phrygian but confined to the north. One will not readily believe that attitudes to the dead changed drastically along a fault-line somewhere south of Nakoleia; but traditional usages for protecting the tomb might well have done. Unfortunately, the Cox-Cameron explanation entails taking the euche as prospective, ‘please protect the tomb’, which, as we noted above, goes against the normal understanding of monuments commemorating euchai; worse, it requires separating type a from types b and especially c, where the god is asked to act in favour of the living. It therefore fails. There are early Christian monuments from Phrygia which similarly combine discharge of a vow with a commemoration: so, for instance, ‘For the memory and the repose of Auxintios the architect and for the vow of Hypatia and Andreas and Eusibia. She made the vow and discharged it.’74 But the distribution of such 71.  So both Chiai, ‘Totenkult’, 143, and Paz de Hoz, ‘Prayer to the Deceased?’, 146, 151. 72.  J. Masseglia in Roman Phrygia, 97; her page 111, fig. 5.12 is a splendid instance. But she leaves it open whether we should speak of ancestor cult. Athenians: R. Parker, Polytheism and Society at Athens (Oxford, 2005), 29n88. 73.  Steinepigramme 16/41/08. (Cave?) is added in English to give sense; the stone is complete and metrically sound, but the adjective ‘high-roofed’ lacks a noun. A. Chaniotis, EBGR 2001 (in Kernos 17 [2004], 230) helpfully compares TAM V 2 1055; but there the dead priestess will send dreams, not speak. 74.  Ramsay, Phrygia, 735 no. 665 (ICG 1617).

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monuments is different from that of the pagan ‘god and man’ texts; the similarity does not look like continuity. I turn finally to non-Christian funerary inscriptions.75 Those in prose are rich sources for study of the Phrygian extended family, and display to the full the obsessive Anatolian anxiety to preserve the tomb from intruders, but otherwise reveal little for our purposes. Some few of the tomb-protecting curses invoke post mortem punishment against offenders,76 but most are unwilling to wait so long; the point of a curse is anyway to be vivid, not to express considered views about the afterlife. But let us note one that invokes ‘the greatness of god [τὸ μέγεθος τοῦ θεοῦ] and the underworld daimones’ against anyone violating the tomb, but continues with the Epicurean motto ‘I was not. I was born. I will not be. I care not. Life is this’.77 Those in verse offer more, though that ‘more’ comes with the reservation that hopes and whimsies can be expressed in verse which are too weak and vague to be stated in plain prose. The verse tradition within Phrygia is also not hermetically sealed: the six Phrygian instances or variants of a couplet which states that ‘Dying is not bitter, for that is fixed by fate for all, but before reaching one’s prime and before one’s parents’ join others from the whole Greek world from Boeotia eastwards to make a total of some twenty—the best example that we have of an ‘off-the-peg’ funerary motif.78 But presumably relatives always exercised some control over the content of the epitaph for which they were paying. As throughout the Greco-Roman world, we encounter a broad spectrum of attitudes. Several in Epicurean fashion commend pleasure in this life, since in the afterlife nothing follows.79 Several protest against jealous Hades or Plouton or a jealous daimon or an evil fate for snatching away a loved one.80 One blames a presumably human Malevolent Envy (Βάσκανος Φθόνος) for a young man’s death; that it was diagnosed as cause much more often we can 75.  For an excellent brief treatment, see EBGR for 2001 (in Kernos 2004), no. 121. Those relevant are all in Greek; neo-Phrygian inscriptions on tombs are apparently all curses seeking to protect the tomb. 76.  E.g. Strubbe, Arai epitumbioi, 177 no. 256, 192–93 no. 285. 77.  Ramsay, Phrygia, 700 no. 635 (Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 463). Ramsay notes that the expression μέγεθος τοῦ θεοῦ may suggest Judeo-Christian influence. The expression (life is) just this (ταῦτα) vel sim. is quite common in the East: I. North Galatia nos. 80, 290, 307, 318 (?). ‘I was not’ etc. occurs also in MAMA VIII 353 (Pisido-Phrygian borderland). 78.  The Phrygian instances: Steinepigramme 16/22/02, 16/25/01, 16/31/76, 16/32/96, 16/34/35; MAMA XI 13, with references for the extra-Phrygian cases (add now SEG LXII 284). 79.  Steinepigramme 16/03/03, 16/04/04, 16/32/05, 16/34/22 (d), 16/34/37; I. Mus. Denizli 137; MAMA IX 189 P 300 (LBW 977). Note also the formula ζῶν κτῶ χρῶ, ‘while living, get and use’ in MAMA IV 88 (for the most recent example, see Gephyra 18, 2019, 138–42 no. 1). 80.  Hades: Steinepigramme 16/23/04, 16/43/03–04, 16/45/08; Plouton 16/35/03 (where Kore is also blamed), 16/37/01; Daimon: 16/32/11 (ὦ δαῖμον φθονόλεθρε, καλῶν ἐπιβάσκανε θνηταῖς); Moira 16/43/01 lines 6 and 8; cf. also 16/51/05 line 1, δαίμονος ἀντιάσασα κακοῦ; SEG LX 1400 (Pessinous), a bitter daimon working through baskania.

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suspect from the hands raised in an appeal for vengeance shown on many doorstones.81 Very gloomy, too, is an epitaph for the ‘twofold disaster’ of two young siblings now buried under one stone in one earth (16/53/03).82 Most drastic of all is Proklos’ claim that ‘Ennosigaios himself [Poseidon], with his trident in his hand, killed poor me beside the streams of the Tembrogios’ (16/31/05). One perhaps Phrygian epitaph raises, and leaves open, the question whether the soul is immortal or not (16/08/06); a funerary monument at Aizanoi is set up a little strangely for the dead man’s ‘wandering soul’ (16/23/13); according to another, a dead husband’s soul, wandering through the air, recognises the fidelity of the wife who has set up a monument for him (16/71/01). Conventional language about Plouton and going to Hades and the gloom of Hades predictably occurs.83 But some more optimistic notes are struck, even if at least one of the two epitaphs which boldly speak of an immortal soul might be Christian.84 The whimsical idea that a dead boy has been taken by Zeus as a new Ganymede, also found in other parts of the Greek world, occurs twice; it is sharpened at Aizanoi by specifying that the lost child is a new ‘Phrygian’ Ganymede.85 A doorstone for certain ‘virtuous men of wisdom and priests of the gods’ declares confidently that they are not among the dead but in the ‘halls of the gods’; a panel of the door shows Heracles dragging up Cerberus from Hades.86 One Menelaos declares that his body is in the tomb, but his soul ‘lives in the aither of the immortals’ (16/22/03). Two epitaphs from the highlands claim that the tomb covers its occupants ‘as/like blessed ones’ (16/41/03 and 04). A woman who dies straight after a (presumably second) marriage has been welcomed in Hades by the man who first loosed her maiden girdle: a curious version of the ‘reunited in death’ theme (16/51/05). Once, remarkably, we read ‘Zeus, highest of the blessed ones, who called a mortal from the dead, ordered (us) no longer to honour this monument of Ploution as a tomb, but as Zeus’ propitious guidance at this very site’ (16/34/33). The last words are obscure but the claim must be that Ploution has been brought among the gods by Zeus. The situation might be the same as in another epitaph from the same region where the passer-by is forbidden to call the burial place of a man struck by lightning a tomb; 81.  Steinepigramme 16/23/10; Waelkens, Türsteine, index, s.v. ‘Hände, erhoben’. In 16/31/07 ‘Plouton, Zeus of the dead’, is appealed to for vengeance. 16/31/08 line 10 blames the Moirai and the star of Kronos. 82.  Such numbers in the text in what follows refer to Steinepigramme. 83.  E.g. Steinepigramme 16/32/07 line 8; 16/32/12 line 7; 16/43/01 line 9. 84.  Steinepigramme 16/04/02, suspected to be Christian by MAMA VI 186; 16/61/07 (from Antioch by Pisidia, where Christian epitaphs are rare though not unknown: W. M. Calder, JRS 2, 1912, 97). ἀποθέωσις in MAMA V 140 is apparently just ‘burial’ (Waelkens, ‘Privatdeifikation’, 301n192.) 85.  Steinepigramme 16/23/06, 16/46/01; Ganymede is not named in the latter, but implied. 86.  Steinepigramme 16/31/02 = Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 233. Over the busts appear the words ‘alive, alive’ (ζῇ ζῇ), but probably just to indicate ‘set up while still alive’, as often.

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it is, rather, the ‘[site for] reverence [σέβας] to heaven’s thunder and lightning’ (16/34/32). The conclusion from the verse inscriptions, perhaps a disappointing one, is that they bear no distinctive Phrygian stamp: the range of attitudes they display and the possibilities they envisage are very much the same as are found in verse inscriptions of the same period from throughout the Greco-Roman world.87 Everywhere there is conventional talk of the underworld and its gods, everywhere some deny that such a place exists, everywhere there are predictions, some whimsical, some more substantial-sounding, of a continuing existence, and probably a favoured one, for the departed person. It is a little surprising, but no doubt a coincidence, that the assurance of going to the ‘place of the pious’, so metrically convenient and made to so many elsewhere, is never, as it seems, extended to a Phrygian. And a long survey of monuments of other types has produced but little trace of distinctive Phrygian attitudes. The doorstones and some other forms are distinctive indeed in their proud evocation of the skills and activities of the dead, but their concern is with their honorands’ worthy past, not their obscure future. The ‘god and man’ texts attest, in a few cases unambiguously, and possibly in many more, that Phrygians could address vows jointly to a dead family member and a god. But cognitive dissonance allows prayers to be made to dead persons about whose situation after death one has only the vaguest ideas. And our picture of the pagan Phrygian afterlife remains vague.

87.  See Parker, ‘Individuals Facing Death: The Evidence of Verse Epitaphs’, forthcoming.

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8

Christianity and paganism in Phrygia Le monde religieux de cette Asie Mineure du IIIe siècle où se coudoient les religions. l. robert, hellenica xi–xii, 438

My main concern in this study is with Phrygian paganism. (That term has been much criticised of late as anachronistic, since the worshippers of Zeus Bronton, for instance, did not define themselves as pagans or polytheists. Granted: but there is a phenomenon there, and it is hard to communicate without using words.)1 The rise of Christianity in Phrygia is part, obviously, of a much broader story, which cannot be told here. (It is a remarkable part of that story, since Christianity flourished before Constantine perhaps more in Phrygia than in any other part of the Roman world.)2 But it is indispensable to my theme in two main ways. Gregory of Nyssa spoke of the achievement of his namesake Gregory the Wonder-Worker in Pontos as one of ‘changing the rhythm’ (μεταρρυθμίζων) of his whole generation to a ‘new life’. The converted adopt a new creed, or rather, they adopt a creed for the first time. (To greatly varying extents: the model of ‘conversion’ as total change makes ‘being’ or ‘becoming’ Christian a much more simple and clearly defined process than it often was.)3 But their needs and wishes remain in important respects unchanged. The question is not about ‘survivals’ of paganism within 1.  ‘Pagan’ is vigorously defended by Cameron, ‘Last Pagans’, 25–32. Recent terminological puritanism is criticised by V. Pirenne-Delforge, Le Polythéisme grec à l’ ‘épreuve d’ Hérodote (Paris, 2020), ch. 1. 2.  Robert, Hellenica, XI–XII, 546; Mitchell, Anatolia II, 63. The Phrygian evidence conflicts toto caelo with the vision that runs through Veyne’s Quand notre monde . . . (e.g. 10, 200) of pre-Constantinian Christianity as confined to ca. 10 percent of the population, a spiritual elite (32–33, 36), extended to the masses only after Constantine through the authority of bishops (201). 3.  See MacMullen, Christianizing the Roman Empire, 2–3, on the mass Bedouin ‘conversion’ described by Theodoret, Hist. Relig. 26 (Migne, PG 82. 1476A-B); Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 257–61 and passim; Gregory of Nyssa: Migne, PG 46. 953.

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Christianity but about how and to what extent such a complete ‘change of rhythm’ is possible; by what processes of assimilation4 the new religion met those wishes and needs; and if, as well as how, different social classes ‘changed their rhythms’ differently.5 To look at new responses to the old needs is, in turn, a way of focusing on what the needs hitherto met by paganism were. But, as scarcely needs saying, the adoption of Christianity was not an instance of ‘everything changing so that everything may remain the same’.6 Drastic and fundamental change occurred. The second question then becomes whether trends or developments within paganism prefigured or prepared for the ‘new life’. Were pagan Phrygians ripe and ready for the Christian message?7 There is also the simple chronological observation that, throughout the period which has been under discussion in this book, Christianity was already a dynamic presence within Phrygia. In one’s mental map paganism precedes Christianity, but very little of the evidence cited thus far in fact antedates the evidence for Christianity in Phrygia contained in the Pauline Epistle to the Colossians. The purely pagan perspective adopted thus far is a fair reflection of the public cults both of the cities and the villages, but not of the religious environment as a whole. I begin with a skeleton account of the emergence of Christianity in Phrygia, insofar as we know it.8 The history begins with Paul, who passed twice ‘through Phrygia and Galatia’, the first time in company with Barnabas, made an impressive speech in Antioch by Pisidia, and had to flee from Iconium after angering the Jewish community there.9 The success of his mission is attested by the Epistle to the Colossians (its value for our purposes will not change much if Paul is not in fact the author.)10 The writer must, to be sure, warn the Colossians against other 4.  MacMullen’s term—see Christianity and Paganism, ch. 4. 5.  I am thinking here of MacMullen’s provocative notion (The Second Church, passim), of a Christianity that is almost wholly new for an educated and moneyed elite, something much closer to what preceded it for the mostly rural masses. 6.  The hope in which Tancredi, in de Lampedusa’s Il Gattopardo, supported reform. W. M. Ramsay, however, in a striking passage, argued that in the long term paganism triumphed in Asia Minor: see Pauline and Other Studies (London, 1908), 130–31, cited by Frankfurter (Christianizing Egypt, 11). 7.  A position powerfully attacked, in relation to Christianity more generally, by Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, passim. For Veyne (Quand notre monde . . ., 89) paganism had been in crisis for six or seven centuries (but still survived!). Bremmer (‘Quiet Demise’) tends in this direction. Other such views are cited by MacMullen (another powerful dissenter). See Christianity and Paganism, 169n37, beginning with Dr Johnson: ‘the heathens were easily converted, because they had nothing to give up’; Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 9; K. M. Girardet, Der Kaiser und sein Gott: Das Christentum im Denken und in der Religionspolitik Konstantins des Großen (Berlin, 2010), 10–13. 8.  Cf. Mitchell, Anatolia II, 38–43; Hutter, ‘Christianisierungprozesse’. 9.  Acts 16:6, 18:23; Antioch, ibid., 13:14–43; Iconium, ibid., 14:1–7. 10.  For this view, see Hutter, Lycus Valley, 81, 111–12, with references. See ibid., 95–97 for the question whether the house church mentioned in 4.15 belonged to Nymphas (male) or Nympha (female).

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teachers distorting the message, but that problem proves there was lively take-up of it; he speaks in the same letter of established Christian churches in Hierapolis (the greater) and Laodicea (the latter received another, now lost, Pauline letter).11 The negative conclusion that there were no others need not follow: he mentions only those close physically to Colossae. The church at Laodicea was famously to be excoriated as ‘lukewarm’ in the Apocalypse of John (3: 14–22) a little later. Phrygia’s first Christian writer was Papias (ca. 60–130), bishop of Hierapolis (the greater) and a believer in a thousand-year reign of Christ on earth after the resurrection of the dead—an influential doctrine, but proof of a feeble intelligence, according to Eusebius.12 Papias aside, evidence virtually vanishes after Paul until the third quarter of the second century.13 But the picture which reappears suggests that the intervening period to was one of rapid expansion: we find a church at Philomelion in eastern Phrygia writing to that at Smyrna to ask for an account of the martyrdom of Polycarp, while an account of the Martyrs of Lyons (one of them an ex-patriate Phrygian) and Vienne sent to ‘the churches in Asia and Phrygia’ may have been a response to a similar request.14 So Phrygia shared in the internationalism that so importantly characterised the early church. A funerary monument from Kadoi dated to 179/180 shows the dead man holding a round object divided in four by a cross: whatever was intended precisely, this is surely a Christian symbol, and makes this the first dated Christian tombstone from Asia Minor. An epitaph from Apameia where two dead parents ask passers-by to pray for their living son might be roughly contemporary. Not much later Apameia will provide evidence which is very spectacular if we accept that the famous Noah series of coins, beginning under Septimius Severus and expressing a publicly endorsed tradition, reflect 11.  Some suppose these two churches to be the original addressees of the Pauline Epistle ‘to the Ephesians’. Lost letter: Colossians 4.16. The church at Laodicea is later mentioned as site of a debate on the date of Easter probably in the 160s in Euseb. Hist. eccl. 4.26.3; on the connection it claimed to the Apostle John, see Hutter, Lycus Valley, 185–90. On the doctrines attacked in Colossians, see Hutter, Lycus Valley, 122–30. Hierapolis became famed as resting place of a Philip and his prophetic daughters (Euseb. Hist. eccl. 3.31.4); bishop Papias met the daughters there (Euseb. Hist. eccl.3.39.9). The daughters certainly belonged to Philip the Evangelist (Acts 21:8–9), but Philip the Apostle apparently supplanted the Evangelist in Hierapolitan memory and so acquired the daughters (Euseb. Hist. eccl. 3.31.2–4; 3.39.9): see Hutter, 185–211 (on Philip’s later cult esp. 211). There is already confusion in Eusebius, who in 3.31.5 passes from the Apostle to the Evangelist without noticing the difference. 12.  3.39.12–13 (not, I think, ‘narrow-mindedness’, as Hutter, 226); as bishop 2.15.2, 3.36.2. See Hutter, 213–31 (for the collections of his fragments, see ibid., 213n 1: easily available is B. D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, vol. II, Loeb Classical Library 25 [Cambridge, MA, 2003], 92–119). 13.  Unusable for this purpose unfortunately is the supposed martyrdom of Ariadne of Prymnessos, in consequence of an edict of ‘Hadrian and Antoninus’ outlawing Christianity but leading to mass conversion of the Prymnessians: see P. J. Thonemann, Chiron 45 (2105), 156–57. 14.  Polycarp: Martyrium Polycarpi, 20, accessible e.g. in G. Krüger, Ausgewählte Märtyrerakten, ed. 4 (Tübingen, 1965), 1–7; a Phrygian who sought martyrdom with him but then showed cowardice (4) is sometimes seen as a proto-Montanist. Lyons: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5.1.2, 49; 5.3.4.

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Christian as much as Jewish influence. For a city to accept a connection with an impressive event in the early history of the world is, however, not the same as declaring allegiance to a new faith.15 The vibrancy of the period is shown, above all, by Montanism and the reaction to it. Montanism, an ascetic new movement within Christianity based upon prophecies issued by Montanus and others, grew up and spread rapidly from two small communities in western Phrygia. The reaction to it is attested for us by an early antiMontanist tract quoted (without the author’s name) by Eusebius which reveals a range of Phrygian defenders of orthodoxy: a co-elder of the unnamed author from Otrous, bishops from Apameia and Koumane (significant, because a small place but already hosting a bishop), Apollinarios bishop of Hierapolis (the greater), who also addressed a defence of Christianity to Marcus Aurelius as well as writing ‘To the Jews’ and much else, and Avircius Marcellus.16 This last is probably to be identified with that Abercius of Hierapolis (the lesser) whose surviving verse epitaph has long been honoured as ‘the queen of Christian inscriptions’.17 From the epitaph we learn that Abercius had travelled on church business both to Rome and deep into Syria— internationalism again. At about the same time, if a redating and bold reinterpretation by Mitchell are correct,18 begin a string of epitaphs from Temenothyrai that 15.  Kadoi epitaph: see now Mitchell, ‘Christian Identity’, 284 fig. 1 (AnatSt 5 [1955], 33–35 no. 2, ICG 1224); on his 285 fig. 2 of the same period (Gibson, Christians for Christians, no. 30), also from Kadoi, ‘Christians’ was added by a second hand. On ‘cross in circle’, to put it neutrally, as a Christian motif, see Mitchell, ‘Origins of Montanism’, 183–84. Apameia epitaph: Ramsay, Phrygia, 534 no. 387 (‘not later than the second century’; but Destephen [‘Le christianisation’, 169–70] supposes it perhaps even post-Constantinian, because so isolated), Steinepigramme 16/04/03, ICG 1122. Mitchell (Anatolia II, 38n227) and Chiricat (‘Crypto-Christian’, 200n9) claim SEG XLI 1073 as an earlier instance from Kadoi, but its Christian character is disputed in the note of ICG 1226. Undated but apparently Christian and early is MAMA X 198 (cf. ibid., xxxvii). On the early Christian monuments of north-west Phrygia see MAMA X xxxvi–xli, esp. xxxvi–xxxvii on Kadoi. Noah coins: page 17 above. 16.  Anti-Montanist tract: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5.16. Koumane: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5.16.17: Mitchell (‘An Apostle from the New Jerusalem’, 209) thinks this Zotikos of Koumane may be identical with Zotikos of Otrous (Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5.16.5), Koumane being a village dependent on Otrous. But his bishopric might still have been of the village, as 5.16.17 suggests. Apollinarios: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 4.26.1, cf. 4. 27; on him, see Hutter, Lycus Valley, 231–71 17.  Steinepigramme 16/07/01, ICG 1597; on which, and its place in the invented traditions of late antique Hierapolis, Thonemann (‘Abercius’) is seminal. On the strategies of the inscription, see most recently M. F. Baslez, Journal of Epigraphic Studies 3 (2020), 149–66. The argument of M. Vinzent (Writing the History of Early Christianity [Cambridge, 2019], 77–153) that the second-century bishop is (if I understand him) an artefact of the fourth-century life seems to me hypersceptical. Abercius’ epitaph was imitated by another Christian from Hierapolis in 215/16 (Steinepigramme 16/07/02, ICG 1598); also from there, and questionably taken by Ramsay to attest a martyrdom (cf. n. 175), is Ramsay, Phrygia, 730 no. 658; ICG 1599. 18.  Mitchell, ‘Origins of Montanism’, restudying the epitaphs published by E. Gibson, GRBS 16 (1975), 433–42. His nos. 1 and 3 are for episkopoi, bishops. Female elder: Mitchell, loc. cit., 175 no. 3 (Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 66–72 no. 4, ICG 1372).

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attest not, as had been thought, early Montanism but rather the prosperous orthodox milieu within which Montanism emerged (one of the epitaphs is for a female ‘elder’, certainly possible within Montanism but at this date not to be ruled out, according to Mitchell, for the orthodox too). The anti-Montanist treatise excerpted in Eusebius also mentions something not common in Phrygia—namely, martyrdom: the author reports with admiration that certain orthodox Christians refused all contact with the Montanist heretics who were martyred alongside them at Eumeneia. Two martyred Phrygian bishops of the second half of the century are also briefly mentioned by Eusebius. All these, we must suppose, suffered during the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Thereafter, there is no clear evidence for persecution until that instituted by Maximinus Daia early in the fourth century.19 The first Montanist ‘prophets’ were probably dead by about 18020 and evidence for Christianity becomes patchy again for some fifty years; but we hear of lay preachers at Synnada around 218 and a synod held at Iconium a little later (which perhaps sanctioned the readmission of penitent heretics).21 At about this time falls the remarkable but problematic monument of the poetic lawyer Gaios of Eumeneia.22 On the right side he stresses (in elegiacs) the powerlessness of wealth before death, the good sense, therefore, and even pleasure, of helping one’s friends financially, but also of enjoying life while one can. Nothing here for a pagan to dissent from, nor to 19.  Eumeneia martyrs: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5.16.22; this happened ‘in the time’ of Eusebius’ anonymous source of the late second-century. Bishops: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5.24.4 (for the date cf. 5.18.13): Thraseas, bishop and martyr of Eumeneia, sleeping at Smyrna; 5.24.5 (cf. 4.26.3, where a plausible emendation gives a date in the 160s) Sagaris, bishop and martyr, sleeping at Laodikeia; Eusebius is quoting Polycrates (late second century). C. Motschmann (Die Religionspolitik Marc Aurels [Stuttgart, 2002], 222n695) briefly mentions Sagaris and Thraseas in the context of the better known cases of Polycarp and Justin; he does not mention the orthodox and Montanist martyrs of Eumeneia. S. Mitchell (JThS 31 [1980], 204) notes ‘the absence of direct and reliable epigraphic evidence for conflict and persecution in the third century.’ Maximinus: n. 60 below. 20.  Maximilla died (Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5.16.19) 13 years before the anonymous anti-Montanist tract there quoted (thought to precede or follow not by long Septimius Severus’ accession in 193 CE, because the anti-Montanist claims to be writing in a time of general peace: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5.16.19); the same work (5.16.13–15) knows but fails to date the others’ deaths. 21.  Lay-preachers: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 6.19.18; synod ca. 220: Firmilian’s letter to Cyprian (Cyprian, Letters, 74), 7 and 19 (penitent heretics: Euseb. Hist. eccl. 7.7.5). On the martyr Trophimos, see n. 172 below. Dionysius bishop of Alexandria (died ca. 264) speaks of Synnada and Iconium as important Christian centres in the generation before his own (Euseb. Hist. eccl. 7.7.5). 22.  Steinepigramme 16/06/01, I. Mus. Denizli 157, ICG 1031: probably pre 212 (no Aurelius names). See, above all, Robert, Hellenica XI–XII, 414–29 and Sheppard, ‘Jews, Christians and Heretics’, 175–80 (the note in BE [1980], no. 496 strangely passed over S’s main argument). As they show, both Jews and Christians were interested in isopsephisms (on ‘alphabetic mysticism’, cf. Edwards, Constantinian Empire, 162–65); Sheppard finds Gaios’ moderate hedonism closer to Ecclesiastes than to the early Christian attitude. The sense of ‘with Roubes’ may deserve more attention. Most commentators assume merely that a tomb is to be shared. But Mitchell (Anatolia II, 41) appears to see him as a protective spirit even in Gaius’ epitaph. A little later an epitaph from Thessalonike denies ἀνάστασις (SEG LXV 530).

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offend a Jew or, perhaps, a Christian (for the praise of enjoyment is very muted). On the fragmentary left side (in iambics) he declares, ‘Here are the gates and paths to Hades, and the routes to the light are impassable. But the just always to resurrection (ἀνάστασις) [. . . .] this the god of powers. . . . shepherd. . . ..’. On the front of his epitaph Gaios states proudly that his name is ‘isopsephic’, equal in number,23 with the adjectives hagios, ‘saintly’, and agathos, ‘good’, and that his family are to ‘occupy their eternal home along with Roubes [Greek form of the Jewish name R(o)uben], servant of the great . . .’. Roubes reappears in another epitaph, found two kilometres away and probably originating from the same site,24 which threatens any violator of the tomb with the wrath of God and of the ‘angel of Roubes’—apparently the protecting angel of the tomb of Roubes, who must have been an important figure in Gaios’ community. But what was the community? I broke off my citation of the front of Gaios’ epitaph at the point where Roubes was called ‘servant of the great . . . ’. Here textual difficulty intrudes: Buckler and Calder in 1926 read ‘servant of the great G[od] Ch[ristos]’, with a Christogram (a symbol substituting for the name of Christ), but Sheppard in 1979 found the traces still visible incompatible with any plausible Christogram and reverted to the reading ‘servant of the great God’ (a standard rendering in the Septuagint of ‘God of Hosts’). Without the Christogram there is no decisive proof that he was a Christian at all, there being Jews who believed in resurrection. But without the expanded form of the Christogram the line becomes unmetrical, a hexameter with only five feet,25 and this argument should be decisive. Even Sheppard in fact saw Gaios as one of ‘an unusually accommodating group of Christians under the influence of lax and Hellenized Jews’. From (perhaps) the 240s Christians become for the first time highly visible epigraphically, through two classes of text.26 The first is that of grave inscriptions carrying the ‘Eumeneian formula’, so called because the instances first noted clustered around that town (as have many subsequently). It and its variants are found through much, but not all, of Phrygia:27 abundantly in the Maeander valley (around 23.  Letters had a secondary use as numbers, alpha for instance being ‘one’. Gaios claims that if the letters of his name are translated into their numerical value this is the same as that of the two adjectives if also so translated. 24.  I. Mus. Denizli 153, ICG 1028. 25.  As pointed out in ICG 1031. Jews and resurrection: Trebilco, ‘Eumeneian Formula’, 79–80. 26.  For third-century Christian texts in South Galatia/Lycaonia, see Mitchell in Ameling, Christianisierung, 131. Of the ‘Religions of Transformation’ of Edwards, Constantinian Empire, ch. 7, I detect no trace (other of course than the great religion of transformation itself); the thought that the ‘Naassene Sermon’ in Hipp. Haer. might come from a ‘Phrygian-Jewish community’ (R. Reitzenstein, Die hellenistischen Mysterienreligionen [Leipzig 1927, 12]) is far from compelling. 27.  Basic now is Trebilco, ‘Eumeneian Formula’. For distribution, see MAMA VII xxxvii–xxxviii; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 144n45. Hutter (‘Christianisierungprozesse’, 147) lists about sixty examples; Destephen (‘Le christianisation’) has ninety-four, though a few are from regions not or not unambiguously Phrygian.

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Eumeneia, Apamea, Dionysopolis, and Sebaste), also at Acmonia, Synnada, Amorion, and in the south-east (Tymandos, Antioch, Philomelion, Laodicea Combusta), just once supposedly in the Upper Tembris valley. This last example aside, it seems not to extend north of Acmonia. Well over sixty are now known. Dated examples fall between 246/47 and 273/74.28 In its plain and commonest form it runs ‘(if anyone violates this tomb), ἔσται αὐτῷ πρὸς τὸν θεόν’, which one can render ‘he will have to answer to god’, ‘he will be in trouble with god’.29 But the entity to be answered to can be expanded to ‘the living god’, ‘the hand of god’, ‘the great name of god’, ‘god as judge’, ‘the judgement of god’, ‘the justice of god’, ‘immortal god’, ‘the greatness of god’, ‘all-ruling [pantokrator] god’, ‘he who has authority over all souls’, ‘Highest God and the scythe of curse’, ‘Jesus Christ’, ‘he who created everything’, ‘the Trinity’; the time can be specified as ‘now and on the day of judgement’ or ‘now and forever’, and the offender can be doomed ‘not to share in god’s promise’; in lieu of ‘having to answer to’ one of these entities he can be threatened with ‘the wrath of god’, ‘eternal whipping from immortal god’, or (perhaps) deprivation of his ‘share in heaven’.30 The first of these variants is not rare; the others mostly occur once only. A careful study identifies seven instances that other aspects of the monument show to be unquestionably Christian, and two that are prima facie Jewish but could conceivably be Christian.31 (In one case the argument for Jewishness is just 28.  Mitchell, Anatolia II, 40n243 (the earliest example there mentioned is now MAMA XI 36, ICG 1364). Trebilco (‘Eumeneian Formula’, 63) supposes undated examples to begin somewhat earlier (so too Mitchell [41n244], citing Waelkens) and extend into the early fourth century. BASP 12 (1975), 151 II, 2 (ICG 1268) is a late example: why the formula died out is unexplained. Similar are two dated inscriptions from Eumeneia threatening offenders with being ἐπικατάρατος παρὰ θεῷ ἰς τὸν ἐῶναν (MAMA IV 354, ICG 1069, of 253, and 356, ICG 1071, of 258, both using the word koimeterion.) ΤΑΜ V.1.21 threatens a tomb violator that his ‘soul will be anathema of the living God’; MAMA X xxxvii–xxxviii assigns it to near Cadi and claims it as pre-212, but only because of ‘the absence of Aurelius from the nomenclature’. 29.  For the construction, see R. Kühner and B. Gerth, Ausführliche Grammatik der griechischen Sprache, 1 (Hannover, 1898) 417, 16 Anmerkung 20; in brief LSJ s.v. ‘εἰμί’, C III 2. On the comparable but (in the main) later (and not found in Phrygia except in the far east) formula ἕξει πρὸς τὸν θεόν (where ‘god’ can be replaced by ‘Trinity’, whose persons can be spelled out [SEG LII 1355], or ‘He who will judge living and dead’), see Robert, Hellenica XI, 401–5. On λόγον δώσει Θεῷ vel sim., often expanded to ‘on the day of judgement’, a formula of east Phrygia and elsewhere apparently not found before Constantine, see MAMA VII xlii; MAMA XI 274 with commentary; Mitchell in Ameling, Christianisierung, 131. 30.  For all this, see Trebilco, ‘Eumeneian Formula’, 65–83, 85n110; add MAMA I 168 (ICG 382) (‘Trinity’), MAMA XI 17 (‘judgment of god’) and 177 (‘he who created everything’); for most in brief L. Robert, Hellenica XI–XII, 405–6. Robert, Hellenica XI–XII, 436–39, was inclined to see ‘eternal whipping’ as Jewish. ‘Wrath of god’: MAMA VI 325 (ICG 988); ‘god’s promise’: MAMA XI 36 (ICG 1364); ‘share in heaven’: SEG LV 1431 with Chaniotis’ reading (there reported) in l. 11. 31.  Trebilco, ‘Eumeneian Formula’, 67–83. Prime facie Jewish: I. Jud. Orientis II nos. 171 and 176 (which also speaks of ‘highest God’). Both significantly come from Acmonia, a town with a well-attested Jewish population. I. Jud. Orientis II 172–75, also from Acmonia, refer to ‘curses from Deuteronomy’ or known from Zacharias: again prima facie Jewish, but Christians too read the Old Testament.

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the name Mathios, taken to be Jewish; in the other the expression ‘scythe of curse’ deriving from the book of Zechariah; but Christians, too, it is observed, could read and respect that book.) To the Christian examples can now be added one where the grave is to be shared with no one, ‘unless any of my family members is a believer’ (πιστεύσει).32 The same study identifies a dozen variants that could go either way (as could the basic formula itself). One must certainly allow the possibility that Jews used the formula. And that note of caution entails that, of eight city councillors (six from Eumeneia, one from Sebaste, one from Eukarpia) mentioned on graves which bear the formula or something comparable, only the one which declares that an offender ‘will have to do with I(esus) Ch(ristos)’33 can be unambiguously claimed as Christian; there is a strong case, too, for the one who wishes ‘peace to passers-by’. Even so, the predominance of definitely Christian over possibly Jewish instances of the formula (seven against [?] two) may incline one to suppose that most of the uncertain instances should be Christian.34 If so, the Eumeneian councillor Helix, who was also an athlete, will become again ‘the earliest Christian ἀθλητής . . . known to history’.35 The formula never appears on a Phrygian monument which there are other reasons to see as pagan, unless we allow, as proof of pagan allegiance, a single case which includes a bust of the sun.36 If, again, we exclude one monument showing the sun, it will emerge that a formula found further north, in the Kotyiaion region, τὸν θεόν σοι, μὴ ἀδικήσῃς (by the god, do not wrong [the tomb]), is, in all eighteen instances, either Christian or indeterminate.37 32.  SEG LV 1431. 33.  Ramsay, Phrygia, 526–27 no. 371 (ICG 1062). Trebilco (‘Eumeneian Formula’, 83–85) stresses the uncertainty. To Trebilco’s cases add now MAMA XI 139 (ICG 1448) (with the ‘peace to passersby’ formula). Something comparable: Ramsay, Phrygia, 520 no. 361 (ICG 1025; Trebilco, ‘Eumeneian Formula’, 85n110). P. McKechnie (‘Christian City Councillors in the Roman Empire before Constantine’, Interdisciplinary Journal of Research on Religion 5 [2009], 2–20, at 5–6) dismisses Trebilco’s caution, but without a decisive counterargument. He takes the two certainly Christian brothers of Steinepigramme 16/31/87 (ICG 1267, Appia/Soa) as councillors to give a total of ten for Phrygia. From the Phrygian/Pisidian borderland add MAMA IV 221 (Gibson, Christians for Christians, no. 44, Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, no. 34, ICG 1135) for a family combining Christians and councillors. MAMA I 170 (ICG 371) attests an undeniable Christian councillor (married to a senator’s daughter!) at the time of Maximinus Daia’s persecution early in the fourth century. 34.  Mitchell (‘Origins of Montanism’, 192) now speaks of ‘probably Christian inscriptions of this kind’. Trebilco (‘Eumeneian Formula’, 96) counter-suggests, a little desperately, that Christians might have chosen to add Christian markers to differentiate themselves when using a predominantly Jewish formula. 35.  Buckler and Calder, cited by Robert, Hellenica XI–XII, 424n3, on SEG VI 203 (ICG 1050). 36.  No pagans: Robert, Hellenica XI–XII, 399, with references. Pagan uses of ἔσται αὐτῷ πρός . . . are known (ibid.), but not in Phrygia, and with a pagan god (or the dead) named after the πρός. Single case: Mitchell (Anatolia II, 47 with n. 279) who discounts it. 37.  See appendix C.

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The argument thus far has been that there is never reason to see any of the monuments on which these formulae appear as pagan. A sceptic might mount a counter-argument of the following form: ‘You say these formulae never appear on monuments which there are other reasons to see as pagan. But what other reasons could there be? Gods are not shown on Phrygian grave monuments except in exceptional cases. The expanded formulae, it is true, such as ‘the living god’, bear a Judeo-Christian mark. But ‘the god’ is very well established as a pagan way of referring to the superhuman sphere. Some pagans might have preferred the vagueness of ‘the god’ to the precision of naming particular gods, whether as more comprehensive or in a spirit of good neighbourliness with monotheists, or of agnosticism about the workings of the divine. You may say that the expanded forms, with their Judeo-Christian stamp, would have made pagans feel that this was not for them, but that is to assume hostile relations between the groups. The formula in its unexpanded form might mark the middle ground.’ This argument may be judged too sceptical: it rules out any appeal to evidence that could refute it. One might counter with this question: if Phrygian pagans were happy with the ‘you-will-have-to-deal-with’ form, why did they never, when using it, name specific avenging gods,38 and always just ‘the god’? But it remains the case that these formulae, except when expanded, are in themselves ambiguous. As far as we can tell, Christians and pagans (and indeed Jews) were buried side by side: there were no denominational necropoleis.39 The second class of texts that make Christianity visible, more unmistakably in this case, is that of the somewhat more than twenty epitaphs from the Upper Tembris valley which proudly declare themselves to have been set up by ‘Christians for Christians’. The one dated example, from 248/49 or 240/41,40 is thought to fall near the beginning of the series. It reads: ‘Christians for Christians. Aurelia Ammeia with their son-in-law Zotikos and their grandchildren Allexandreia and Telesphoros and Allexandros made it for her husband.’ The formula extends, to judge from style and from dated texts of other types from the same workshops, into the fourth century and even beyond Constantine. Another fifteen or so epitaphs, possibly 38.  As happened occasionally outside Phrygia: see 125n36. 39.  J. G. C. Anderson in History and Art of the Eastern Provinces, 197; as elsewhere, Macmullen, Christianizing, 78 with 153n22 (citing Cyprian’s disapproval). Their monuments too were the same in form: P. Testini, Archeologia cristiana (Rome, 1958), 306. 40.  No. 22 in Gibson, Christians for Christians, the fundamental resource (= Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, no. 27, who supports her reading of the date; Mitchell (‘Christian Identity’, 286 fig. 3) shows the inscription and dates it, presumably because of a different reading, to 240). On chronology of the whole series, see the useful summary in Mitchell’s review, JTS 31 (1980), 201–3; Mitchell (Anatolia II, 40n240) extends it to ‘350 at least’. A new example: ICG 1366. Hutter (‘Christianisierung’, 148, 163) raises the question whether persecution under Decius, Valerian and the Tetrarchy caused Christians to become more cautious: no sign of such caution in the ‘Christians for Christians’ inscriptions.

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beginning at the end of the second century, identify dead persons as ‘Christians’; these are more widely dispersed, but with a concentration at Akmonia.41 It used to be argued that the bold assertion of a Christian identity in the ‘Christians for Christians’ texts marked them as belonging to the uncompromising Montanist sect; but, other arguments aside, they come from a region further north than the Montanist heartland, and that position has been almost entirely abandoned.42 An opposite conclusion follows. Not only extremists flaunted their allegiance: ‘ “Coming out” as Christian was normal in Phrygia, but taboo in the cities of the coastal regions’.43 (But perhaps we should modify that to read ‘was normal in the Phrygian countryside’.) We have already noted that some of the epitaphs bearing the Eumeneian formula make the Christian allegiance of the dead manifest. Perhaps one self-proclaimed church of pre-Constantinian date has been found.44 There were Christian city councillors. A martyr story tells how one Dorymedon, a councillor of Synnada, was revealed as a Christian during persecution under Probus by refusing to participate in a civic festival of the Dioscuri.45 Doubtless this is legend; if not, we must suppose that what was normally inoffensive became dangerous in a time of active persecution. Normally such issues cannot have been pressed. An issue that these texts raise is that of family solidarity in religion. Where the full formula, ‘Christians for Christians’, is used, the answer is not in doubt: both the dead and those who commemorate them are Christian alike. But a remarkable epitaph from Apollonia which names (probably) fourteen individuals over five generations specifically identifies just one of them as a Christian, a man in the oldest generation 41. Gibson, Christians for Christians, nos. 30–45 (summarized in Strobel, Das Heilige Land, 112–17; no. 32 is now dated 253/4, MAMA XI 122); add MAMA XI 44 (Eumeneia), 82 (Sebaste), and 164 (Kidyessos) (ICG 1454, 1477, 1461), and Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, no. 10 (for the two latter the commentaries ad loc. flirt with a late second-century date; Tabbernee also dates his no. 9 early thirdcentury, and MAMA X xxxvi even says of Gibson 30 ‘soon after the middle of the 2nd c.’—but ‘Christians’ was added to this text by a second hand (n. 15 above)). Provenances given by Gibson are ‘western regions of Kütahya province’, Akmonia (x 4 or 5), Apamea (x3), Eumeneia, Apollonia, Amorion; her nos. 42 and 43 are from the region of Dionysopolis. 42.  For history of the debate, see Gibson, Christians for Christians, 131–35; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 147–50; Trevett, Montanism, 204–9. But the Roberts were sympathetic; see BE (1979), no. 522. The suggestion that Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, no. 63 (where see commentary; ICG 1413) applies a Montanist counter-formula (P[neumatic] for P[neumatic]) is attractive, but chronologically difficult since this text seems to postdate the ‘Christians for Christians’ texts (cf. Gibson, Christians for Christians, 64). 43.  Mitchell, ‘Christian Identity’, 281. For the modification, see BE (1979), no. 522. It was taboo elsewhere in the empire too: MacMullen, Christianizing, 102. 44.  MAMA X 254, where the editors confidently proclaim ‘Christianity did not skulk away in this period’. MAMA I 170 (ICG 371) also seems to imply a pre-Constantinian church of some splendour at Laodikeia Katakekaumene. For the church at Laodikeia, supposedly datable to about 325 CE, see C. Şimşek, Church of Laodikeia (Denizli, 2015). 45.  See 155n172.

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but entering the family tree only through the marriage of his granddaughter. Are we meant to understand that all his descendants (i.e. another five individuals) and perhaps their spouses (two more) were also Christians? We could wish for the explicitness of an epitaph from Lydia where the Christian tomb-owner makes plain that his wife too is a Christian! A pair of epitaphs on the same stone from the Upper Tembris valley show that Christians did not necessarily declare their faith on every occasion. In one, Euktemon and Ammia name their dead daughter, but not themselves, as Christian; but in the other four siblings, including what is presumably the same Euktemon, honour their stepmother with the ‘Christians for Christians’ formula.46 It has long been conventional to contrast these ‘phanero-Christian’ inscriptions with others held to reveal such an allegiance only obliquely, so-called ‘cryptoChristian’ epitaphs. The concept goes back to the ancient biography of Bishop Aberkios, where it was said that his epitaph was ‘comprehensible and beneficial to those worthy of Christ, but not recognizable by those without faith’.47 Chiricat has recently challenged this conception: he points out that the purpose of an epitaph was not to make a profession of faith, that we have no reason to think that Phrygian Christians normally had any need to disguise their religious allegiance, and that verse epitaphs are often vague and allusive about other aspects of the honorand’s life, too. In regard to one Eutropius, he remarks epigrammatically, ‘if we wish to categorize Eutropius as a “crypto-Christian”, we ought in good conscience also to classify him as a “crypto-freedman” ’ (neither status being declared explicitly); ‘there is no reason’, he continues, ‘to think that either part of the epitaph was intended to deceive his readers, let alone that Eutropius was afraid of persecution or wished to keep his faith secret from his Pentapolitan neighbours.’48 These points are well made, but in the light of them it becomes more remarkable that some Christians did find it appropriate to include a profession of faith in their epitaphs. It is hard not to see here an element of militant pride.49 Other distinctively, if quietly, Christian words or formulae are κοιμητήριον, ‘sleeping-place’ (for tomb) and ἀναπαύεσθαι, ‘rest’, both expressing the idea of death as temporary; the wish of ‘peace to passers-by/peace to brothers’; the request to ‘pray for me/us’; the pairing of alpha and omega; a vine growing from a chalice.50 Possible 46.  Apollonia epitaph: MAMA IV 221 (Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, no. 34; Gibson, Christians for Christians, no. 44, ICG 1135). Lydia: TAM V II 1299, ICG 1354. Euktemon: Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, no. 42, ICG 1256. 47.  T. Nissen, Sancti Abercii Vita (Leipzig, 1912), ch. 76: τοῖς μὲν ἀξίοις τοῦ Χϱιστοῦ νοούμενον καὶ ὠϕέλιμον, τοῖς δὲ ἀπίστοις μὴ γινωσκόμενον. 48.  Chiricat, ‘Crypto-Christian’, 213. 49.  This was in fact one of Calder’s main reasons for seeing these epitaphs as Montanist: see e.g. AnatSt 5 (1955), 27–31. 50.  For references to the first four, see Chiricat, ‘Crypto-Christian’, 199n7, 213n37, 204n24, 206n26; for αω MAMA I 177 (ICG 525), MAMA X 239 (ICG 1198); for vine in chalice (best seen in

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but disputed iconographic indicia of Christianity are the use of a slightly rotated chi perhaps suggesting a cross, a small circle with a cross in it (like a hot cross bun) perhaps evoking the bread of the eucharist, and a fish suspended from a horizontal bar (the bar thus forming the top of a cross of which the rope holding the fish is the vertical).51 The influence of Christianity on lay onomastics awaits a modern study.52 What proportion of the population in the third century was Christian will always be impossible to determine with precision. On archaeological grounds it has been argued that 80 percent of those appearing on gravestones in the Upper Tembris valley between 280 and 310 were Christians.53 But not everyone who existed will have been able to afford an expensive gravestone. Two well-known texts are sometimes thought to attest the total adhesion of two communities early in the fourth century. Eusebius, describing the great persecution of 303, writes that ‘armed soldiers ringed round a whole small town of Christians in Phrygia, set fire to it and burnt it, men and all, along even with their children and womenfolk’, because all the inhabitants including the public officials refused to commit idolatry.54 The victim has often been identified as Eumeneia, but this was scarcely by MAMA IV 109) MAMA VII xli. ‘Peace’ is already there in the prose ending of Steinepigramme 16/07/02, ICG 1598 of 216 CE (and MAMA XI 139, ICG 1448, of 255/6), with perhaps a hint of ‘prayer’, which is explicit in its model Steinepigramme 16/07/01 line 19 (ICG 1597, 170–80 CE); ‘rest’ in MAMA XI 145. 9–10, ICG 1445 (before 250 CE). Cf. ‘peace of God’ in Ramsay, Phrygia, 730–33 no. 658 (ICG 1599). On κοιμητήριον, see in brief D. Feissel, BE (1993), no. 771, 586: ‘On n’en connaît aucun example païen . . . ni aucun avant le milieu du IIIe s.’; he notes that the first three dated examples (first MAMA IV 354 [ICG 1069] of 253–54) are all Phrygian. But koimeterion is also Jewish: I. Jud. Orientis II no. 183. 51.  Slanted chi: MAMA X, xl n. 12; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 266, 276; Lochman, Grabund Votivreliefs, 93n20; ICG 1238. Hot cross bun: MAMA X xxxviii; notes on ICG 1232, 1238. In MAMA IV 222 (ICG 1136), it is accompanied (MAMA X, xxxviii) by an Alpha Omega missed by the editors, but in MAMA V 154 R 19 (ICG 1434) it appears above a dedication to Zeus. Suspended fish: MAMA VII xxxix; note on ICG 1812. ΙΧΘΥΣ is written out on MAMA VI 224 (ICG 962); fishes are shown on MAMA IV 354–55 (ICG 1069–70; both these are κοιμητήρια). 52.  To complement S. Destephen, ‘Christianisation and Local Names in Asia Minor’, in R. Parker (ed.), Changing Names (Oxford, 2019), 258–76, which concentrates on clergy and is Anatolia wide. Older observations in MAMA I xxi–iv, VII xxxvi, xxxix–xl, and much in the notes in ICG; but a systematic study exploiting LGPN V C is now needed. 53.  Mitchell, Anatolia II, 59, reporting ‘one of the conclusions of a detailed study of the Altıntas workshops by M. Waelkens’ (not, however, subsequently published to my knowledge); for Christian predominance in Eumeneia perhaps by 250 ibid., 41, 59 (noting the two bishops, so identified on tombstones, JRS 16 [1926], 58 no. 177, 73no.200 [ICG 1043, 1049]). Such estimates are drastically scaled down by Macmullen, The Second Church, 145n20; cf. for global numbers Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 585–92. 54.  Euseb. Hist. eccl. 8.11.1; cf. Lactant. Div. inst.. 5.11.10, ‘sicut unus in Phrygia qui universum populum cum ipso pariter conventiculo concremavit’. Eumeneia: so Ramsay, Phrygia, 505–9, apparently following Cumont; his main argument is a contrast between the rich Christian epigraphy of the city in the third century and the barrenness of the fourth. Blanchetiere (Le christianisme asiate, 339, 374) is sympathetic but more plausibly suggests nearby Attanassos (cf. Ramsay, Phrygia, 355–56, 504–5); sympathetic too are Fremd (Persecution, 470n59) and Hutter (in Ameling, Christianisierung, 147), the

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ancient standards a ‘small town’ (πολίχνη). And Eusebius’ contemporary Lactantius, apparently referring to the same incident, speaks of a persecutor in Phrygia who ‘burnt a whole populus along with its very meeting place (conventiculum)’. Conventiculum suggests that populus here means ‘congregation’; Eusebius possibly exaggerated a lesser outrage. Secondly, the people of little Orkistos, petitioning Constantine in the 320s to recover (as they put it) their status as an independent polis, declared that they were all ‘followers of the most sacred religion’.55 Constantine declared this the most compelling reason to grant their request, but presumably did not send a commission to check that it was literally true. The most one can conclude is that the claim could credibly be made. What cannot be doubted is that numbers of Christians in Phrygia grew very rapidly in the third century. That some, from time to time, fell back into paganism in Phrygia, as elsewhere,56 is very likely, but beyond demonstration. To judge from epigraphy, however, uptake of Christianity even within Phrygia was ‘intense but patchy’. A near vacuum of demonstrably Christian texts before Constantine has been noted in the Lycus valley and the areas of Dorylaion, Nacolea and Aizanoi,57 particularly striking in the case of Aizanoi, only some twenty-five kilometres distant from Kadoi whence, as we saw, comes the earliest dated Christian epitaph. Local specificities and boundaries in the distribution of pagan cults too are a feature of Phrygia, but the phenomenon is surely more noteworthy in the case of Christianity given its radical novelty: why should the ‘good news’ of the Evangelium seem good so selectively? It will scarcely do to say that Christianity came in where local cults were weak: the Upper Tembris valley is a hotbed of Christianity but it also hosted, for instance, the very popular cults of Zeus Thallos and Ampelites. Nor is it very convincing to suppose that public self-identification as a Christian was more hazardous in some regions than in others.58 The Upper Tembris valley is one of several regions which show that Phrygian Christianity, whatever may be true elsewhere, is as much a rural as an urban latter noting, however, the city’s pagan coinage under Gallienus. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 771n4: ‘not, I think, big Eumeneia (though no bishop from Eumeneia is attested at Nicaea).’ Calder supposed it to be the Montanist centre Pepouza (see several references in Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 216n3); certainly not Orcistus (rightly Mitchell, Anatolia II, 57n34). 55.  MAMA VII 305 I, 39–42. 56.  Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 271. 57.  Lycus valley: Hutter, Lycus Valley, 336; the other regions: Mitchell, Anatolia II, 60, 62, with earlier references (the phrase quoted, 62); MAMA X xxxix. Trombley (Hellenic Religion II, 99–110) adds the Axylon and most of eastern Phrygia; but the whole epigraphic record from there is relatively meagre. MAMA IX 390 (ICG 1301, the name Kyriakos) is a possible exception from Aizanoi; the ascription by ICG of its 1240 to ‘Aizanoi’ is misleading: see Steinepigramme 16/22/05 for the ascription to Tiberiupolis. 58.  Local cults weak: Mitchell, Anatolia II, 62; uneven danger: Hutter, Lycus Valley, 382 (on 392 he suggests that ‘the busy through highways and frequent presence of representatives of the Roman administration’ may have increased the risk in the Lycus valley.)

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phenomenon, perhaps more so.59 That point aside, it is hard to say much about the sociology of pre-Constantinian Phrygian Christians. We saw above that there were almost certainly several Christian councillors in Eumeneia in the third century, one of them the prize-winning athlete Helix. From Eumeneia, too, comes the probably Christian advocate Gaios, from Laodicea Combusta M. Iulius Eugenios, who married the daughter of a senator and engaged in some kind of military service (as did other Christians) until required by the legislation of Maximinus Daia to sacrifice.60 The monuments bearing the Eumeneian formula and the ‘Christians for Christians’ inscriptions were, for the most part, fairly elaborate and expensive: the decorations of the panels would often mark those commemorated as farmers.61 Below that level of prosperity we do not penetrate. Specific professions other than agriculture are almost never identifiable: perhaps a grocer (παντοπώλης), perhaps a doctor, perhaps a butcher, perhaps the freedman of a senatorial family, a carpenter or mason, perhaps a litter-bearer.62 A particular issue is the relation of Christianity to Roman power. By the third century, large parts of the Upper Tembris valley were imperial estates. Were, then, the self-proclaimed Christians of the region unexpectedly bold and free-spirited residents of those estates, or did they occupy interstices not yet swallowed up by the emperor?63 A second problem or paradox concerns Eumeneia, which gives its name to the famous formula. Ramsay wrote of it eloquently: Further the inscriptions convey the impression that there was no violent break between Greek and Christian culture in Eumeneia. There is no sign of bitterness on either side . . . The inscriptions bring before us a picture of rich and generous development, of concession, of liberality, in which people of diverse thoughts were 59.  As noted in MAMA X xxxix; they also stress rural areas of south Phrygia and ‘west and southwest of Aezani’ as showing much early evidence of Christianity. 60. Gaios: above, page 122. Eugenios: MAMA 1 170 (ICG 371). Trophimos too who ‘led his patris’ was a Christian if we accept the τὸν θέον σοι formula (cf. appendix C) as probable evidence (ICG 1977, Steinepigramme 16/31/14). Christian soldiers: e.g. Domnos, Gibson, Christians for Christians, no. 29 (Steinepigramme 16/31/12, ICG 1270). 61.  So e.g. in Gibson, Christians for Christians, nos. 3–5, 8–12, 14, 16, 20, 34. 62. Grocer: Ramsay, Phrygia, 560 no. 449 (ICG 1610), dated to 255–56 but marked as Christian only by the Eumeneian formula; doctor: SEG VI 266 (ICG 1367), a vow to ‘highest god’ by one Aurelios Paulos (n.b. Paulos); butcher: BASP 12 (1975), 151 (ICG 1268: Christian, but possibly post-Constantinian); freedman: MAMA XI 145 (ICG 1445), with Chiricat, ‘Crypto –Christian’, 211–13; carpenter/mason: Gibson, Christians for Christians, no. 15 (with her page 36; ICG 1205); litter-bearer: MAMA IV 32 (Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 486: a Christian makes his monument, so he was probably one too). This lack of sociological evidence is true of most early Christian communities: Bremmer, Rise, 52; cf. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 299–301, 311. The ‘horse-doctor’ of Gephyra 18 (2019), 168 no. 34 is post-Constantinian; so too the grocer—ibid., 172 no. 36. 63.  J. G. C. Anderson, in History and Art of the Eastern Provinces, 199–202, raised the problem, and inclines to the former view; on the estates see MAMA X xxxiii–xxxv.

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132      Christianity and paganism in Phrygia practically reconciled in a single society. But they also show us Eumeneia as mainly a city of Christians. Nothing similar to this is known throughout the ancient world: Eumeneia stands before us as the earliest Christian city of which record remains, exemplifying the practical conciliation of two hostile religions in a peaceful and orderly city. (Ramsay, Phrygia, 503)

But this earliest Christian city was also, at the relevant period, the site of an important Roman garrison.64 Where did the members of the garrison stand in relation to the cult which was proving so attractive to the Phrygians they lived among? This question, like the other, is for the moment tantalisingly unanswerable. But any friction there may have been has left no trace. More generally, we saw earlier that the third century offers no firm evidence for martyrdom or persecution.65 PAG A N I SM F R OM A B O U T 2 5 0 T O C O N STA N T I N E

Christianity, on any view, grows rapidly in the third century. What of paganism? The period from about 100 to about 250 CE that saw Christianity take root in Phrygia is also the period from which evidence for pagan cults survives in such splendid abundance. From about 250 the picture becomes much less clear. Dedications to pagan gods bearing dates provide the hardest evidence, but they were always a small minority among such dedications; of the more than six hundred presented in that bible of pagan religion, Phrygian Votive Steles, for instance, no single one bears a date. Dated dedications scarcely continue into the second half of the third century. A striking exception is a family’s dedication of a ‘propylon with columns’, possibly from the region of Aizanoi, to Theos Hypsistos in 308/9.66 But some (see below) would regard Theos Hypsistos as anyway a compromise between paganism and Christianity; he receives a notable number of other late dated dedications.67 A dedication from Aizanoi, made ‘on instructions of the god Sozon’, is of 253/54;68 the title Sozon, too, could, at a pinch, be seen as a stepping away from ordinary paganism in the direction of abstraction. But no such defence could be made for a dedication to Zeus Herakles from south of Appia (Upper Tembris valley) of 250–51.69 Three years later a ‘night general’ at Laodikeia on the Lykos replaced a stolen statue of Eros (and possibly added another). Not dated but 64.  Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 150–57. 65.  122n19. 66.  SEG XL 1251. 67.  SEG XL 1227, of 257/8, MAMA X 261, of 253–54, and perhaps MAMA X 504, of 245–46, all from north-west Phrygia. 68.  MAMA IX 57, if calculated by the Sullan era, as now appears inescapable for Aizanoi: P. Herrmann ap. W. Günther, IstMitt 25 (1975), 356n32; further references in LGPN V.C, xi n. 22. 69.  SEG LIII 1460. The dating to 298–99 (Sullan era) of a dedication to Men in MAMA IX 62 is a slip for 198–99.

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datable is a statue dedicated to Artemis (Lochia?), again at Laodikeia on the Lykos, by Dyskolios, no doubt while governing Phrygia or Phrygia-Caria at some time between 305 and 324;70 by this date such a dedication by a prominent figure may have been intended to make a statement. The katagraphai (dedications of persons to some form of service of the god) at the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos are particularly suggestive, because these inscriptions, recording a legal transaction, were normally dated and form a series: that series ends in 257 CE (though the possibility has been raised that some undated cases squeezed into awkward corners of already-used stones might be even later.)71 In the far south-east the abundant evidence from the sanctuary of Men Askaenos just east of Antioch, and from the meeting place of the Xenoi Tekmoreioi some thirty kilometres further north-west, apparently ceases by 250 or a little before. The only inscription from a Dionysiac society with a firm date is of 249/50: it may be the latest. The latest dated confession inscription is of 288–89, but comes from Maeonia;72 those from Phrygia itself cannot be precisely dated. Civic coinages remain pagan to the end, but frustratingly break off, for reasons unconnected with religion, during or before the reign of Gallienus (253–68). The last known civic high priest in the imperial cult appears to be one Titianos, attested on a coin of Temenothyrai between 253 and 262.73 That the imperial cult, so central to the ceremonial life of the cities and the ambitions of the more prosperous citizens, came to a full stop while the empire remained pagan is not easy to believe; but we cannot trace what would have been the instructive history of its last stages. Thus far the evidence can be accommodated without too much violence in the hypothesis that publicly displayed appeals to pagan gods come to an end about 260, the two exceptions from the early fourth century allowing special explanations.74 The difficulty comes from undated material. It is normal to assign humble votives to ‘second/third century CE’ or ‘the (late) imperial period’ without further justification. Expert epigraphists may have good grounds for dating an inscribed votive to the third rather than the fourth century, but I have never seen them stated; and rough amateur work scarcely admits precise dating from letter forms. 70.  Night general: I. Laodikeia Lykos 72. Dyskolios: SEG LXII 1239. 71.  Ritti, Şimşek, Yıldız, ‘Apollo Lairbenos’, 45; last dated example, ibid., K 52, SEG L 1270. 72.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften. Supplement, no. 135. Dionysiac society: Jaccottet. Dionysos, no. 83. Xenoi Tekmoreioi: Blanco-Pérez, ‘Men Askaenos’, 138. 73.  Frija, Prêtres des empereurs, 273n460. On pp. 55–56 Frija claims the high priests of the later Epitynchanos inscription for the imperial cult, to my mind implausibly; cf. pp. 147n133, 231. Coinage: the brief revival in three cities in the early fourth century did not touch Phrygia: J. Van Heesch, ‘The Last Civic Coinages and the Religious Policy of Maximinus Daza (312)’, NC 153 (1993), 65–75. 74.  Such was the well-known conclusion, in relation to the whole empire, of J. Geffcken, The Last Days of Greco-Roman Paganism, trans. S. MacCormack (Amsterdam, 1978), 25; it is contested by Lane Fox (Pagans and Christians, 574–85).

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Lochman is unusual in attempting more precise datings and in explaining his grounds for them (‘a combination of stylistic analysis and a comparative analysis of stele forms and decoration’).75 His conclusion for the regions he has studied is that production ceases about 250, and at some sites even earlier; the last survivors would be Hosios and Dikaios at their sanctuary in the Upper Tembris valley near Kotiaion, where they hang on till about 270. One can provisionally accept his datings and still wonder about the conclusions to be drawn for religious history. Production of votives in his regions begins only in the mid-second century CE, but manifestly the worship of the gods concerned must go back much further. The sanctuary of the Zeuses Alsenos and Petarenos near Phyteia has yielded votives in abundance, but only until early in the third century. Lochman concludes the following: ‘Presumably a sudden worsening of economic conditions caused the relocation of the sculptors and thus the end of votive production.’ But the worshippers will not have been free to relocate; they must have expressed their piety in other forms. As is well-known, the ‘epigraphic habit’ in almost all its forms declined sharply in the second half of the third century, just when the evidence for paganism seems to fade away. A special problem arises in those regions where, as noted above, there is virtually no pre-Constantinian evidence for Christianity. If paganism had failed around the middle of the third century and Christianity only took root after Constantine, what had happened in the intervening period, which lasted almost three quarters of a century? The destroyed rural sanctuary of Zeus Limnenos and Zeus Bronton in the territory of Nakoleia (one of the Christianity-free zones) comes to our aid here: it has yielded not just dedications to those gods in very large numbers, but also eleven coins extending from the reign of Gordian III to that of Theodosius.76 Prima facie, then, this pagan sanctuary flourished not only until Constantine but unexpectedly far into the fourth century. And this result, if accepted, must raise some doubt about the posited collapse of pagan piety in other places. B E C OM I N G C H R I ST IA N

I revert to the question of central interest, the preconditions or predispositions that may have favoured the uptake of Christianity. (There were none, except in some measure Judaism, according to Paul Veyne, who stresses ‘la formidable 75.  See conveniently in brief Phrygian Votive Steles, 31–34 (the phrase cited in the text is on page 33); also Grab- und Votivreliefs, 196, 234. 76.  See N. E. Akyürek Şahin, Yazıdere (Seyitgazi): Zeus Kutsal Alani ve Adak Yazıtları (Istanbul, 2006) (SEG LVI 1513–1665) and in Arkeoloji ve Sanat 122 (2006), 89–124 (SEG LXII 1152–1176); for the coins, see Yazıdere (Seyitgazi), 19–21. The supposed continuation of pagan games well into the fourth century at the sanctuary of Men Askaenos near Antioch by Pisidia, by contrast, is no longer accepted (Blanco-Pérez, ‘Mên Askaenos’, 127n49).

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originalité du christianisme’;77 but for the sake of argument they should be put on parade.) I will give these factors numbers, not in any order of importance, but to make returning to them point by point a little clearer. 1. A passage of the church historian Socrates (Hist. eccl. 4.28. 9–12) is regularly cited to show that Phrygians were temperamentally ready for the transition: ‘the Phrygian people appears to be more restrained [σωφρονέστερα] than other peoples. One proof is that Phrygians seldom swear oaths.78 Anger [τὸ θυμικόν] prevails among the Scythians and Thracians. Those living towards the rising sun are rather enslaved to desire [τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν]. But the Paphlagonians and Phrygians incline to neither of these extremes. There is for instance no enthusiasm for horse races nor for theatres among them.’ This is a striking contrast, indeed, to the image of sensual and cowardly Phrygians so common in most Greco-Roman literature. 2. Several cities contained long-established, thriving and integrated Jewish communities, and Jewish names found on epitaphs in rural districts show that many Jews also worked on the land.79 Actual Jews will always have been a small minority, but there will also have been that important bridge to the pagan world, ‘god-fearers’, non-Jewish sympathizers who attended Jewish services and to some degree adopted Jewish practices. Although in Phrygia ‘god-fearers’ are never named as a class, Julia Severa of Acmonia, who ‘built the synagogue’ but also served as ‘high priestess and agonothetis of the whole house of the theoi Sebastoi’, is a spectacular example, and surely allows us to postulate the existence of many others in humbler levels of society.80 That many of the earliest Christian converts in Phrygia were Jews or god-fearers is highly plausible, even if not strictly demonstrable; 77.  Veyne, Quand notre monde . . ., 35–65. 78.  This point is already noted in Nicolaus of Damascus FGrH 90 F 103 (i) 128. It is a paradox that the mysterious and ill-attested ‘Phrygian tales’ seem typically to have been euhemeristic/atheistic (J. B. Rives, GRBS 45 [2005], 223–44). 79.  Evidence is richest from Acmonia and Hierapolis (the latter has a ‘katoikia of Jews living in Hierapolis’, I. Jud. Orientis II 205. 4–5), but one can mention too Laodicea on the Lycus, probably Apameia and Eumeneia (but Jews and Christians are had to disentangle in these places), and Synnada: I. Jud. Orientis II nos. 167–214. For rural Jewry, see Ameling, ‘Jüdische Gemeinden’, 31–32, I. Jud. Orientis II 343; for Jewish graffiti in quarries, see I. Jud. Orientis II, 380n101, 386n119, 388n126. Integration: note e.g. acceptance of Kalends in I. Jud. Orientis II 196; cf. Hutter, Lycus Valley, 75–79, 252–3. P. van der Horst (‘The Jews of ancient Phrygia’, in his Studies in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity [Leiden, 2014], 134–42, at 142) speaks of ‘a high degree of integration of the Jewish communities into society as a whole’. 80.  See the discussion in I. Jud. Orientis II 168, 351–53. The ἀρχισυνάγωγος P. Tyrronios Klados, one of the restorers of Julia Severa’s synagogue (I. Jud. Orientis II 168), is likely also to have been a godfearer: see Ameling, ‘Jüdische Gemeinden’, 51.

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Paul warns the Colossians against misleading teachers who fuss over food rules, and claim contact with angels (beings familiar in Judaism).81 Much later, in the fourth and fifth centuries, strong Judaizing tendencies appear among ‘heretical’ Christians, Novatians and Montanists;82 the phenomenon there is perhaps not Jewish conversion to Christianity, rather Christian admiration for Jewish traditions, but it still shows how much the two monotheisms could be felt to have in common. We saw above that it is controversial whether the so-called Eumeneian formula was exclusive to Christians or used by both Christians and Jews. The doubt arises because in some of its expanded forms the formula uses Old Testament language, so that we are dealing, on the one view, with a distinctive formula, on the other a sacred book, shared between the two. Hostility between Jew and Christian, widespread in other regions, is not attested in Phrygia.83 3. Jews and Jewish sympathisers lead on naturally to the worshippers of ‘Highest God’. Or should that have been ‘worshippers of whatever god was locally deemed highest’? Twenty-six dedications to that entity survive in Phrygia, most made by individuals, one by a village, none by cities. The two views on this central issue were discussed above.84 On one this is a distinct cult, non-sacrificial and, so to speak, non-denominational, open both to Jews (for whom Jahwe was regularly Hypsistos in the Septuagint) and pagans unwilling to give a name to the supreme power; it persisted in the movement of Hypistarioi (definitely a cult) to which the father of Gregory of Nazianzus belonged before his conversion to Christianity. On the other, there were many highest gods: this was just a locution that became popular at a time when it was de rigeur to exalt the power of almost any god one was momentarily involved with (‘megatheism’); any local top god became ‘Highest God’, or an anonymous ‘Highest God’ might be added to others bearing names.85 This was then traditional polytheism with a touch of 81.  Col. 2.8–23; cf. I. Jud. Orientis II, 343n9; Hutter, Lycus Valley, 122–31. But Hutter (122) notes that the primary addressees of Colossians should be ex-pagans, not ex-Jews. Lane Fox (Pagans and Christians, 318–19) doubts whether Christianity made many Jewish converts after the early years. 82.  See S. Mitchell, ‘An Apostle to Ankara from the New Jerusalem,’ Studia Classica Israelica 24 (2005), 207–23, at 220–23; cf. Sheppard, ‘Jews, Christians and Heretics’, 172 and in brief I .Jud. Orientis II 342. Canon 29 of the fourth-century Council of Laodicea forbad Christians ἰουδαίζειν (Hutter, Lycus Valley, 298n151): there was a temptation. 83.  Destephen (‘Le christianisation’, 168) writes ‘les zones d’épigraphie paléochrétienne ne correspondent pas aux grands foyers du judaïsme anatolien, à l’exception d’Akmonia en Phrygie’. But coexistence also appears well-attested in e.g. Apameia, Eumeneia and above all Hierapolis, though doubt over the ‘Eumeneian formula’ is regularly a complicating factor. 84.  See p. 23. 85.  As in Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 38, a dedication to Theos Hypistos and Hosios and (?) Zeus.

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cautious abstraction. The implications of the two views for our question are obviously dramatically different. On the one view, it was easy for the worshipper of Hypsistos to take the step that Gregory’s father later took and become a Christian. Christians could indeed still describe their god as Hypsistos. On the other, one might make a dedication to Highest God (probably envisaged as a form of Zeus) one week, and to Mother or Men the next. A dedication or dedications to Highest God found in a secure archaeological context will doubtless one day bring down the scales on one side or the other; for the moment the issue is finely balanced. 4. Also to be mentioned among possible fertilisers for Christianity is the cult of Hosios and Dikaios, first attested in Phrygia in the second century and appearing with increasing frequency until well into the second half of the third.86 As gods anonymous, apart from qualifying adjectives which stress not power but virtue, they fall outside the pagan norm. Particularly tantalising are some of the dedications from their sanctuary at Yaylababa Köyü near Kotiaion, where the chi of euche is tilted in a way that makes it resemble a cross: here and in other such instances of a ‘tilted chi’ it is unclear whether we are dealing with a stonecutters’ fashion, or a gesture to Christianity. One dedication at Yaylababa also displays a ‘hot cross bun’ which, again, may be evocative of the eucharist, or may be merely decorative.87 If it is true that the cult of Hosios and Dikaios prepared the way for Christianity, it will turn out to be ironic that their sanctuary at Yaylababa was vandalised in late antiquity, presumably by Christians;88 they will have been the forerunners who had not gone far enough. Remarkable, too, is the role of Dike at Prymnessos,89 since she is not just worshipped, a thing not hard to parallel, but is actually, in all appearance, the chief deity of the city. 5. Hosios and Dikaios have, slightly paradoxically, scarcely any connection with the so-called ‘confession inscriptions’; but the practice of public admission of fault, so alien to the Greco-Roman ethos of ‘turning the fair 86.  Its importance in this regard is stressed by L. Robert, CRAI (1978), 267–69 (= idem, Choix d’ écrits [Paris, 2007], 338–40; also available in his OMS V). First attested: SEG LIII 1451 (Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios. Newly Published’, no. 36), dated to 138 AD if the era is Sullan (if so, the earliest dated dedication from anywhere, though the two adjectives appear in an acclamation in 58 AD (Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios. Newly Published’, no. 1) and a mysterious supposedly Hellenistic text from Thessaly (ibid., no. 44). The latest examples are dated by Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, on stylistic grounds to 260 (93) or 280 (198). 87.  Ricl, ‘Hosios kai Dikaios’, nos. 47, 50, 51, 58, 59, and (with ‘hot cross bun’) 73 (ICG 1556–61). On the ‘hot cross bun’, see p. 129 above. 88.  Lochman, Grab- und Votivreliefs, 91. 89.  Cf. 23n62.

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side outwards’, can evidently be seen as anticipating the Christian sense of sinfulness and the need for confession and absolution. The penitent is required to ‘praise’ the power of the god: the terms in question (εὐλογεῖν, εὐλογία) are rare in Greek religious texts, but of constant recurrence in the Septuagint, so we have here, perhaps, an illustration of Jewish influence on paganism which could have prepared the way for the other monotheism. More broadly, the total self-submission before the divine seen in these inscriptions can be seen to anticipate the Christian conception of mortals as servants or slaves (douloi) of a god who is addressed as ‘Master’ (Kyrios).90 Again, we saw that the confession inscriptions imply hidden agents who helped the culprits identify the transgressions responsible for their affliction. These hidden agents must have been village priests; as moral arbiters for the community they can be seen as forerunners of Christian bishops.91 6. A surprising feature of Phrygian self-presentation is pride in literacy, as shown by the writing tablets so often depicted on male tombs.92 7. At a very general level one might argue that, since Christians and pagans could apparently coexist comfortably, there must have been commonalities encouraging mutual sympathy.93 8. Globally, the ‘end of sacrifice’ is in recent scholarship often mentioned as encouraging new forms of worship.94 9. Montanism has sometimes been thought to have significant pagan roots. These suggestions are very unevenly persuasive. 1. In making his claim about the Phrygian temperament, Socrates is not seeking to explain why Phrygians became Christians but why, within Christianity, they were so susceptible to the austere and unforgiving 90.  εὐλογεῖν: so e.g. Mitchell, Anatolia II, 36–37; cf. Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 149–50. Selfsubmission: Bremmer, ‘Quiet Demise’, 247–49. But note that the general late antique fondness for giving gods the honorific title kyrios is barely visible in Phrygia (I have only MAMA IX 61 and Ramsay, Phrygia, 377 no. 198, both Asclepius); nor are they ‘kings’ or ‘tyrants’. 91.  Mitchell, Anatolia II, 72 (discussing bishops): ‘Divine justice had a long pedigree in Anatolian villages’. Hutter in Ameling, Christianisierung, 163, speaks more cautiously of the possible influence of ‘die Beicht- und Busspraxis’ in the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos on Christian practice as ‘uncertain’. 92.  See e.g. Waelkens, Türsteine, 319, index s.v. ‘Diptychon’. On the importance of literacy cf. Bremmer, ‘Quiet Demise’, 240–44. 93. G. W. Bowersock in Ameling, Christianisierung, 4, toys with a non-confrontational model whereby ‘the new religion imperceptibly absorbed and satisfied ancient local pieties’; cf. Mitchell, Anatolia II, 48. But the roles of prophets and of ‘angels’ stressed by Mitchell, 46–47, as common ground do not seem to me very important in Phrygia. 94.  See e.g. Bremmer, ‘Quiet Demise’, 244–46.

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Novatian heresy. Even so, it has some force, if we allow that genuine knowledge underlies this very schematic picture of temperaments varying along an east-west spectum. 2. The existence of Jewish communities and associated ‘god-fearers’ was surely an important factor. So, too, were generally good relations between Christians and pagans (7 above). 3. and 4. Taken in themselves, the cults of a Highest God and of Holy and Just do indeed sound like paths leading away from traditional polytheism. But dedications to Highest God could perhaps, and to Holy and Just did regularly, form part of combined dedications which included traditional gods.95 More important than this is that the goods sought from them are more or less indistinguishable from those sought from the traditional named gods. One could pray to Hosios and Dikaios for the welfare of one’s crops, to Hypsistos for one’s livestock. No doubt Phrygian peasants continued to supplicate the Christian god about similar concerns: what is striking is not that traditional needs are still present even in prayers to Highest God and Holy and Just,96 but that almost nothing else is present. Only occasionally does Holy and Just appear to have a special concern with justice. Highest God has no distinctive concerns; just once is he said to ‘have pitied’ a suppliant (normal pagan usage would have expressed this notion as ‘saved’).97 From the votive record both powers are, almost without exception, just an extension of the range of gods one could turn to with normal mundane anxieties. 5. The vocabulary of sin/trangression (ἁμαρτ- words) was common to both pagan and Christian ‘confession’. But in other respects they were very different.98 Pagan confession was, above all, a response to affliction; when 95.  Highest God: T. Drew-Bear, Nouvelles Inscriptions de Phrygie (Zutphen, 1978), 41 no. 8 (SEG XXVIII 1182; Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, no. 38) is a dedication Θεῷ Ὑψίστῳ καὶ Ὁσίῳ καὶ Διὶ̣;̣ space excludes the more obvious supplement Δικαίῳ. Outside Phrygia note TAM V.1.186, a statue of the goddess Larmene dedicated to highest god and to theion. Holy and Just: ‘Hosios Dikaios: Analyse’, 91–93, ‘Les divinités associées’. 96.  As Mitchell (‘Theos Hypsistos’, 106) rightly allows; cf. Levick, ‘Phrygia outside the Polis’, 113– 14: these gods ‘are not let off their daily tasks’. 97.  Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2039 on their no. 33 (SEG XL 1188). 98.  ‘Confession’ is seen as an important point of continuity by Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter, 485–91. But see rather Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, 103–4; on post-baptismal sin in brief Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 337–38. W. Ameling (‘Paränese und Ethik in den kleinasiatischen Beichtinschriften: Zu den Voraussetzungen christlicher Mission in Kleinasien’, in: R. Deines et al. [eds.], Neues Testament und hellenistisch-jüdische Alltagskultur. Wechselseitige Wahrnehmungen [Tübingen, 2011], 241– 49) detects a commonality of values; but the Beichtinschriften are more focused on ritual offences than is Christian preaching. Two inscribed Christian confessions (MAMA I 253 [ICG 504]; JRS 2 [1912], 260 no. 21 [ICG 1707]) somewhat recall the Beichtinschriften, but not closely enough to suggest a link; so too the account of a broken promise to join a monastery in Kallinikos, Vita Hypatii, Bartelink (ed.), 44.27–33.

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something bad struck oneself or a member of one’s family, one identified an offence (most commonly a ritual offence) which had caused it, and performed an expiation which might, expensively, entail commissioning a stele on which to acknowledge the power of the god. No one, to our knowledge, thus expiated an offence for which punishment had still to strike. It was, one might say, a medical procedure. It could, if necessary, be repeated: one Lydian stele (exceptional, admittedly) records three sexual offences and three expiations.99 The Christian could be purged of his sins only because of Christ’s redeeming self-sacrifice on his behalf. The ritual of baptism, preceded by years of instruction (catechism), was the enactment of that purgation; the extent to which sins committed after baptism could be confessed and expiated was a matter of theological controversy. But Christians did not need to fall ill to know that they had sinned. 6. Literacy, no doubt, facilitated but could not in itself cause the spread of Christianity. 8. The ‘end of sacrifice’ argument dovetails with a different line of attack, which starts by noting that the rapid rise of Christianity in the third century coincides with the much-discussed ‘third century crisis’ of the Roman Empire. What kept paganism going, it has been argued, was a constant supply of lavish festivals, sacrifices, processions, games, regular building and repair of impressive temples, all financed by the civic elites who were proud to occupy the leading priesthoods in the cities; when that whole system came into crisis, so did paganism.100 Christianity came simpler, and cheaper. Added to this may have been the rising distaste for blood sacrifice as a form of worship. That argument has some force, but is very much city-based. Other difficulties aside, the place that city festivals had in the religious life of Phrygian cultivators is impossible to judge. It is, indeed, hard to tell how central sacrifice had ever been as a form of religious action in Phrygia; for whatever reason, it is not of this that the inscriptions speak.101 The rural piety that we see in the votive inscriptions did not, obviously, need elaborate expenditure to sustain it. 9. On the supposed pagan roots of Montanism see appendix D, where the argument that it was ‘a movement of purely Christian character’ is endorsed. 99.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften, no. 5. 100.  Mitchell, Anatolia II, 90; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 322–25; MacMullen, Christianizing, 53–54. But J. G. C. Anderson, in History and Art of the Eastern Provinces, 197, had argued that ‘in Northwest Phrygia the non-Christian element was strong and vigorous in the towns.’ 101.  Of course there are scraps of evidence, such as the votive stele from Thiounta (10n6), the priest who ‘sacrificed a white bull and the god heard me’ (Robert, Et. Anat. 371), a reference to a (literal?— surely not!) hecatomb for Apollo Archegetes at the sanctuary of Apollo Kareios north-east of Hierapolis (SEG LXII 1191.4–5), honours for a citizen who financed βουθυσίαι (SEG LXV 1248. 15).

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Let us note another negative. Scholars have often tried to place Christianity as one among the many ‘Oriental Religions’ and ‘Mysteries’ that supposedly flooded through the Roman world in the imperial period. Phrygia is a striking countercase: Christianity flourishes, other newly imported cults are all but invisible, as are Mysteries. ‘Private Associations’, too, are of slight importance, and will not have constituted a template for the church. We lack direct statements from Phrygians as to why they renounced Zeus and the rest of the gods for Christ. Some hints come from expanded versions of the Eumeneian formula, though a given instance might be owing to a Jew rather than a Christian. We hear there of ‘the living god’, ‘god as judge’, ‘the justice of god’, ‘he who created everything’, ‘god who will judge living and dead’;102 the offender can be doomed ‘not to share in God’s promise’, to suffer ‘now and on the day of judgement’ or ‘now and forever’. Unlike Zeus, this Judeo-Christian god created the world, and is (invisibly) living, not fashioned by human hands; much more reliably and vividly than Zeus, he is a god of justice and, potentially, terrible judgment, but one who also brought a promise to mankind. Rather fuller hints come, when we are lucky, from Christian funerary epitaphs,103 though hints are what, at best, they remain. An epitaph is not a credo: some that are shown to be Christian by a cross, for example, are indistinguishable in the ways they praise the dead from those of pagans; pagan cliches (going to Hades, Acheron, Plouton and so on) are not rare in Christian texts.104 Christian tombs often invoke supernatural punishment of a pagan violence against those violating them; Calder was shocked by one which included the wish that, as he put it, ‘the offender’s widow may live in sin in his house’.105 But more distinctively Christian notes are also struck: care for the poor (an inheritance from Judaism);106 the priest as shepherd of his flock, or disciple of Christ the shepherd, or teacher of Christ’s wisdom, or otherwise humane, or even, remarkably, ‘gentle’;107 102.  On judgement and punishment, see Robert, Hellenica XI–XII, 401–8. 103.  Cf. Mitchell, Anatolia II, 105–7, 104.  See e.g. the long Steinepigramme 16/31/83 (ICG 1192) and Steinepigramme 16/32/04 (ICG 1206) (Erinyes, Acheron, Plouton, particularly striking in a ‘Christians for Christians’ text). Cf. Trombley, ‘Christianity in Asia Minor’, 346: ‘It should be recognized that pagan and Christian shared an increasingly conventionalized language of discourse in the literature, both epigraphic and literary, about the divine milieu.’ 105.  See Destephen, ‘Le christianisation’, 170–71, esp. n. 43; Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 73–75; Calder on MAMA I 235: λίψῃ . . . χήραν γυναῖκαν ἀλιτρεύουσαν κατὰ οἶκον. Steinepigramme 16/31/87 (ICG 1267) line 23 (prose) threatens ‘eternal punishment’. 106.  MAMA XI 206 (Steinepigramme 14/02/12, ICG 81) and Chiron 44 (2014), 206 (corrected text of MAMA XI 208, ICG 1498, l. 5); Steinepigramme 14/06/05 (ICG 52) l.7; probably JRS 15 (1925), 142–43 no. 125 l. 3 (Steinepigramme 16/32/03, ICG 1355), despite ‘isles of the blessed’: see the discussion in JRS. 107.  Aberkios, Steinepigramme 16/07/01, ICG 1597, lines 3–4 (cf. ibid., 16/07/02, ICG 1598, l. 3), shepherd; Steinepigramme 16/31/12, ICG 1270, lines 15–16 (prose) πρεσβύτεροι λαοῦ πρεστάμενοι (cf. 16/31/82, line 3); Steinepigramme 14/06/04, ICG 372, two leaders/ charioteers of the sect of Sakkophoroi (and, ibid., an interpreter of Christ’s wisdom); Steinepigramme 14/06/07, ICG 603, a priest ‘loved by

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love of god or yearning for god;108 the value of chastity;109 hymn-singing relatives;110 God as ‘heavenly father’ or ‘father of all’.111 One cites a fragment of liturgy.112 The complaints about early death so familiar from pagan epitaphs are not quite silenced, but somewhat muted; instead, the kosmos itself becomes occasionally a bad place from which it is good to escape.113 Prose texts wish ‘peace to passers-by’ or to ‘brothers’ or ‘the brotherhood’.114 Above all, there is in these epitaphs an optimism about an afterlife.115 The dead man is deathless and ageless in paradise (14/02/04, ICG 349, l. 7; cf. 16/31/15, ICG 1360, l. 24), or ‘living within the heavenly court’ (16/42/02, ICG 1692, l. 4,); his soul is with immortal God, resting in the bosom of Abraham like one of the blessed (14/04/03, ICG 270, ll. 5–6; cf. 16/31/15, ICG 1360, l. 23); in spirit he is in heaven, though his body is in this tomb until the resurrection (16/43/06, ICG 1806); he will be aroused by the sounding trumpet (14/06/12, ICG 518, ll. 4–5); he sleeps with his kin until the great king calls them to himself (14/06/16, ICG 374, ll. 3–4); she has gone into eternal light (16/31/80, ICG 1175, ll. 15–16); God’s command came to him to depart for rest (16/31/82 l.4); resurrection awaits the righteous (16/06/01, ICG 1031, l.24);116 Christ ordered their souls to dwell in heaven because of their good children’ and ‘gentlest of all’; cf. 14/07/03, ICG 481, l. 2 (gentleness) and 14/07/04, ICG 303, l. 1 (‘like a dove’). Steinepigramme 14/06/03, ICG 604, line 3 is uncertain (Thonemann, Chiron 44 [2014], 203). 108.  Steinepigramme 14/04/03, ICG 270, lines 12–13, the dead man’s ‘brothers’ τερπόμενοι ζώοντι θεῷ; ibid., 14/06/11, ICG 606, l. 2, ‘who cared for θεοῦ χάρις most of all men’; Steinepigramme 16/31/85 l. 5 ὅς ἐπόθησε θέον, λιπὼν τὸν κόσμον ἅπαντα. 109.  Steinepigramme 14/06/16, ICG 374, l. 3, a man’s ‘virgin’ (i.e. not remarried) mother (for the male equivalent, see 16/31/15, ICG 1360, l. 5, well discussed by Mitchell, Anatolia II, 106); Steinepigramme 14/02/04, ICG 349, l. 5, a youth who died ἁγνὸς ἀπιρόγαμος Χριστοῦ φίλος; probably Steinepigramme 16/31/11, ICG 1190, l. 4, Bishop Heortasios as an ‘honourable eunuch, praying to God’. In northern Lykaonia we meet, remarkably, a male parthenos (MAMA XI 292, ICG 1495). 110.  Steinepigramme 16/31/81 lines 10–11. Christian singing is already mentioned in Colossians 3.16; being communal (though apparently, in church, male only: MacMullen, Second Church, 148n42), it differs from the singing by trained choirs of paganism. 111.  Steinepigramme 14/06/04, ICG 372, l. 2; ibid., 16/31/13, ICG 1159, l. 2; probably 16/22/05, ICG 1240, l. 10. 112.  Steinepigramme 14/06/05, ICG 52, lines 1–2, Mitchell, ‘Christian Identity’, 293 fig. 8; Mitchell compares MAMA XI 356, ICG 1505, an inscribed (non-orthodox) prayer. 113.  Steinepigramme 14/02/04, ICG 349, l. 6; 16/31/15, ICG 1360, l. 21; MAMA X 78, ICG 1174, l. 14. In Steinepigramme 14/04/03, ICG 270, lines 14–15 a wife is told by her husband to pray for an early relief from her grief (i.e. an early death). Death can occur by God’s will (Steinepigramme 14/05/02, ICG 20) or be seen as God taking his servant (MAMA I 229 and 230: ICG 214 and 631). Complaints: Steinepigramme 16/31/15, ICG 1360, l. 10; ibid., 16/31/75, ICG 1066, l. 14. 114.  MAMA XI 139, ICG 1448, with note. 115.  References in this paragraph in xx/xx/xx form are to Steinepigramme. ‘Line’ refers to the line as printed in verse form in Steinepigramme, not the line on the stone. 116.  Perhaps too in the problematic MAMA X 118 (Steinepigramme 16/31/97, where it is too confidently—aliter MAMA ad loc.—branded Christian). For hopes of resurrection among Galatians, see

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works (MAMA I 220 (a), ICG 491, in prose). The negative counterpart, the danger of eternal punishment, naturally does not appear in epitaphs, but must surely have been present to many minds.117 An attentive reader will have noted how much118 of all this evidence for Christian values comes from the far east of Phrygia, the region around Laodicea Combusta which became a hotbed of extreme movements judged heretical. But there is no reason to doubt that the values were shared more generally. Paul Veyne denies that hopes for the afterlife explain the appeal of Christianity to any great extent: if one were not drawn by the Christian message on other grounds, one would have no reason to believe Christianity’s promises on the subject; afterlife beliefs are anyway one thing, while a whole religious faith is something else altogether.119 It is no doubt also the case that one is more inclined to talk about the afterlife when writing a funerary epitaph than one is to think about it on a day-to-day basis. Some pagan epitaphs had already spoken optimistically of the dead person being now in the ‘halls of the gods’ or something similar. Nonetheless, it is reasonable to detect in the Christian epitaphs a stronger hope. Optimistic pagan epitaphs were always in counterpoint with others that declared death to be the end. And they were based on no more than a hotchpotch of myths and speculations backed by no authority. It is a paradox that the promises of mystery cults (those at Eleusis above all) about a better afterlife are all but never referred to in pagan epitaphs, even in regions very devoted to them; such cults had little influence in Phrygia anyway. Christianity, by contrast, made a clearly formulated promise, regularly recalled at meetings of the faithful. Lucian ridicules the foolish Christian belief that they would ‘become immortal and live for ever’. Julian is rather insistent on the fair hopes for the afterlife available to pagans, too, no doubt in response to the Christian challenge on this point. The converse was the Christian threat of eternal damnation for sinners and unbelievers, immeasurably shriller and more insistent than its pale pagan precursors.120 Mitchell (‘Christentum in Galatien’, 132–34), who cites SEG XXXI 1116, ICG 1379 (a memorial set up in Phrygia to his wife by a Galatian soldier, proud of his military career); I. North Galatia 87, ICG 2367; I. Ancyra II 357 (Steinepigramme 11/10/03, ICG 3709). 117.  John Chrysostom speaks of ‘ten thousand sermons on eternal punishment’ (Adversus Judaeos 1.4 [Migne, PG 48.848]); cf. MacMullen, Christianizing, 64 with 147n14, citing other relevant passages; idem, Christianity and Paganism, 168n31; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 326–27, 504. 118.  That is, texts with the prefix 14/ in Steinepigramme, the region ambiguous between Phrygia and Lycaonia; texts from nearer eastern, central and western Phrygia have the prefix 16/. On the intense piety of the former region, as revealed by quantity of clergy, see Mitchell, Anatolia II, 107. 119.  Comment notre monde . . ., 49–57. But on page 52 he mentions that the question ‘where will we go?’ was a live one and could have led to conversions. 120.  Lucian, Peregrinus, 13. Christians, however (e.g. Minucius Felix, Octavius, 11.4, 34.10; cf. Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 82–85), denied the pagan claim that their preference for burial over cremation had this ground (aliter Mitchell, ‘Christentum in Galatien’, 133–34). They were early representatives of a broader trend: cremation was obsolescent by the time of Macrobius, Saturnalia 7.7.5. Julian: Ep. 89b Bidez, 298d. Christian threat: MacMullen, Christianizing, 110

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This survey has revealed much of the ‘formidable originality’ (Veyne) of Christianity vis-a-vis the cults of Zeus and the rest. Christianity’s god is ‘living’ (because not contained in man-made images), much greater than Zeus—he created the world121—and more just. Judgement will come, but with it the guarantee of resurrection. This god is the ‘father of all’, a god whom one can yearn for. On earth, care for the poor has suddenly emerged as a virtue to be praised in epitaphs.122 Love is not spoken of, but it is implied in ‘yearning for’ a god who is father, in the duty of care for the poor, in the image of Christ the shepherd, and in the death of Christ for mankind (not mentioned in epitaphs, but visually evoked in endless crosses). Priests are shepherds in their turn, and their flock are ‘brothers’: worshipping together had created a bond even in paganism, but the intense sense of community implied by the language of ‘brotherhood’ has no parallels there.123 The influence of the clergy is shown by the long letter (89 Bidez) in which Julian sets out a programme for bringing pagan priests up to the mark. Even wishing ‘peace’ to passersby is new. Sexual continence has a new value, and it acquired even more in sects judged heretical (already in Montanism); here, for once, Socrates’ much-quoted remark about the self-control of the Phrygians may have some relevance. Selfabasement—as ‘sinner’, ‘your slave’, ‘humble’, ‘lowest’ and so on—is not characteristic of verse epitaphs, but common in prose epitaphs and inscriptions of other kinds. On a different level, and naturally not mentioned in the epitaphs, was the organisational novelty of the tentacular church, the inspired vehicle for ‘bridging and bonding’.124 Also unmentioned in the epitaphs, and therefore invisible to us, is the kind of teaching and reading that went on in Christian communities. There is, perhaps, no single regard in which Christianity outdoes paganism so comprehensively as in storytelling: in embodying its message in the story, located in historical 121.  Cf. e.g. SEG LIV 1344, ICG 930, an amulet. Regarding the Christian stress on God the creator, see the works cited by Bremmer, ‘Quiet Demise’, 247n51. 122.  Cf. Lucian, Peregrinus, 12 for the appeal of Christianity to widows and orphans. Care for the poor by Christian priests is like the cakes used by kidnappers to trick children, according to Julian Ep. 89b Bidez, 305c (on the need for pagan charity, see ibid., 290c–292d); for Libanius’ claim, Or. 30.20 (and some supporting evidence) that pagan temples also benefited the poor, see MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 45 with 184n41. In Ep. 84 Bidez, 429d, Julian mentions kindness to xenoi, along with ‘a pretended high moral standard’ (πεπλασμένη σεμνοτής κατὰ τὸν βίον) and special attention to burials (περὶ τὰς τάφας τῶν νεκρῶν πρόμηθεια) as sources of Christianity’s appeal (though on this letter cf. n. 184 below); on social care cf. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 324. On Julian’s imitatio Christianorum (as Christians themselves saw it: Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 89n1), see e.g. O. Nicholson, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 45 (1994), 1–10 (though see the argument of van Nuffelen [‘Deux fausses lettres’, 145–46] that the supposed imitatio is a Christian fabrication). 123.  Not even at Eleusis: Parker, Polytheism and Society, 361n152. 124.  Bremmer, Rise, 43; Veyne, Quand notre monde . . ., 67–91: ‘Autre chef-d’œuvre: l’ Église’. The imaginative grip of the idea of the church is seen in The Shepherd of Hermas (available e.g. in B. D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers II [Cambridge, MA], 2003), 11.3, 23.2, 90.1.

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time, told in circumstantial detail, of an individual, healer, wonder-worker and inspiring moral teacher, whose life ended in seeming tragedy and redemptive triumph—an individual who was none other than God the Son.125 Whence the proliferation of alternative gospels, and Christian polemic against the one pagan rival to the gospels, the Life of Apollonius of Tyana.126 The tradition continued with the many martyrologies and lives of wonder-working saints and holymen. Miracles are impressive to hear about but very hard to perform; insofar as miracles aided the spread of Christianity, this will have happened primarily through narrative. That Phrygians read or heard of and admired the teachings of Christ, and his and his followers’ miracles, we cannot doubt, but details almost wholly escape us.127 This is true, also, of Christians personally reaching out to pagans. Christianity also produced many wonder-workers, exorcists and prophets subsequent to Christ. Of such in Phrygia we hear (Montanism aside) only of Philip and his prophetic daughters.128 A factor that has not been stressed hitherto is community solidarity in Phrygian villages. It was common, as we have seen, for Phrygian villages to make collective dedications, and for individuals to make dedications for the well-being of their village as well as of themselves (occasionally only the village is mentioned). Such was not the way in Greece or in Greek colonies. About the value systems of Phrygian farmers we know no more than what we can glean from the words and pictures on their tombstones, and that is little; the pictures on the whole teach more than the words.129 But the dedications show clearly that they valued cooperative virtues no less, and perhaps more, than competitive ones. They were ready to be told to love their neighbours. L AT E PAG A N I SM

The epigraphic evidence for paganism, so abundant in the second and early third centuries, dries up, as we saw (except apparently at one site), in the second half of 125.  A point dramatically made by J. H. Newman in a famous sermon, made even better in the recollection by J. A. Froude: see e.g. https://www.alivepublishing.co.uk/2010/07/scripture-and-newman-a-living-book/. 126.  Edwards, Constantinian Empire, 76–79. 127.  But for the miracles reported by the daughters of Philip (above, n. 11), see Euseb. Hist. eccl. 3.39.9; Hutter, Lycus Valley, 205–8. MacMullen, Christianizing, 26–29, and cf. also his index s.v. ‘miracles’, stressed their role. He should perhaps have distinguished more sharply between the miracle as supposedly experienced and as reported. 128.  On them, see n. 11 above. 129.  Thonemann (‘Poets of the Axylon’, 223) is perhaps a little too generous in speaking of a ‘rich and vivid picture of the ethical world of the late Roman Axylon’. More than words: the high respect for literacy emerges iconographically above all. But tombstones may reveal, e.g., an individual’s consciously Epicurean attitude (p. 122n22 above).

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the third century. Perhaps the most remarkable document of late paganism, and one that, to our gratitude, bears a firm date (313/14 CE), is the funerary monument of Epitynchanos, probably set up somewhere in the Upper Tembris valley. It is written in bizarre and jerky prose, and the layout on the stone, where inset reliefs, now mostly mutilated, divide the text in places into tiny fragments, must have made, and make it, in some places torture to read.130 Here is an attempt at translation: side a I, immortal Epitynchanos son of Pios, honoured first by Hekate, secondly by Manes Daos, solar runner of Zeus, thirdly by Phoibos Archegetes oracle-giver. Truly I received a gift of prophesying truths in my homeland, and within the boundaries of prophesying, legislating, within the boundaries prophesying to all. This I have as a gift from all the immortals. [This monument is] for immortal supreme high priest Pios, who had fair children, and for my mother Tatie [ ], who bore fair children—a fine title!—[such as?] supreme immortal high priest Epitynchanos, saviour of his homeland, lawgiver side b in the year 398 and observing the commands of the immortals, and I am the one saying all this, immortal Epitynchanos, who was initiated by the fair high priest of the people—a fine title!—Spatale, whom the immortal gods honoured both within the boundaries and beyond the boundaries, for she ransomed many from dire tortures. High priest Epitynchanos honoured by immortal gods. He was consecrated by Diogas and Epitynchanos and his daughter-in-law Tation and their children Onesimos and Alexander and Asklas and Epitynchanos. side c Immortal supreme high priests, full brothers, Diogas and Epitynchanos, saviours of their homeland, lawgivers.

The words printed in bold make plain the character of the text: it is a funerary monument for Epitynchanos I, set up by Diogas and Epitynchanos II and other family members. But it begins with a commemoration of his own parents, put in Epitynchanos’ mouth, and proud claims by himself about his own career. And it apparently ends with further proud claims by the authors of the monument, Diogas and Epitynchanos II, about themselves.131 The date is crucial: it falls just after the failure of Maximin Daia’s attempt to revive paganism in the East.132 Whether any 130.  Cf. appendix E. 131.  This last claim assumes the Epitynchanos of side C to be Epitynchanos II. For discussion of this and other problems in this text, see appendix E. 132.  On this, see above all Mitchell, ‘Maximinus and the Christians’ (publishing new evidence for the solicited anti-Christian petitioning, now I. Mus. Burdur 338) and Belayche, ‘Maximin Daia’. Its

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bodies within Phrygia responded to Maximin’s solicitation to submit antiChristian petitions to him is unknown. But a key element in his programme was the creation of new priests in the cities and high priests for the provinces (Eusebius), or high priests in the cities and, for the provinces, ‘at a still higher level as it were pontiffs’ (Lactantius). Until a recent challenge it had been generally assumed that the high priests of the inscription, Epitynchanos chief among them, will have been products of this programme. In favour of that view is the title of ‘high priest’, barely attested hitherto in any context other than the imperial cult; against it is the extreme difficulty of fitting the three generations of high priests of the inscription into the period of Maximin’s reforms, particularly if, with most scholars, we make them begin only in 311.133 The matter remains obscure. A second funerary monument from the Upper Tembris valley which also commemorates an Epitynchanos is very different in character. It is written in elaborate and fairly accomplished verse, and presents Epitynchanos as an intellectual thoroughly familiar with the ways of the kosmos, but also as a prophet who, in good old prophetic style (like Calchas in the Iliad), could reveal truths about past, present and future. The two Epitynchanoi are universally thought to be the same person (the connection goes back to Ramsay), even though the verse inscription is undated and the multiplication of tombstones for one individual is problematic. The one clear common element is the claim to prophetic powers. If we accept the connection, the important

negative aspect, the requirement of soldiers to sacrifice, caused ‘severe trials’ (basanoi: actual torture, according to H. Grégoire, Byzantion 8 [1933], 68–69) to M. Ioulios Eugenios, later bishop of Laodikeia Katakekaumene (MAMA I 170, also printed in Steinepigramme III 80, ICG 371). That another bishop of Laodikeia, Severus (possibly predecessor of this Eugenios) suffered martyrdom is unlikely, despite the triumphal language of Steinepigramme 14/06/04, ICG 372 line 2: see 156n175. Whether Gennadios was a bishop and martyr (so the heading of Steinepigramme 14/06/03) of this period is very uncertain: the view that he was is best argued in different ways by H. Grégoire, Byzantion 8 (1933), 65–69 and S. Mitchell, JRS 78 (1988), 105n4, but the problem of reading in l. 3 appears insoluble: see now Thonemann, ‘Poets of the Axylon’, 203. 133.  Challenge: Belayche, ‘Maximin Daia’: on the chronology of Maximin’s programme, see esp. 239–41; on Epitynchanos, 253–54. I am not convinced by Belayche’s argument (241–42) that Maximin’s civic (high) priests can be assimilated to ‘priests of all the gods’ as known in various places, i.e. just ministers of one further cult in a non-hierarchised set of local priests (Grant [‘Maximin Daia’, 158] also finds nothing new); ‘veterum sacerdotum ministerio subnixi’ in Lactantius (De mort. pers. 36.4) implies a superior level. In the passage of the life of St Theodotus of Ancyra (P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, I martirii di S. Teodoto e di S. Ariadne [Rome, 1901], ch. 23) thought to refer to these events, what the saint is offered is a high priesthood of Apollo. Frija (Prêtres des empereurs, 55–56) takes the high-priests of the Epitynchanos inscription as serving in the imperial cult (of which there is no trace in the text). Also rejecting any link with Maximin is Chauvin (Chronique, 170), for whom these are just officiants in a little local cult according themselves grand titles. Possibly relevant because of its date (313 CE) is SEG LXII 1205, attesting restoration of a sanctuary (of the emperors).

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consequence is that Epitynchanos was an accomplished late antique intellectual despite the crude character of the prose inscription.134 The prose inscription itself shows paganism developing in ways that nothing has prepared us for. The plethora of ‘high priests’ can perhaps be explained by the reforms of Maximinus; so, too, possibly the bold claims of Epitynchanos, Epitynchanos II (?) and Diogas to be ‘lawgivers’ and even ‘saviours of ’ their ‘native land’. But the mysterious institution of ‘honouring by’ a deity has now been expanded: in the past individuals were ‘honoured by’ one god (usually Hecate, occasionally Apollo or Zeus), but Epitynchanos is so treated by three, one of them the strange ‘Manes Daos solar runner of Zeus’. Epitynchanos steps forward as a prophet, a being seldom encountered explicitly in Phrygia,135 who has been initiated (to what?) by a priestess who has rescued many, and has herself been honoured by the gods collectively and in many places. Above all, mortals have become (in name) immortal; this is equally extreme whether we take immortal as a kind of forename (Athanatos Pios) or as a title (immortal high priest).136 Phrygian paganism has been hitherto a largely sober affair, a negotiation between farmers and a variety of gods for the well-being of their crops, cattle and families. The most drastic element had been the threat of divine anger revealed by the confession inscriptions, and even that is rooted in a very practical concern, recovery from disease. Behind the confession inscriptions we suspect the influence of local priests, but, if so, theirs is a hidden hand. There have been no immortal high priests claiming to be prophets, lawgivers and saviours, no priestesses performing initiations and rescuing many from unspecified torments, no charisma. It is hard not to see here a kind of paroxysm of a threatened system. Thereafter, the last days of paganism in Phrygia prove impossible to describe. The nuances known from elsewhere of that fourth-century world where pagans and Christians shared teachers, and bishops gave counsel on the extent to which they could also share sociabilities,137 escape us in Phrygia. Pagan epigraphy, formal and informal, comes to an end (except, apparently, at the shrine of Zeus Limnenos).138 Nakoleia was still in 331 pressing its neighbour, Christian Orkistos, 134.  For a possible member of the same family belonging to a Dionysiac society attested in 249/50, see Mitchell, Anatolia II, 47n274 (Jaccottet, Dionysos, no. 83, wrongly assigned to Acmonia). Gibson, Christians for Christians, no. 11 (SEG XXVIII 1099, ICG 1257) attests a Christian Epitynchanos from the Upper Tembris valley apparently around the end of the third century. 135.  Though one can compare Steinepigramme 16/41/09, ICG 1658, line 5, the enigmatic Zosimos from the ‘people of Hypsistos’. 136.  The editors of Steinepigramme 16/61/04, where the dead youth is called ὁ νέος ἀμβρόσιος, suggest that he was ‘ritually immortal’ like Epitynchanos and co.; but 16/61/04 is much less extreme. 137.  MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 118. Phrygia is absent, through no fault of the author, from E. J. Watts, The Final Pagan Generation (Oakland, 2015). 138.  Mitchell, ‘Christian Epigraphy’, 276, 279. Limnenos: above, n. 76. According to Trombley, Hellenic Religion II, 116, the epigraphic record suggests that the territories of the Phrygian cities converted between 375 and 450: but in fact the epigraphic record of paganism (Limnenos aside) ceases much

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to continue a traditional payment ‘pro cultis’, according to a petition of Orkistos to Constantine; how candid the Orkistans are is beyond proof, but Nakoleia was later to honour Julian with an inscription.139 In an empire-wide perspective, it is generally held that paganism resisted with some stubbornness in the countryside,140 and one could imagine the same for Phrygia, but it is from local bishops that one normally hears of such deplorable rural recidivists, and writings of Phrygian bishops do not survive. As late as the sixth century, John, bishop of Ephesus, the ‘idolbreaker’, engaged for thirty years (ca. 535–65) on a mission of destruction and conversion to which he was mandated by Justinian; he claims to have baptised eighty thousand pagans in Asia, Caria, Lydia and Phrygia and built ninety-eight churches and twelve monasteries. ‘Asia, Caria, Lydia and Phrygia’ make up a large area; even if we accept the figures as roughly accurate, they prove, it has been suggested, no more than the existence of ‘small but resilient pockets of pagans’, not large-scale adherence to the old ways.141 Certainly, in an empire-wide perspective the apparent speed and thoroughness with which Christianity took over in Phrygia is exceptional.142 Camps of Roman soldiers stationed in Phrygia might have kept the old religion going:143 they are beyond our observation. The huge growth in Phrygian bishoprics (from eight to twenty-eight) between the councils of Nicaea in 325 and Chalcedon in 451 will no doubt have helped to counter the evil, if evil there was. Surveys have shown church buildings, some impressive, springing up at many sites in the territory around Aizanoi.144 This had been one of the regions where pre-Constantinian evidence for Christianity was not to be found. How things went in the other ‘cold spots’ cannot be traced in detail. But an overwhelming majority of all Phrygian funerary earlier, and there follows a hiatus. A reader for the press points out that many groups of votive stelai published in Phrygian Votive Steles ‘were deliberately buried, presumably to save them from destruction by those who did not share the traditional forms of worship.’ 139.  ILS 6091, left side. Inscription for Julian: CIL III 350. 140.  See e.g. Brown, Cult of Saints, 122–24; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 287–93; C. P. Jones, ‘The Geography of Paganism’, in Ameling, Christianisierung, 13–20; K. Bringmann, ibid., 31–32. Jones (Between Pagan and Christian, 5) revives the view that this is how paganus, originally meaning, inter alia, ‘villager’, came to mean pagan; a different view in Cameron, Last Pagans, 14–25. The picture of Phrygia during the saint’s boyhood in the fifth century in Kallinikos, Life of Hypatios, 1.4, as a place where there were scarcely any εὐλαβεῖς (believers? priests?)) and where, if ever there was a church, the clergy were ‘rather dim, as to be expected in the country (ὡς ἐπὶ χώρας, νωθρότεροι), is pure fantasy, as Mitchell (Anatolia II, 118) observes. 141.  Mitchell, Anatolia II, 118 (ibid., n. 75 for the sources). 142.  Contrast MacMullen, Christianizing, 81–83; Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 574–85. 143.  So Hutter, ‘Christianisierung’, 164, though he notes (ibid., n. 161) the epigraphic evidence for Christian soldiers. 144.  P. Niewöhner, Aizanoi, Dokimion und Anatolien (Wiesbaden, 2007), 76–80; idem in K. Rheidt (ed.), Aizanoi und Anatolien (Mainz, 2010), 147–53 (non vidi).

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monuments bearing verse epitaphs from the fourth and fifth centuries display Christian allegiance, if quite often only through a cross or other iconographic marker, not in the text;145 the small number of monuments marked as Christian in neither way may, but need not, have hosted pagans.146 Texts honouring governors from this period do not (why should they?) reveal anything about their religious position.147 Repurposing of temples as churches/martyr shrines, or simple destruction of temples or statues, cannot be demonstrated on a large scale; but Christograms and crosses sprung up widely on what had been pagan funerary monuments, and on bare rocks.148 And the landscape could be redescribed in narrative, without physical intervention, by explaining physical features through the acts of early heroes of Christianity: the late fourth-century life of Aberkios of the lesser Hierapolis is here the paradigm exhibit. Narrative also allowed saints buried elsewhere to acquire Phrygian associations, possibly leading to cults.149 Paganism flickered briefly back into life under Julian. Nakoleia erected an inscription honouring him. A magistrate at (probably) Meiros Megale ordered the (main) local temple to be cleaned and the images in it restored; it was evidently already derelict. Three Christians vandalised the images by night, confessed when enquiries were made, refused to sacrifice when invited to do so, and were put to death.150 But the flame relit by Julian soon died. From late in the fifth century comes a bizarre vignette. The Neoplatonist Damascius tells us that under the temple of Apollo in Hierapolis (the greater) was 145.  So e.g. MAMA XI 278 (ICG 1490), Steinepigramme 16/31/91 (ICG 1265), and quite often; cf. Mitchell, ‘Christian Epigraphy’, xx. 146.  Ramsay, Phrygia, 744 nr. 685 on Steinepigramme 16/53/08 (with a typical curse on tomb violation) writes ‘nothing but the obviously late date implies Christian origin; it may be the epitaph of a fourth-century pagan’. But ‘may’ is the most one can say. Some fourth-century epitaphs for soldiers or family members of soldiers not obviously Christian: HSCP 81 (1977), 257–74 (ICG 1440); MAMA XI 72 (ICG 1475), JRS 16 (1926), 92–93 no. 225 (ICG 1476) (with a striking curse); and note Thonemann (‘Poets of the Axylon’, 197) on his Zıvarık poet. 147.  Steinepigramme 2/12/06 (ICG 927) and 2/14/07 (ICG 951); Dike and ‘the Nymphs’ in the former are unmarked conventional language (Hutter, Lycus Valley, 308). 148.  See Hutter, ‘Christianisierung’, 154–58 (but on repurposing he notes the case of ‘Temple A’ at Laodikeia; cf. idem, Lycus Valley, 306–7). On the general phenomenon, cf. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 227n66; Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 234–35. Phrygia is not treated in T. M. Kristensen, Making and Breaking the Gods (Aarhus, 2013), and barely mentioned, apparently for lack of evidence, in I. Jacobs, ‘From Production to Destruction? Pagan and Mythological Sculpture in Asia Minor’, AJA 114 (2010), 267–303. 149.  See Hutter, ‘Christianisierung’, 159–61, on ‘Christianisierung der Geschichte,’ mentioning Menas, Artemon, Trophimos, Thallos. It was sometimes claimed that Menas was martyred in Kotiaion (P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’ Orient [Paris, 1985], 386). On Aberkios, see especially Thonemann, ‘Abercius’. 150.  Socrates, Hist. Eccl. 3.15. The mss. have ἐν Μηρῷ; on Meiros and Meiros Megale, see BE (1972), no. 461. Nakoleia: CIL III 350.

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an underground passage containing fumes noxious enough to kill any bird that flew in; only ‘initiates’ (of whom?) could enter safely. He, however, went down with another philosopher and emerged unscathed; he then had a dream in Hierapolis that he had become Attis, and the festival of Hilaria was being celebrated for him by the Mother of the Gods, symbolising his ‘safe return from Hades’. Later he learnt that a fellow philosopher had earlier made the same risky descent. A form of late antique Russian roulette for philosophers! An earlier source, Strabo, speaks of a Ploutonion at Hierapolis with vapours deadly to all but Galloi. Much here is obscure: two separate but adjacent underground systems fed by the same vapours, one under the temple of Apollo, one a Ploutonion?151 Or confusion? (‘Mother of the Gods’ appears in both reports, through Damascius’ dream and through the Galloi, respectively.) All we can conclude is that the pagan site could still be visited by the curious, not that there were still ‘initiates’ or Galloi or cult activities. That pagans visited the healing spring at Chonai even when it belonged to the Archangel Michael is not incredible, especially if the speculation is correct that Michael had a pagan precursor; they would have been trying out a new healer as an addition to existing powers, not a replacement for them. But the edifying work that speaks of them casts them in one of two roles: either they come as pagan and leave as Christian, or they come in order to mock and destroy the activity of the shrine, and are confounded by a miracle;152 they belong, therefore, to the narrative stereotype of ‘confuted pagans’, which may remove them from the historical world. The horror of horrors in Christian eyes was blood sacrifice performed at the altar of an ‘idol made by hands’, its actual recipient a demon; it was variously legislated against in the fourth century.153 The boule of every Phrygian city must have had to consider at some point whether such traditional public sacrifices as there may have been (few are attested) should be suppressed. But the ‘end of (Phrygian) sacrifice’, whether civic, of the village, or individual, is another key transformation that eludes us; nor can we know what degree of stubborn persistence with the old rite at a private level there may have been. An epigram praises Flavius Magnus, probably vicarius Asianae between 353 and 358, for (inter alia) making Hierapolis 151.  So Renberg, Where Dreams may Come, 533–38, with the archaeological bibliography. But it is odd that for Strabo (13.4.14, C 629–630) only Galloi can enter safely, whereas in Damascius (Vita Isidori, fr. 87a Athanassiadi ap. Phot. Bibl. cod. 242. 131 [344b; p. 34 in the Budé Photius, vol. 6]) it is ‘initiates’. Is Damascius speaking loosely? Hutter’s conclusion (Lycus Valley, 306), ‘In Hierapolis we see that the sanctuary of the Great Mother at the Plutonium was still intact’, goes a little too far. Chuvin (Chronique, 108), speaking of Proclus, notes that at this date the supposedly Phrygian cult of Mother was more popular with the pagan aristocrats of Rome than with Phrygian peasants. See now D’ Andria, ‘Ploutonion’. 152.  M. Bonnet (ed.), ‘Narratio de miraculo a Michele archangelo Chonis patrato’, Analecta Bollandiana 8 (1889), 287–328 [and separately available, Paris, 1890]: converts: ch. 3 (291–92); mockers: ch. 5 (296–97). 153.  See e.g. Jones, Between Pagan and Christian, 25–29, 70–73.

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a place ‘rejoicing in delightful thaliai’ (θαλίαις ἑραταῖς . . . ἀγαλλομένην); according to traditional Greek usage one would probably have rendered thaliai there ‘feasting’ and assumed a sacrificial banquet, but in the new context commentators are doubtless right to soften it to ‘revelry’ (we would like to know of what form).154 O L D N E E D S A N D A N EW FA I T H

Pagan Phrygians had looked to their gods to protect and cure themselves, their families, their property, their livestock and their crops. These needs did not go away with the new faith.155 Paul told the people of Lystra that, although God did not reveal himself before the coming of Christ, ‘nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness’ (Acts 14:17). He was, then, an adequate replacement for Zeus Bronton, and could no doubt in principle deal with all other everyday needs. But how was he to be reminded to do the needful, or solicited when special difficulties arose, or thanked? A first approach to this question has to be through epigraphy. Dedications made ὑπὲρ (ὑπερὶ) εὐχῆς (apparently a Christian variant on the old pagan εὐχή[ν]), ‘for a prayer/vow’, are not rare, though trivial in quantity in comparison with their pagan predecessors; their dating is almost always imprecise within a range of at least a hundred years, and this means that development in the first half century of acknowledged Christianity cannot be traced in detail.156 A significant number of such dedications are contibutions to the structure or furnishings of a church: column capitals, baptismal fonts, decorative features, and the like. But there are also stand-alone monuments, short, non-structural columns above all.157 None are at all as slight or as common, unfortunately, as the most modest pagan votives. ‘Lord, help [your slave] X’ is likewise found on short columns and architectural members, but could also become a graffito; a church at Metropolis in the highlands bears fifteen or so such graffiti, unfortunately of very uncertain date.158 A ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς dedication at its shortest runs ‘for the euche of X’; the first part is often expanded to ‘for the euche and soteria of ’159 154.  So Graf, Roman Festivals, 319, following C. P. Jones, Hermes 125 (1997), 204. 155.  MacMullen, Second Church, 31: ‘the many wanted help in their daily lives, where it was daily needed, not in the hereafter’: but this is not an either/or. 156.  Thus a succession of monuments dated in MAMA X ‘mid 4th c. at earliest’ (9, 16, 23, etc.) appear in IGC (1158, 1163–64, etc.) dated ‘300–450’. 157.  See e.g. ICG 1161 (MAMA X 16), with note: ‘Gelübdesäulen’ (votive columns). 158.  Haspels, Highlands, 325–30 nos. 66–81 = ICG 1664–79, who date ‘400–550’ while noting that Haspels assumes a much later date (Seljuq era). MAMA X 243 (ICG 1199) appeals not to the ‘Lord’ but to ‘Archangel’ (Michael). 159.  ‘For the health and soteria of ’ (good pagan combination) I have encountered only in the late BCH 33 (1909), 401 no. 400 (ICG 1422). ‘Health’ in Haspels (Highlands, 323 no. 61 [ICG 1633]) is

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(‘and forgiveness of sins’ is occasionally added), and extra individuals, usually family members (sometimes ‘his whole family’ or ‘kin’, syggeneia), often come after ‘X’. ‘And in memory of ’ or ‘for the repose of ’ dead family members can be added; such dedications recall similar dual purpose pagan dedications, though there is no reason to suppose actual continuity. Indications of the benefit that was prayed for, so common in pagan Phrygian votives, are all but unknown: ‘hyper the euche of Domnos in the case of [ἐπί] his son Trophimos’ is inscribed on a font, so possibly ‘on the occasion of [the baptism of] Trophimos’.160 Of ‘[Name lost] set this up in gratitude to God and his archangel for the vow and preservation [euche and soteria] of his children when his son Magalas fell ill’ the editors note ‘this Christian dedication has precisely the same form as many typical pagan dedications of central Anatolia’;161 but they point out the similarity precisely because it is so unusual. In general, then, the specific pagan prayers for crops, for cattle and for individuals suffering particular illnesses have disappeared. One might argue that prayers on these topics were indeed still addressed to the Christian god, but an inhibition had grown about acknowledging such a subject of prayer explicitly. The Christian god could in principle attend to the faithful on any matter, however trivial. Augustine reassures his flock repeatedly that God is not above mundane concerns. ‘He sees’, he memorably asserts, ‘to the salvation of your hen’.162 But the repeated reassurances were needed because ordinary people supposed that such concerns belonged to lesser powers. That assumption was no doubt just as common among Phrygian as among North African peasants. If nervous about approaching God Almighty, where were they to turn? The archetypal Anatolian holy man, Theodore of Sykeon (died 613), could intercede with God to heal the sick, drive out demons, summon rain, avert storms and hail, destroy locusts, pray for rain, save failing crops and dying animals.163 Everything necessary was in the very uncertain. Where the thing dedicated is a church or part of it, the soteria sought may be ‘of the faithful’ (MAMA IV 327/ICG 1080) or of ‘pious contributors’ (SEG XLII 1193/ICG 1315): Haensch, ‘Kirchenbau’, 342. 160.  So the editors, MAMA X 111 (ICG 1182). 161.  MAMA IX 551, undated (put by ICG 1302 ‘400–550’).Another prayer mentioning health: I. North Galatia 212 (ICG 2382, Oxford Saints E00991). 162.  In Ioannis Evangelium Tractatus XXXIV 3 (Patrologia Latina 35 col. 1652, quoted with similar remarks by MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 121). In the West, note Severus Sanctus Endelechius’ Eclogue (Anthologia Latina 893, ca. 400 CE: written in Asclepiads!), in which a neatherd and a goatherd whose herds are dying are taught by Tityrus to mark the animals’ brows with the sign of the cross; they convert at once (even before testing the remedy!). 163.  Brown, ‘Holy Man’, 97: ‘the holy man carried the burden of making such a distant God relevant to the particularity of human needs.’ The paradigmatic holy man who heals was Antony, as depicted in Athanasius’ life (14, 48, 57–58, 61–62, 63–64, 71, 80, 84), where it is carefully stressed that he heals only by intercession with God. For Theodore (A. J. Festugière, Vie de Théodore de Sykeon [Brussels, 1970]), see the summaries in sections 144–45 and 158 (and for rain e.g. 101); many individual in-

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power of such a one, therefore. But we cannot assume that Phrygia in the fourth century boasted many or any such figures.164 Agapetos, who survived the persecution of Licinius, became bishop of Synaos or Synnada under Constantine, and is credited with relevant feats in the late Life of him, is perhaps the only Phrygian candidate;165 at Ankara in neighbouring Galatia there was Theodotos, martyred in 312 but already before his death supposedly healing many by laying on of hands and prayer.166 One could also, no doubt, approach saints, martyrs and angels with such requests.167 Who might have been available in the fourth century? One candidate is the martyred apostle Philip. At Hierapolis, a mausoleum of the first/second century CE was apparently identified as the tomb of Philip and enclosed in a new building, including lustral basins perhaps used for healing, in the fourth, and this new structure was in turn built into a three aisle basilica in the fifth; about thirtyfive metres away is the octagonal building which had traditionally been identified as the Martyrion of Philip. (A sixth-century bronze bread stamp is taken to show the saint between the two buildings.)168 Another is the Archangel Michael, as worshipped at what became a famous sacred spring at Kolossai/Chonai. Angel worship was already condemned in the Epistle to the Colossians (2:18), and, according to Theodoret in his commentary on that passage, continued until his day in Phrygia and Pisidia; Theodoret mentions ‘an oratory of St. Michael still to be seen among them’, doubtless a reference, the first, to the famous cult at Chonai, which eventually hosted a celebrated church. Invocation of angels was a current practice forbidden to Christians by Canon 35 of the Council of Laodicea (third quarter of stances occur earlier in the life. On locusts and weather control cf. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 136–38; on healing of livestock, ibid., 225n56. 164.  P. Hordern, ‘Responses to Possession and Insanity in the earlier Byzantine World’, Social History of Medicine, 6 (1993), 177–94, at 179 ‘I suggest rather that the Byzantine world did not pullulate with ascetics, that there were villages complete without a holy man . . . ’; MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 138: ‘most people never laid eyes on a holy man’. Whether in the late sixth century it was for lack of local healers that two Phrygians went to the tomb of Martha near Syrian Antioch (Life of Martha ch. 71, in P. van den Ven, La Vie ancienne de S. Syméon le jeune II [Brussels, 1970], 312) cannot be established. 165.  See the entries by E. Rizos, S02696/E07081, in Oxford Saints. 166.  P. Franchi de Cavalieri, I martirii di S. Teodoto e di S. Ariadne (Rome, 1901), 62–63, ch. 3. 167.  For fourth-century pagan protests against martyr cult (not specific to Phrygia), see Eunap. VS 472 (page 424 Loeb); Julian, Against the Galilaeans, 335B–D (pages 414–16 in the Loeb Julian vol. III). 168.  See D’Andria, ‘Sanctuary of St Philip’, with earlier references; on the lustral basins also D’ Andria, ‘Ploutonion’, 124n92; and for a graffito from the site honouring ‘the apostle Philip’, see F. Guizzi, Historika 7 (2017), 130–33. For the bronze, see https://www.biblicalarchaeology.org/daily/biblical-sitesplaces/biblical-archaeology-sites/tomb-of-apostle-philip-found/ (or Oxford Saints E 02905; cf. ibid., E 012904 [both P. Novakowski]) for lead seals showing Philip). For pilgrim ampoules (fifth/sixth century) and unguentaria (sixth/seventh century) from the Martyrion, see Hutter, Lycus Valley, 377–78; see ibid. for similar finds from under ‘Sanctuary A’ in Laodicea.

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the fourth century); a gloss on that canon referred specifically to the cult at Chonai. The canon, combined with Theodoret, thus very probably attests the healing cult at Chonai by the second half of the fourth century, although the legend of its origin as we have it is later; scholars speculate about Michael having had a pagan predecessor.169 And one can think of other candidates: Areadne (sic) of Prymnessos, possibly worshipped at the site of her supposed disappearance;170 Sagaris, bishop of Laodicea and martyr of the second half of the second century;171 Trophimos, known from a humble reliquary of (?) the late third century from Synnada which names him as a martyr;172 or Aberkios of the lesser Hierapolis, a saint though not a martyr, responsible according to his Vita for several enduring features of the Hierapolitan landscape including a healing spring.173 We would like to know more of Tryphon, martyred in Nicaea but a Phrygian from Sampsadoukome by origin, because he became a specialist in protecting fields from insects and promoting 169.  See Cadwallader, ‘St Michael of Chonai’, 67, on Theodoret, Interpr. Epist. ad Coloss., Migne, PG 82.613B, 620D–621A; for the gloss on Canon 35 he cites W. Lueken, Michael: Eine Darstellung und Vergleichung der jüdischen und der morgenländisch-christlichen Tradition vom Erzengel Michael (Göttingen, 1898), 75 (non vidi). For Const. Porphyr. De Thematibus 3.24 the church there is celebrated, διαβόητος. On the date of the legend Cadwallader (‘St Michael of Chonai’, 86n29) reports views. On the cult at Chonai, see Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 125–29; he puts the first datable pilgrimage to Chonai as late as ca. 815. Pagan predecessor: Cadwallader, 72. On possible pagans attending, see p. 151. Evidence from elsewhere in Phrygia for appeals to Michael: Ramsay, Phrygia, 741–42 no. 678 (ICG 1552, Oxford Saints E05037, Akroinos/Prymnessos; ‘protect your city’); MAMA IV 307 (ICG 1084, Oxford Saints E00915, Dionysopolis: ‘protect “workers” ’in the shrine of Michael), neither datable; MAMA IV 325 (‘4th/5th c.’); BE (1965), no. 386 (Steinepigramme 16/23/03). The filiation suggested in the title of C. Mango, ‘St Michael and Attis’ (Delt. Christ. Arch. Het. ser 4, 12 [1984], 39–62) is surprising. On the cult of Michael, cf. MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 125–26. 170.  So Oxford Saints E 02474 (E. Rizos); Seeliger and Wischmeyer, Märtyrerliteratur, 385. 171.  Melito of Sardis ap. Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 4.26.3; ibid., 5.24.5; Hutter, Lycus Valley, 334–35; for an octagonal building tentatively suggested as his martyrion, see D. Andria, ‘Sanctuary of St Philip’, 14–15 (cf. Hutter, Lycus Valley, 351). 172. G. Mendel, BCH 33 (1909), 342–48 (ICG 1378; Tabernee, Montanist Inscriptions, no. 35 with commentary). The life of Trophimos (Acta Sanctorum Sept. VI, cols. 12–20; cf. Symeon Metaphrastes, Migne, PG 115, 715–50) tells of a decree of Probus requiring all Christians to sacrifice to the gods; in consequence one Sabbatios is martyred at Antioch and Trophimos at Synnada, whither he is taken from Antioch for trial; at Synnada dies also Dorymedon, a Christian councillor who refuses to participate in a festival of the Dioscuri. Such persecution under Probus is otherwise unattested, and the life is considered largely a work of fiction (see the references given by Tabbernee loc. cit.); so nothing reliable can be said about the martyr Trophimos known from the reliquary. ‘Martyr Trophimos’ is evoked on a later Montanist tombstone from the region of Sebaste, Tabernee, Montanist Inscriptions, no. 80 (ICG 1363); the relation of this Trophimos to the former is disputed (different according to Tabbernee ad loc.; but BE 233 [1954], 172 is sympathetic to identity). He appeared to S. Constantine of Synnada in the eighth century: Acta Sanctorum Nov. IV, col. 630D–E. 173.  T. Nissen, Sancti Abercii Vita (Leipzig, 1912), chs. 39–40, 65–66, 75; Thonemann, ‘Abercius’, 277. The life (79) records the date of his death, which may suggest cult.

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fertility.174 At Laodikeia Katakekaumene in the far east, a fourth-century martyr shrine shared by two victims of persecution has been postulated on the basis of two texts: (a) a prose epitaph for a Bishop Eugenios, persecuted under Maximinus Daia; (b) a shared funerary epigram for a bishop Severus, acclaimed as a ‘glorious prize-winner of the heavenly father’ (an expression suggesting martyrdom or at least persecution), and his successor, again a Eugenios (another, or the same?). But the postulate runs into numerous complicated difficulties, not least that the Eugenios of (a) sounds orthodox, whereas the Severus whom the Eugenios of (b) succeeded is bishop of the heretical sect of ‘sackcloth-wearing people.’ Nor is it clear that any actual martyr is involved; Eugenios (a) suffered but survived persecution, and the same may have been true of Severus.175 A list of ‘Martyrs’ days’ compiled in Greek at some time after 361 that survives in a Syriac translation of 411 knows of three martyrdoms at Laodicea with ten victims in all, four at Synnada with eleven victims, and one each at Hierapolis (two victims) and Eumeneia (eleven victims).176 There are candidates, therefore; and some have doubtless slipped out of the record. But details escape us. Martyr cults also provided some of the razzmatazz traditionally offered by paganism; feasting, too, though of course without sacrifice to idols. All too much, austere critics thought, but Gregory of Nyssa in his life of Gregory the WonderWorker praises him for (already in the mid-third century, in Neokaisareia in Pontos) establishing martyr cults at which people missing the fun of pagan festivals could ‘let fling a bit with pleasure within the yoke of faith’ (μικρόν τι τῷ ζυγῷ τῆς πίστεως δι᾽ εὐφροσύνης ὑποσκιρτᾶν.)177 Martyr shrines are the ‘Second Church’ of 174.  His Vita is edited by P. Franchi de’ Cavalieri, Hagiographica (Rome, 1908), 43–74. 175.  For a cautious account with bibliography, see Steinepigramme 14/06/04 (on ICG 371–72). On the most likely restoration of the epigram Severus erected a joint epitaph with his successor Eugenios, thus cannot have been martyred even if persecuted. On Severus cf. the scepticism of Wilhelm, Akademieschriften, II, 390 (citing Grégoire). Wilhelm ibid. rejects Akylas of Steinepigramme 16/31/82 and the five children dying ‘at one time’ of Ramsay, Phrygia, 730 no. 658 (ICG 1599), as martyrs; the heading ‘Märtyrer?’ in Steinepigramme 14/02/01 to another epigram commemorating multiple deaths is rightly tentative. For Lycaonia, see C. Breytenbach et al. in W. Eck, P. Funke (eds.), Öffentlichkeit, Monument, Text (Berlin, 2014), 642–44, citing as pre-Constantinian MAMA VIII 200 and (questionably) 168. 176.  F. Nau, Patrologia Orientalis 10 (1915), 5–26; cf. S. Minov, Oxford Saints, E 01576. The closelyrelated Martyrium Hieronymianum (ed. H. Delehaye and H. Quentin, Acta Sanctorum Nov. II/2, 1931) names the same four cities, with some difference in names and numbers. 177.  Migne, PG 46.953. Cf., with MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 114–16, the criticisms cited and countered by Jerome, Contra Vigilantium, 4–9, and Augustine, Ep. 29.8–11. The Christian authors see these cults as necessary if in some ways regrettable substitutes for rites honouring pagan gods; MacMullen sees them rather (e.g. loc. cit. 62–63, 111–12, 115, 223n43) as continuation of pagan funerary cult, but the two views are not incompatible. Canon 20 of the anti-ascetic Synod of Gangra (ca. mid-fourth century.) anathematizes those who condemn ‘assemblies in honour of the martyrs’. On feasting at martyrs’ tombs, see references in P. Maraval, Lieux saints et pèlerinages d’ Orient (Paris, 1985), 218–19, Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 151–52.

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Ramsay MacMullen’s book of the same name. Churches in the traditional sense within the city walls can never have been designed, he maintains, to accommodate more than a privileged minority of the faithful; they are too small. The real action lay outside the walls where the faithful were buried beside the saints. Here was some compensation for ‘the remarkable diversity of cult-centered arts, activities and psychological rewards’ of pagan cult that ‘church leadership wished converts to surrender’.178 That it was somewhat like this in Phrygia we may certainly believe, but we cannot, for the moment, show in detail. Did Phrygian bishops, like their contemporaries elsewhere, have to fight against the traditional but, to a censorious eye, pagan pleasures of the Kalendae?179 Very possibly; the evidence, however, eludes us. I mentioned earlier Gregory of Nyssa’s claim that his namesake ‘changed the rhythm’ of his whole generation to a ‘new life’; Gregory’s remark in the passage just quoted about festivals is offered by him as an illustration of the claim. We would dearly like to observe the extraordinary process in more detail. The sources, so abundant for earlier paganism, so abundant, too, for the rise of Christianity in the pre-Constantinian era, here let us down: no Phrygian holy men, no Phrygian fathers of the church.180 The politics of the process escape us,181 above all the guiding role, huge power and dilemmas of the bishops. One might extrapolate from other regions, plausibly; but that is to lose the benefit in specificity of a regional study. It is best to be brief, therefore. Animal sacrifice came to an end; but feasting probably continued, we have noted, at shrines of saints and martyrs. Dancing, too, no doubt;182 but to mention dancing, such a central feature of paganism as known for instance from mainland Greece, is to realise that we lack specific evidence for its place in pagan, no less than in Christian, cult practice in Phrygia. Again, we can be confident that the sacred images to be seen within the home will have changed; but no more do we know anything of Christian than of pagan domestic religion in Phrygia.183 Julian noted Christian ‘care for the burial of corpses’ as one of the sources of their popularity.184 Burying the poor was conceived as a Christian duty, but initially 178.  MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 152. 179.  Cameron, Last Pagans, 787–88; Graf, Roman Festivals, 128–62; on the one Phrygian attestation of Kalendae, see p. 157 above. 180.  Phrygia is absent, for lack of evidence, from the chapter on ‘Persecution’ (of pagans by Christians) in MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 1–31; so too from the account of the persistence of paganism, ibid., ch. 2, esp. 32–48, and of pagans and Christians attending one another’s rites, ibid., 117–18. 181.  As so brilliantly brought out for the West by Brown, Cult of Saints. 182.  On dancing at martyr shrines, see MacMullen, Christianity and Paganism, 102–6; idem, Second Church, 153n85. 183.  Contrast for the West K. D. Bowes, ‘ “Christianization” and the Rural Home’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 15.2 (2007), 143–70. 184.  Julian, Ep. 84 Bidez, 429d. Note, however, the argument, strong in some points, of van Nuffelen (‘Deux fausses lettres’) that Ep. 84 is a forgery.

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as one for individual Christians, not the organised church. What form such a charitable burial took—was there a marker or inscription?—is apparently not known. Christians continued to be buried alongside pagans,185 and their obsequies, like those of pagans, were organised by kin though also attended by non-kin (to what extent the Christian sense of brotherhood meant larger gatherings is another unanswerable question.) Most Christian tombs after Constantine, and many before, displayed Christian symbols; that aside, however, traditional forms of grave monument remained in use. Whether, as is certainly probable, ‘burial alongside the saints’ (depositio ad sanctos) was practised in Phrygia, archaeological investigation has yet to reveal; the Christian veneration for tombs and even—the horror!— fragments of dead bodies were certainly some of the features of the new cult that disgusted pagans the most.186 Christians were ahead of the trend in preferring inhumation to cremation, but they explicitly denied the pagan claim that this was because of their belief in resurrection of the body.187 I noted earlier188 the paradox that it is from two Christian monuments that we hear of offerings brought at the actual interment from the dead persons’ native place (the village?) and from their relatives or contemporaries; this must be a traditional usage (involving feasting?) that crossed over to Christianity, briefly at least. Another traditional usage, the curse to protect the tomb from violation, of course continued, not always much modified. Whether hired mourners were another traditional usage and also crossed over (as they did in two big cities, Antioch and Constantinople, to the rage of John Chrysostom) is unknown.189 Thus far, nothing in funerary practices seems very new, except care for burying the poor. The conclusion is implausible, given the Christian promise for the afterlife. Doubtless, then, we should supply from nonPhrygian evidence some details that would impose a Christian mark, even if there is not yet a fixed form of funeral service: psalms are sung; a priest attends and may deliver an address; the eucharist may be celebrated.190 Commemorative rites at the tomb, typically the Parentalia, were a problem to bishops throughout the empire. What was a mark of decent respect, what pagan185.  See n. 39 above. 186.  ‘You have filled everything with tombs and funerary monuments’, Julian, Contra Galilaeos, 335B-C (Loeb, vol. III, 414); Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 448. On burial ad sanctos, see Y. Duval, Auprès des saints corps et âme : l’inhumation “ad sanctos” (Paris, 1988) and now R. Wiśniewski, The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics (Oxford, 2018), ch. 5, who cautions against exaggerating its frequency; for cases in Cappadocia in the late fourth century, see his page 93. 187.  E.g. Minucius Felix, Octavius, 11.4, 34.10; cf. Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 82–85. The trend: Macrob. Sat. 7.7.5 (burning obsolescent). 188.  See 106n39 above. 189.  The curse: 141n105. Hired mourners: Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 132–33. 190.  Psalms, and eucharist: e.g. August. Conf. 9.12.31–32; priest: e.g. Tert. De Anim. 51.6. Min. Fel. Oct. 38.3–4 also justifies the Christian habit of not garlanding the dead. No fixed service: Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 139, summarising his discussion (on which I depend).

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ism? Few sought to anathematize them completely. In Phrygia we know them best from the funerary foundations of (above all) Hierapolis, and from a few references to the (originally Roman) Rosalia. Analogy suggests they would have been surrendered with reluctance; we know that the Rosalia persisted in Lycia into the sixth century; once again, the voice of Phrygian bishops is mute.191 The new rhythm was not, far from it, something merely affecting worship and ritual. Gymnasia, unknown in the countryside but attested in many Phrygian cities, are likely to have faded away, tainted by their homoerotic associations.192 In the Greco-Roman world at large, bishops were distressed and disgusted by their congregations’ relish for popular entertainment—circuses, theatres, amphitheatres— an evil which emperors declined to assist in eradicating.193 How much entertainment of this kind had ever been available to pagan Phrygians is unclear. The church historian Socrates was to claim that Phrygians had little enthusiasm for such things. There had certainly been athletic games, named for gods or emperors, and gladiatorial games, attached to the imperial cult; theatres, but not a festival Dionysia, are known at Aizanoi, Hierapolis, even little Blaundos and (epigraphically) Laodicea;194 whether Phrygians were ever exposed to the various excitements of, for instance, chariot racing and pantomime dancing is unknown. Yet again, the lack of sermons by Phrygian bishops stops us seeing what remaining snares of the devil they may have had to protect their faithful from. Nosology was one area of probable change. The diagnosis of illness, mental illness in particular, as owing to demonic attack was not impossible within paganism in general, nor was it always insisted on by Christians.195 But innumerable accounts of exorcism in lives of saints show how powerful a weapon it was in the Christian armoury: it dramatised the role of Christ and his ministers in fighting for the good of man against invisible foes.196 Paganism was not dualist in that sense; illnesses either simply occurred, or came from punishing gods, and the confession 191.  Foundations: 106 above. Parentalia: Rebillard, Care of the Dead, 142–53. Lycia: Anon., Life of St. Nicolas of Sion, ch. 76. 192.  Cf. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 670, with good citations. 193.  Cameron, Last Pagans, 789–91. 194.  I. Laodikeia Lykos 5. 17. Laodikeia could also boast a stadion amphitheatron, ibid., 15. Games: 14n25. Socrates: 135 above. 195.  N. Metzger, ‘ “Not a Daimōn, but a Severe Illness”: Oribasius, Posidonius and Later Ancient Perspectives on Superhuman Agents Causing Disease’, in C. Thumiger and P. N. Singer, Mental Illness in Ancient Medicine: From Celsus to Paul of Aegina (Leiden, 2018), 79–108; G. B. Ferngren, Medicine and Healthcare in Early Christianity (Baltimore, 2009), 57–59; Hordern, ‘Responses to Possession’, 186. Pagan expulsion of demons: see e.g. Philostrat. V.A. 3.38, 4.20, 4.44.3, 6.27 (cf. 3.56), cf. 7.32.1. Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 328, ‘to educated pagans, exorcism was tommy-rot’ (citing Marcus Aurelius and Plotinus) is a little drastic. 196.  Ferngren (previous note), 54–56; D. Frankfurter, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 14 (2013), 3. ‘Psychodrame’: Brown, Cult of Saints, 118.

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inscriptions confirm that in Phrygia gods were responsible, not servants of the enemy of mankind. Radical change in this area is to be supposed, though it cannot actually be observed. The confession inscriptions show that some Phrygians, at least, might have been well prepared for exorcism in its highly public aspect, as a ‘psychodrama’ enacted before an audience. The practice of consecrating individuals, slave or free, to Apollo Lairbenos came to an end. Early monasticism (though not the new value placed on chastity) is hard to trace in Phrygia;197 we cannot say that the hieros or hiera of Apollo (anyway not bound to chastity) mutated directly into a monk or nun, and monasticism, when it came, was on a scale that dwarfed the old practice.198 A question that poses itself in relation to the whole Greco-Roman world is of what within Christianity provided the kind of guidance in everyday problems that pagans looked for from oracles: ‘if a slave runs away, or a pot gets lost, or whether to buy a plot of land or engage in trade or take a wife’ (to quote Eusebius’ contemptuous list).199 In Egypt, existing oracular techniques (ticket and lot oracles) were Christianised to meet the need. Surely the need existed both in pagan and Christian Phrygia; in neither can we say how it was met.200 Some changes in professed values we have already encountered: chastity (variously defined) becomes a virtue not confined to young girls; care for the poor becomes, for the first time, a virtue; and ‘brotherhood’ can be seen as a matter of credo rather than of blood. The source for all this has been funerary epitaphs, and funerary epitaphs, usually in verse, are unfortunately almost our sole source for Phrygian values both before and after the great change.201 Through them, however imperfectly, we can look at attitudes and values in several areas. First, kinship. 197.  See the table in S. Destephen, JSav (2010), 206 (where the one fourth-century entry, for Synaus, depends on a late hagiographical source); also his comment on page 212. The region is absent from Mitchell’s survey, Anatolia II, 114–19. Chastity: n. 109 above. 198.  Palladius, Historia Lausiaca, ch. 67 (written ca. 420), for Magna’s two thousand virgins at Ancyra. Also in Galatia note the complex of St. Michael at Germia (but again evidence begins only in the fifth century): see Mitchell, Anatolia II, 117. 199.  Theophany 52, 104. 28–31 in H. Gressmann, Die Theophanie: die griechischen Bruchstücke und Übersetzung der syrischen Überlieferungen, A. Laminski (ed.), (Berlin, 1992). Why consult the gods about such trivia and not matters of real importance about the nature of the world, asks Eusebius. 200.  On the very limited pagan evidence for divination in Phrygia, see 69n57. Egypt: Frankfurter, Christianizing Egypt, 186–88 (and for the Christian West R. Wiśniewski, The Beginnings of the Cult of Relics [Oxford, 2018], 75–76). Questions resembling those put to oracles were occasionally asked of holy men: e.g. F. Neyt and P. de Angelis-Noah, Barsanuphe et Jean de Gaza, Correspondance III (Sources chrétiennes 468 [Paris, 2002]), 649 (should I buy slaves?), 743 (should I associate with someone [in a business?] ?), 637, 778a, 779 (will x live or die?); but predominantly the questions put to them were about religious issues. Kallinikos’ Life of Hypatios (ed. G. J. M. Bartelink [Paris, 1971], 43.9–15) tells how this saint of the fourth and fifth centuries, based near Constantinople, suppressed the mantic service of an old man to whom an ‘angel’ supplied answers by night to practical questions. 201.  Cf. Mitchell, ‘Christian Identity’, as well as ‘Christian Epigraphy’.

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Funerary monuments in which all the members of an extended family express grief are an eye-catching feature of pagan Phrygian funerary epigraphy (though always in a minority against simpler texts). There was, it is well known, a strand in early Christianity that stressed loyalty to Christ over loyalty to family. But it came to the fore in divided families and situations of crisis. In better times it did not need to be so divisive; and several of the ‘Christians for Christians’ and other early Christian inscriptions are full of extended kin in the old way (one stresses that the dead man was a ‘kin-lover’, philosyggenes).202 Burial remained primarily a family responsibility. If Christianity weakened kinship ties,203 it was only in a longer timescale. Then wealth. Care for the poor has become a virtue, but it can be combined with a stress on wealth, expressed in Homeric language; the relatives of the dead show no anxiety about the eye of the needle.204 And finally the great change that so distressed Nietzsche, from pride in oneself and one’s achievements to humility before God and a sense of sin. The latter can certainly be found. The following is perhaps of the fourth century. For me life is Christ and death a benefit [a citation of Philippians 1. 21]. Amarantos, deacon, pitiful slave of Christ, after looking at the life of this transitory existence, on completion of five decades formed the wish with his brother Kyriakos, their mother having prayed for [vowed?] it, and made this memorial for themselves and their wives Papiane and Pancharie and their dearest children Domne and all the children who inherit this poor life. Remember, you who read, that death is prepared for all. Pray to God to be healed from your sins. Fare well, the righteous!205

(But note even here the family aspect!) And the Pauline self-designation as ‘servant/slave of Christ’ goes back earlier. Coincidentally or not, the two texts just cited are in prose. In verse, assertions of merit are still common. ‘Here the earth covers Domnos the mighty soldier, who displayed every virtue among men, the mighty soldier who toiled so much and was most renowned.’206 But quieter virtues can also be acclaimed. ‘A good priest of God lies here, loved by children and loving to heed God, gentlest of men . . . lover of god, lover of law, attendant of Christ, one chosen 202. Gibson, nos. 25 (with φιλοσυγγενής: Steinepigramme 16/31/91, ICG 1265), 28 (Steinepigramme 16/31/88, ICG 1269), 29 (Steinepigramme 16/31/12, ICG 1270); cf. Steinepigramme 14/06/17 (ICG 608) (stressing this to be a family grave), 16/31/81, 82, 85. Family responsibility: see 157 (bottom). 203.  Mitchell, Anatolia II, 119–20, on evidence of the fifth and sixth centuries from Galatia. 204.  For pagan stress on wealth, see Steinepigramme 14/02/10, 14/06/21 (if pagan), 14/07/06; for Christian 14/02/12 (ICG 81), 14/06/05 (ICG 52) (in both these combined with care for the poor), 14/06/20 (ICG 97). 205.  MAMA IV 33 (‘date, fourth c., to judge from the script’, endorsed by Robert, Hellenica XIII, 272n2; but ‘400–600’, ICG 1094). Slave of Christ: MAMA IV 32, ‘later third century’ (‘wohl 3. Viertel des 3. Jhs.,’ Waelkens, Türsteine, no. 486, followed by ICG 1087). 206. Gibson no. 29 (Steinepigramme 16/31/12, ICG 1270), which also glorifies his son; cf. e.g. Gibson no. 28 (Steinepigramme 16/31/88, ICG 1269).

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of God.’207 An epitaph which begins, ‘Now, stranger, do you wish to know who I am or whence I came? I am from the legion of those who locate the mightiest king on high. . . . ’ has clearly broken with epigraphic convention.208 That of a presbyter in the sect of the ‘Pure’ (Novatians) is interestingly mixed: first comes praise of God, then ‘Great is the memory on earth of Eugenios who has died. Eugenios, you died young. All under the sun knew you, East, West, South and North, for your prosperity and wealth and high birth and courage. Alive, you brought courage to the poor, and to your village more than anyone. You Phrygia and Asia and East and West’ (the inscribed epitaph stops here with free space below it; the stone is not broken).209 Men’s values were not instantaneously and totally transformed, therefore. But we can end with one striking monument that dramatises the shift between the two worlds. Ammia and her husband (presumably Christians) commemorate the death both of Ammia’s parents and of two of their own children, and a son-in-law. Ammia’s father, apparently a pagan, is made to lament the horrors of sunless Hades; one of the daughters, a Novatian Christian, appears to her parents in a dream and tells them not to weep because ‘my saviour Jesus Christ has redeemed [δικαιόω] me’; she has died a ‘holy virgin’, having granted her maidenhood to Christ, and has apparently received post-mortem baptism.210 The mention of Novatians evokes a new theme, that of the various so-called heresies that leave rich traces of themselves in Phrygia after Constantine.211 With them, the religious epigraphy of the region becomes exciting again. But that is not a story for this book.

207.  MAMA I 237 (Steinepigramme 14/06/07, ICG 603); cf. e.g. MAMA I 238 (Steinepigramme 14/06/15, ICG 602). 208.  MAMA I 176 (Steinepigramme 14/06/16, ICG 374). 209.  SEG VI 370 (Steinepigramme 14/06/05, ICG 52). Probably comparable is SEG VI 119 (Steinepigramme 16/32/03, ICG 1355), if we accept (with Buckler/Calder/Cox in JRS 15 [1925], 142–44) that Domnos was a Christian. Mitchell, ‘Christian Epigraphy’, notes a turn to more humility in the fifth and sixth centuries. 210.  Steinepigramme 16/31/93 (ICG 1689), where the crucial studies by Wilhelm and Grégoire are cited. Hutter (‘Christianisierungsprozesse’, 164n158) considers the possibility that Ammia’s father was a Rabbi, but the talk of Hades and Plouteus makes this less likely. 211.  See recently P. J. Thonemann, ‘Amphilochius of Iconium and Lycaonian Asceticism’, JRS 101 (2011), 185–205; D. Hofmann, ‘The Hot-Bed of Heresies: Häretische und schismatische Bewegungen in Kleinasien und ihre Bedeutung für die Christianisierung nach 325 n. Chr’, in Ameling, Christianisierung, 393–412; A. Filippini, ‘“Non sono atti degli apostoli, ma scritti demoniaci”. Il movimento enkratita nell’ Anatolia tardoantica’ (ibid., 413–72).

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9

Retrospect

‘Begin from the beginning’ has never been a good principle in the study of religion. That is not because there never is a true beginning, but because one should start with what is clear and tangible. That, in Phrygia, means the second century CE. The historical process from which that relatively well-illuminated period emerged cannot be traced in detail. But it would show a lack of curiosity not to peer back into the darkness a little. This chapter will be shaped like the kind of wine flask that swells from a narrow neck, the early centuries, as it approaches the period of central interest to this book (where relevant evidence also greatly increases). In the second millennium, the region later known as Phrygia formed part of the vast Hittite Empire. A singular ritual known from the confession inscriptions has been traced back to that period; it is attested so far only in eastern Lydia, but were a Phrygian example to turn up, one would scarcely be surprised. A serial offender lists the various expiations he performed. ‘He removes the first offence with a sheep, a partridge, a mole . . . second offence. . . . he removes [it] with a piglet, tuna, a fish1 . . . third offence . . . he removes it with a cock/hen, a sparrow, a dove, a kypros [a measure] of wheat and barley, a prochos [a measure] of wine.’ A different offender ‘took it away with a three-voice (τρίφωνον), mole and sparrow and tuna’; and a ‘three-voice’, once multiplied to a ‘nine-voice’, appears as an expiatory device in some other texts.2 1.  Surely this must be the articulation, not as the editors have it, ‘a thunny fish’, to give a triad. 2.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften, no. 5, 6, 55, Suppl. 131; ‘nine voice’, Suppl. no. 142. 55 and 131 appear to attest a practice of ‘raising [αἴρω] a three-voice’. Petzl wants to give the verb the sense of ‘remove’ (the sin) that the compound ἀπαίρω has in the other texts, but this entails very odd syntax in 131; almost anything is possible in these texts, however.

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These procedures echo, it is argued,3 scapegoat type rituals known from Hittite (and other ancient Near Eastern) texts, by which evil is transferred to an animal which is then sent away; mice, birds and other species could be used for the purpose, as in the Lydian texts. A different conception found among the east Lydian confessions has also been traced back to Hittite origins: that of the divine court.4 Two confession inscriptions appear to envisage a trial before the ‘[great senate and] assembly of the gods’ at which the offender, with one god as ‘advocate’ (parakletos), persuades the offended god to accept propitiation before the divine court.5 How this was played out in reality is left to us to imagine: the guilty man, one or two priests impersonating gods, a representation of twelve gods standing for the divine council, and very likely curious bystanders? As for the postulated Hittite origins, whether the pleas and self-exculpations by Hittite monarchs before gods should be seen as (theoretically) delivered at a kind of tribunal is for Hittitologists to say; whatever their answer, it is very difficult to see how such a conception, attested in relation to rulers, would have survived to re-emerge in a village context well over a millennium later. What vehicle of cultural transmission could one realistically imagine? The survival, as mentioned above, of a ritual technique of scapegoat type is far less problematic. According to the ancients, the Phrygians were not lineal descendants of the Hittites but migrated from Europe ‘after the Trojan wars’,6 a timing we might 3.  Perhaps first suggested, with citation of D. P. Wright (The Disposal of Impurity: Elimination Rites in the Bible and in Hittite and Mesopotamian Literature, 57, 81–82) by E. Varinlioğlu, EpigAnat 13 (1989), 48. ‘One of the rare instances of 2nd millennium cult practice observed in later Lydia that has been universally recognized as such’, according to Ricl (‘Continuity and Change’, 17). Ricl (ibid., 13–14) suggests a Hittite origin for expressions of ‘Zeus Trosou’ type (cf. 31n22), unnecessarily in my view. 4.  M. Ricl, EpigAnat 44 (2011), 151–52, ‘Continuity and Change’, 15–16; Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter, 80–81 (Chiai sees confession more generally as an inheritance from the Hittite period, e.g. 249). To my admittedly ignorant eye, Ricl’s source (I. Singer, Hittite Prayers (Atlanta, GA, 2002), 5–14, ‘The Prayer as Enactment of a Case in a Divine Court’) makes the idea of a court with prosecution and defence more explicit than the actual texts do. A much closer and more relevant template is Roman jurisdiction, as shown by Shelfer, Temple as Courtroom (to be read with J. Potts, Confession in the GrecoRoman World, ch. 5, forthcoming). 5.  Petzl, Beichtinschriften 5, which gives advocate and assembly, and a speech by the propitiated god, who is ‘questioned’ by the assembly; Petzl, Beichtinschriften, Suppl. 146, ‘great senate and assembly of the gods’ (crucially proving the assembly to be divine, not human); 130 may add a further case of the role of an ‘advocate (paraclete)’. Cf. Chaniotis, ‘Ritual Performance’, 132–33. In SEG LIII 1344 line 11 Men is accompanied by a δωδεκάθεον. But for ‘paraclete’ Petzl (EpigAnat 12 [1988], 163–64) compares the first Epistle of John 2:1 and other biblical texts, which are certainly closer parallels. 6.  Hdt. 7.73, where see the note in P. Vannicelli, Erodoto, Le Storie, Libro VII (Fondazione Valla, 2017) and Xanthos FGrH 765 F 14. For archaeological support, see Roller, ‘Sacred Landscapes of Matar’, 1n3; for diverse modern views, see Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 178–79; Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter, 94–98; and, in brief, Rutherford, Hittite Texts, 164. For continuities, see Hutter, ‘Phrygische Religion’, 79. On the Phrygian kingdom, see e.g. M. Mellink, in J. Boardman et al. (eds.), The Cambridge Ancient History III 22 (Cambridge, 1992), 622–43; L. Roller, ‘Phrygian and the Phrygians’, in S. R. Steadman and G. McMahon (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia (Oxford, 2011), 560–78; on the little that is

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reinterpret as ‘after the collapse of the Hittite Empire’. The reality of that migration is controversial. If it happened, the break was not absolute; Hittites and Hittite culture cannot have vanished completely from Phrygia, and contacts must have persisted with the various ‘neo-Hittite states’ in Anatolia. Even so, the contrast is acute between the ‘thousand gods’ of the Hittites and what we can see of the religion of the Phrygian Empire of the eighth to sixth centuries, where Matar, ‘Mother’, dramatically emerging from rock-cut doorways, is the only divine figure identifiable with any certainty, and one not reliably associable with any Hittite forebear.7 Alongside her can perhaps be set—but not as an invariable companion—a figure wanly known as ‘Superior Male God’;8 obviously any number more may have been worshipped but not depicted. A famous rock-cut relief from Ivriz (in what was later called southern Cappadocia) shows the Hittite/Luwian god Tarhunta confronting King Warpalawas of Tuwana (ca. 740–705 BCE), both named in the accompanying Luwian inscription. Tarhunta is holding grape clusters and has often been identified as a forerunner of Phrygia’s agricultural Zeus of the Roman period. Here is someone much more tangible than ‘Superior Male God’! Phrygia had close dealings with Tuwana,9 whose king here honours Tarhunta, and Tuwana is the south-eastern tip of the quadrilateral region within which palaeo-Phrygian inscriptions are found. So the relief becomes evidence for an image of a male god knowable about Phrygian religion, see S. Berndt-Ersöz, Phrygian Rock-Cut Shrines (Leiden, 2006), 209–11. On the whole iron age history of Phrygia Thonemann, ‘Anarchist History’, is a brilliant guide; note too for the far south-east, Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 286–300. 7.  See Roller, God the Mother, 63–115; for Matar as a new figure (though iconographically influenced by neo-Hittite images of Kubaba), see Roller, ‘Sacred Landscapes of Matar’, 2–3; Hutter (‘Phrygische Religion’, 83) tentatively seeks Hittite mountain goddesses to link her with. Rutherford (Hittite Texts, 169–82) is also very cautious; on 166 he queries whether ‘all instances of Matar in Phrygian texts refer to the same deity’. Against an attempt to find Matar at Gordion before 800 BCE, see L. Roller, BMCR 2022.02.08. 8.  See S. Berndt-Ersöz, ‘In Search of a Phrygian Male Superior God’, in M. Hutter and S. HutterBraunsar (eds.), Offizielle Religion, lokale Kulte und individuelle Religiosität (Münster, 2004), 47–56, which is reinforced by Hutter, ‘Phrygische Religion’, 86 (ibid., 85–87 for other possible components of ‘das phrygische Pantheon’). Chiai (Phrygien und seine Götter, 243) is sceptical; cf. 249 (local weather gods sidelined even if not wholly suppressed by Matar). The best items of evidence are a mini-relief showing Matar beside a bull (perhaps a reminiscence of Hittite iconography), and an Ata as recipient of a dedication in a palaeo-Phrygian dedication; aniconic double idols possibly represent the pair. Note also the probably male (king or god?) sub-life-size statue (sixth century?) from Kerkenes Dağ: C. M. Draycott and G. D. Summers, Sculpture and Inscriptions from the Monumental Entrance to the Palatial Complex at Kerkenes Dağ, Turkey (Chicago, 2008), 8–21. A middle Phrygian (ca. 800–550) inscribed stele from the Nakoleia region perhaps represents schematically two greater deities and one lesser: R. Tamsü Polat et al., Gephyra 19 (2020), 45–67. 9.  See e.g. A. Kuhrt, The Ancient Near East (London, 1995), II 564 (with a drawing of the often-reproduced relief); cf. e.g. Chiai, Phrygien und seine Götter, 74–77. On the scope of palaeo-Phrygian inscriptions, see p. 5n7. Ivriz is about seventeen kilometres south-east of Ereğli (= [Herakleia], Barr. 66 E 2).

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whom Phrygians may have worshipped. That Midas in the eighth century dedicated his wagon in a temple of ‘Zeus’ at Gordion, as Hellenistic tradition claimed, we will not believe without, at the very least, the adjustment, ‘a god later identified as Zeus’; that he sent a dedication to Apollo at Delphi, as already told to Herodotus, is not impossible, and becomes more plausible if he was the Midas who married an aristocratic Greek woman, Hermodike of Kyme.10 Already at this date we must envisage Greek-Phrygian interaction, and with it the possibility of interpretatio of one another’s gods. The cult at the sacred cave at Hierapolis with its poisonous fumes, or what became the Ploutonion, had already begun in this period.11 The Phrygian kingdom succumbed to Lydian and then Persian domination. All the prosperity and brilliance of the Phrygian Empire in its heyday, as displayed, for instance, at Gordion, disappears; this drawing in, which has even been described as ‘destatification’, perhaps, it has been argued, had its positive side for the Phrygians in leaving them less exposed to depredation through their new imperial masters.12 About Lydian influence nothing specific can be said. The first use of the Greek language in a Phrygian context may belong in the Persian period, a GreekPhrygian bilingual (dated ‘5th/4th c. BCE ?’) invoking a curse against anyone damaging or cutting wood in a sanctuary of (to judge from the accompanying relief) what may have been a form of Matar. But it comes from Vezirhan in the far north-west, within what is conventionally thought of as Bithynia, and probably points to a sanctuary where Greeks and Phrygians converged, not necessarily a take-up of Greek by Phrygians. (The relief that the inscription accompanies is remarkable and enigmatic: above a hunting scene and a banqueting scene appears a goddess [Matar?], with birds on both shoulders as well as the expected lions on either side, and palmettes sprouting from her head.)13 Persian influence on religion is visible in ‘Zeus of the Persians’ and the survival of a festival, Mithrakania, as an occasion when the dead could be commemorated.14 Much more important would be the coming of Men to Phrygia, if the theory 10.  Zeus: e.g. Arrian Anab. 2.3.6; Delphi: Hdt. 1.14.2; Hermodike: Arist. fr. 611.37 Rose, Pollux 9.83. Hermodike’s supposed link with coinage would exclude an eighth-century date, but may be fiction. Cf., in general, O. W. Muscarella, ‘King Midas of Phrygia and the Greeks’, in K. Emre et al., Anatolia and the Ancient Near East (Ankara, 1989), 333–44. 11.  D’Andria, ‘Ploutonion’, 102. 12.  Thonemann, ‘Anarchist History’, 13–15. ‘Destatification’: ibid., 8 (over the period ca. 550–330), expressed in a stepping back from ‘high urbanism and structural differentiation and literacy’. 13.  SEG XLVII 1684; cf. Thonemann, ‘Anarchist History’, 16. For the relief, see e.g. T. P. Kisbali’s lecture on ‘The Goddess on the Vezirhan Stele,’ SWITCHtube, 3 March 2021, https://tube.switch.ch/ videos/51aed57e. On Persian settlement in Phrygia, see the papers of N. Sekunda in A. Kuhrt and H. Sancisi-Weerdenburg, Achaemenid History III(Leiden, 1988), 175–196, and VI (Leiden, 1991), 83–143. 14.  Mithrakania: Laum, Stiftungen, 175 11–12; cf. 106n42. The festival is otherwise attested in Greek only (slightly corrupted) in Strabo 11.14.9, 530 (and perhaps, not so named, in Ath. 10.45.434d– e), but widely in other languages: F. Cumont, Textes et monuments figurés relatifs aux mystères de

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of that god’s Persian origin15 were sound: the region’s second most popular deity would turn out to be a recent import. Little supports the Persian thesis; but the origin of Men is a puzzle on any view. He is first securely attested in Anatolia, as Men Askaienos, in an inscription of 209 BCE, but he had entered Attica perhaps a century or so earlier, presumably having been imported from Anatolia;16 he must have been present in Anatolia, strangely invisible, for an indeterminate period prior to 209. And what are we to make of his name? Men the word is Greek for month, and Men the god is closely linked with the moon, whose waxings and wanings mark out the months for early peoples. A coincidence? A Greek name introduced by interpretatio?17 Or is Men the word for month in Phrygian or some other Anatolian language as well as in Greek? The aftermath of Alexander’s conquests brought Phrygia first under Seleucid, then, after 188 BCE, Attalid, and finally (at sometime soon after 118) Roman control. Some twenty colonies and military settlements in southern Phrygia introduced Greeks, the Greek language, Greek gods (or at least their names) and Greek ways into the region for the first time on a large scale.18 Already in a grave stele dated to the late fourth/early third century BCE we find an inscription in the Phrygian language but written in Greek letters, prepared by Nikostratos for Kleumachos. A second stele found with it, in the Greek language as well as script this time, Mithra, II, 6, 91, supplément p. 58; M. Boyce with F. Grenet, A History of Zoroastrianism, II (Leiden, 1982), 172–73; III (Leiden, 1991), 259–61; A. de Jong, Traditions of the Magi (Leiden, 1997), 371–77. Boyce accepts our text as evidence for Zoroastrians in Phrygia. Zeus of the Persians: SEG XXVIII 1186; cf. ‘Gods of the Greeks and Persians’ in a grave curse, SEG XXVIII 1079. A dedication of 77–78 CE from the territory of Ancyra Sidera to Helios Mithras is isolated, MAMA X 449; the editors ascribe the cult’s origins to Iranian colonists. κ]ατὰ μάγους Μίθ ̣ρην in the very fragmentary I. North Galatia 404 is frustrating. On Persian names in one region, see Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 261–64. 15.  As argued by E. N. Lane, Berytus 17 (1967–68), 81–106, supported by A. Van Haeperen-Pourbaix, ‘Recherche sur les origines, la nature et les attributs du dieu Men’, in R. Donceel, R. Lebrun (eds.), Archéologie et religions de l’Anatolie ancienne, Mélanges . . . P. Naster (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1983), 221–248. Rejected by Mitchell, ‘Persians’, 161–62 (the forthcoming defence by P. Debord that he mentions is unpublished, to my knowledge), and Labarre, Le dieu Mèn, 63–65 (reproducing the arguments of his article in H. Bru et al., L’Asie Mineure dans l’ Antiquité [Rennes 2009], 389–414.) For Chiai (Phrygien und seine Götter, 247), he is an Anatolian god who has undergone Iranian influence. Personal Names in Men- should not originally be seen as theophoric from Men but rather from Mēnē, moon: R. W. V. Catling and N. Kanavou, ZPE 163 (2007), 103–17; Labarre, Le dieu Mèn, 146–57. 16.  Men Askaienos: SEG LIV 1353 13–14. Attica: Parker, Athenian Religion, 193n146. A god who might be Men appears in an Aramaic text of (?) the fourth century CE from Lydia: A. Lemaire, EpigAnat 34 (2002), 179–84. 17.  For the ‘Anatolian moon gods Arma or Kusuh’, see Rutherford, Hittite Texts, 54n184. See ibid., n. 186 for possible Hittite origins for some of Men’s epithets. Chiai (Phrygien und seine Götter, 131) seeks an Iranian origin for the later Phrygian cult of Hosios Dikaios. 18.  Thonemann, ‘Anarchist History’, 17; Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 277–326, with the revealing maps 8 and 9. Thonemann (‘Anarchist History,’ 24–35) takes the ‘emergence of civic life’ outside the colonies in Phrygia only to happen from ca. 100 BCE.

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commemorates Tatis, daughter of Nikostratos (presumably the same Nikostratos), wife of Theophilos. So three male Phrygians, of a class able to afford expensive monuments, bear Greek names and apparently no others; only the woman has a Phrygian name.19 Remarkably, Greek effaced Phrygian to the extent that Roman observers came to speak of the mixed population of eastern Phrygia after the arrival of the Galatians as ‘Gallograeci’, not ‘Gallophryges’. (But in all seeming the Phrygians were coming to think of themselves, as it were, as Phrygograeci.20) This is the period, alas ill-documented, in which the development crucial for this book occurred, the emergence of the mixed religion that we observe in detail from about 100 CE onwards. A little catalogue of items must follow that may appear disconnected; but together they reveal one side of the development, the Greek influence. In 267 BCE the inhabitants of two villages in the far south-west (only a few miles from the about-to-be founded Laodikeia on the Lykos) met in an assembly and passed an honorary decree in perfect Greek style, to be displayed ‘in the sanctuary of Zeus in Babbakome and of Apollo in Kiddioukome’. The toponyms are Phrygo-Greek hybrids, the theonyms pure Greek; the honours bestowed are the very Greek ‘front seats at all the public festivals’, and even animal sacrifices ‘to’ the benefactors, which again sounds like an early Hellenistic Greek practice. But those who passed the decree, worshippers in Babbakome and Kiddioukome, were surely either all Phrygians or Phrygians with an admixture of Greeks.21 A decree from Synnada (probably a colony) of the second century BCE (?) ordains that a person whose name is lost should be ‘temple-sharing’ and ‘altar-sharing’ with someone, perhaps his father, apparently while still alive: Hellenistic benefactor cult again. (As late as the first century BCE, Apollonia by Pisidia honours a mortal, apparently still living, with a temple.)22 A more conventional form of ruler cult, that addressed to actual rulers or their kin, appears in an edict of Antiochus III from Eriza, perhaps, establishing a ‘high priestess’ of Laodike’s cult, and a decree of Hierapolis honouring the dead Attalid queen Apollonis.23 19.  C. Brixhe, Kadmos 42 (2004), 7026; cf. Thonemann, ‘Anarchist History’, 18–19, with his fig. 1.2. The tendency for women to preserve indigenous names is observable in many regions: see R. Parker (ed.), Changing Names (Oxford, 2019), 10n.31. Gallograeci: see C. T. Lewis and C. Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1879), s.vv. ‘Gallograeci’ and ‘Gallograecia’. 20.  Cf. Levick, ‘Phrygia outside the Polis’, 111: ‘Doubt about their identity, Phrygians or Greek, would have surprised them: they were both’. This is cited approvingly by Schuler, ‘Rural Population Groups’, 90n121. 21.  I. Laodikeia Lykos 1. The decree was passed by the ‘Neoteichitai’ and ‘Kiddiokometai’: the former might be Greek settlers (Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 225n102). 22.  Synnada: BCH 7 (1883), 300, to be read in Wilhelm, SBWien 166.1 (1911), 54–61 (Akademieschriften 1, 72–79; a proposed downdating is rejected in SEG LIV 692). Apollonia: MAMA XI 1. 23.  OGIS 224, Ma, Antiochos, 354–55 no. 37; I. Hierapolis Judeich 30, OGIS 308. Chiai (Phrygien und seine Götter, 174–90) argues that treating kings as gods encouraged the Phrygians to treat gods as kings.

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A letter of Antiochos III sent to Philomelion in the extreme south-east in 209 BCE brings us back from rulers to conventional gods. It was to be displayed ‘in the shrines of Aphrodite [?] at ΤΙΜΙΣ[.]ΝΩΙ and those in the Killanian plain of Zeus and Men Askaienos and the Tyrimneian [?] Mother of the Gods’:24 the nominal holders of the ‘most conspicuous’ sanctuaries of the region were therefore two indigenous gods, two Greek (if Aphrodite is correctly read; but she would be a rarity). At the start of the second century, Laodikeia on the Lykos displays its decrees in a treasure house of Artemis (and celebrates Antiocheia). An honorary decree of Apameia (ca. 168– 158) reveals ephebes and boys conducting ‘Hermaia and Herakleia’ in quintessential Greek fashion; the same thriving gymnasium culture reappears perhaps a century later in a decree of an unnamed city, probably Eriza, from the extreme south-west.25 The ‘Zeus Peltenos’ of Peltai (second half of the second century BCE?) in the southwest is a first case of what became the ubiquitous combination of a Greek theonym with a toponymic adjective. At an unspecified date, Hierapolis secured the right of asylia for its ‘ancestral gods’ (Apollo Archegetes chief among them?) from unnamed kings; we learn this from the renewal of this right by Hadrian. In (probably) the first century BCE, Aludda (?) displayed an honorary decree in the temple of Soter Asclepius, and crowned the beneficiary ‘at the publicly financed sacrifice’.26 The evidence cited thus far comes without exception from the south of Phrygia, where, for reasons of communications and defence, the overwhelming majority of new Greek settlements were located.27 But in the north-west tracts of land were dedicated to ‘Zeus the founder and the city of the Aezanitans’ by ‘kings Attalus and Prusias’ (in both cases the first of that name, it is argued; they died in 197 and 182 BCE, respectively), who perhaps first made Aizanoi into a polis. Any indigenous predecessor there may have been to Zeus has unfortunately left no trace. The land was leased to cleruchs, the rental income going to the god, and the kings’ motive was probably to implant military colonists in a frontier area.28 24.  SEG LIV 1353, ll 12–14 (for Timis[n]os, cf. LVII 1387; cf. ‘the most conspicuous sanctuaries’ in a Mysian copy of the letter, Ma, Antiochos, 288–90 no. 4 [SEG XXXVII 1010] 49–50.) The Killanian plain is at the bottom of Barr. Atlas 62 F5. 25.  Laodikeia: I. Laodikeia Lykos 5. 19–21, 36. Apameia: MAMA VI 173.16 (for the date cf. SEG LIII 1457); Eriza (?): BCH 13 (1889), 334 no. 4 (Michel, Recueil, 544; for the findspot Karayük as Eriza J. Nollé, Gephyra 6 (2009), 49–56; on 52 he leaves the dating of the decree open). Peltai (unlocated, but for the ‘plain of Peltai’ see Strabo XIII 4.13, 629): Michel, Recueil, 542 (as dated by C. W. Crowther, Oxford Epigraphy Workshop, April 26, 2021). 26.  Hierapolis: SEG LV 1415. Aludda: SEG VI 273; cf. 59n109. 27.  See map 8 in Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements; Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 174. 28.  On all this, see MAMA IX xxxvi–xliii, which I follow closely; cf. now the letter of Caesar relating to the issue (M. Wörrle, Chiron 39 [2009], 409–44 [SEG LIX 1479]; Aizanoi as polis: ibid., 428–31 [aliter Thonemann, ‘Anarchist History’, 25]; he suggests (416n15) a late Hellenistic date for the dedication to Zeus Ezeanites, SEG LIV 1276). Predecessor (?) K. Rheidt, in Aizanoi und Anatolien, 171. Aizanoi had organised bodies of ephebes and young men by 49/8 BCE (if the era date is Sullan): IstMitt 25 (1975), 350–51.

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We touch a less formal level with early Hellenistic (before 189 BCE) graffiti from Gordion, a city of what came to be Galatia with a mixed population of Phrygians, Greeks and (from ca. 241 BCE) Galatians, particularly interesting because the Greek influence here was not owing to a colony implanted in the old city. Nothing here would cause surprise in a Greek sympotic context, except a minority of indigenous names: we meet an insult to ‘bald Manes’, a threat (‘it will be the worse for him’, οἰμώξεται), cups inscribed for Agathos Daimon and Agathe Tyche, a statuette of Cybele dedicated to the Muses.29 The arrival of Galatians in eastern Phrygia leaves, indeed, surprisingly little trace in religion: the Zeuses Souolibrogenos and Zeus Bussurigios bear manifestly Celtic epithets, but the Zeus plus toponym template is Phrygian (and the case is unusual); the situation at Pessinous, where the priesthood in the major cult of Mother came to be shared between Celts and Phrygians, shows the incomers claiming influence within existing structures.30 The people of Themisonium somewhere in southern Phrygia supposedly fled from the invading Galatians to a cave on advice given in a dream by Herakles, Apollo and Hermes, subsequently in gratitude honoured outside that cave with statues: coins of the third century CE depict that triad of gods and suggest the incident lived on in folk memory.31 In the first century BCE, some twenty Phrygian communities started to coin (in bronze), and most of their issues had Greek gods, or Mother, or occasionally Men, on the obverse. Institutionally and economically, this outburst of coining is a landmark; culturally, the coins show that images of Greek gods were widely familiar; but any direct inferences from the coins of a city to the gods actually approached by its citizens is hazardous. Athena is one revealing case (but there are others): common on these coins, all but absent from Phrygian cult.32 The upsurge in coining is a consequence, it has been suggested,33 of the Roman presence, which was conspicuously influential in political and economic terms. Its impact in religion is much less visible, except at Antioch by Pisidia where there was an actual Roman colony (and, of course, except for the imperial cult). Romans were, to a very large extent, happy to make use of the gods they found on the spot. Even at Iconium, where a colony had been implanted alongside the old native city, we find an invocation to ‘saviour gods Angdistis and great Mother Boethene and Mother of the 29.  L. Roller, AnatSt 37 (1987), 103–33 (SEG XXXVII 1104–63; cf. XL 1212). 30.  Pessinous: 76 above. Two Zeuses: I. North Galatia nos. 191, 203–4. ‘Most of the cults’ (of northern Galatia) ‘may loosely be called Phrygian’, I. North Galatia 16; for Galatian traces (above all in elite burials), see Darbyshire et al., ‘Galatian Settlement’, 84–87. 31.  Paus. 10.32.4–5; RPC VI 5523, 5535 (both temporary), VIII unassigned (ID 20692): see J. Nollé, Gephyra 6 (2009), 68–70. 32.  Cf. page 62. We know, admittedly, little about cult in the first century BCE; but the lack of fit between coins and attested coins persists in the second century CE when we know the cults well. 33.  Thonemann, ‘Anarchist History’, 28–29.

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Gods and [ ] Apollo and Artemis to be propitious and [ ] to the colony Eikonion.’ By this date colony and city had merged, and the gods named first were all local, even Apollo and Artemis well assimilated within Phrygia.34 There are, in fact, rather few documents of any kind that illuminate Phrygian religious life, the imperial cult aside, in the first two and a quarter centuries of Roman control. It is only in the early second century CE that private dedications start to appear in such abundance. How much of the change is to be attributed to epigraphic habit, how much to population growth is not clear.35 But from then on the Phrygian system presented in the core of this book is laid out to our view. Much of what then emerges could barely have been predicted on the basis of evidence dating prior to the third century BCE, nor even of the period from 300 BCE to 100 CE. On a gloomy view one might designate the period from the fall of the Hittite Empire to 100 CE the Dark Age of Phrygian religious history. The preceding paragraphs have illustrated the spread of Greek divine names and, to some extent, of Greek usages, but have not engaged seriously with the process by which an existing religious system translates itself, so to speak, into a new language, the accommodations, resistances and real innovations that such a process entails. That process was replicated, mutatis mutandis, throughout Anatolia: everywhere a religion emerged that was a hybrid of indigenous and Greek. The following chapter will look beyond Phrygia, and open a broader perspective on the problems and limitations of studying such hybrid religions. At the end the chapter will revert to Phrygia in that light.

34.  I. Mus. Konya 9; on the colony and city see Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 99. For dedications by Romans to Phrygian gods see e.g. I. Mus. Konya 4, Güney, ‘Zeus Sarnendenos’, 162–63 no. 7. For a man with a Roman cognomen serving as priest of Mother, see SEG LXVI 1580. The funerary formula D(e)is Manibus of course occurs, rendered θεοῖς Ἥρωσι in MAMA XI 32 and θ(εοῖς) Δ(αίμοσι) in an epigram from Dorylaion (L. Robert, RPhil [1939], 207 [OMS II 1360]) as well as the commoner θεοῖς (κατα)χθονίοις. The Capitoline triad appears on coins (e.g. RPC II 1282–83, etc., Laodicea on the Lycus; III 2359, Hydrela), but not to my knowledge in dedications. 35.  In favour of population growth (in eastern Phrygia, on the fringe of the great Anatolian plateau) see Mitchell, Anatolia II, 148–49. From the first century CE I have noted only MAMA VII 486, a dedication to Men with a lost topographic epithet of 89 CE; REG 3 (1890), 65 no. 12 (dedication to Artemis) has been claimed for 99 CE, but only on the (plausible) hypothesis of a misread numeral; and note ZPE 14 (1974), 259–60 (BE [1976], no. 670), a statue of Men Patalaos from 100 CE. Ramsay, Phrygia, 374 no. 196 (IGR IV 742), a priest of Apollo Propylaios, and 377 no. 199 (IGR IV 741), a priest of Rome, both from Eumeneia, are dated to the first century CE by Ramsay on prosopographical grounds. MAMA IV then offers several dated inscriptions from the first forty years of the second century (272, 276b, 309, 314).

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10

The masked ball Interpretatio and its effects

Books and articles containing the terms ‘Greek’ or ‘Roman’ religion in their title are legion. Books and articles titled ‘Anatolian religion (ca. 500 BCE–300 CE)’ or subdivisions of the same (e.g. Phrygian religion) barely exist. They speak rather of the ‘cults’ of Anatolia or its regions. The reason is not an unease that is felt in some quarters1 about using the word ‘religion’ in relation to a time when people did not think of themselves as adherents of one defined religion as opposed to another. It is rather a product of embarrassment or uncertainty before a mixed religious system. By the beginning of the Christian era Anatolia was overrun with Apollos and Artemises and Zeuses and many others. But, with rare and uncertain exceptions, these gods had not been there under those names seven hundred (let us say) years earlier. The Greek divine names spread, along with the spectacular diffusion of Greek as the language of written record, a diffusion which eliminated all competitors until Greek was partially and temporarily challenged by Latin under the Roman Empire. Persons not Greek by origin took up Greek divine names as they took up the Greek language; ethnic Greeks also settled in considerable numbers in the cities founded by Hellenistic kings, though always remaining a small component of the total population. The result of these two factors—the adoption of Greek names for gods by nonGreeks and the influence of actual Greeks—was a comprehensively mixed religious system. But how to designate it? Zeus and Apollo are two of the chief deities of Hellenistic and Roman Lydia, but does this mean that the Lydian religion of that period 1.  For discussion, and critique, of such views, see V. Pirenne-Delforge, Le Polythéisme grec à l’ épreuve d’ Hérodote (Paris, 2020), 25–32.

172

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is a branch of Greek religion? The Zeuses of Asia Minor are treated as sub-aspects of Zeus in A. B. Cook’s monumental study of that god in 3,256 pages; Hans Schwabl in his encyclopaedia article on Zeus undertook the heroic and Sisyphean task of tracking down every epithet borne by Zeus in Asia Minor as everywhere else— Sisyphean because there are already many additions to be made.2 Some reference works on Greek religion also turn their gaze eastwards. The treatment in the indispensable Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae is rather inconsistent: material from Asia Minor is sometimes thrown in with that from Greece, sometimes treated under the special rubric ‘peripheria orientalis’, sometimes ignored. But Men and Mother (for instance) have a far greater prominence in Lydia and Phrygia than in any region of mainland Greece. Throughout Anatolia, gods with Greek and with indigenous names are found together, some of the latter, such as Men and Mother and Ma, being very widely diffused (though none pan-Anatolian), others being much more local. For this and other reasons no one has ever tried to subsume Lydian or Phrygian religion or that of any other Anatolian region within Greek. Instead, the religious practices of these regions are left at the level of ‘cults’. The title on a book jacket or at the head of an article matters little: what matters is how one is to describe and evaluate a mixed religion (by which should be understood ‘a notably mixed religion’, since all religions are, like all languages, mixed). The commonest approach has been to distinguish between the indigenous and that which is imported from Greece. Joseph Keil, in a classic article on the cults of Lydia, identified in that region twenty-one Greek gods, fifteen non-Greek gods, and eight of ambiguous character, who received, respectively, 70, 194, and 90 dedications. The fact that the non-Greek gods receive more than twice as many dedications as the Greek is taken by Keil as decisive for the character of religion in the region. (But the principle of division is rather complicated, because, for Keil, some gods with Greek names are in fact natives in light disguise and so are listed in the non-Greek column.) More recently Maria-Paz de Hoz has reviewed the cults of Lydia in an indispensable monograph. The quantities of evidence have increased hugely, but she follows Keil’s approach of dividing the material into categories: Anatolian gods now have 565 attestations, Greek 159, Persian 29, and ambiguous 42.3

2.  A. B. Cook, Zeus (Cambridge, 1914–1940), 3 vols.; H. Schwabl, ‘Epiklesen’, RE X A (1972), 153– 376 and ‘Zeus, Nachträge’, in RE Suppl. XV (1978), 1441–81. 3.  J. Keil, ‘Die Kulte Lydiens’, in W. H. Buckler and W. M. Calder (eds.), Anatolian Studies presented to Sir W. M. Ramsay (Manchester, 1923), 239–66; M-P. de Hoz, Die lydischen Kulte im Lichte der griechischen Inschriften (AMS 36, Bonn 1999). But the great W. M. Ramsay, in a different region, found nothing but indigenous gods: BSA 18 (1911–12), 69: ‘Such is the impression that all these religious monuments of the Antiochian Region make on the spectator: the old Phrygian cult remained practically almost the same in its fundamental features for a thousand years or more; and instead of calling it Phrygian we may move a step further and employ the name Hittite.’

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The title of Alfred Laumonier’s monograph, Les cultes indigènes en Carie, is a clear pointer to his approach; it can almost become, in archaeological metaphor, an attempt to dig down through the Greco-Roman levels to a less familiar and more interesting archaic stratum. In a different metaphor one might speak of a serial outing of indigenous gods. This approach draws sharp divisions, even within the cult of individual gods: Apollo, as worshipped in this city or under this epithet, is a Greek Apollo; in that city or under that epithet, a disguised native; the same city, perhaps even the same sanctuary, will often host both Greek and indigenous Apollos. The scholar becomes an observer at a masked ball trying to see beneath the mask of the figures passing in front of her. This approach invites three comments: that it is in one way profoundly misleading; that it can only be achieved to a limited degree and in a special sense; but that, in another way, it is necessary and almost inevitable. It is misleading in that it is almost completely alien to the ways in which the peoples in question conceived their pantheons. No Anatolian people divided the gods into two classes, ‘Greek’ and ‘our own’;4 nor is an equivalent found of the distinction known from Rome between ‘Greek rite’ and Roman. The process, so characteristic of the ancient world, of identifying the differently named gods of different peoples (‘intepretatio’) served precisely to efface such distinctions, to universalise the divine. Ethnic epithets for individual gods do occur—Persian Artemis, Lydian Zeus, Carian Zeus, the Pisidian goddess, and others5—but not a generalized distinction between Greek and indigenous; and epithets much more commonly refer to particular places than to whole peoples. Greeks may have continued to regard Men as Phrygian or the Sandan of Tarsus as ‘Syrian’,6 because their names remained non-Greek. But nobody sorted Apollos and Zeuses into different ethnic heaps.7 As for the success with which the distinction can be drawn, a truly indigenous stratum can never be reached. Caria, for instance, was a zone of transit that had always been exposed to the comings and goings of peoples and gods. But even if one treats ‘indigenous’ as a shorthand for ‘present in Anatolia before the growth of Greek influence’ (whatever its ultimate origin), the enterprise is made difficult by 4.  Cf. J. Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Oxford, 2007), 144. 5.  Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 98–101. 6.  It has been noted (I forget unfortunately who by) that Dio in speaking of the gods of Tarsus, in Or. 33 (16), omits Sandan. 7.  L. Robert, CRAI (1978), 283–86 = OMS V 741–42 compares the ‘Gods of Greeks and Persians’ of an epitaph of the far SE of Phrygia which he publishes (SEG XXVIII 1079) with the ‘Pisidic gods’ of funerary curses in the same region and notes that ‘les dieux des Hellènes ne sont pas confondus avec les dieux Pisidiques. C’est un bon exemple d’ une couche de dieux indigènes’ (on which Persian and Greek gods were successively superimposed). But he has created the contrast by bringing together distinct documents.

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a radical dissymmetry in the evidence. To take the example of Caria again, of the two elements that enter the compound of Greco-Carian religion, one, the Greek, is well attested from an early period and from regions far removed from Carian contact; the other, the Carian, is all but unobservable before contact with Greece begins, and has, in the main, to be isolated by a process of separation within the Greco-Carian compound. Much of the argument of Laumonier’s standard work has the form, to paraphrase crudely and cruelly, ‘since this doesn’t sound/look Greek, it must be Carian’. Sometimes he could find parallels for the supposedly Carian in other evidence for Anatolian or ancient Near Eastern religions, but very seldom could this be drawn from the immediately relevant context, that of southwest Anatolia in, let us say, the period from 1000 to 500 BCE. The decipherment of Carian has improved the situation, as has the decipherment of Lycian in neighbouring Lycia; so have occasional bilinguals.8 We can now, to a limited extent, observe a god with a Carian or Lycian name taking on a Greek name. Nothing comparable is yet possible in Phrygia. And we still know very little of the powers and attributes and myths associated with these gods in archaic Caria and Lycia. There are iconographic motifs that we can be fairly sure are indigenous by origin (the god with a double axe, or standing on an animal, or with the protuberances on the chest that gave Artemis of Ephesus her false repute as ‘many-breasted’) because they are so alien to Greco-Roman norms.9 But it does not follow that every god to whom such a motif is applied is indigenous through and through. In appendix F, I shall discuss the limitations of Laumonier’s attempt to identify indigenous gods through such representations (seen on coins, above all). Even if his method were sound, there are strict limits to what numismatic iconography can tell one about religious experience. The situation varies region by region, in ways not to be inventoried here. The cities of coastal Cilicia are in some ways the most favourable observatory, because here we see, for instance, figures named as Baal of Tarsus and Nergal giving way on civic coinages to an

8.  Two key texts: I.-J. Adiego, P. Debord, E. Varinlioğlu, ‘La stèle caro-grecque d’ Hyllarima’, REA 107 (2005), 601–53 (cf. P. Debord, ‘Peut-on définir un panthéon carien?’, in F. Rumscheid [ed.], Die Karer und die Anderen [Bonn, 2009]); H. Metzger et al., Fouilles de Xanthos, vol. VI: La stèle trilingue du Létôon (Paris, 1979). At Iasos in Caria, we see, through dedications from the same sanctuary, the Carian trqδ, descendant of Hittite Tarhunt, mutate into Zeus Megistos: Piras, ‘Karische Sprachdenkmäler’, 233–35. For an Isaurian case, see Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 79n9. 9.  Double axe: see e.g. Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, 224, index s.v. ‘Double axe’; T. J. Smith, AnatSt 47 (1997), 24–26 (‘The Triad’), and as the characteristic weapon of Zeus of Labraunda I. Labraunda 32, 74, and J. Crampa in ibid., part II, 192–93. God on animal: Sandon on coins of Tarsos (e.g. Ehling et al., Kulturbegegnung, Taf. 2. 3–6). The type is already seen among the Hittite reliefs at Yazilikaya; it later became standard for Theos/Jupiter Dolichenos, probably through continuous tradition (though the possibility of imitation of an earlier type from a re-discovered monument [cf. SEG XLI 503] cannot quite be ruled out. ‘Breasts’: see below.

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unmistakable Zeus.10 But the point about the limits of numismatic iconography applies again here. This, then, is the ‘limited degree’ and the ‘special sense’ mentioned above in which we can study the mix that created the Anatolian religion of the GrecoRoman period: of the two elements that entered the compound only one is adequately known in its prior state, and the other cannot be recovered by a process of calculation. Cultural mixing is not like simple arithmetic: if one takes, for instance, the case of a god obscure in Greek cult but prominent in Anatolian (Ares or Kronos), it is reasonable to postulate that Ares has given his name to an important Anatolian deity, and one could express the relation in the form X (Greek Ares) + Y (unknown Anatolian deity) = Z (Anatolian Ares). But one cannot then do a sum and identify the precise contours of Y by simple subtraction; nor will the situation improve if one switches to culinary metaphors (of clarifying or straining off).11 The problem is one familiar to scholars trying, for instance, to recover the indigenous pantheon of Gaul: does ‘Mercury’ cover one native, or many? Yet one cannot simply set aside the issue of what reality underlies an Anatolian god with a Greek name. It is true that, as we have seen, the question whether the Apollo he worshipped was Greek or Carian was one a Carian of the third century BCE was never likely to pose. But we as observers need to know what powers he associated with that Apollo. A historical process of mixing did in fact take place, and there is no reason to doubt that in different contexts and at different times and combined with different epithets one divine name such as Apollo may have had very different associations. The general scholarly presumption is that a naming of the form ‘Greek divine name plus local epithet’—so Zeus Pigindenos, for example—will refer to an interpreted indigenous god, and this presumption is, at least in regard to an initial stage, entirely reasonable. The inhabitants of these regions were not Greek by origin, and it is inconceivable that they should have switched from one divine world to another overnight. In situations of bilingualism, where Greek had not killed the local language, the native name presumably lived on, with all the associations attached to it; that factor is particularly relevant in Phrygia, where the best authority argues that Phrygian had speakers down into

10.  See Ehling et al., Kulturbegegnung, passim; W. Müseler, ‘Between Mesopotamia and Greece: Cultural influences in Cilician Coin-iconography from the Late 5th to the Early 4th Century BC’, Gephyra 22 (2021), 69–133. A similar process is observable on Carian coins: see Piras, ‘Karische Sprachdenkmäler’, 238–41. 11.  No more can one readily separate Greek from Carian in political structures: R. van Bremen, Chiron 30 (2000), 400–401. But for an ingenious attempt to detect a Dumezilian tripartite structure embodied in Zeus, Mother and Ares, see P. Talloen et al., ‘Religion and Society in Pre-Hellenistic Pisidia’, in M. Hutter and S. Hutter-Braunser, Offizielle Religion, locale Kulte und individuelle Religiosität (Münster, 2004), 433–45.

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the Roman period; in the Phrygo-Pisidian borderlands there was also Pisidian.12 Not every god with a Greek name, however, will necessarily be an interpreted native. Anatolia was dotted with Hellenistic colonies containing, potentially at least, some ethnic Greeks, and one must also allow for the possibility of non-indigenous gods being taken up because they were felt to offer something new and valuable, according to the normal traffic of gods across the boundaries of ancient polytheism. The Egyptian gods, on the one hand, and Asclepius, on the other, are, as it seems, true incomers to Anatolia, not new names imposed on existing figures.13 Changes in culture and lifestyle might create a need for particular gods. The gymnasium required Hermes and Heracles;14 the theatre often (though not demonstrably in Phrygia) required Dionysus. So the gods of Anatolia with Greek names have different origins; the traditional sifting approach, the idea that under the one name ‘Apollo,’ say, there may lie diverse realities, is not ridiculous. Where one can criticise it is for neglecting the possibility of change.15 Interpretatio opens the gate between two pantheons and allows elements to cross from one to another; this process manifestly takes place in iconography, and there is no reason why, in areas harder to trace, interchange should not have occurred, too. What functions at a given moment a particular god is being asked to discharge, how he is being conceived, will never be predictable from his name alone except in the broadest terms, meaning, for instance, that a Zeus will never be female or noticeably young or insignificant. And it will often be impossible to decide whether a given god is by origin a native god dressed in Greek 12.  See e.g. C. Brixhe, ‘Greek and Phrygian’; the use of neo-Phrygian on gravestones is not proof in itself (cf. SEG LXV 1241), but the case is much subtler than that. Note, however, Roller’s counter (5n7 above). On the importance of surviving native languages, see Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 78–79; and on the problematic theonyms contained in one Greek/neo-Phrygian bilingual, see the references (ibid., 79n8); the remarks of W. M. Calder (CR 41 [1927], 162–63) are dated but provocative. Pisidian: Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 237–54. 13.  L. Robert (I. Laodicée Lycos nymphée, 291–92) points out that Asclepius is always an import, not an interpretatio. But in some cases doubt is possible: are the Dios Soteria and Herakleia of Hanisa in Cappadocia (Michel, Recueil, 546.24–25—a famous text also mentioning a shrine of Astarte) interpreted indigenous cults (Robert, Noms indigènes, 499–501), or imports (Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 83n31)? 14.  SEG I 466 = I. Tyana 29 (Tyana, year five of Ariarathes VI, late second century BCE), one of the rare Hellenistic inscriptions from pre-Roman Cappadocia (Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 86), is a striking example: ‘indiz eines kulturellen Umbruchs’, as Berge notes in I. Tyana, 480; cf., for the gymnasial gods, MAMA VI 173.17 (Apameia), SEG XXXI 1321 (Cilicia); I. Arykanda 162.13–14; Heberdey-Kalinka, Südwestliches Kleinasien, 28.12 (Kyaneai, in Lycia); I. Byzance funéraires p. 154 (Gazioura); I. Estremo Oriente 381 (Ai Khanoum); for Dionysus e.g. SEG LV 1481. Robert writes (Noms indigènes, 490): ‘s’helléniser, ce n’ est point renoncer à ses dieux et à ses vieux cultes, c’ est vivre à la grecque’. But it requires, at the least, additions to one’s old gods. 15.  ‘Les grecs ont accepté sans pratiquement les altérer un certain nombre de traits proprement “orientaux” des cultes anatoliens’: P. Debord, Aspects sociaux et économiques de la vie religieuse dans l’Anatolie gréco-romaine (Leiden, 1982), 3; cf. 135.

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clothes or an immigrant god now somewhat naturalized.16 The best we can do is17 simply to describe the gods as we find them in a given place and time. Where the evidence for what they do is abundant, that ‘best’ will be very good; if we know what a god or goddess does, the question of what he or she once was becomes of secondary importance, interesting only as a study of fixity or change. The difficulty, unfortunately, is that we often do not in fact know what the god does; we have only a name. Some of the detailed clarities and certainties of previous scholarship must therefore be abandoned. But there is a broader level at which the nature and limitations of the reception of Greek gods or their names in Anatolia can be brought out. (From Anatolia I exclude in this context the long-established Greek cities of the coastlines. More problematic are the inland cities, whether indigenous or Greek foundations/refoundations. The difficult question of whether there was a cultural divide between town and country was discussed above, in relation to Phrygia. At all events, my central concern, if with some blurring at the edges, is with rural Anatolia.) Although it is bestrewn with Greek gods, in any given region the shape of the pantheon is very different from that in any region of Greek proper, and some of these differences from Greek norms are common to almost all parts of Anatolia. This topic—the fortunes of the Greek gods or of gods bearing Greek names in Anatolia—is no doubt impossibly large and complex. It is impossible because the relevant material is very extensive, to a large extent undatable with any precision, and has only in a few cases been brought together in readily usable form. There is also much to be said for the purist view that one should not generalise about Anatolia at all; each region is a special case, and some claims will be valid for particular areas only. But a survey region by region would test patience. Some lines in the sketch that follows will doubtless be misdrawn. My collections of evidence will surely be incomplete. The sketch may nonetheless be worth attempting because certain broad conclusions emerge which bring into focus the selective acceptance and adaptation of Greek gods.18 The point at issue is the shape of the pantheon in any given region and how it might relate to the kinds of shape familiar from Greece. Among the factors to consider are issues of prominence, where particular gods are much more, or much less, prominent in Anatolia than in Greece; lack of prominence can reach the point 16.  Cf. D. Flusser, cited and endorsed by N. Belayche, Iudaea-Palaestina (Tübingen, 2001), 80: ‘With regard to Greek divinities in Palestine, it is often impossible to decide whether we are dealing with a Greek interpretation of an eastern divinity, or with a Greek divinity which came in from abroad.’ 17.  As is done in the splendid account of Mitchell, Anatolia, II, 11–51. 18.  A topic seldom discussed; but note F. W. Hasluck, Cyzicus, (Cambridge, 1910), 206: ‘On the other hand, though the worship of Kore, Athena, Poseidon and others never penetrated to the villages and remained a badge of Hellenism, the Hellenic Zeus, Artemis, and Apollo were everywhere identified in name and art-type with the generally nameless village gods.’

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even of virtual absence of certain gods.19 There are also questions of function, where gods possess powers they normally lack in Greece, or lack those they normally have; one can also watch out for strange alliances, gods closely associated with one another in unusual ways. I begin with some easy and often quoted cases of unusual prominence. A strange and spectacular example is that of the god Kronos in the Lycian city of Tlos: almost unknown elsewhere in Anatolia, in Tlos Kronos was honoured with games, Kroneia, and probably celebrated as founder of the city; at no place in Greece other than Olympia does Kronos have such civic prominence.20 The case of Ares is of broader application. Ares in mainland Greece received offerings at a restricted range of moments, almost always in public cult and in relation to warfare. Over wide stretches of southern Anatolia, though he remains in iconography emphatically a military god, he is honoured by all sorts and conditions; at Savatra in Lycaonia he is even accompanied by mysterious feminine Areiai.21 A case of even larger scope is that of the Dioscuri (so named), immensely popular in broadly the same regions of southern Anatolia as Ares; hundreds of rock-cut reliefs show them, usually flanking a goddess who is normally nameless but just once called Artemis and often topped by a crescent moon. The Dioscuri, it is true, were popular throughout Greece, but a difference is observable: here they are inland, detached from their most familiar role as saviours at sea; iconographically, they are normally mounted and clothed, whereas in Greece they typically stand beside their horses, naked; and they are associated with a goddess with whom they are not associated in Greece.22 Cilician Hermes is an especially interesting case because here we can almost put a name to a predecessor. In rough Cilicia Hermes steps forward from his usual subordinate role to something more 19.  Pan, for instance, whom I know only from the recently published SEG LXVI 1686 (nr. Termessos, Pisidia), and a relief, MAMA XI 111. On Eileithyia, see below, 182n36. 20.  TAM II ii 581, as restored by Robert, Hellenica 7.53 (founder); ibid., 585, SEG LXIV 1421 (‘great Kroneia’); TAM II ii 554, SEG LXIV 1415, 1418 (‘great god’, with life priest and ‘chief prophet’). Cf. Robert, JSav 1978, 42–44 (OMS VII 420–22); Frei, Götterkulte Lykiens, 1811. Plutarch (Def. Or. 21, 421D) speaks of great honours among ‘the Solymians, the neighbours of the Lycians’. A hetairia of men who almost all have indigenous names dedicate to Kronos north of Anazarbos in Cilicia (Ehling et al., Kulturbegegnung, 244 no. 51, cf. 192–93; this should link to the role assigned him in local Hellenizing mythology [ibid., 157–61]). There is little other Anatolian evidence, though cf. Hesych. s.v. ‘Ακρισίαςˑ ὁ Κρόνος παρὰ τοῖς Φρύξιν (unexplained); SEG XLIV 1289, Θεῷ μεγίστῳ Κρόνῳ from Commagene, third century CE (influence from Syria?). For Kronos in Olympia, see BE 2018 no. 226. 21.  Robert (Doc. Asie Min. 416n92, 423–27), citing (423n149) his many previous studies; for the Areiai at Savatra in northern Lycaonia, see Robert, Hellenica XIII, 44. Cf. Delemen, Anatolian RiderGods, 69–70; Talloen, Cult in Pisidia, 62–63; for Lycia, Frei, Götterkulte Lykiens, 1766–67 is cautious. At Metropolis in Ionia Ares had a temple on the acropolis and was ‘ein (wenn nicht der) Hauptgott der Stadt’ (I. Metropolis, 15; add now SEG LIX 1333–53); I know no explanation for his exceptional role there. 22.  See Robert, Doc. Asie Min. 397–423; Artemis, ibid., 404 no. 10 (SEG VI 770). New examples occur frequently: for those from the region of Balboura, see T. J. Smith, AnatSt 47 (1997), 3–49.

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central: he has temples, he has priesthoods.23 He also plays a part in a myth located in Cilicia, that of Zeus’ conflict with Typhon, which is generally agreed to have a Hittite or earlier original. Many indigenous names in the region are based on that of the Luwian stag-god Runt,24 and it is tempting to suppose that Hermes is here Runt à la grecque. But Runt has no role in the surviving version of the Hittite myth: we cannot quite close the circle. So lesser—or, even in the case of Kronos, very minor—figures acquire new status in parts of Anatolia. But still more striking is the way in which one god already great in Greece becomes much greater in Anatolia. By way of paradox one might assert that it is in Anatolia that Zeus really comes into his own. In Greece he is, both in myth and literature, immeasurably the greatest god, and every city honours him in cult, but it is comparatively rare for him to be the chief god of a city25 or to receive dedications from individuals. In Anatolia he is honoured in both these ways, particularly the latter, with enormous frequency; there is no region of Anatolia where Zeus is not the dominant god. Aspects of his existing portfolio of functions have been enormously extended and strengthened. Zeus thunders, of course, in Greece, but it is in Phrygia that he receives hundreds of dedications under the title ‘thundering Zeus,’ ‘Zeus Bronton’. Agriculture is not alien to the Greek Zeus, but the Zeus of Anatolia—or at least the Zeus of Phrygia and Bithynia, the one whose character is most clearly marked—is much more centrally and insistently concerned with it than is his Greek counterpart.26 In Phrygia, we have seen, he stretches out beyond the scope of his Greek equivalent in apparently being concerned with the cultivation of vines as well as with cereal crops. In Phrygia he also acquires an entirely new role as a healer; and, as we have seen, the question arises, if Zeus is in effect a universal god, of how what is still a ‘polytheism’ now operates, if the division of functions between gods familiar from Greece and Rome no longer applies. To establish how developed this imperialism of Zeus was in other regions of Anatolia, and how it affected the cults of other gods, would require a separate monograph. In Phrygia Dionysus presided over the drinking of wine, not the making of it. But in some regions, Cilicia above all, he remained

23. G. Dagron and D. Feissel, Inscriptions de Cilicie (Paris 1987), 45–46. Runt and Hermes (?). P. H. J. Houwink ten Cate, The Luwian Population Groups of Lycia and Cilicia Aspera during the Hellenistic Period (Leiden, 1961), 212; Rutherford, Hittite Texts, 53. 24.  The phenomenon of theophoric names outliving the gods they derive from was revealed by P. H. J. Houwink ten Cate, The Luwian Population Groups of Lycia and Cilicia Aspera during the Hellenistic Period, studying the names Trokondas, Rondas, Armapias; cf. e.g. P. Bernard, Studia Iranica 16 (1987), 114. 25.  N. Kreutz, Zeus und die griechischen Poleis (Rahden, 2007). 26.  Abundant evidence is quoted by Schuler, ‘Rural Population Groups’, 72–76. For Pisidia, see Waelkens, ‘Sagalassos: Religious life’, 199–201.

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Kallikarpos, ‘of fine fruit’.27 The conclusion may be that Zeus’ expanded competence blocked Dionysus in that aspect to different extents in different areas.28 As for the goddess of agriculture, Demeter, her presence and the company she keeps are variable. In Phrygia, we have seen, she is almost unknown. In Bithynia she is sometimes paired with Zeus29 to give a male-female alliance between agricultural gods that seems entirely natural but in fact is rare in Greece; in Cilicia, where Dionysus is in charge of the vines, she joins with him.30 The link with Kore that is so important in Greece is less common in Anatolia, and, where it is found, it does not obviously have any agricultural implications.31 So the lines of force surrounding Demeter have changed. The other male Greek god who is omnipresent in Anatolia is Apollo. Apollo is obviously a very prominent god in Greece, too, but so, for instance, is Poseidon; the marked pre-eminence of Zeus and Apollo over all other male Greek gods in Anatolia is another significant shift in emphasis. But, whereas Anatolian Zeus seems centrally concerned with agriculture, it is hard to find a single dominant function for Apollo.. He is represented as young; he is often associated with or even assimilated to the sun; in some regions or under some titles he rides with a double axe but in others he figures as a Greek lyre-player, or holds a patera. Beyond these points no simple formula offers itself for the functions that he discharges. But perhaps this multitasking in itself reinforces the point about his prominence in the region. We noted earlier the decree passed in good Greek in 267 BCE by the inhabitants of two villages near the site of what became Laodikeia on the Lykos in the extreme north-east of Caria.32 The decree was to be displayed ‘in the shrine of Zeus in the village of Babas and in the shrine of Apollo in the village of Kiddias’:

27.  Schuler, ‘Rural Population Groups’, 76n54; and for Dionysus Kallikarpos in Galatia, see Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 147. 28.  It would be satisfying to argue that where Demeter and Dionysus are strong, Zeus in his agricultural aspect is correspondingly weak; and it is true that though still prominent in Cilicia his epithets there seem not to be agricultural. 29.  I. Mus. Iznik 701; I. Apameia Pylai 115, 116 (?); by herself in I. Mus. Iznik 1514. 30.  Ehling et al., Kulturbegegnung, 250–53 nos. 65–69. 31.  The main exceptions known to me where the two goddesses are linked are from Pisidia: I. Mus. Burdur 24, perhaps 48 and 329 and SEG LVIII 1564 (these last three are all addressed to hagnai theai); Bithynia: SEG LVIII 1428 (also with Plouton, Klaudioupolis), TAM IV 402 and BE 2018 no. 444, nos. 1 and 2 (Nicomedia; for Demeter at Nicomedia cf. Mitchell, Anatolia, I, 221); and Caria: I. Stratonikeia 147; I. Carie hautes terres, 237–38 no. 1 (both these name them ‘the Eleusinian goddesses’—in I. Stratonikeia 1124 Demeter is Eleusinia), SEG XLIX 1422. Note also a dedication to the pair by, appropriately, a priest of Zeus Epikarpios: Studia Pontica III 189 (Euchaita), and I. Hadrianopolis Paphl., 50. On the Thesmophorion at Limyra in Lycia (SEG LXIII 1311. 13), see 183 below. 32.  I. Laodikeia Lykos 1. A whole article would be needed to document what I assert about Apollo here; for one region, see P. Debord, ‘Apollon en Carie’, Arkeoloji Dergisi (2008), 57–67.

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the village names are thoroughly indigenous; the divine names are Greek; and, predictably, the two gods concerned are Zeus and Apollo. If one turns to goddesses, the shift in weighting in comparison with Greece becomes even more marked. We saw that the three Greek goddesses supposedly judged by the Phrygian shepherd Paris are almost unknown in Phrygian cult.33 But the same is almost true of the whole of inland and southern Anatolia. At Panamara near Stratonicea in Caria, it is true, Hera has become as prominent as Zeus by the imperial period. Their two cults are central to the religious life of nearby Stratonicea and run in parallel; but this may be a secondary development and is, at all events, unusual. Elsewhere Hera appears only spottily, sometimes in partly Roman contexts where one may suspect the influence of Juno.34 No less elusive is that Aphrodite who dominates the cultic life of nearby Cyprus. One may think of Aphrodisias in Caria, where she is chief goddess of the city, but the case is unusual and even in Aphrodisias, as Chaniotis has argued, she was a symbol more than an object of popular devotion.35 There are other local exceptions but in general the cult of these goddesses is remarkably inconspicuous outside the Greek cities, and it is not of these goddesses alone: Eileithyia is almost completely absent from Anatolia, even, in fact, from the Greek cities.36 33.  Page 62 above. For Athena elsewhere, see R. Parker, ‘Athena in Anatolia’, Pallas 100 (2016), 73– 90; cf. Talloen, Cult in Pisidia, 89–90; add now Athena Polias in Kibyra, SEG LXVI 1745. 34.  Panamara: H. Oppermann, Zeus Panamaros (Giessen, 1924); I. Stratonikeia, I, passim. In Caria also MAMA VIII 492 (b) 4, life priestess at Aphrodisias; I. Mylasa 301.6, 405, joint cult with Zeus Stratios. Elsewhere, there is something of a concentration in Pisidia: I. Mus. Burdur 50, 51 (the latter the so-called ‘Thracian Hera’), 108.23; BSA 16 (1909–10), 122 no. 16; BCH 3 (1879), 336 no. 4 (by Menandros ὁ καὶ Μάρκος); ibid., no. 5; JHS 8 (1887), 256 no. 41 (a priestess of Hera basilis); Milner-Hall, Kibyra Olbasa 101 (by a senator’s steward; with Zeus in the relief, not named); Steinepigramme 18/03/01 (a priestess of Zeus and Hera, both Capitoline). Other regions: Mysia: Steinepigramme 08/06/01, the orator Aristeides dedicated a statue near his estate. Bithynia, BE (1965), no. 391, Maximos dedicated (a statue of the) goddess Hera for the village of Morzapenani. Paphlagonia: BE (1944), no. 176a, a statue of Hera for Zeus Brontaios; SEG XXXIII 1114: ‘to great goddess Hera the bronze doors of the temple’; C. Marek, Geschichte Kleinasiens in der Antike (Munich, 2010), 630: ‘great Hera Kandarene’. Lydia: SEG LVII 1193.15, a priestess of Zeus Targyenos and Hera, Cayster valley. Pamphylia: SEG XVII 641 (cf. XLII 1225), to Zeus, Hera and the Aphroditai Kastnietides (Aspendos). Lycia: I. Arykanda 51/50 II 8 may now attest a life priestess; other instances relate to emperor cult (Frei, Götterkulte Lykiens, 1799). Cilicia: I. Anazarbos 52, dedication in a cave to the city-protecting gods Zeus, Hera Gamelios, Ares. Isauria (Astra): Bean-Mitford, Rough Cilicia II, no. 128 (an altar). Robert wrote (Doc. Asie. Min. 84n196) that Hera was not used, or barely, in interpretatio: Pisidia and Paphlagonia may be among the rare exceptions. 35.  A. Chaniotis, ‘Aphrodite’s Rivals: Devotion to Local and Other gods at Aphrodisias’, Cahiers Glotz 21 (2010 [2011]), 235–48. For the slight Phrygian evidence, see page 62. The main exceptions are Anazarbos (see I. Anazarbos 29–34 for Aphrodite [or just ‘goddess’] Kasaleitis—the ‘hearing goddess’ of nos. 35–39 is probably the same) and the famous double Aphrodite Kastnietis of Aspendos (Callim. Ia. X fr. 200a Pfeiffer, Robert, Hellenica XI–XII, 177–88.) 36.  Except I. Knidos 179–81. The restoration in the Pergamene inscription AM 27 (1902), 92 no. 79 is very doubtful (E. Ohlemutz, Die Kulte und Heiligtümer der Götter in Pergamon [Würzburg, 1940], 260); so too in an early dedication from Kalchedon (SEG XXVII 816).

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Demeter, we have seen, has a modest role in association with Zeus; Kore, too, has a modest role associated with Plouton; and at one site, Athymbra/Nysa in Caria, they become leading deities (this is another instance of unusual prominence); they are important, too, at the Ploutonion in Hierapolis.37 What is crucial, however, is that the Demeter-Kore pairing as the Thesmophoroi which lay at the heart of women’s religious experience in Greece is virtually invisible in Anatolia. The Thesmophorion, which a document of the early second century BCE recently revealed at Limyra in Lycia is unique, and anomalous.38 The dominant goddesses are instead, first and foremost in almost all regions except Lycia and Caria, Mother in her myriad forms; secondly, almost everywhere, Artemis—but in Lydia she is often amalgamated with a Persian goddess as Artemis Anaitis; more regionally limited are Leto, a leading goddess in Lycia, and Hekate, a prominent figure in Caria and Phrygia.39 (Let us note in passing, whatever offence it may cause to worshippers of the Goddess, that hypothetical proto-figure of universal powers from whom all the separate goddesses of the historical period are believed by some to derive,40 that, hard though the lines of differentiation between different goddesses in Anatolia can be to trace, Mother and Artemis were distinct figures from the time of our earliest written evidence.) The configurations in which these goddesses are found are extremely variable. In Caria Artemis is constantly joined with Apollo, while cultic life in Lycia is dominated by a triad of Leto and her children Apollo and Artemis; in Phrygia Artemis has only a modest role and is seldom linked with her brother.41 There is nothing un-Greek about a linking of Apollo with Artemis or of them both with Leto, but these groupings recur in the areas mentioned with an unparalleled regularity; as for a pairing of Mother with Apollo, for instance, attested in Lydia,42 that might be difficult to parallel in Greece itself. 37.  For Athymbra/Nysa, see especially SEG LX 1130; in BCH 10 (1886), 520, no. 18 they are ‘ancestral gods’, and an Athymbrian revealingly dedicates to them on Delos, IG XI 4 1235. I. Mus. Manisa 165 may come from there. For the evidence on Plouton and Kore from Phrygia and Lycaonia, see pages 61–62. Elsewhere: Plouton alone: SEG XLIX 1598 (Plouton Symakenos, Maionia); SEG XVIII 567 (inherited life priesthood, Prostanna); Milner-Hall, Kibyra Olbasa 127.2 (Zeus Plouton epiphanes); ‘second gerousia of Plouton’, SEG LXI 1271 (Astra in Isauria); Bean-Mitford, Rough Cilicia II, 200 (recipient of a fine). With Kore: Robert, Hellenica XIII, 27 (Hyllarima, unpublished); de Hoz, Die lydischen Kulte, 212 nos. 35.1–2; SEG LVIII 1428 (also with Plouton, Bithynia); SEG XIX 827–28 (Pisidia, where they have a Doric temple, and own hierodouloi); Milner-Hall, Kibyra Olbasa, 160.9; Hagel -Tomaschitz, Repertorium, Hacilar 4d (a priestess). 38.  SEG LXIII 1311.11. 39.  Artemis Anaitis: de Hoz, Die lydischen Kulte, 11–12. Leto: Frei, Götterkulte Lykiens, 1812–13. Hekate: 57 above, and for Caria, above all, the great sanctuary at Lagina. 40.  For a critical view, see L. Goodison and C. Morris (eds.), Ancient Goddesses: The Myths and the Evidence (London, 1998) 41.  See Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 757, index s.v. ‘Apollon et Artémis’; Frei, Götterkulte Lykiens, 1744–53; Phrygia: 50–51 above. 42.  SEG XXXVII 1735; TAM V 1 202, 460.

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After gods and goddesses, heroes. Here, too, a drastic difference from Greece is not confined to Phrygia. Every Greek city, as far as we know, and many entities below the level of cities, paid honours to one or more figures from the distant past as heroes; this level of quondam mortals receiving cultic honours was a fundamental part of the religious system. Scholars sometimes speak of hero-cult in Anatolia as if it were self-evident that it should also be found there. But hero-cult as practised by the Greeks is a singularity of their religion, not a cultural universal. Heroes appear on the coins, and in the legends, of communities in Anatolia. But, if we look for cult worship, there are no such heroes in Phrygia except the ‘founder’ of Aizanoi, and apparent instances elsewhere, not very numerous (there are some in Lycia, and some healing heroes, and a few isolates), may have arisen or been reidentified under Greek influence. In terms of the basic structure of cult it is scarcely rash to say that the third estate of Greek religion is missing.43 Alongside gains and losses in prominence, change of function, as already mentioned, is a possible aspect of the Anatolian reconfiguration of Greek gods. Some instances have been touched on already—what looks like a redrawing of the line between Zeus and Dionysus, for instance, or the raising of Ares to something much more like a general-purpose god in some regions. Most striking is the growth of Zeus in Phrygia (and Bithynia) to something resembling a universal god—though one who still coexists with others. That aside, really drastic changes of function are seldom observable; the names of Greek gods were not applied to pre-existing cults at random. Athena is worshipped as Oreia, of the mountains, in rough Cilicia:44 that is shocking, because ‘of the mountains’ is a stock epithet of a figure poles apart from Athena, Mother; but it is an unusual case. Another surprising instance at first sight is the association of Plouton and Kore with an incubatory healing cult at Acharaka near Nysa in Caria. But the particular local circumstances are relevant: this cult seems to have exploited mephitic vapours that issued from a 43.  I mean ancestral heroes, not recently dead family members, for which see Waelkens, ‘Privatdeifikation’, or dynasts, such as the possible cases discussed by A. Thomsen, Die lykische Dynastensiedlung auf dem Avşar Tepesı (Bonn, 2002), 176–94, or other categories of ‘new hero’ (C. P. Jones, New Heroes in Antiquity [Cambridge, MA, 2010]; SEG LXIV 2215). N. P. Milner (AnatSt 54 [2004], 47–78) finds three types of hero cult in the vicinity of Oinoanda (where we now learn that tribes kept lists of heroic war-dead: SEG LXI 1238. 16–17): ‘(a) full-blown for newly heroized dead notables . . . (b) chthonic cults for established local heroes, unnamed demi-gods, invoked by symbols . . . (c) quiet and private hero cults using traditional iconography for non-elite people’s grave-markers.’ Only type (b) concerns me here, and I see nothing in his evidence that recalls hero-cults known from Greece. F. Işik (Lykia 2 [1995], 176) suggests dropping the practice of calling large graves ‘heroa’ (he prefers ‘templegraves’). For the ‘not very numerous’ apparent instances, see endnote to this chapter. 44.  Ehling et al., Kulturbegegnung (above), 238 nos. 33 and 34; cf. Parker, ‘Athena in Anatolia’, 84. The supposed sanctuary of Oreia Demeter (so the ms.) near the river Sangarios (Σ Ap. Rhod. Argon. 2.722 = Xanthos the Lydian FGrH 765 F 28) is very plausibly reassigned to Oreia Meter by Wendel in his edition of the scholia, followed by Jacoby on Xanthos.

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cave which gave access to the underworld; so it is as gods of the underworld that Plouton and Kore entered the scene. (The Ploutonion of Hierapolis in Phrygia is an exactly parallel case if we accept that the vapours there were used for incubatory healing.)45 There might be something more to be said about Hermes, who, in several contexts in Anatolia, appears as a kind of aide-de-camp to Zeus: most notably, in a famous incident in Acts, the Lycaonians mistake Paul and Barnabas for Zeus and Hermes.46 But I will take Poseidon instead as an example of a Greek god wandering in Anatolia, a little unsure, one might say, of his function. Reliefs from Lycaonia show Poseidon mounted on horseback, identified both by inscription and by the fact that he is still holding his trident; other dedications to him are not rare from Pisidia and the Kibyra-Olbasa region.47 Those reliefs come from inland Anatolia, and it can be argued that he must have been approached in his role as holder of the earth, protector against earthquakes; that is Strabo’s explanation for the cult paid him by the people of Apameia in Phrygia, ‘although they are inlanders’. But that prima facie plausible suggestion does not fully fit the facts. Only once does he receive any of the epithets suggesting that function (hedraios, ‘firmly based’, asphaleios, ‘of security’, and gaeieochos, ‘earth-holding’) inland.48 The reliefs in question were often dedicated in fulfilment of vows, presumably not made during the course of an actual earthquake. Of two dedications in the Konya museum one was made ‘on behalf of all his livestock’ while the other depicts a horse, as if the epithet hippios were in the dedicator’s mind; a Roman senator dedicates to him and the nymphs after a successful hunt. A dedication from Çallica made to Zeus, Poseidon, Athena and all the gods, as well as to the river Euros, as thanks from one 45.  Acharaka: Strabo 14.1.44, 649–50; cf. Robert, Doc. Asie min., 22–35; C. Nissen, Entre Asclépios et Hippocrate (Liège, 2009), 111–24; F. Ertuğrul and H. Malay, EpigAnat 43 (2010), 31–42; Renberg, Where Dreams May Come, 295–97. Hierapolis: D’ Andria, ‘Ploutonion’, 123–24, arguing against Renberg for incubation. 46.  Acts 14.11 (cf. M. S. Smith, God in Translation [Tübingen, 2008] 307); cf. (with many commentators) the Baucis and Philemon myth (Ov. Met. 8. 620–724, set in Phrygia); also Denkmäler Lycaonien, 72–73 no. 146, a priest’s dedication to Zeus Bronton and Hermes, topped by two busts with respectively a thunderbolt and a herald’s staff; I. Laodikea Lykos 63 and 64, with Zeus. 47.  On horseback: Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, nos. 365–67 (365 = I. Mus. Burdur 121). He is shown with a horse in Denkmäler Lykaonien, 55 no. 111. Other dedications: Milner—Hall, Kibyra Olbasa, 115.5, 123.1, 150; I. Mus. Konya 41, 42; SEG XLVIII 1610 (= I. Mus. Burdur 122; by a slave woman, hyper her masters); LX 1460 (by an unnamed demos). 48.  Strabo 12.8.18, 579. Inland: SEG XII 513 = I. Anazarbos 49, where the link with Ge Hedraia, (‘Firmly-based Earth’), fixes the meaning. Hedraios also at Patara, TAM II 403 (with Frei, Götterkulte Lykiens, 1822). Asphaleios, which covered both land and sea (for the marine aspect e.g. IGR III 921), was a good general purpose epithet, and oracles often recommended honouring Poseidon thus: J. Fontenrose, The Delphic Oracle (Berkeley, CA, 1978), responses H39, 50, 68, 74; I. Milet 3.1294; I. Didyma 132 (Steinepigramme 01/19/02); I. Kaunos 31, identified as an oracular recommendation by Lupu, Greek Sacred Law, 35n162.

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who ‘had been in danger and saved at this point’ seems to suggest a connection with inland water, and that association becomes explicit where the Phrygian river Sangarios is addressed as ‘Poseidon Sangarios’ in an individual’s vow ‘for his cattle’.49 Perhaps, then, a connection with river water is the key to the inland Poseidon’s role: this is barely an aspect of his cultic persona in Greece, but would be a comprehensible extension from it. The Poseidon reliefs from Lycaonia raise a broader issue about the Anatolian reception of Greek gods. Poseidon in those reliefs is mounted, though still brandishing his trademark trident. Why does a god of the sea find himself in this strange position? At one level this is not a hard question to answer. The depiction of gods on horseback is extremely common in Anatolia. Delemen, in a valuable study, identified twelve rider-gods or groups of gods and even one rider-goddess, some known from hundreds of examples, some from a handful (a rider Zeus, perhaps strangely, is very rare). The differentiation between the thirteen gods or groups of gods is made chiefly on the basis of accompanying inscriptions, but there is also iconographic differentiation, if with some overlap: it was Louis Robert in a classic article who pointed out these differentiations and stressed that we were dealing with a swarm of gods, not a single Anatolian rider-god.50 So the answer in relation to Poseidon is that the image was not created for him; it is a pre-existing template reused for him with a modest change to reflect his particular identity. Something similar is the case in Thrace, where the iconographic schema known as ‘the Thracian rider’, recognised in literally thousands of examples, is applied not just to a figure known as ‘hero’ or, in a very singular Thracian variation ‘god hero’, but also to the dead and a cluster of Greco-Roman deities, chief among them Apollo and Asclepius on the Greek side, Silvanus on the Roman.51 So here, as in Anatolia, we are dealing with a template applied to more than one deity. In both areas it is an iconography that is partly generic, because applied to a range of gods, and partly specific, because not applied to all gods and allowing some degree of differentiation from god to god; Thracian Apollo, for instance, is marked out by his lyre. Such iconography is un-Hellenic: gods in Greece go on foot, though heroes ride and are associated more generally with horses. So the question becomes whether 49.  SEG XXXII 1273; ibid., 1274 is addressed simply to Sagarios basileus, with a riverscape relief. Callica: Milner—Hall, Kibyra Olbasa, no. 150. Roman senator: SEG LIV 1399 = Steinepigramme vol. 5, 44, 17/01/08 (on which cf. J. Nollé, Gephyra 2 [2005], 179–195). T. Corsten’s ed. princeps of the last named text, Adalya 9 (2006), 53–57, is titled ‘Ein Epigramm für Poseidon als Gott der ländlichen Fruchtbarkeit’. 50.  Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods; L. Robert, ‘Un dieu anatolien’, Hellenica 3 (1946), 38–73. 51.  M. Oppermann, Der Thrakische Reiter (Langenweißbach, 2006). See now the groundbreaking study of N. Dimitrova (‘Inscriptions and Iconography in the Monuments of the Thracian Rider’, Hesperia 71 [2002], 209–29), who argues convincingly that ‘the Thracian rider’ is an iconographic scheme applied to many gods, not a specific god.

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Anatolian rider-gods (I leave aside those of Thrace) perpetuate an indigenous tradition. A bracing alternative was offered by Edouard Will.52 He argued that the god on horseback was not in fact traditional in Anatolia; Hittite gods do not ride. So this is not a case of an indigenous substrate exercising a powerful lasting influence; nor is it a by-product of the (supposed) sociological fact that masters in Thrace and Anatolia rode horses. He derives the type instead from Greek iconography of the hero: heroes are constantly associated with horses, and though they often just stand beside them, they also ride. We need, he argues, to see the development whereby gods, as well as heroes, came to ride within the changing social evaluation of cavalry; in the post- Alexander period a new glamour came to surround the figure of the fighting horseman, as we see from the famous figure of Alexander in the Alexander mosaic. This was an impressive new image which could become a way of figuring no longer just heroic but also divine power: ‘what is symbolised by the horse is the direct, immediate and permanent intervention of the deity; it is the active power of the god that is expressed by the image of the horseman in a form reserved until then for the hero; whence the iconographic connections with the latter’.53 So the role of the horse is intrinsic to the religious function of the god, and the potent image lived on later in, for instance, the horseman Saint George fighting the dragon. There is, it must be allowed, an obvious paradox in this theory: if the new image of divine power emerged out of Greek values and Greek art, why was it only taken up in Thrace and Anatolia? Will counters with the claim that the new development was blocked in old Greece by existing traditions for representing the divine; it was only in newly conquered regions lacking iconographic traditions of their own that it took root.54 This theory is attractive because it tries to make sense of the image in religious terms; if correct, it abolishes these rider-reliefs as providing any kind of evidence for pre Greco-Roman ways of figuring the divine. What will be crucial is whether Will was justified in denying all pre-Greek antecedents for the riding deity type. One must concede to Will that Hittite gods did not ride and that there is little or no trace of a pre-Greco-Roman tradition of riding deities.55 On the other hand, there is a gap of more than a millennium between Hittite art and the images that concern us; that interim is not full of images of pedestrian gods, but is, with notable exceptions, a vacuum. The Anatolian riding god Kakasbos bears an indigenous

52.  Will, Relief cultuel, accepted by Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, 85 (which Talloen [Cult in Pisidia, 72–73] criticises, without citing Will). 53.  Will, Relief cultuel, 106. 54.  Will, Relief cultuel, 115. 55.  Dr Cathy Draycott kindly refers me to F. Prayon, Phrygische Plastik: die früheisenzeitliche Bildkunst Zentral-Anatoliens und ihre Beziehungen zu Griechenland und zum Alten Orient (Tübingen, 1987), cat. no. 29, a base of ‘middle Phrygian III or later’, which shows respectively on front and back of a base (what stood on it is lost) what looks like a female worshipper and a rider. But it is isolated.

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name that may be attested in a Lycian text in the fourth century BCE;56 significantly, he is the riding hero known from more examples than any other. His close associate Maseis also has an indigenous name, though both became associated with Herakles. The matter remains frustratingly dark; but the hypothesis of an indigenous tradition of riding gods cannot be dismissed out of hand. I have tried to sketch the relation of the Greek gods as worshipped in Anatolia to their mainland originals. A god with a Greek name worshipped in Anatolia is always in some sense the same god as the god of the same name worshipped in Greece, but some shifts of emphasis, some redefinitions of competences, are observable, and above all some important gods of Greece play very little role in Anatolia. I have tried to be descriptive and to bypass all questions about origins. I now revert briefly to that issue. The standard answer is in terms of two processes, the interpretatio graeca of indigenous deities, and the introduction of the cult of Greek deities. This answer is not wrong, but it needs to be stressed that the two processes are often hard to distinguish, that they interact one with another, and that for this and other reasons any attempt to describe the process in detail will fail. A few cases are easy. In Cilicia, we noted earlier,57 coins allow us to see a Nergal or a Baal give way to Zeus. More generally, it is a general and no doubt correct assumption that Zeus has stepped into the role of a pre-existing weather and storm god also associated with agriculture. Anatolian specialists frequently list points of contact between this Zeus and his predecessors; what they often fail to mention is that most of these characteristics of the Anatolian Zeus are also characteristic of the Zeus of Olympus, who could hurl thunderbolts and send rain just as well as Teshub or Tarhunt. Assimilating Zeus to his predecessors was thus easy and, one might say, inevitable; the fit was much better than that, say, with Amun-Re in Egypt which created Zeus Thebaieus, since Amun-Re was associated with the sun in a way Zeus never was. But we noted earlier that Zeus, in parts of Anatolia, including Phrygia, acquires an association with viticulture that he lacks in Greece, and here the appeal to a predecessor may be enlightening. A connection has often been made with a famous image of ‘the great Tarhunzas of Warpalawas’ (late eighth century BCE), holding grape-clusters, known from Ivriz fourteen kilometres south-east of EreğliKonya; it has been suggested recently that the Zeus Pigindenos of Piginda in eastern Caria was actually portrayed with a grape branch in his hand, very much in the manner of such a Tarhunzas.58 So here an identifiable predecessor can perhaps 56.  As χaχakba: Frei, ‘Götterkulte Lykiens’, 1808; G. Neuman, Glossar des Lykischen (Wiesbaden, 2007), 110. On Kakasbos/Maseis/Herakles, see Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, 5–38. 57.  See 176n10. 58.  Tarhunzas: H. Çambel and D. Hawkins, Corpus of Hieroglyphic Luwian Inscriptions, I.2 (Berlin, 2000), 516–17, X 43, plates 292–95; I. Tyana, II, figs. 41–43; cf. page 165 above. Zeus Pigindenos: P. Debord and E. Varinlioglu, Cités de Carie (Rennes, 2010), 170–76; Debord (in O. Henry [ed.], 4th Century Karia: Defining a Karian Identity under the Hekatomnids [Paris, 2013], 123–28), discussing SEG

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explain an unusual feature of the cult of the Greek-named god as we observe it being practised. But even here a little geographical caution would be in order, a study of regions where Zeus is and is not associated with viticulture. We noted earlier the possible dependence of the strangely prominent Cilician Hermes on a Luwian predecessor, Runt. And from bilinguals and other types of evidence we know a certain amount about the names (though scarcely the functions) of the predecessors into whose shoes Greek gods stepped in Lycia and Caria. But in the main we have no knowledge of what figure, if any, may have preceded a given instance of Apollo or Artemis or Ares, or how many different figures might underlie each one of those gods;59 it is not even safe to suppose that every Zeus had a similar predecessor.60 As for, say, Demeter, Dionysus and Poseidon, historical evidence which we lack could alone teach us the history of their cults: whether they arrived through interpretatio, or were genuinely new introductions, extensions of the palette; they may have been one thing in one place and the other in another. To illustrate the complexities that may be involved, I revert briefly to a case discussed earlier—namely, that of the Anatolian Dioscuri. A well-known iconographic type, studied by Chapouthier in an admirable monograph Les Dioscures au service d’ une déesse,61 shows the Dioscuri (so named by inscription) on either side of a female figure. In Greece (a type known especially in Sparta) the Dioscuri are typically naked and on foot, though their horses may stand by them, and the female figure is sometimes certainly their sister Helen. In Pisidia and elsewhere in southern Anatolia they tend to be mounted (on reliefs; but often on foot on coins) and clothed. Chapouthier believed that both the iconographic schema and the cult of Dioscuri and Helen were exported to southern Anatolia; he appealed to the late traditions which speak of Spartan colonisation of the region. Robert dismissed those traditions and pointed out that the female figure, on the only Anatolian example where she is identified, is Artemis, not Helen; she is also often topped by a crescent indicating the moon. He concluded that two indigenous gods had been renamed Dioscuri by interpretatio. But the argument is problematic. The iconographic schema was created in Greece, perhaps for the trio of Dioscuri plus Helen. LX 1087–88. For a Pisidian Zeus shown with grapes, cornucopia, and wheat, see SEG LX 1459; for Baal Gazur on coins of the Cappadocian satrap Ariarathes enthroned with eagle, sheaf of corn and grapes, see E. Olshausen in ANRW 18.3 (1990), 1877. 59.  That Artemis in Lycia covers several goddesses is suggested by B. Freyer-Schauenburg (Die lykischen Zwölfgötter-Reliefs [AMS 13, Bonn, 1994], 83); conversely, C. Brixhe maintains that Kybele becomes both Artemis and Mother in Perge: SEG LII 1421bis. W. M. Calder, in notes on MAMA I 8 and 12 (cf. on VII 1), supposes a single god of fertility variously graecised as Zeus, Dionysus, Heracles. 60.  On Zeus Stratios, whose epithet has been claimed—a unique case?—as a translation from Hittite, see references in Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 103n112; Rutherford, Hittite Texts, 109; for different connections, see SEG LXI 1060. 61.  Paris, 1935. See Robert, Doc. Asie Min., 397–423; SEG VI 770.

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It is a little difficult to believe that there already existed in Anatolia a triad consisting of two saviour twins closely associated with a goddess which that schema just happened to fit perfectly. Perhaps the twins were there but a goddess had to be linked with them to fit the iconographic type. A new twist emerged recently with the publication of inscriptions attesting temples (second/third centuries CE) dedicated to ‘the Dioscuri and Helen’ in northern Lycia and at Termessos in Pisidia.62 Does this mean that Chapouthier was right after all? But why, then, the example stressed by Robert where the goddess is named Artemis? The temples appear to attest a reinterpretation which reidentified as Helen, perhaps under the influence of the supposed Spartan colonial activities in the region, the figure who, when the iconographic type was first borrowed, was not so understood.63 The very existence of temples seems to show that the popular cult has undergone gentrification. We seem to be dealing with very complicated interactions between Greek and Anatolian conceptions. And, as usual, the attempt to get back beyond what we have to a supposed pre-Greek stratum ends in indecisiveness. The discussion thus far has been pitched at the level of individual gods, but there is a broader dimension. I have been speaking as if the comparison between the panthea of Greece and Anatolia were like the comparison between two football teams: different personalities and skills in the two cases, but nonetheless a comparison of like with like. But this is to assume that the two sets of gods were comparable in this sense. The Greco-Roman pantheon consisted of a large number of named gods with separate functions; at different stages in their lives every individual would have dealings with a considerable number of these gods. The situation in rural Phrygia, we have seen, is quite different—a restricted set of gods overtopped by a Zeus who can apparently do all that they can do but despite whom they still find worshippers. Detailed study of other regions might produce a similar result.64 What that implies about the religious world that preceded the Greek one is difficult to determine. It is a common belief of scholarship that, in the preHellenic religious world of Anatolia, any god could do anything. The assumption 62.  B. Iplikçioğlu and C. Schuler, ‘Ein Tempel für die Dioskuren und Helena’, AnzWien 146.2 (2011), 39–60 (SEG LXI 1230); I. Termessos Suppl. 4, 50–52 no. 3 (SEG LVII 1472). 63.  So Iplikçioğlu and C. Schuler (previous note), 50; they point (49n57) to a coin of Akalissos (H. von Aulock, Die Münzprägung des Gordian III und der Tranquillina in Lykien, Tübingen 1974, 55 no. If) which adopts the mainland schema of standing, naked Dioscuri. 64.  For Lydia, cf. de Hoz, Die lydischen Kulte, 126: she argues that the indigenous cults were marked by lack of functional differentiation and ‘restriction of gods to a male and female type, most commonly named Meter and Men’ (on such pairings, see ibid., 81–83). Calder (on MAMA I 8 and 12; criticised by Drew-Bear and Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1971n225) in the trail of Ramsay envisaged an old Anatolian agricultural god who could be graecised indifferently as Zeus, Dionysus and even Heracles. When Mitchell speaks, ‘Theos Hypsistos’, 126, of ‘an indigenous tradition which favoured monotheism’ he is probably thinking of the role of Zeus (but neglecting the other gods).

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is that gods differed one from another merely topographically: all gods had much the same powers, but the god you turned to was the one who happened to have a cult site and high reputation in your locality.65 Such a complete lack of functional differentiation has never been demonstrated and is not easy to believe in. Perhaps we should rather suppose an ‘oligotheism’,66 where differentiation is weaker than in Greece, but not completely absent. But this must remain a vague suspicion that cannot be worked out in detail here. From these pan-Anatolian considerations I revert to Phrygia. If one tries to survey the process of mixing that took place, a few points are clear. Mother had been there since the Phrygian period, though apparently not before. The sanctuary of Men Askaienos at Antioch near Pisidia was, in Strabo’s description, centre of a temple state of radically un-Greek type:67 proof, if proof were needed, that Men, too, had been worshipped long before Greek colonists arrived in the region. Men never received a Greek interpretatio, Mother only occasionally, if at all; this was perhaps because the cults of both had already entered Greece before Greeks in large numbers entered Phrygia, perhaps because the names of both already made sense in Greek (Mother, obviously, and Men as ‘month’). Zeus steps into the shoes, we may suppose, of the ‘Superior Male God’. But we cannot name, even in those vague terms, a predecessor to that Apollo who is already present at Kiddioukome in 267 BCE. Phrygian Apollo, we have seen, is much less strong both as healer and as prophet than the familiar Apollo of Greece. Perhaps, then, he replaced an unknown ‘Inferior/Younger Male God’. But that is pure speculation. Nor can we identify an antecedent to Dionysus as a patron of male drinking societies mostly based in villages. Greek goddesses, we noted, are in short supply in Phrygia: almost no trace of Athena, Aphrodite, or Demeter, none of Hera. Mother, we can suppose, saw no reason to make room for them. Artemis had some civic priests/priestesses but little popularity in the countryside. Hekate emerges unexpectedly as the most important goddess after Mother. How, then, are we to characterise Phrygian religion of the Roman period? To treat it as just a form of Greek religion would be obviously false. Greek religion, it is true, is fluid and polymorphous, the cults of not one of the 1,035 poleis in Hansen 65.  So e.g. Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 440: ‘pour chaque villageois, le dieu du village est le dieu par excellence ayant tous les attributs et tous les pouvoirs’; L. Robert, in L. R. and A. Dupont Sommer, La déesse de Hiérapolis Castabala, Cilicie (Paris, 1964), ‘l’indétermination du nom divin . . . convenait bien à des déesses des grands sanctuaires de l’ Asie Mineure avec leurs aspects multiples’ (53); cf. ibid., 88 (predominance of Perasia, as—idem, Hellenica VI, 27–28—of Anaitis at Hierakome); de Hoz, Die lydischen Kulte, 126. 66.  For a drastic form of this concept, cf. Macrob. Sat. 1.23.17–18, for whom the Syrians ‘omnem potestatem cunctarum rerum his duobus [Adad and Adargatis] attribuunt’. 67.  Strabo 12.8.14, C 577; cf., in brief, Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 229–30.

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and Nielsen’s Inventory68 are likely to have been identical with those of any other; but the difference between Phrygian religion and that of any one of the 1,035 is much greater than that between any two of the 1,035 will have been. We have just noted the major Greek goddesses to have been all but unknown in Phrygia; a whole class of divine beings, the heroes from mythical times, is also absent (and with them, possibly, the whole category of the ‘chthonian’); and the village-by-village segmentation of major figures—the innumerable Zeuses and Mothers and Mens with topographic epithets—takes that modality to an extreme far beyond anything found in Greece. About rituals we know too little for any confident statement to be possible. A quite different way to view the situation would be the stratigraphic or ‘outing’ approach discussed earlier: on the surface are gods with Greek names, but under them lies a stratum of indigenous gods whose essential characteristics and functions the Greek-named gods have taken over. No doubt there often was an antecedent indigenous cult, one whose traditions lived on even ‘under new management’, which did not necessarily amount to more than a new name. (And we noted earlier the possibility that Phrygian speakers will have continued to use the old name; but their voices are all but lost to us.) The problem, as we have just seen, is that in a majority of cases that cult is entirely hypothetical: no predecessor to Apollo or Dionysus or Hekate can we identify or name. Visually, too, it is very difficult to get back to a pre-Greek stratum.69 Nor is it sure—far from it—that every Greek-named god had a predecessor whose influence lingers. What, in detail, the religious life of the Greek colonies was like, whether a religious calendar from any one of them would have been anything like as rich and varied as one from even a humble Attic deme, we do not know; but they were always centres from which the influence of imported Greek gods could leak out. Apollo’s sanctuary at Çavdarlı was for Robert, we saw, ‘un morceau classique sur le sol phrygien’; Apollo Archegetes at Hierapolis in name and function sounds like an authentic import by Greek colonists; everything suggests that Asclepius came to Phrygia, as to the rest of the ancient world, as a new god bringing a new healing technique. Another Apollo, the Propylaios of Eumeneia, is more complicated, because, despite his impeccably Greek epithet, he wields a double ax, a symbol typical of Anatolian but not of Greek deities.70 But the most plausible view of that case is that the imported Greek god has been assimilated iconograph68.  M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen, An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Greek Poleis (Oxford, 2004). 69.  MAMA IV 49 is claimed from letter forms to be a work of 200 BCE and ‘an example of rustic Phrygian style unaffected by Greek art’. Stylistically, perhaps, but not iconographically. MAMA V 213bis shows not a crude androgynous (Zeus) Papas but, as Drew-Bear and Naour (‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 2019n429) observe, a female worshipper. 70.  Çavdarlı and Hierapolis: above, 21n55 and 64n136. Eumeneia: Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 222n88.

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ically to an indigenous type, an example, therefore, of mixture or fusion. The puzzling cult/cults of ‘Highest God’ have no relation to a Phrygian past; they spring up in various places in the ancient world in the imperial period, and Phrygia participates in the broader movement. Hosios and Dikaios are a much narrower phenomenon, largely confined to Maeonia and Phrygia; they might antedate the first hint of their existence (not quite in the form familiar later) in 58 CE,71 but cannot be traced back to anything antecedent except a cliche of Greek language. The best than can be done with such a hybrid religion—what has been done in the best studies72—is to describe in detail the data as one finds them. One must be aware of the historical processes that led to what we have, but one cannot reverse them; there is no getting back to the religion in its pre-Greek or pre-Persian or pre-whatever state. At the masked ball, the mask, if that is what it is, is the only face we are ever going to see. And it is only scholars who see it as a masked ball; the worshippers see a god powerful to aid. E N D N O T E O N H E R O C U LT

I speak above of ‘apparent instances elsewhere, not very numerous’, of hero-cult of Greek type (i.e. for figures of myth), in Anatolia.73 Here is what I have found: Lycia74 Quintus Smyrnaeus (10. 161–66) tells how Skylakeus is honoured as/like a god on Apollo’s orders at Tlos beside the tomb and temenos of Bellerophon (so two cases, the latter clearly influenced by the temenos of Homer, Il. 6.194). TAM II.I. 265 (OGIS 552, Xanthos) is a dedication by a victorious admiral to Sarpedon and Glaukos at Xanthos, where there was (App. B. Civ. 4. 78–79) a Sarpedonion; athletic Sarpedoneia of the Lycian koinon are attested at Telmessos (SEG XXVIII 1248). His burial in Lycia is already mentioned in Homer, Il. 16. 671–75 (cf. Quint. Smyrn. 4. 1–12).75 See, too, for Pandaros Strabo 14.3.5, 665; cf. the entries Hieraor and Telephos in Frei, ‘Götterkulte Lykiens’, and his comment (1850), where he notes that the influence of Greek literature is clear. 71.  SEG LIII 1344, the acclamation that Men of Artemidorus possess ‘great hosion, great dikaion’. 72.  For instance, Mitchell’s Anatolia. 73.  Talloen (Cult in Pisidia, 190–91) should not speak of ‘cult’ on the basis of depictions of local heroes on coins. 74.  When L. Benda-Weber writes (Lykier und Karer [Bonn, 2005], 68; AMS 56), ‘Einen besonderen Stellenwert in Lykien hat der Kult der Heroen’, one needs to be told what is here understood by the term. 75.  Frei (‘Götterkulte Lykiens’, 1826) leaves unanswered the question whether ‘altlykische Vorstellungen’ influence this cult or whether it owes its origin to Hellenisation and Homer.

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The Kybernis to whom soldiers dedicate at Xanthos in the third century BCE (SEG LXIII 1382) may be a historical figure of the late sixth (coins)/early fifth (Hdt. 7.98, where see P. Vannicelli’s note). Caria Many Carian cities had eponyms, but (pace Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 444, ‘Le héros [Alabandos] était certainement l’objet d’un culte, comme Iasos, Kaunos, Kibyras, Kidramas, etc.’) the only evidence I know for actual cult is Cicero’s statement that Alabandos, though a mortal, was treated as a god by Alabanda (De n.d. 3.39), and the connection between the Kanebos worshipped at Hyllarima and Κανήβιον, the supposed old name of the town Κύον (Steph. Byz. s.v.). The honours paid to Iphimedeia by ‘the Carians in Mylasa’ (Paus. 10. 28. 8) are of unspecified nature, and mysterious. Healing heroes Healing heroes: Mopsos at Mopsuestia and Amphilochos at Mallos, Steinepigramme 19/15/01, Arr. Anab. 2.5.9, Plut. Def Or. 45, 434D–F. Founders Steinepigramme 16/23/01 (priesthood of unnamed founder, Aizanoi in Phrygia). Paus. 9.18.3 reports enagismos (so true heroic ritual) to the eponymous oikist at Pioniai in Mysia. MDAI(A) 33.1908.154,13 θεῷ ἥρῳ ἀρχα ̣[γέ]τᾳ εὐχαριστήριον ἀνέθηκεν Εὐτύχης. Cf. s.v. Caria, above. Isolates, problematic cases The ἥρως προγάμιος of Sterrett, Wolfe Expedition, 274 (found with the athletic regulations ib.275 [SEG VI 449]: cf. Denkmäler Lycaonien, 15), is taken in the Supp. to LSJ, following Swoboda, as ‘prob. honoured by those about to wed’; but may it not just mean ‘who died before marriage’? The heroon in the agora at Termessos (G. E. Bean, Turkey’s Southern Shore, 99–100), was probably for someone recently dead. The hero Melanthas who receives a charisterion in I. Parion 27 is probably recently dead, despite charisterion.

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11

Envoi

This book has been about a hybrid religious system which was not, however, experienced as such by participants. The book itself will, I hope, not be experienced as a hybrid but as one that has followed where the particular history of Phrygia led: ‘not confused, but well mixed’, in Robert Frost’s often-quoted self-description. Phrygia itself is a problematic concept: contemporaries always spoke about Phrygia and Phrygians without embarrassment, but what counted as Phrygia varied and was sometimes indefinable; almost all the phenomena discussed in this book were also found in neighboring regions, in particular eastern Lydia and Bithynia. The book’s starting point, as also its emotional centre, is the rich picture that Phrygian inscriptions of (mostly) the second and third centuries CE provide of the religious concerns, immediate products of their daily lives, of farmers and herdsmen and their wives and families. The picture is one-sided in a way that arises inevitably from the nature of the evidence, which consists mostly of records of discharged vows. Vows commonly respond to particular needs or crises: of routine maintenance of good relations with the gods through a regular programme of rites and festivals we hear very little because such things were not commemorated on stone, though they very likely occurred. (But some vows made ‘for the health and safety of oneself and all one’s people’ might, in fact, reflect not crisis but prudent precaution.) Communal religion outside the cities is barely visible, but the kind of village festivals extending over several days, exceptionally revealed by two stelai from Thiounta,1 are likely to have been common. For men there are also some 1.  Thiounta: see 10n6. Women’s cults: see page 72.

195

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Dionysiac societies; but there is so little trace of the kind of ‘women’s cults’ familiar from Greece that one must doubt whether they existed at all. The evidence is one-sided, but in its way especially informative, because those discharging vows commonly indicated through a hyper clause the subject of their appeal:2 health and safety of themselves and their families, of named individuals, of ‘all their own’; of their crops; of their livestock. Often, too, they include their whole village, in a way not found in private vows in Greece; even if we can seldom observe communal rites, a strong sense of belonging to a community emerges. The gods addressed are very many, if we count every different god-plus-epithet combination as a separate god, but rather few in comparison to Greece if we count divine names alone. The hyper clauses allow us to track the competences of the gods addressed, and they leave us with a problem: Zeus is omnipresent and omnicompetent, but can be paired with other gods, and other gods can be approached by worshippers in preference to him. The model of a pantheon Greek-style, where gods have delimited spheres or modes of action, does not fit; an alternative model often invoked, whereby any local top god can do anything, also does not cover very well the messiness of the evidence. It is not quite the case that any god can do anything, though some can do surprising things; and the situation is not one of more or less equipollent local gods each omnipotent in their own geographical area, because the long shadow of Zeus spreads over all.3 Phrygian religion can be seen as hybrid in two senses: not just between Greek and Anatolian, but also between the cities (many of them founded or refounded by Greek settlers) and the countryside. The distinction is clearest in relation to the imperial cult, such a focus of ambitious effort in the cities, so little evident outside them; traces of devotion to the emperors can function as a litmus test for a community’s aspiration to climb the scale from village to city.4 (But, obviously, villagers may have come to the cities to enjoy the games and gladiatorial shows attached to the imperial cult.) How great the distinction was in other respects is a delicate issue. A helpful figure to call as witness here is Monimos Zenodotos of Eumeneia, lampadarches (in an unknown cult), priest of Zeus Soter and Apollo and Men Askaenos and Agdistis mother of the Gods and Isis and the Pax Augusta. Isis, Pax Augusta and Zeus, under the title Soter, are deities unknown in the countryside, and we do not find torch races (lampades) outside cities. But Men Askaenos and Agdistis mother of the Gods are as indigenous as it is possible for gods to be. There was, then, no hostility in the cities to pre-Greek cults. But cities hosted some cults from the larger world that did not penetrate the countryside.5 Even the 2.  See pages 66– 68. 3.  On all this see page 70. 4.  See pages 80-81. 5.  I note, but as an exception, the famous, apparently hyper-Hellenic, cult of Apollo at Çavdarlı (21 above). Monimos Zenodotos: IGR 4. 739

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pantheons of the cities, however, look rather sparse if compared to cities of Greece itself. Phrygia figures in Greco-Roman perception as a land of religious extravagance, of ecstatic rites reaching the extreme of auto-castration. Modern students of the Phrygians rightly see them, by contrast, as steady, sober agriculturalists and herdsmen with a strong work ethic and a surprising respect for literacy. There were some Galloi in Phrygia, most notably at Hierapolis, but how they lived and what place they had within Phrygian religious life is unclear; it does not seem to have been a large one. Also marked out from the ordinary population were hieroi, some of them manumitted ex-slaves, some free persons made over to a god by their relatives. (Only at the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos can we observe these processes by which hieroi were created, but this was not the only shrine to which they were attached.) They certainly had some obligations to the deity to whom they were consecrated, but it is not clear that they worked for the god full-time, in workshops or cultivating its fields; extensive landholding by Phrygian temples is not attested. At the minimum they will doubtless have been required to serve in the cult on festival days (a requirement which tied them to its locality). They could marry and have families like anyone else. The dynamics that might lead a family voluntarily to make over a member to a god in this way have not yet been revealed by any inscription.6 The most dramatic documents of Phrygian religion also come (almost entirely) from the sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos. They show persons afflicted by illness, in their own person or a dependent’s (an ox in one case; by analogy with Lydian instances we can suppose children, too), identifying a ritual offence as its cause, and setting up a stele to acknowledge the offence and the power of the punishing god. One puzzle posed by these texts is that of their limited distribution. The sanctuary of Apollo Lairbenos abuts Maeonia, where such ‘confession inscriptions’ are common; scattered instances of them occur elsewhere in Phrygia, but large areas lack them altogether. Was the fear of such dire punishment by an offended god (in Maeonia the ritual offence often led to death) really so circumscribed? It may be just a differing epigraphic habit that veils this savage punitive aspect of the divine from us elsewhere in Phrygia. Another puzzle is that of the agent who diagnosed the ritual offence. Sometimes it is said that the offender ‘asked the gods’. Since there is very little evidence in Phrygia for local oracles, indeed for divination of any kind, the tantalising question arises of how the gods gave their answer, and the best guess is that it was through some form of consultation between the sick person and the priests of the sanctuary. About structures of religious authority in Phrygia we are very ignorant. Cities could consult prestigious distant oracles; in villages we must suspect that the influential voices were those of local priests.7 6.  On Galloi, see pages 75–76; on hieroi, pages 84–88. 7.  On Apollo Lairbenos, see ch. 7; on village priests, page 10.

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Memorials to the dead are the commonest surviving monuments, but reveal much more about how Phrygians wished to be remembered than about religious attitudes.8 The only explicit evidence is that of accompanying inscriptions (above all, those in verse): these present the same gamut of attitudes, ranging from vaguely expressed hopes of a favoured afterlife to denial of any continued existence, familiar from the rest of the Greco-Roman world. The rich iconography predominantly and perhaps exclusively evokes the virtues of the dead. Gods barely appear except in a small, regionally restricted and puzzling group of monuments which speak of the dead as ‘consecrated to Hekate’ (very rarely a different deity) and show her and other deities. Regionally restricted again, but much more numerous, are texts in which both a god (most commonly Zeus Bronton) and a dead person are named in connection with a prayer/vow. On a weak reading of these difficult texts they are grave markers to which a god has been added to ensure respect for the grave; on a strong reading the dead person, like the god, is being credited with power to benefit the living. But even the strong reading need not amount to anything stronger than a more emphatic version of the vague belief familiar from (for instance) the Greek world that the dead, if prayed to, can ‘send up good things’ from below. About funerary cult in Phrygia we know very little, though sarcophagi appear to show offerings brought to the tomb. Best attested are the foundations set up by rich persons in cities, particularly Hierapolis, to finance periodic commemorative rites at their tombs; they differ little from similar foundations elsewhere in the Greco-Roman world, and the bringing of roses on such occasions is a rare instance of Roman influence on Phrygian custom. Villagers are unlikely to have been behind city-dwellers in piety to the dead, but details escape us. Almost all that we know of Phrygian religion in the Roman period comes from inscriptions written in Greek. The Greek language and, with it, Greek theonyms came to Phrygia in the Hellenistic period, when the region was under first Seleucid, then Attalid, control and Greek-speakers settled in colonies. Mother and Men were already familiar in the Greek world by then and did not change their names; virtually all other pre-existing theonyms9 were then replaced in Greek texts (what Phrygian speakers may have said among themselves is lost to us) by a selection from the existing stock of Greek theonyms. The renaming process had begun by the third century BCE, three and a half centuries or so before most of our evidence. During that long period there must have been much interchange, much mutual influence between Greek settlers and Phrygians, even if the former, 8.  For the following paragraph, see ch.7. 9.  For Papas/Papias and Lola (?) see Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 193; add Ouargasos, MAMA X 382. On the topic of this paragraph, see ch. 10.

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to some extent, had the status of a privileged ‘ethnoclass’. One cannot then say that a given Apollo is just an indigenous god (original name unknown) in disguise, any more than that he is an exact equivalent of the Apollo at Delphi. All we can do is to describe the god as revealed to us in the documents that we have. But those documents do reveal great discrepancies between the Phrygian and Greek pantheons of ‘Greek’ gods. Most major Greek goddesses are absent from Phrygia, and with them, startlingly, the whole structure of women’s religion familiar to us from Greece. There are no, or almost no, cults of heroes from the mythical past either. By contrast, two gods or cults unknown in old Greek religion emerge. The nature of Highest God is controversial: a new aniconic top god, a first stab at monotheism? Or an honorific new title applicable to any particular god held locally in especial esteem? Either way, the cult is not specific to Phrygia but found in much of the Greco-Roman world. Hosios Dikaios, by contrast, is a local growth in Lydia and Phrygia, with occasional outliers. This god or pair of gods has a Greek name but is unknown in Greece; there is not even a legend to illuminate its origin.10 The Apostle Paul was at work in Phrygia before most of the inscriptions that reveal the pantheon he sought to supplant had been set up.11 The second and third centuries CE look like boom years for both Christianity and paganism in Phrygia, although for Christianity this was a real boom, whereas for paganism, in all probability, it was just a matter of new epigraphic habits revealing to us what had long been going on. A funerary monument of 179/80 is the first dated Christian tombstone from Phrygia and indeed the whole of Asia Minor, but from literary sources we know a little of, for instance, Papias bishop of Hierapolis (ca. 60–130); in the third quarter of the second century the Montanist heresy emerged, revealed to us chiefly by the anonymous anti-Montanist tract of about 193 extensively quoted in Eusebius. Epigraphic evidence for Christianity becomes abundant in the third century. Whether all users of the ‘Eumeneian formula’ (anyone who disturbs my tomb ‘will answer for it to god’; first dated instance 246/47) were Christians is disputed (some might be Jewish), but the presence of some Christians on city councils is certain; from 248/49 comes the only dated example of the remarkable ‘Christians for Christians’ tombstones of the Upper Tembris valley, open proclamations of what was still an illicit allegiance. According to one (contested) modern estimate, 80 percent of the inhabitants of that region were Christians between 280 and 310; it was certainly possible for the inhabitants of little Orkistos in the 320s to claim to Constantine, presumably without obvious absurdity, that they were all ‘followers of the most sacred religion’. Firmly dated evidence for paganism 10.  On Highest God and Hosios Dikaios, see 23– 24, 53– 54, 139. 11.  On the next two paragraphs, see ch. 8.

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almost vanishes after about 260 CE; coins found in the rural sanctuary of Zeus Limnenos and Zeus Bronton in the territory of Nakoleia, however, go far down into the fourth century, and much votive evidence throughout Phrygia cannot be dated with confidence. Maximin Daia’s attempt to revive paganism from about 311 brought persecution to some bishops and perhaps left a monument in the extraordinary inscription of Epitynchanos, ‘immortal supreme high priest, saviour of his homeland, lawgiver’; Julian’s similar attempt later in the century also created its martyrs. But neither could turn back the tide. Detailed evidence from Phrygia in the fourth and fifth centuries is unfortunately rather sparse, except for certain so-called heresies; we cannot observe in any detail the crucial process whereby a pagan lifestyle became a Christian lifestyle, and from Phrygia, in contrast to other parts of the Roman world, sermons by bishops chiding the faithful for (to us) instructive backslidings do not survive. Just who a Phrygian farmer whose ox or child was ill was to appeal to, now that Zeus was not available, is not clear. Nor, needless to say, do we know why Phrygia became so early and so resolutely Christian. As centuries of inconclusive discussion have shown, the rise of Christianity is a prime example of an historical phenomenon too big and too important, paradoxically, to admit of any neat explanation. Was paganism no longer fit for purpose, or was it, though still workable, supplanted by a religion with advantages hitherto unthought of? Factors predisposing the Phrygians both to orthodox Christianity and to heresies such as Montanism have been identified but are only variably persuasive. Well-established Jewish communities are an important factor; whether the cults of Highest God and Hosios Dikaios represent a turning away, within traditional paganism, from its traditional deities is uncertain. A specifically Phrygian factor that I have stressed is the markedly communitarian character of village life. Phrygians might include fellow-villagers in their private vows in a way not normal in the Greco-Roman world. The central concern of this book has been the this-worldly piety of Phrygian farmers. I conclude with two illustrations. First, a dedication to Zeus, in irregular verse, from Apollonia Mordiaion in the south-east. In the year 247 [162 CE] I Sagaris set up these two earth-ploughers, Dokimian [i.e. marble] ploughers, in place of living oxen whom god saved when a famine over the earth—flesh-devouring and terrible, laden with inescapable death— occupied the whole world. My lovely tawny workers, ploughers of the earth, escaped from trouble. You rescued oxen and saved the souls of men . . . wherefore I set up this altar for you, no great gift: for who could find a fit gift in repayment to the king of the gods?

The oxen were presumably carved in high relief on a side of the altar. Then a fragmentary prayer (dated 175 CE), again to Zeus, from Dorylaion in the north ‘[mois-

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ten] the earth, so that it may be heavy with produce and burgeon with ears of corn. This is the prayer that I, Metreodoros, make to you, Zeus son of Kronos, as I perform pleasing sacrifices at your altars’.12 Health of ploughing oxen; health of humans; flourishing of crops: Phrygians’ aspirations went well beyond this (their respect for literacy revealed by funerary monuments is very striking), but these were their key religious concerns in the pagan period.

12.  Steinepigramme 16/62/01 and 16/34/01.

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appendix a

Myths and traditions of city origins

This appendix is much indebted to Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 167–83.1 Cities named for Hellenistic monarchs and generals are included even where no mythical ‘prefoundation’ is claimed, as a reminder of the diverse possibilities. BMC Phrygia lists some fifty Phrygian communities that coined, whereas this appendix contains just under forty; about relevant traditions of the rest there is apparently nothing to be said. Aizanoi. Two, perhaps three, traditions are known. 1. Steph. Byz. s.v. Azanoi (A 72) cites Herodian for ‘Aizen son of Tantalos’ as the city’s origin. 2. For Pausanias (8.4.3, 10.32.3) it was colonised from Azania in Arcadia. 3. Hermogenes (FGrH 795 F 3, cited in Steph. Byz. s.v. ‘Azanoi’ [A 72]) mysteriously claims the city’s original name to have been Exouanoun, derived from the propitiatory sacrifice successfully performed by one Euphorbos in a time of famine of an ‘ouanous, which is a fox, and an exis, which is a hedgehog2 . . . those who lived round about, hearing [of his success], made him priest and ruler. The name Azanion seems to have been changed from Exouanoun.’ Meineke took Euphorbos to be the Trojan hero (Il. 16.808) 1.  On the importance of coinage, from roughly the second century CE onwards, as a source for this topic, see P. Weiss, ‘Städtische Münzprägung und zweite Sophistik’, in B. Borg (ed.), Paideia: The World of the Second Sophistic (Berlin, 2008), 179–202. 2.  For the possibility that ouanous and exis relate to real Phrygian words, John Penney kindly refers me to B. Obrador-Cursach, The Phrygian Language (Leiden, 2020), 412–24, on ‘glosses’.

203

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who was reincarnated as Pythagoras (e.g. Diog. Laert. 8.1.4), and this is the majority opinion; but for Billerbeck he was just a local shepherd or herdsman (see their respective editions of Steph. Byz. ad loc.). It is not clear that this explanation of the name entails a claim about the foundation. Steinepigramme 16/23/01 (‘between 50 and 250 CE’) attests a priest of ‘the founder’ but unfortunately leaves him unnamed. Which of 1/ and 2/ was the local tradition is unclear. Kelp (Grabdenkmal, 172) argues that the later attested 2/ supplanted 1/ in order to make Aizanoi yet older than cities claiming Spartan origins. But we do not strictly know that 2/ was current in Aizanoi itself at all. For Aizanoi’s apparent claim to be the birthplace of Zeus, see page 22; for other Phrygian claimants, see Akmonia (?), Apamea, Laodicea, Synnada.3 Akamantion: see s.v. ‘Dorylaion’. Akmonia. Two different Akmons are apparently in play. 1. The city was founded by Akmon son of Manes (Alexander Polyhistor, FGrH 273 F 73); he was brother of Doias (Steph. Byz. Δ 103 s.v. ‘Δοίαντος πέδιον’), who gave his name to the Δοίαντος πέδιον in which the city lay, and in one tradition was father of Mygdon (see ‘Otrous’). 2. For the Euboean Kourete Akmon, see s.v. ‘Prymnessos,’ with evidence for the link with Phrygia. Nonnus describes the Kourete Akmon as ὀριδρόμος, ‘mountain-runner’. Robert (‘Akmonia’, 162–81) has accordingly recognised Akmon in a galloping rider holding a whip seen on many coin types of Akmonia: in the fullest form (RPC 9:846; Kelp, Grabdenkmal, Taf. 52.6) ‘the rider with the whip gallops towards a mountain, a rock on which stand two women; in front of the rock, to the left, a reclining figure, upper body naked, generally identified as a river god or a nymph’ (Robert, ‘Akmonia’, 164); the women would be mountain nymphs, the reclining figure a local river, the mountain probably Mount Dindymos. ‘Le héros fondateur de la ville et son éponyme serait aussi le génie de la montagne’ (180). An eagle seen on several of the coins would be a pun on a meaning of ἄκμων known from Hesychius, ‘eagle’. It then becomes quite easy to see ‘two naked individuals, each with a lance, shaking hands over an altar while an eagle glides over the scene’ (Robert, ‘Akmonia’, 181; for the illustration, see 183; RPC IX 844) on a single coin issue of Trebonianus Gallus as the brothers Akmon and Doias (though this involves conflating the two Akmons).

3.  For claimants elsewhere, see Lindner, Mythos und Identität, 165.

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A society of Kouretes has recently emerged at Akmonia (MAMA 11:109), and coins of the city minted under Trebonianus Gallus and Gordian show a goddess and a baby danced round by Kouretes, one of them4 no doubt Akmon (Robert, Documents, 356; RPC 7:1.679, 9:843). The baby on the coins has always hitherto been recognised as Zeus; if we follow Nonnos in book 13 (see s.v. ‘Prymnessos’) it might, rather, be Dionysus, but coins of Magnesia on the Maeander and Hadrianeia that do show Dionysus amid Kouretes5 have a different iconography, and in book 28 (312–13), Nonnos speaks of the baby Zeus sleeping in Akmon’s shield; so the received identification is probably correct. For Phrygian birthplaces of Zeus cf. s.vv. ‘Aizanoi’, ‘Apamea’, ‘Laodicea’. See s.v. ‘Eumeneia’ for a society in the region of Akmonia whose members declared themselves ‘Distinguished [Semnoi] Achaeans’. Amorion. The Alexander named on coins is probably a local magistrate (Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 277–78), so no tradition is known. Ankyra. Founded by Midas (Paus. 1.4.5). What myth, if any, underlies ‘the seafaring hero (an Argonaut?) standing with foot on prow’ (RPC 4:3.10,046 and 10,904) is unknown. Antioch by Pisidia. A Seleucid foundation; Strabo (12.8.14, 577) speaks of it as having been settled from Magnesia on the Maeander. Apameia Kelainai. Named after Kelainos, son of Poseidon and the Danaid Kelaino, according to Strabo (12.8.18, 579), in the context of volcanic activity in the region; Strabo also gives a non-mythological explanation (blackening of the local stone through that activity). Kelainos appears, named, as a bust on the obverse of coins (BMC Phrygia Apameia 117, pl. XI.4; RPC 6:11,020 temp.) and is thought to be the naked hero pouring a libation on the reverse of others (e.g. RPC VI 5705 temp., IX 811).6 On the depiction of Noah’s ark on the coinage, see p. 17n39; it ‘explains’ the (in fact unexplained) by-name of the city, Kibotos. Marsyas, too, is very frequent on the coinage: this is an aspect of ‘the central position held by the water-courses of Celaenae-Apameia in the city’s religious identity’ (Thonemann, Maeander Valley, 68), not evocation of a founder.

4.  The taller, according to Lindner (Mythos und Identität, 184–85). 5.  Magnesia: RPC VI 5179, VII 540b, VIII unassigned ID 20485; Hadrianeia: RPC VIII unassigned ID 20100. 6.  Cf. LIMC VIII 1 (1997), 670–71 (P. Weiss).

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A scene of Korybantes/Kouretes dancing around a running female who holds a baby appears on coins (RPA IX 810, Trajan Decius; more in Robert, Doc. Asie Min., 266n69). So perhaps the city claimed, like so many others (cf. Aizanoi, Akmonia, Laodikeia), to have been a site of Zeus’ birth. Apollonia Mordiaion. Steph. Byz. (Α 361 [17]) speaks of a Phrygian Apollonia previously called Mordiaion (his A 361 [18], a Phrygian Apollonia previously called Margion, may refer to the same city). We are evidently dealing with a Hellenistic refoundation. Coins of the Severan period have a portrait of Alexander and the legend ‘Alexander founder of the Apolloniates’, which may reflect wishful thinking. Both coins and inscriptions speak of ‘Apolloniate Lycian Thracian settlers (coloni)’. On all this, see Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 286–89; on ‘Lycian Thracian’, see Bru (Phrygie Parorée, 31–61), who argues for Attalid settlers. Cohen refers (285) to the ‘presence in Apollonia of Lycian Thracian settlers’. But linguistically we seem to have a complete identification (‘un même politeuma’: Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 48): the Apolloniates are (nothing but) Lycian Thracian settlers. Cf. s.v. ‘Neapolis’. Blaundos and Peltai. These cities proclaimed themselves on coins as Macedonian foundations (Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 291, 318; not so for Kadoi, ib. 213). Dionysoupolis. No legendary origin is recorded, but it acquired a divine connection through the legend that its Attalid founders found a wooden image of Dionysus at the site (Steph. Byz. Δ 90); Dionysus dominates the coinage. Dokimeion. Coins depict a Dokimos (named),7 while others (first RPC II 1398, Domitian) bear the legend ‘Macedonian Dokimeis’: Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure, 240–4; Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 296–7. This Dokimos was probably ‘the like-named general of Antigonos who defected and surrendered Synnada to Lysimachos in 302 B.C. (Diod. 20. 107. 3–4; Paus. 1.8.1)’ (Cohen, 295). For (apparently and surprisingly) Hosios and Dikaios named as archegetes in the region, see s.v. Prymnessos. Dorylaion. A statue honoured ‘Dorylaos of Eretria the founder’ (G. Radet, Nouvelles archives des missions scientifiques et littéraires 6, 559, no. 3). An inscription of the third century CE designates a contemporary who bore the honorary name Akamantios as a ‘founder like Dorylaos—a young man descended from Heracles—or a new Akamas’ (Steinepigramme 16/34/06). A military diploma of 233 7.  RPC IV 2 6908, 6962, 8136 (all temporary).

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speaks of a solider originating from ‘Acamantia Doryleo’.8 It may follow that Akamantion, the ‘town in Greater Phrygia, a foundation of Akamas son of Theseus, to whom [name lost]9 gave it for his help as ally against the Solymians’ (Steph. Byz. Α 150), is Dorylaion under another name. Doubtless, Dorylaos and Akamas are to be recognised in two youths standing one on either side of a flaming altar into which they pour libations on a coin of Gordian III (RPC VII.1.754; Kelp, Grabdenkmal, Tafel 53.5; LIMC s.v. ‘Dorylaos’, no. 2). Akamas has been called ‘Theseus’ famously colonizing son’ (S. Hornblower, Lykophron, 54); present at Troy in the post-Iliadic phase of the war, he had a liaison with Priam’s daughter Laodike (Lyc. Alex. 494– 96 with Hornblower’s commentary) which made him sympathetic to the Trojans, and founded numerous towns in the Troas, as well as Daskyleion further east (Lysimachos FGrH 382 F 9). What brought him to Phrygia is unknown (cf. s.v. ‘Synnada’). Of the motives of Dorylaos, the Eretrian son or descendant of Heracles,10 we again know nothing. He is doubtless the baby shown in Heracles’ arms on RPC IV.2. 1873 temp. (Commodus).11 Eukarpeia. Steph. Byz. Ε 157, citing Metrophanes (FGrH 796 F 1), states that it got its name ‘from its fertility. For the barbarians say Zeus gave the region to Demeter and Dionysus’.12 See also s.v. ‘Otrous’, ad fin. Eumeneia.13 ‘Attalus named it after Eumenes Philadelphos; or Hyllos had a pleasant stay there [καλῶς μείνας] and so named it:’ Steph. Byz. E 159 (where, to make the etymology work, Steph. should, of course, have written εὖ, not καλῶς). Toponyms such as Hyllouala (Steph. Byz. Υ 28, citing Apollonios FGrH 740 F 6) and Hyllarima

8.  J. Weiss, ÖJhBeibl 16 (1913), 74–75, ‘Zur Gründungssage von Dorylaion’; cf. L. Robert, REG 94 (1981), 356–58 (OMS VI 450–52), who writes (358), ‘le nom mythique hellénisant s’ est implanté alors avec le nom traditionnel’. Weiss (loc. cit.) finds the identification of Dorylaion with the Akamantion of Steph. Byz. ‘risky’ (gewagt). 9.  Meineke supplied Isandros, comparing Hom. Il. 6. 203–4; Billerbeck prefers the form Peisandros for the same man (comparing Str. 12.8.5, C 573). There was also a Trojan Akamas, son of Antenor (Hom. Il. 2. 823 and often). Steph. Byz. is the only text to identify the Akamas of Akamantion, and makes him the son of Theseus; the colonising activity of Theseus’ son in the Troad and beyond (Lysimachos, FGrH 382 F 9), and the popularity of the name Attikos in Dorylaion (Strubbe [‘Gründer’, 298 with n. 264]; P. Weiss [WürzJbb 10 (1984), 187] also cites one Theseus, IGR IV 530) support that identification, though some ambiguity between the Akamantes remains conceivable. 10.  Strubbe (‘Gründer’, 260) takes Dorylaos the Eretrian and Dorylaos descendant of Heracles to represent two different traditions: this is possible but not necessary. 11.  Strangely taken as Telephos by v. Aulock. Münzen und Städte Phrygiens II, 67 no. 224. 12.  Steph. Byz. locates Eukarpeia in ‘little’ (i.e. Hellespontine) ‘ Phrygia’. All other sources put it in the Pentapolis, i.e. in ‘great’ Phrygia. I have not seen a discussion of this anomaly. 13.  Cf. P. Weiss, Chiron 30 (2000), 630–37.

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(Steph. Byz. Υ 26)14 in Caria, as well as a river name Hyllos at Temenothyrai,15 were an invitation to establish links with the son of Herakles, without any worked-out account for the hero’s presence necessarily being given. Why Eumeneia should have claimed a link to him is, by contrast, obscure, but presumably the reference was to Herakles’ famous son, not to an obscure local. The mythical explanation emerged, even though the games called Eumeneia Philadelpheia (Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 303n5) commemorated the actual origin of the city.16 Regularly on coins from the time of Hadrian to Gallienus (Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 302–3; first RPC III 2577A), and once on a statue base (SEG XXVIII 1115), the Eumeneans described themselves as ‘Achaeans’, as do the members of a society (συνβίωσις) near Akmonia (SEG XL 1192). ‘Achaean’ here presumably does not refer to the part of Greece called Achaia but has its broader Homeric sense of ‘Greek’, and is doubtless to be linked to Eumeneia’s claim to membership of Hadrian’s Panhellenion.17 But a more specific claim of connection with Argos is seen in Eumeneia’s tribes Argeias and Herais (Kunnert, Bürger unter Sich, 137–39), and especially in a coin of the time of Hadrian with the legend ‘Argive Hera’ (RPC III 2578). Hierapolis. An oracular response of Clarian Apollo to the city justifies an instruction to honour Apollo Kareios by the claim that ‘you are descended from me and from Mopsos the city-holder’ (Steinepigramme 02/12/01 line 17). Whence Apollo Archegetes appears constantly in documents of the city. Mopsos was son of Apollo (e.g. Apollod. Epit. 6.3); how he came to be the ancestor of Hierapolis seems not to be recorded. He appears on a Hierapolitan coin type where Torrebos is holding out a god’s or goddess’ statue to him (both names are inscribed: RPC IV.2.2041 temp.). Torrebos is Lydian, but a ‘Karios’ was son of Zeus and a Torrebia (Nic. Dam. FGrH 90 F 15) and (if Jacoby’s restoration of that text is correct) ancestor of Torrebos, and Apollo Kar(e)ios was honoured in Hierapolis. ‘On sent un jeu de rapports pour Torrébos entre le Tmôlos lydien et la Phrygie de Hiérapolis’ (Robert, ‘Motaleis’, 60–61n43), which would imply that Lydian Karios and Hierapolitan (Apollo) Kareios are the same figure, even if the detailed logic of the connection escapes us. 14.  Steph. Byz. Υ 26 does not in fact speak of Hyllos, but SBBerl (1894), 918, no. III (McCabe PHI Caria: Hyllarima 8) has a Zeus Hyllos. Hyllouala claimed to be the place of his death; but in Greek tradition he was buried at Megara (Paus. 1.41.2; Kelp’s ‘Carian Megara’ [Grabdenkmal, 174] looks like confusion.) 15.  Temenothyrai: Paus. 1.35. 7. Paus. (1.35.8) speaks of an otherwise unknown Hyllos son of Earth buried there, after whom the river was named; Herakles in turn named his son from the river (cf. Panyassis F 17 Davies). For the location, see Barr. 62 B 4. 16.  As noted by P. Weiss, Chiron 30 (2000), 631. Weiss raises the possibility that the Hyllos tradition is an external (poetic?) invention but rightly allows for concurrent accounts within the city itself. 17.  The two rider-god reliefs dedicated to ‘theos Achaios’ unfortunately lack a provenance (Robert, Doc. Asie Min., 392–94; Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods, 201 nos. 392–93; SEG XXXIII 1542–43). Panhellenion: P. Weiss, ‘Eumeneia und das Panhellenion’, Chiron 30 (2000), 617–39.

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Ikonion. Byzantine sources (W. Ruge in RE s.v. ‘Ikonion’) explained the name by reference to the ‘image’ of the Gorgon that Perseus saw in his shield; Lobeck brilliantly added a letter to Nonnus, Dion. 13. 517, where a Phrygian city is required by sense, to give ἰκαστήρια Γοργοῦς and an allusion to this etymology. Perseus in various guises is among the commonest images starting with the first coins of the city (RPC I 3543 and e.g. III 2825); Medusa also appears, on obverses (RPC II 1608 B, C: cf. Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 172, with Tafel 53.8–54.1). A funerary epigram speaks of it as a city where Perseus won glory (Steinepigramme 14/07/08). The etymological play on the city’s name was attached to a different myth in Steph. Byz. Ι 46. After Deucalion’s flood, Zeus instructed Zeus and Athena to fashion images (εἴδωλα) from mud, and summoned the winds to animate them. ‘So because the εἴκονες were sketched there it was called Ikonion.’18 Kadoi. A rare bronze coin (RPC III 2502) shows a seated/squatting naked child with both hands raised. The child is taken in RPC to be Dionysus; cf. s.v. ‘Akmonia’ and ‘Prymnessos’. Kotiaion. No tradition of its foundation is known. It is called ‘wise’ in an epigram (Steinepigramme 16/32/05): as supposed birthplace of Aesop? Or of the ‘most learned grammatikos Alexandros Asklepiadou’ (Steph. Byz. K 188)?19. Laodikeia on the Lykos. A Seleucid foundation. Steph. Byz. Λ 37 reports oracular instruction conveyed to Antiochos in a dream to found the city; the preexisting settlements apparently incorporated into the city (page 168) have left no aitiological trace. Coins bring together in various combinations a Zeus figure, sometimes named as ‘Aseis’, a goat (they may be together, or obverse and reverse) and (in some cases) a child held by Zeus.20 Chiai (Phrygien und seine Götter, 197–98) sees here a claim to be the birthplace of both Zeus (as suggested by the goat, seen as Amaltheia) and Dionysus. The regular association of (Zeus) Aseis with a goat on these coins might 18.  In the notice in Steph. Byz. the death of one Annakos (sic) after a life of three hundred years inaugurated the flood. In Hermogenes (FGrH 795 F 2) Nannakos was ‘king of the Phrygians’. Neither source links him explicitly with Iconium. 19.  Robert (‘Acmonia’, 173), citing Cavedoni; for Kotiaion as place of origin of Aesop he cites Const. Porph. De thematibus 4. 20.  A search of RPC s.v. ‘Zeus Aseis’ gives nine results; for Zeus touching the goat and holding the child see e.g. IV 2 2095 temp. Lindner (Mythos und Identität, 177) sees Zeus here not as father but as kourotrophos—not, however, a common function for males in the ancient world!

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have an unknown local significance, but a coin of Caracalla (Robert, Documents, 266 citing SNG Copenhagen 31, Phrygia, no. 589) gives a more familiar reference (Rhea and child, Korybantes), to the birth of Zeus, and Dionysus is the obvious candidate for the child held by Zeus (for the child Dionysus in Phrygia cf. s.v. ‘Prymnessos’). For other Phrygian birthplaces of Zeus, see s.v. ‘Aizanoi’. Lysias. Named for its founder, a member of ‘a petty dynastic family whose chief members were named either Lysias or Philomelos’ (Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 311) in west-central Phrygia. Cf. Philomelion. Manesion. ‘From Manes a very rich founder’ (Alexander Polyhistor, FGrH 273 F 126, ap. Steph. Byz. Μ 49); but see s.v. ‘Akmonia’ for Manes father of Akmon. The place is unknown. Mantalos. ‘From Mantalos its founder’ (Alexander Polyhistor FGrH 273 F 127 ap. Steph. Byz. Μ 53). Metropolis (northern). The entry in Steph. Byz. Μ 179 (Alexander Polyhistor, FGrH 273 F 78) is corrupt: it mentions ‘Mother of the Gods’ and ‘founded’, and can be variously edited to give ‘founded by the Mother of the Gods’ (so Meineke in his ed. of Steph. Byz; for cities founded by gods, see Robert, HSCP 81, 10–11 [OMS VI 220– 21]; Strubbe, ‘Gründer’, 258) or, for example, ‘(named) from the Mother of the Gods’ and ‘founded by ’ (so Billerbeck in her ed. of Steph. Byz; Robert [A travers l’Asie Mineure, 299n192] supposes Mother as the founder even on this view). The reference is to the northernmost of the two Phrygian cities of that name (Barr. 62 E 3), according to Robert, A travers l’Asie Mineure, 299 (against the previous consensus). Metropolis (southern). A helmeted bust with inscription Akamas appears on a coin (RPC VIII unassigned, ID 77085). Midaion. The laureate bust in a Phrygian cap identified on coins just as ‘the founder’ is taken to be Midas (von Aulock, Münzen und Städte Phrygiens, II, nos. 749, 827, 830–31; RPC IV.2. 1912 temp., VI 5735 temp., VII.I. 764, VIII unassigned ID 20683). Nakoleia. From the Nymph Nakole, or Nakolos son of Daskylos (Steph. Byz. Ν 6). But an inscription identifies as ‘founder’ a bearded Heracles on BMC Phrygia, Nacoleia, no. 9 (Caracalla). Neapolis. MAMA VIII 350 (I. Sultan Dağı 505) speaks of (Neapolitan Lycian [?]) Thracian settlers (coloni), as at Apollonia: cf. Bru, Phrygie Parorée, 41–43, 49–61.

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Otrous. Otreus and Mygdon were leaders of the Phrygians when Priam went to aid them against the Amazons (Hom. Il. 3. 186; Σ D ad loc makes them sons of Deimas, Σ Genev. of Dymas, but Eustathius [misleadingly alone quoted by Robert, ‘Akmonia’, 161] has Otreus a son of Dymas, Mygdon of Akmon21). Coins of the city (e.g. BMC Phrygia 345.12, pl. XL 6; Kelp, Grabdenkmal, taf. 52.8) show a naked hero mounting a ship, in whom some see Otreus, some a scene from epic: Hector assaulting the ships.22 Both views raise problems: ‘what is a “seefahrender heros” doing “en plein continent”?’ asked Robert; but one might equally ask what is Hector doing on a coin of Otrous? They also show Aeneas carrying his father (who holds the Penates) and leading his son by the hand out of Troy; Aeneas wears a helmet, the two others a Phrygian cap (e.g. BMC Phrygia 345 no.14, pl. XL 7; Kelp, Grabdenkmal, taf. 52.9–10). It was sometimes said that Aeneas left Ascanius in Phrygia as a king (Dion. Hal. Ant. Rom. 1. 54.2; but in 1.47.5 he returns to Troy), but presumably what was envisaged in that tradition was somewhere in Hellespontine Phrygia, not Otrous in the Pentapolis. IGRR IV 692 honours an Alexander of Macedon as ktistes (or perhaps oikistes) ‘of the city’. Whether the city in question was Otrous or Eukarpeia or indeed another is uncertain; nor indeed is it quite certain that this Alexander is Alexander the Great, as opposed to an Alexander the Asiarch attested on coins of Otrous in the third century CE.23 Peltai. Cf. s.v. ‘Blaundos’. Philomelion. Cf. s.v. ‘Lysias’; Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 319–21. Prymnessos. According to Nonnos (Dion. 13. 135–57; cf. Robert, ‘Acmonia’, 171–73) Prymneus was one of seven Euboean Kouretes (Akmon was another) driven from home by their father Sokos; they wandered to Crete, then to Phrygia, where they nursed the infant Dionysus in the company of Rhea, then to Athens, then home

21.  For Akmon as father of both Otreus and Mygdon (Strubbe, ‘Gründer’, 259), I know no source. 22.  For the debate, see Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 170n814 and especially Robert, ‘Acmonia’, 161n40. Robert favours Hector, but it is odd if the city made no use of the hero with so similar a name. Bizarrely, K. Regling (Klio 8 [1908], 489–92, at 490n1) saw the Otrous type as Aeneas while identifying the closely related figure on coins of Stectorion as Hector. On coins of Ilion showing a very similar scene the figure is sometimes identified by inscription as Hector: RPC IV 2 98–99, 112, all temp. Cohen (Hellenistic Settlements, 315) sees the motif as merely symbolizing migration; but would any relevant migration have been by sea? The same difficulty applies to the suggestion of Kelp (loc. cit.), following Imhoof-Blumer, that the scene can denote any founding hero. Kelp (Grabdenkmal, 182) noted that Phrygian cities claim as founders only those Trojans who are Phrygian sensu stricto. 23.  On all this, see Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 315–18.

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again. But it is not clear that the city claimed any association with this Prymneus, despite the reference to Phrygia in Nonnos;24 there is no trace of him on the coins. Two coin types show ‘[king] Midas’ (inscription) on the obverse, and the connection with him has been taken to explain the epithet ἐπιφανεῖς supposedly given to the city in Steinepigramme 16/32/05;25 but that epithet belongs rather to the ‘cities’ of the previous line. The ‘Zeus Archegetes’ claimed for Prymnessos by Leschorn, Gründer der Stadt, 366) is from the territory of Dokimeion, not Prymnessos (Drew-Bear/ Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1951n155), and the god named as archegetes is apparently not Zeus but, remarkably, Hosios and Dikaios: Ricl, ‘Hosios Dikaios’, 42n92. Sebaste: It has been suggested that coins showing Perseus may suggest a ‘backprojection’ of the Augustan foundation to mythical times (P. Weiss, Chiron 30, 2000, 635 with 639 figs. 8 and 9; BMC Phrygia Sebaste 34, pl. XLIII.11). More significant is a hexameter poem, fragmentarily preserved on stone, which celebrates the city’s foundation by Augustus as Sebaste, and earlier recounts the myth of Ganymede, possibly described as a ‘son of Azen’ (Steinepigramme 16/01/01, line 14): a coin26 depicts a naked boy clutched by an eagle—Ganymede, therefore—and the myth was presumably linked in some way with the city’s prehistory. Stektorion. There was a ‘conspicuous funerary monument’ of Mygdon (on whom see s.v. ‘Otrous’) ‘at the boundary of Stektorion’ (Paus. 10.27.1). On the Homeric Mygdon, see s.v. ‘Otrous’. Pausanias is apparently the only source to link the hero with Stektorion; nonetheless, coins showing a hero in various guises (standing with weapons; riding on a chariot; mounting a ship, much like the figure on coins of Otrous) are sometimes taken to represent him.27 Synnada. Steph. Byz. Σ 321 ‘They say that Akamas, wandering off after the Trojan war, came to Phrygia and found the ruler of the region under siege; he helped him and was given territory and founded a city. Then collecting many settlers from the

24.  Chuvin (Mythologie . . . dionysiaque, 45–46) very tentatively evokes Antiochus III’s links with Euboea while in control of Phrygia. But Vian (note on Nonnos, Dion. 13. 142–48 [p. 222]) takes the name to be ‘plutôt d’ origine littéraire’, comparing Hom. Od. 8. 112. 25.  Robert (‘Akmonia’, 173), citing Cavedoni. Coins: RPC IV 2 1919 temp.; VII 1 782. 26.  RPC VI 5678 temp. 27.  So Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 170; K. Regling (Klio 8 [1908], 489–92, argued for Hector. Standing: BMC Phrygia Stektorion 11 (RPC VI 5683 temp.) and (pl. XLV 4) 18 (Kelp, Taf. 53 1–2); riding Kelp, Taf. 53.4 (RPC VIII unassigned ID 20572)—a type used for Hector on coins of Ilium (Kelp, 170 n. 814); mounting Kelp, Taf. 53.3 (RPC VIII unassigned; ID 20573) (a type also used for Hector: n. 22 above.)

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Macedonians from Greece in Asia28 he first called it, from bringing them together and making a joint foundation, Synnaia, but later the name was corrupted by those living nearby and it was called Synnada.’ On Akamas at Troy, cf. s.v. ‘Dorylaion’. The help he gave to the ruler of the region sounds identical with the ‘help as ally against the Solymians’ mentioned in the foundation legend of Dorylaion. The citizens describe themselves as Thynnaridai in a verse inscription (MAMA IV 66; Steinepigramme 16/51/01); a head on a coin of the city is named as Thynnaros (RPC IV 2. 9999 temp., figured also in the commentary to Steinepigramme 16/51/01).29 How, if at all, the Thynnaros and the Akamas traditions were reconciled is not clear. Two pseudo-autonomous coins of the city bear Akamas’ head, identified by inscription (RPC IV.2. 9995 and 11884, both temp.), as obverse; an armed figure holding a Palladion/Nike on others (RPC IV.2. 2986, 3941, 11885, VI 5770, all temp.) has been claimed to be him.30 On coins the Synnadeis claimed both Dorian and Ionian origins, sometimes simultaneously (Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 323; Robert [A travers l’ Asie Mineure, 240] speaks of Spartan Athena Chalkioikos and Athenian Athena Polias on coins: Polias [inscribed] is RPC IV.2.2212, but Chalkioikos escapes me. In an inscription they apparently present themselves as of both Athenian and Spartan origin.)31 Ti. Klaudios Attalos Andragathos, who, in the second century CE, dedicated a statue of Athena at Sparta as voted for (?) by ‘the colonists at Synnada’ (SEG XI 771 plus addenda, p. 271; Thynnaros also appears in a broken context), was also an Athenian citizen as well as ‘priest of the Homonoia of the Greeks’ (Robert, BE, 1966, no. 144; SEG XXX 86 a 1–3; cf. 89)32: a good illustration of the double allegiance of the Synnadeis at this date. His nephew, too, was honoured by the Athenian demos (MAMA VI 374); one family in the city favoured the name Attikos and derivatives (MAMA VI 370). All the emphasis on Hellenicity recorded in this and the previous paragraph is a product of the city’s claim to membership of Hadrian’s Panhellenion (A. J. Spawforth and S. Walker, JRS 76, 1986, 89–90).

28.  ‘Clearly Stephanos has conflated a tradition about an earlier migration with one about a later Macedonian colonization’ (Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 322). 29.  This makes more likely the identification of the head on BMC Phrygia Synnada 23 and 28 (pl. XLVI 110 and 12) as the hero. 30.  So tentatively BMC Phrygia Synnada 30; Kelp, Grabdenkmal, 171; and RPC. This image occurs both on coins which claim the Synnadeis as Ionian (RPC IV 2 2986 temp.) and as Dorian (IV 2 11885 temp.). 31.  Chalkioikos: the references Robert gives in the note do not help. Inscription: see BE (2021) no. 196. 32.  On this family, cf. H. Müller, Chiron 10 (1980), 460–68.

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214      Appendix A

Eleven coin types of the city (first RPC III 1402, Hadrian) show Amaltheia with the infant Zeus and a goat. Temenothyrai. A city so named could not fail to claim an association with Temenos, grandson of Hyllos, the Heraclid who got Argos for his portion (Apollod. Bibl. 2.8.4); its river was ‘Hyllos’, doubtless by adjustment of an indigenous name, and in verse the inhabitants could speak of themselves as Temenidai (Steinepigramme 16/08/01). A young figure is named as Temenos oikistes (less often ktistes) on the obverse of coins (RPC IV.2. 2178 temporary, and often); his great-grandfather Herakles occurs frequently on coins, once even being apparently named as ktistes (P. Weiss, Chiron 30, 2000, 634 with 639 abb. 7). A scene showing Herakles with a river god perhaps juxtaposes him with his son (BMC Phrygia Temenothyrai 38, pl. XLVIII 8, where, however, the scene is interpreted as one of ‘contention’). Themisonion. Presumably took its name from an individual named Themison in the Hellenistic period (Cohen, Hellenistic Settlements, 325–26). On the miraculous protection afforded it by three gods at the time of the Galatian invasion, see p. 170.

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appendix b

‘Honoured by/consecrated to Hekate’ and related texts

H E KAT E 1

1. Pfuhl/Möbius, Grabreliefs, II, 503 no. 2090 taf. 300 = Sarian, ‘Hekate’, no. 328. No provenance. ‘Large marble stele with two reliefs representing (a) Triform Hekate with polos and torch, flanked by Demeter, with polos, poppyhead and ears of grain, and a deity similar to Demeter holding a small staff (Persephone ?); above Hekate the head of Helios; (b) bust of a man and a woman; between (a) and (b) and under (b) an inscription’ (SEG XXIX 1696). Ἀμίας Μνένναν τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδραν τιμηθένταν ὑπὸ Σωτίρης Ἑκάτης κατιέρω[σ]εν καὶ Ἀπο[λλώνι]ος καὶ Μάν[λ]ιος υἱοὶ α[ὐτοῦ].

2. Pfuhl/Möbius, Grabreliefs, II, 503 no. 2091 taf. 301 = Sarian, ‘Hekate’, no. 326. Kotiaion region. A relief of poor quality shows a triple Hekate between two male figures, one perhaps Hermes; above them a ‘rayed male head resting upon a crescent moon’ (JRS 15, 1925, 168); below, a male and a female bust. Τρόφιμος κὴ Σέκκτος τὸν πατέρα [Τρό]φιμον κὴ τὴν μαιτάρα Ἄμ[μιο]ν ἔτι ζῶσαν ἀπειέρωσαν τιμηθέντας ὑπὸ Σωτίρης Ἑκάτης.

3. Pfuhl/Möbius, Grabreliefs, II, 502–3, no. 2089 taf. 300 = Sarian, ‘Hekate’, no. 327, Lane CMRDM no. 99, plate xliii. No provenance.

1.  For nos. 1–5 cf. Lochman, ‘Grabsteine’, with excellent photos.

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figure 9 . Stele of Mnennas, ‘honoured by Hekate’. Sammlung Ludwig, Antikenmuseumbasel Basel, photo museum.

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Appendix B    217

Four levels: (a) an eagle; (b) triple Hecate between Men and a naked youth who holds a double axe in his right hand and an object in his left which is being gnawed by a dog. Above Hecate a crescent moon within it the bust of a young god (presumably Helios)2 surrounded by an aureole; above Men a writing tablet; above the youth a bird on a basket, a mirror, a comb (?); (c) male and female busts (d) a plough. Between levels (b) and (c) the inscription: Απψιον τὸν ἑαυτῆς σύνβιον Γάειον κατεειέρωσεν Σωτίρῃ Ἑκάτῃ καὶ Ἀπελλᾶς καὶ Γάειος ἐτείμησαν τοὺς ἑαυτῶν γονῖς μνήμης χάριν. Τειμέας Μουρματεανός.

4. Pfuhl/Möbius, Grabreliefs, II, 503–4, no. 2092 (now lost) (from LBW 805, whence CIG 3827q) = Sarian, ‘Hekate’, no. 329: Kotiaion. ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ. Σωτείρης Ἑκάτη[ς3 . . . ]ιμος κ(αὶ) Ἀφφη Δημοσθένη τὸν ἑαυτῶν υἱὸν τειμ[η]θέντα ὑπὸ Σωτείρης Ἑκάτης κατειέρωσαν [followed by names of further relatives who συνκατειέρωσαν].

Hekate between crescent moon and small bust, under this two busts, under this ‘enfant debout entre deux enfants à cheval et placés sur des bases; sur le socle, trois chevaux chargés avec des chabraques garnies de franges et attachés à la queue l’un de l’autre’ (G. Mendel, BCH 33, 1909, 285). 5. T. Lochman, Revue du Louvre 6 (1990), 455–61 (SEG XL 1241) = LIMC VI, s.v. ‘Men’, no. 137, plate 252. No provenance. Four levels: (a) bust of Helios (b) Zeus, with large crescent to left (c) Hekate between Men and Demeter (d) busts of Tateis and Glykon. The inscription appears bit by bit in three places; the divisions are indicated below by //. ἀγαθῇ τύχῃ. Σωτείρης Ἑκάτης· Μένανδρος δαὴρ κὲ Κύριλα ἐνάτηρ// Παπας υἱὸς, Απης νύνφη Τατ ̣ε ̣ιν κ ̣ὲ ̣ Γύκωναν υἱὸν αὐτῆς {ε}τειμηθέντας ὑπὸ Σωτείρης Ἑκάτη[ς] κατειέρωσαν//, κὲ Ὀνήσιμος τεθρεμένος ἀπειέρωσεν.

6. SEG LIII 1545, fragment from Tembris valley with Hekate and other figures in at least two panels, and the verb καθι]έρωσεν. 7. SEG LXI 1565.4 No provenance. Naiskos stele, which is broken above the bust of a man with hand on chest; below the bust is the inscription. Τατεις Δαμᾶν τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδρ[α] τειμηθέντα ὑ[πό] Σωτείρης Ἑκά[της, [—Γ]αïος ] καὶ Ἀλέξαν[δρ]ος τὸν ἑαυτῶν πα[τέρα

8. The Epitynchanos inscription: see appendix E. 2.  Unless it is Men, as in CMRDM pl. LXVI no. 142. 3.  This phrase has sometimes been edited as a dative, Σωτείρῃ(ς) Ἑκάτ[ῃ, but no. 5 above defends the genitive. 4.  Also edited by M. Adak, Philia 2 (2016), 124–26 (SEG LXVI 1666) (non vidi).

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218      Appendix B APOLLO

9. SEG XL 1077. In the museum of Uşak, no further provenance. ‘Gray white marble stele with support; in a recessed niche representation of a standing woman and of a man/boy, standing on a podium between two dogs (?)and clad in a chiton; above the niche the inscription; above the inscription representation of a man on horseback’ (SEG XL 1077). Διόδωρος κ(αὶ) Δανάη ἐσστεφάνωσαν τὸν ἑαυτῶν υἱὸν Ἀσκληπιάδην τὸν τειμηθένταν ὑπὸ Ἀπόλλωνος. καθειέρωσαν ἐτῶν θʹ.

10. Drew-Bear/Naour, ‘Divinités de Phrygie’, 1936.5 No provenance, but perhaps attributable to a sanctuary of Apollo NW of Akmonia (Barr. 62 C4). Above, a horseman in a long cloak holding a double axe over his left shoulder; below, a male figure between two quadrupeds, with an inscription on either side of the figures and below them. Ἀρτέμων καὶ Τρο/φιμὴς [Ἀ]σκλᾶν τέκνον ἀπιέ/ρωσαν Ἀπόλλωνι. ZEUS

11. JRS 15 (1925), 154, no. 140 (SEG VI 104); Pfuhl/Möbius, Grabreliefs, II, 511 no. 2120, taf. 180. Kotiaion. ‘At top, a wreath (cut away). In upper panel, bust of the priest with a bird carrying a wreath in its beak to the left and a naked figure of Hermes with purse and Kerykeion to the right. . . . In the main panel, a bust of Zeus with two trees (perhaps representing the grove (alsos) at his sanctuary), two portable amphorae, and a large two-handled jar with three unidentified objects. Below, an ox.’ (Mitchell, Anatolia, II, 26, on his fig. 11). Between the wreath and the bust of the priest the inscription: [Ἀλ]έξανδρος Μητ[ρόφιλ]ον τὸν ἱερέα [τιμηθέντα] ὑπὸ Διὸς καθ[ιέρωσεν].

Provenances. Of these texts, four come from the upper Tembris valley/Kotiaion region (2, 4, 6, 11), one was recorded further south but in the possession of a stationmaster, to whom it may have come down the line (8), while the rest lack a provenance but (except [10]) are ascribed to the upper Tembris region by analogy. Texts using καθιερόω/ἀφιερόω for ‘perform funerary rites’ for a person, without reference to honouring by gods, are more widely distributed (n. 6 below), and one which speaks of a young man ‘consecrated to Apollo’ (although it also lacks a provenance) has been plausibly assigned on iconographic grounds to a sanctuary in the territory of Akmonia (10).

5.  That this stele is funerary is not strictly demonstrable; but analogy with (9) suggests it.

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Appendix B    219

Iconography. The iconography is very variable, but always includes the god most concerned, if we accept that the horseman in (9) and (10) is Apollo, and almost always the dead person(s). ‘Consecration’. In every case the action of the survivors is said to be one of ‘consecrating’ the dead person (καθιερόω, less often ἀφιερόω). The same verbs are occasionally used, a little more often also in Lydia, for some form of homage to a dead person, without the addition that the person had been honoured by a god;6 even less often ἀνατίθημι is used in what seems to be the same sense.7 Once καθιερόω is preceded by a more ordinary verb for the action of the survivors to give ἐτίμησαν κὲ καταειέρωσαν (TAM V.1 177). What additional rite or honour, if any, is contained in καταειέρωσαν is unclear.8 Nock wrote that ‘The force of καθιέρωσαν is that the tomb is put under the deity’s protection, cf. Mordtmann, Ath. Mitth. x. p. 17’ (though Mordtmann did not in fact say that).9 The very common ‘god and man’ epitaphs of north Phrygia which combine a memorial epitaph with a prayer, usually to Zeus Bronton, have been seen (also problematic though they are) as a different strategy to achieve the same end. None of the texts available to Nock specified a deity in the dative as the designated protector, but Nock presumably supposed that a person honoured by Hekate would also be protected by her; and one, perhaps two texts with such a dative have since emerged.10 But there remain cases where the verbs καθιερόω/ἀφιερόω are used but no deity is mentioned anywhere in the text. The matter remains obscure. 6.  MAMA VII 290; SEG XLI 1171 A 6–7 (ἀφιερόω); TAM V 1 177, 285, 298; SEG XXXVIII 1232 (of a priest); TAM V III 1784. Does it mean ‘perform funeral rites for’, ‘consecrate to [an unnamed god]’, or ‘set up a tombstone for’? For the last possibility (set up a tombstone), cf. the common use of καθιερόω plus accusative for ‘dedicate (a statue of) a person’: e.g. TAM V 2 1360–63; P. Herrmann REA 100 (1998), 506 = idem, Kleinasien im Spiegel Epigraphischer Zeugnisse (Berlin, 2016), 208. The uses in SEG XLVIII 1472 II 11 and I. Sardis 1 no. 22. 3–4 are problematic: Herrmann, loc. cit. 7.  TAM V I 682, and in verse MAMA VII 359 (Steinepigramme 16/46/01), where a recipient of the dedication (Zeus) is even named. Here the dead person is object of the verb; in MAMA IX 89 (Steinepigramme 16/23/12) and X 52 the object, expressed or implied, is stele, which is dedicated ‘for’ the dead person. 8.  In TAM V 1 682 a mother is said to have ‘dedicated’ (ἀνατίθημι) her daughter, while other kin merely honoured her: M.-L. Cremer and J. Nollé (Chiron 18 [1988], 207) suggest that a similar distinction is marked there. 9.  ‘The Honoured of Hecate’, JHS 45 (1925), 100–101. ‘God and man’: pages 107–15 above. 10.  (3) and perhaps (4): (3) has not mentioned a previous honouring by the god. The strange appearance of Zeus Ktesios in TAM V I 285—Δία Κτήσιον Τατια Παπιαν τὸν ἑαυτῆς ἄνδρα, Τειμοκράτη[ς] τὸν πατέρα, Καρποφόρος τὸν θρέψαντα κατειέρωσαν—may hide something similar, though literally it seems to indicate that Papias was ‘consecrated as Zeus Ktesios’ (so A. B Cook [Zeus II (Cambridge, 1925), 1067], who takes it as ‘a striking vindication of my view that Zeus Ktésios was but the buried ancestor of the clan’).

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appendix c

τὸν θεόν σοι, μὴ ἀδικήσῃς

BE 1939 no. 420 is a report on F. Miltner, ÖJh 30 (1937), Beiblatt, 48–66, ‘Epigraphische Nachlese in Ankara’, which presents monuments decorated in a manner characteristic of the Kotiaion region. Roberts remarks: ‘Deux exemples de la formule: τὸν θεόν σοι, μὴ ἀδικήσις; M. la considère comme chrétienne . . . et s’étonne de la présence d’un buste d’Helios; l’étude même de Ad. Wilhelm, à laquelle il envoie, en relève des exemples indubitablement païens.’ The reference is to Wilhelm, ‘τὸν θεόν σοι, μὴ ἀδικήσῃς’, SBBerl1932, 847–56 (Akademieschriften II, 391– 400), a study in which he reinforced what he had already communicated to the editor of TAM II 356 twelve years earlier, that τὸν θεόν σοι is a phrase on its own (‘in God’s name’: cf. e.g. Steinepigramme 16/32/05, l. 6), syntactically distinct from what follows. (Wilhelm’s view of the σοι was lightly corrected by K. Latte, Glotta 32, 1953, 34–35 = Kl. Schr. 680–81.1) In making the claim quoted above, the Roberts failed to distinguish between τὸν θεόν σοι, which Wilhelm certainly showed to be often in the mouth of pagans, and the whole formula (with ‘do not wrong’) as it was used in the Kotiaion region and upper Tembris valley whence almost all the relevant gravestones derive;2 in this they are followed by Gibson (Christians for Christians, 62–63), whereas Tabbernee (Montanist Inscriptions, 369–71) is more cautious. More recently, the valuable Inscriptiones Christianae Graecae website has included 1.  Wilhelm wrongly adduced as parallel various expressions referring to personal gods—on which see Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 113–122. Note in particular that the supposed reference to ‘my god, the Nile’ in what is now I. Ephesos IV 1230 is completely unreliable: the editor J. Keil (in In Memoriam Halil Edhem 1 [Ankara, 1947], 183) spoke of an eroded stone in which he ‘mehr kombinierte als las’ the relevant phrase. 2.  But MAMA VI 321–22 (ICG 986–87) are from the region of Acmonia.

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Appendix C    221

some twenty examples of the formula,3 though in most cases adding the caution that the dead person may not have been a Christian; at the other extreme, Huttner has declared that of twenty Phrygian examples only two are certainly Christian (to which one might add one from Phrygian Lykaonia). That is to accept as Christian only monuments that contain the word Christ or Christian; even then there is probably one more to be added.4 If we loosen the criteria slightly, we will scarcely be rash to let in Steinepigramme 16/31/85 (ICG 1978), which speaks of ‘yearning for God’; Gibson, Christians for Christians, no. 25 (SEG XXVIII 1206; ICG 1265), which displays a cross; and, less clearly, MAMA VI 363 (ICG 1004), where the commentary notes that ‘the dove pecking grapes suggests Christianity’; Steinepigramme 16/31/14 (ICG 1977), ‘he completed the years that God gave him’.5 It remains the case that only a minority of instances are definitely or probably Christian. Are any pagan? Calder (in W. M. Calder and J. Keil, eds., Anatolian studies presented to William Hepburn Buckler, Manchester 1939, 26; cf. MAMA VI xviii) adduced as a pagan instance of the full formula an unpublished example from the upper Tembris valley ‘displaying the radiated god’; he later dramatically declared that ‘it has the distinction of being the only Anatolian formula of imprecation used both by Christians and by contemporary pagans in the same area’ (AnatSt 5, 1955, 36). His supposedly unpublished example is likely to be the stone, said to be ‘from Kutahya’, which found its way to Ankara and when published by Miltner in 19376 evoked the Roberts’ comment cited above. The question then becomes whether the presence of a bust of the sun is decisive proof that the monument bearing it is pagan. In relation to a monument bearing the ‘Eumenean formula’, Mitchell has opposed that conclusion, and Tabbernee expressed caution in the present case.7 If so, there is no certain pagan case of the full formula. One could not then be refuted if one claimed that only Christians used it. But the claim would be rash, for two reasons. There is no intrinsic reason why a pagan should have spurned it, since the appeal by ‘the god’ carried no monotheistic implications. More crucially, Phrygian

3.  To the list on ICG 1837 add 1834, 1838, 1977–8, and cf. the note on 109 (an abbreviated form). ICG 1356 (early third century) may be the earliest instance: see the note ad loc. 4.  U. Huttner (in Ameling, Christianisierung, 147), admitting only Gibson, Christians for Christians, nos. 28 (Steinepigramme 16/31/88; ICG 1269) and 29 (Steinepigramme 16/31/12, ICG 1270). One more: Gibson, no. 26 = SEG XXVIII 1207: as noted in SEG, the crucial phrase is absent from her printed text, doubtless in error, but clearly assumed in her commentary. Lykaonia: I. Mus. Konya 219 (ICG 325). 5.  SEG XV 800 (ICG 1361) can also be claimed because of a cross-shaped Chi (a disputed criterion, however: 129n51). 6.  ÖJh 30 (1937), Beiblatt, 57–58 no. 61; Pfuhl-Möbius Grabreliefs 173 no. 580; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions no. 65; ICG 1390. 7.  Mitchell, Anatolia II, 47n279; Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, 412.

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222      Appendix C

tombs very seldom depicted gods;8 there was normally no way in which a tomb that was in fact pagan would declare itself as such. For the related formula ἐνορκίζω (σοι) τὸν θέον and variants, see note on MAMA XI 142: it is Jewish, Christian and pagan. Calder claims τὸν οὐράνιον θεόν (just that) as a variant (MAMA VII xxxv on MAMA VIII 354).

8.  See 103 above.

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appendix d

Paganism and Montanism

The form of Christianity today known as Montanism (which emerged in the third quarter of the second century CE)1 was ‘the New Prophecy’ to its adherents, ‘the Kataphrygian Heresy’ to its orthodox critics. It had always been known that the two hamlets Pepuza and Tymion, where the movement had its origin and which Montanus spoke of as ‘Jerusalem’, were somewhere in western Phrygia. An early Montanist prophetess predicted (on the normal interpretation)2 that the (new) Jerusalem would descend just there, and recent evidence has at last allowed Pepuza and Tymion to be plausibly identified at either end of a large agricultural tableland which would make a good landing place for a heavenly city.3 Geographically, then, Montanism is certainly Phrygian by origin. But the question whether what it taught is also distinctively Phrygian has been much discussed:4 are its divergences from orthodox Christianity explicable from within that movement, or should we invoke influence from its pagan Phrygian ambience? Central to Montanism was the claim that prophecy had not ceased with the end of the apostolic age. New revelations had come through the mouths of Montanus and three prophetesses associated with him. It is controversial how important 1.  Ancient sources date its origin to two precise but discrepant dates, 156–57 and 171 CE: see most recently Mitchell, ‘Origins of Montanism’, 170–71. 2.  Epiphanius, Panarion, 49.1; but for a different possibility, see Trevett, Montanism, 96. 3.  See in brief W. Tabbernee, ‘Portals of the Montanist New Jerusalem: The Discovery of Pepouza and Tymion’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 11 (2003), 87–93; and at length now Tabbernee and P. Lampe, Pepouza and Tymion (Berlin, 2008). 4.  For the history of this debate, see Schepelern, Montanismus, 89–91; Strobel, Das Heilige Land, 292–98; Trevett, Montanism, 8–9.

223

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224      Appendix D

eschatological hopes and expectation of the new Jerusalem were for the new prophecy.5 Some, rather, see its main force as pushing the church in the direction of sterner discipline. Jerome’s letter to Marcella (Ep. 41) warning against Montanist snares provides a useful summary: ‘They bar the doors of the church to almost every kind of offender’ (sc. after baptism); they forbid second marriages, even after the death of the first spouse; they impose obligatory fasts on an exaggerated scale; their ecclesiastical hierarchy is bizarre, with bishops, Episkopoi, in only third rank, below the enigmatic koinonoi, above whom in turn are the patriarchs at Pepuza. Jerome inveighs against two of the prophetesses, ‘those insane women Priscilla and Maximilla’, but strangely fails to mention that Montanism also admitted female elders, presbyterai.6 Jerome goes on to speak of Montanus himself as ‘abscisus et semivir’, a castrated half-man, which is often taken to imply that he had once been a Gallus in the cult of Cybele. Calder argued that, though Montanus found little acceptance in cities, ‘he, or his successors, knew better how to appeal to a rustic population which had found vent for its religious emotion in the orgiastic ritual of Cybele.’7 But the orthodox speaker in an anonymous ‘Dialogue of a Montanist and an Orthodox Christian’ calls him a ‘priest of Apollo’ (and, a little later, ‘of an idol’).8 Although it might be possible to find a place where ‘Cybele’ (perhaps under another name) and Apollo are worshipped together, a castrated priest of Apollo is unthinkable. The two claims are incompatible; if we accept as more plausible the one that sounds less like straightforward negative stereotyping of ‘Phrygians’, we can make him a quondam priest of Apollo in the great cult of Apollo Lairbenos not so far from Pepuza.9 Montanist rigorism over sin might then be associated with the ‘confession inscriptions’ found in precisely that sanctuary of Apollo.10 But the gods of those inscriptions, savage though they are against those who offend them, are yet 5.  Strongly pro, Mitchell, ‘Origins of Montanism’, esp. 194–97; rather anti, Lane Fox, Pagans and Christians, 405–6, and Trevett, Montanism, 95–105. Trevett (121–29) also questions the supposed ‘Prophetic Zeal for Death’. 6.  The omission remains strange even if Mitchell (‘Origins of Montanism’, 196) is right that Ammion, the presbytera of his no. 3 (Tabbernee, Montanist Inscriptions, no. 4), attests the presence of female clergy in early orthodox groups. 7.  W. M. Calder, ‘Epigraphy of Phrygian Heresies’, in W. H. Buckler and Calder (eds.), Anatolian studies presented to Sir William Mitchell Ramsay (Manchester, 1923), 59–91, at 64–65. 8.  See R. E. Heine, The Montanist Oracles and Testimonia (North American Patristic Society, Patristic Monograph Series 14, 1989), 122, or A. M. Berruto Martone, Dialogo di un Montanista con un Ortodosso (Bologna, 1999), IV 5 and IV 6; first published by G. Ficker, Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte 26 (1905), 445–63. Didymus the Blind, De Trinitate 3 (Migne, PG 39. 989.16, 3.41.3 in the edition of J. Hönscheid and I. Seiler [Meisenheim, 1975]), likewise has him ἱερεύς πρῶτον εἰδώλου. 9.  So Strobel, Das Heilige Land, 46; if so, I do not see how (36) the link with Cybele can be maintained; the same impossibility in Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta, 74. 10.  Schepelern, Montanismus, 92–105; Strobel, Das Heilige Land, 240.

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Appendix D    225

willing to be appeased by those who acknowledge their power: Montanus’ God, we have seen, ‘bars the doors to almost every offender’. And the offences of the confession inscriptions, ritual infractions in the main, are not those with which Christian morality was mostly concerned. If Montanus was a priest of Apollo, not Cybele, then attempts to show him influenced, whether positively or negatively, by ‘the Great Spring Festival’ of Cybele would lose much of their force.11 But to establish that there was such a ‘Great Spring Festival’ in Phrygia is itself problematic. It is postulated by analogy with the elaborate rites of Magna Mater that occurred at that time in Rome and probably Pessinous. Where should such rites have come from if not from Phrygia? Yet not a scrap of evidence from Phrygia itself points to any such a celebration. There is a problem, we can concede, about the activities of Galloi, about the very phenomenon of ecstatic religion, in Phrygia. Galloi, though elusive, are not completely invisible.12 Yet it is hard to believe that a festival which, if it occurred, would have been one of the high spots of the year, should have vanished so comprehensively from the record. The movement began with a prophet and was immediately taken up by prophetesses. Prophets and prophetesses are, obviously, easy to find in the pagan world. But a Pythia giving answers to specific questions in Delphi can scarcely be seen as a forebear of Priscilla and Maximilla receiving spontaneous revelations in Pepouza.13 What would be needed to root these women in their environment would be antecedent evidence for ecstatic female prophecy in Phrygia. Christian prototypes are available (the daughters of Philip the Evangelist14), not pagan. Prophets attested in Phrygia before the fourth century CE are rare, male, and pre11.  But they are scarcely persuasive even on their own terms. Schepelern (Montanismus, 122–30) argues for ritual elements taken over from ‘die phrygischen Mysterien’ into Montanism; but the practices he compares show more differences than similarities. Strobel (Das Heilige Land, 250–55) argues that the Montanist Easter fast was deliberately made to coincide in time, but not in content, with Cybele’s festival. I cannot judge his difficult calendrical argument, but would have no reason to resist his conclusion that the Montanist Easter was perhaps ‘eine eindeutige Gegenfeier’ to the Phrygian spring festival (did I believe in the latter.) A point by point discussion of Strobel’s further claims (some entailing Montanism following, some opposing, practice in the cult of Cybele) would require too much space; I share Mitchell’s scepticism in his review (JThS 35 [1984], 225–27; cf. idem, Anatolia II, 40). An extreme form of the ‘nostalgia for Cybele’ argument is ‘What the Galli did in their supreme sacrifice in order to be united with their goddess, the Montanists did through martyrdom’ (S. Benko, quoted in Trevett, Montanism, 123). 12.  See page 77. 13.  This against Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta, 74–119. W. Tabbernee surprisingly begins his review (Journal of Early Christian Studies 14.4 [2006], 357–58) of this work with the claim ‘No longer can it be said that Montanism was unaffected by the pagan cults of Phrygia’. 14.  Acts 21:9; Euseb. Hist. Eccl. 3.37.1 (a valid parallel, however much disputed by the orthodox: e.g. Euseb. Hist. eccl. 5. 17.2–4). Huttner, Lycus Valley, 202–4, rightly stresses the total dissimilarity of the two prophetic traditions, and on 261–63 the relevance of Philip’s daughters.

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sumably tasked merely with answering questions put to them. ‘The relatively late Nanas inscription still speaks volumes’, it has been claimed,15 about the role of prophetesses in Phrygian popular religion. But Nanas is a Christian and very probably a Montanist! To conclude: repeated attempts, some cautious, some more radical,16 to trace significant pagan elements in Montanism, have failed: this was a ‘movement of purely Christian character’.17 One qualification to that formulation is needed, however: a strong continuing Jewish influence is also to be recognised.18

15.  Strobel, Das Heilige Land, 276–77, on Steinepigramme 16/41/15. 16.  Schepelern (Montanismus, e.g. 130, 159) supposed primitive Montanism to have been wholly Christian but to have been infiltrated later by pagan elements; Strobel (Das Heilige Land, 222–29) rejects the chronological distinction (so too by implication Hirschmann, Horrenda Secta) and speaks (295) of thorough indigenisation of the Christian message. 17.  K. Aland (Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 46 [1955], 109–16) reprinted in his Kirchengeschichtliche Entwürfe (Gütersloh, 1960): ’eine Bewegung rein christlichen Charakters’, quoted with approval by Trevett (Montanism, 9; cf. her page 91, on prophecy, as well as page 144). 18.  See Mitchell, ‘An Apostle to the New Jerusalem’, passim.

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appendix e

The prose inscription for Epitynchanos and family

Origin. Unknown, probably Upper Tembris valley. This is one of several stones owned by persons associated with the French railway, and apparently brought to them from uncertain origins up and down the line. Since ‘the ‘honouring by Hecate’ that the stone mentions is otherwise known only from the Upper Tembris valley, the presumption is that it came southwards down the line to the station master at Otourak from there.1 For a description of the monument and photos (taken from the edition of F. Cumont)2 see Steinepigramme 16/31/10, which follows their study in EpigAnat 31 (1999), 157–62; for new photos see EpigAnat 36 (2003), 151–52. It is a very rough piece of work. Face A contains three carved figures (the latter two mutilated) one above the other: a small Helios, what is said to be a horseman with a double ax, and a head and shoulders bust of a figure apparently holding a key.3 The text normally just jumps across these insets,4 which leave little space on either side, and so it becomes very hard to read: the word χρησμοδοτῖν, for instance, appears as χρησ [line break] μο [relief] δοτι [line break] ν. Side B con1.  Waelkens, ‘Privatdeifikation’, 285. 2.  Catalogue des sculptures et inscriptions antiques des Musées royaux du Cinquantenaire (Brussels, 1913), no. 136. 3.  Cumont takes the bust as Hecate and the horseman as the Heliodromos: ‘Nous aurions ainsi les trois divinités auxquelles Épitynchanos, suivant l’inscription, a été initié successivement’. Steinepigramme echoes him, even to the point of misrendering ‘honoured by’ as ‘initiated by’. This is far from compelling. Helios often appears high on a relief; this is no way to represent ‘Apollo Archegetes oraclegiver’. To judge from photoes, the other two identifications are equally arbitrary: the bottom figure might well be male, possibly Epitynchanos; for Hirschmann (EpigAnat 36 [2003], 148) it is lion-headed Phanes. 4.  But the text intrudes at the bottom of the space marked off for the ‘horseman’.

227

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tains a single inset in a crown, its image now completely chiselled out and replaced by a cross. The treatment of the inset is different here: around the inset the text divides, so to speak, into two columns for seven lines, the whole left column to be read before the right, and resumes as a single line of continuous text after the inset. Different again is side C, where, apart from the heading, the (short) text keeps to the right of the main, now defaced, reliefs (only an eagle is visible). Side D was uninscribed: it shows a standing man with a chlamys thrown over his shoulder; according to Cumont he holds a purse and the caduceus, so is probably Hermes. T H E P R O SE T E X T

Side A

I, immortal Epitynchanos son of Pios, honoured first by Hekate, secondly by Manes Daos, solar runner of Zeus,5 thirdly by Phoibos Archegetes oracle-giver. Truly I received a gift of prophesying truths in my homeland, and within the boundaries6 of prophesying, legislating, within the boundaries prophesying to all. This I have as a gift from all the immortals. For7 immortal supreme high priest Pios, who had fair children, and for my mother Tatie [ ],8 who bore fair children—a fine title!—9 [such as?] immortal supreme high priest Epitynchanos, saviour of his homeland, lawgiver 5.  So articulated by Cumont, Grégoire, ‘Maximin Daia’, (the best discussion of the text), and Robert, Et. Anat., 132n2. A. B. Cook (Zeus [Cambridge, 1914–40], II i, 312n5) had understood Manes Daos Heliodromos as titles of Zeus, and Robert (Doc. Asie Min., 428n8) reverts to that view (no reasons given); so too Mitchell, Anatolia II, 47. The translation in Steinepigramme leaves both options open. Grant’s suggestion (‘Maximin’, 157) that ‘Manos Dios . . . may even be Maximin Daia himself, named Manos Daos because he is dead and divine’ does not commend itself. Grégoire ingeniously notes that Manes is a primeval king of Lydia and Phrygia and that Daos is Greek for Dacian: ‘Le créateur—quel qu’il fût—du culte trinitaire et syncrétique attesté par l’inscription d’Otourak, a voulu marquer la communauté ethnique des Phrygiens et des Daco-Thraces (dont on n’avait pas cessé d’avoir conscience), et leur donner, sous le double nom de Manès-Daos, un dieu national commun.’ This would, he argues, have been particularly salient at a time when Dacia/Thrace remained a centre of resistance to Christianity. For an elaborate interpretation in terms of syncretistic mysteries, see V. Hirschmann, EpigAnat 36 (2003), 137–52. 6.  ‘Innerhalb der Grenzen’, Merkelbach and Stauber, Steinepigramme; ‘dans les limites [de la cité]’, Cumont and Grégoire; ‘innerhalb der Grenzen (des Heiligtums)’, Hirschmann, EpigAnat 36 (2003), 138n5, with inconclusive parallels (because there an added genitive specifies what the boundaries are). Which verb the following repetition of the phrase goes with is unclear. 7.  Merkelbach and Stauber (Steinepigramme) render the dative here ‘next to’ and supply a main verb later, ‘we set up’, so Epitynchanos is being ‘set up’ next to Pios: but this is not a statue group. The dative is the normal dative used in indicating the beneficiary of a funeral monument. 8.  The stone gives ΕΡΙ, widely supplemented to (ἱ)ερί(ῃ), ‘priestess’?, but by Grégoire to τρὶς, ‘the third’ of that name. 9.  Literally ‘a fair name’: I use the dashes, questionably, to fit in this phrase which otherwise floats unconnected (‘die werte Person’, Steinepigramme; ‘au nom favorable’, Cumont; simply omitted by Grégoire on the first occurrence, ‘au beau nom’ on the second).

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Appendix E    229 Side B

In the year 398 and observing the commands of the immortals, and I am the one saying all this, immortal Epitynchanos, who was initiated by the fair high priest of the people—a fine title!—Spatale, whom the immortal gods honoured both within the boundaries and beyond the boundaries, for she ransomed/rescued many from dire tortures. High priest Epitynchanos honoured by immortal gods. He was consecrated by Diogas and Epitynchanos and his daughter-in-law [?]10 Tation and their children Onesimos and Alexander and Asklas and Epitynchanos. Side C

Immortal supreme high priests, full brothers, Diogas and Epitynchanos, saviours of their homeland, lawgivers. The first question to ask about this monument is how to classify it. Cumont lists it as ‘Dédicace relative à la célébration de mystères’; but a dedication needs a divine recipient, and this text has none. The heading in Steinepigramme is ‘Kaiserpriester Epitynchanos’. This suggests, correctly, that it is funerary, but introduces a role as ‘Kaiserpriester’ which has no support in the text. It is indeed primarily a funerary monument for Epitynchanos, but of a complicated and an unusual kind. Sides A and (up to ‘dire tortures’) B are supposedly spoken by Epitynchanos Piou, as he explains at the start of B. Although he talks much about himself, it emerges at the end of A that he is commemorating his parents Pios and Tatie, who appear in the dative regularly used ‘for’ (i.e. in memory of, to honour) dead persons. But halfway through side B he moves from subject to object: he himself has been ‘consecrated’ (i.e. given funeral rites) by Diogas and Epitynchanos II and others. On side C Diogas and Epitynchanos II, in turn, speak briefly about themselves. There is no sign that the monument was created in two stages, first by Epitynchanos Piou for his parents, then for him by Diogas and Epitynchanos II: the shift from Epitynchanos Piou as subject to him as object occurs within a single line. Rather, as it seems, the monument created by Diogas and Epitynchanos II enfolds within it a dedication supposedly addressed by Epitynchanos Piou to his own parents. One might compare another monument from the same region where Ammia and her husband commemorate the death of both Ammia’s parents and two of their own children: both Ammia’s father and one of her daughters are given speaking parts.11 What lies behind such multi-purpose monuments—whether no suitable monument had been erected for those who died earlier at the time of their death, or 10.  See P. Thonemann in Roman Phrygia, 132–33. But Chuvin (Chronique, 169) has ‘son épouse’. 11.  Steinepigramme 16/31/93 (ICG 1689).

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whether the new monument supplemented or replaced a predecessor—we can only guess. The family relations have caused some difficulty.12 The monument to Epitynchanos (I) is set up by (inter alios) Diogas and Epitynchanos (II) (side B). Side C speaks of Diogas and an Epitynchanos as full brothers. If they are the same Diogas and Epitynchanos as on side B, they will both be sons of Epitynchanos (I).13 But theoretically the Epitynchanos of side C might be Epitynchanos I, in which case Diogas would be his brother and the Diogas and Epitynchanos of side B would be respectively brother and ? son to Epitynchanos I.14 But this has nothing to commend it except that the brothers of side C are hailed as ‘saviours of their fatherland, lawgivers’, as is Epitynchanos I on side A. That proves little, however, in a text that throws compliments around very freely. It is neater to suppose that the Diogas and Epitynchanos of side B who erect the monument (amid a cluster of other kin) on side B step forward to praise themselves on side C. An expression combining the words ‘immortal’, ‘first’, ‘high priest’ and a proper name or names occurs three times in the inscription, though with variations in the order of the elements: applied first to Pios, then to Epitynchanos, then to the brothers Diogas and Epitynchanos. Grégoire takes ‘immortal’ as a kind of ‘first name’, which is attractive, though unparalleled, when ‘immortal’ precedes the proper name directly (A 1, B 2) but untenable when divided from it (C 1–3), and so to be rejected throughout. The ‘immortal, ‘first’, ‘high priest’ and proper name or names’ grouping should doubtless be taken in the same sense in each occurrence.15 Since ‘first’ is applied to members of the family who were not temporally first (that was Pios), it cannot, in their case, be temporal; the whole expression must mean something like ‘immortal supreme high priest’.16 The date, 313/14 CE, has played a crucial part in discussion of the monument. This puts it just after the period (306–12) in which Maximinus Daia was (intermittently) persecuting Christians and attempting to revive paganism. One of his chief 12.  I have not seen E. de Stoop, Revue de l’instruction publique en Belgique 52 (1909), 293–306, cited on this point by Cumont. 13.  So the Stemma in Cumont, presumably taken from de Stoop, and followed by Grégoire. 14.  So, roughly, Steinepigramme, though it treats the relation of Epitynchanos II to I as unclear and flirts with the idea that he might be son to Diogas, i.e. a nephew to Epitynchanos I. The translation in Steinepigramme imports chaos by making the Epitynchanos of side C Epitynchanos II; by their own logic he should be Epitynchanos I. 15.  This against Cumont and Grégoire, who render A 6–7 ‘who gave birth to fair children, and first of all Athanatos Epitynchanos, high-priest.’ 16.  Belayche, ‘Maximin Daia’, 254, speaks of ‘first high-priest’ as a ‘formule d’éloge bien attestée’. For ‘first priests’, see page 30 (the force is not entirely clear); for ‘first high-priest’ she cites just C. Arruntius Nicomachus Tiberinianus of Temenothyrai (BCH 17 [1893], 265–66 no 50, ‘first high-priest of his patris’), where Frija (Prêtres des empereurs, 54n141) tentatively allows the possibility that the high priesthood was a late creation and Arruntius the first holder; ‘of his patris’ may support that view.

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Appendix E    231

measures concerned priesthoods, but our sources do not quite agree on details. According to Eusebius, he created ‘priests’ ‘in every place’ and in addition a person of great standing as ‘high priest’ in every province (Hist. Eccl. 8.14.9; 9.4.2); but Lactantius speaks of ‘sacerdotes maximi’ in each town and over them for each province a yet higher grade of ‘quasi pontifices’ (De mort. pers. 36. 4–5). Lactantius dates this measure at a very late stage, whereas Eusebius, although giving no date, introduces it at the start of his account of Maximin’s activities; Lactantius’ late dating is favoured by most modern scholars, who interpret it as 311.17 Epitynchanos and his fellows become examples of Maximin’s new appointees if we follow Lactantius in allowing these, even at the local level, the title of ‘high priest’; we could imagine a structure whereby, by analogy with the imperial cult, the local functionary was simply ‘high priest’, the provincial ‘high priest of [e.g.] Asia’. But we have to fit ‘high priests’ belonging to at least two, probably three, generations (depending on the view we take of the brothers Diogas and Epitynchanos of side C) in a period extending at most from 306 to 313 and on the dominant view only from 311 to 313. That is obviously very awkward. Awkward, too, is the coexistence of what looks like a pair of high priests, the full brothers Diogas and Epitynchanos of side C.18 Nor does anything reported about Maximin’s high priests prepare us for the extraordinary title ‘immortal first high priest’. But that is unique on any view. By the date of the inscription Maximin had been defeated, had abandoned his antiChristian policy, and was probably dead.19 The pagan structures Maximin set in place are unlikely to have outlived him for very long. If our inscription does refer to them, it is their epitaph too. The ‘rescuing of many from dire tortures’ by Spatale has been greatly discussed. Cumont understands ‘from the torments of the future life’, and adds that this explains the title ‘immortal’ claimed by the high priests. Calder supposed that Spatale rescued Christians from torture by persuading them to apostasize. Grégoire gives the phrase multiple referents: he accepts both Cumont’s and Calder’s views and adds that she also intervened with persecuting authorities on behalf of obstinate Christians. Robert supposes simply that she was a miraculous healer.20 17.  See Belayche, ‘Maximin Daia’, 239–41. 18.  They are claiming the title simultaneously if identical with the Diogas and Epitynchanos II of side B. But on the stemma of Steinepigramme one could suppose that Diogas succeeded Epitynchanos I as high priest. The view of Grégoire (‘Maximin Daia’, 53) that Maximin’s provincial high priests came in twos, is strange, given ‘singulos’ in Lact. De mort. pers. 36. 5; ‘utrosque’ (ibid.) must mean ‘both civic and provincial’ high priests, as taken by J. L. Creed in his edition (ad loc.). 19.  As stressed by Grégoire (‘Maximin Daia’, 51). Eusebius (Hist. Eccl. 9.10.6) says even that in his last phase Maximin turned against and executed his own pagan priests and prophets: no hint of this in our text. 20.  W. M. Calder, JRS 2 (1912), 240; so too Mitchell, Anatolia II, 47n274. See Robert, Doc. Asie Min., 584n8.

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232      Appendix E

Trouble in this life is more likely than in the next, given the confidence of the claim; what the troubles were we would need to know more of her history to judge. The monument, we saw, is believed to come from the Upper Tembris valley. So does another, again commemorating an Epitynchanos.21 This is a work of very different character, sixteen lines of mostly competent, if elaborate and pretentious, elegiacs. It declares that he now ‘takes delight in’ the stars in whose ways he was expert. The implication seems to be that he now resides among them, which is a common funerary motif, though at the end of the poem he has ‘reached the dark owed to all.’ He was, we are told, a prophet who revealed truth to men about past, present and future; he was also a citizen of many cities, and left sons who were his equals. He resembles the other Epitynchanos, above all in his claim to be a prophet; the other Epitynchanos, too, probably had sons who followed in his path. The identification of the two Epitynchanoi, now widely accepted,22 goes back to Ramsay (Phrygia, 790), though his argument is somewhat incoherent: ‘The date [of the metrical epitaph] is evidently late third century (to judge from style and lettering); and no. 467 [the prose text] may be a little later, being dated 315.’ It is already a problem for one man to have two epitaphs; but for a man who has one epitaph dated to 313/4 (‘315’ was a slip), and who, ex hypothesi, was an agent of Maximin Daia’s activities in the period from 306 to 312, to have already received an epitaph of ‘late third century’ date is unusual indeed. The chronological problem can be resolved by redating the verse epitaph to about 313 (so Steinepigramme); the stone is lost, so control of the letter forms is impossible. But the problem of two epitaphs for one man remains.

21.  ‘Das Epigramm auf Epitynchanos’, Steinepigramme 16/31/10, 240–22. Steinepigramme (III 241) states on the supposed authority of Ramsay that this text like the prose epitaph had travelled down the railway. But the editors have apparently confused it with a different stone, SEG XLI 1171, which Ramsay saw at the station at Banaz (REA 3 [1901], 276). Ramsay copied the verse epigram at ‘Doghan-Arslan in the territory of the Praepenisseis’ in 1881 (Phrygia, 790), where it was later seen and copied by the eventual editor Souter (CR 11 [1897], 136–37 no. 6: ‘at ‘Doghan Arslan near Spore of the Prepenisseis’). Spore is tentatively located at Barr. 62 C 3, still in the Upper Tembris valley. 22.  So e.g. Mitchell, Anatolia II, 47; Steinepigramme III, 240, ‘offensichtlich für denselben Mann’.

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appendix f

Iconography and ‘recovering the indigenous’

I begin by discussing the type of stiff hieratic depiction of gods and more particularly goddesses widely found in western and southern Anatolia: the quintessential example of such an idol is the image to be seen on almost every postcard stand in Greece and Turkey of Artemis of Ephesus. Ephesus, though a Greek city, is generally and plausibly believed to have had pre-Greek antecedents; the cult itself has many traits not found in mainland cults of Artemis, so the idea that iconography here opens a window to the pre-Greek world is credible in itself. But I start rather with Zeus Lepsynos of Euromos of Caria, to make the point that the famous protuberances on the chest have nothing to do with breasts (though, in the case of Artemis, this was already so understood in late antiquity).1 His temple is used as a place for document display in the Hellenistic period in the usual way, but coins of (perhaps) the first century CE (fig. 10.1) present him as a pillar-like figure whose entire front is covered by protuberances; his stiffly projecting arms hold a double ax and a lance.2 Such an iconography is often taken as conclusive for the real nature of the god: the Hellenic facade slips, and something raw and indigenous is revealed. Similar ‘idols’ 1.  E.g. in Min. Fel. Oct. 23.5; cf. Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos, 75n6; L. R. LiDonnici, HThR 85 (1992), 392n11. LiDonnici suggests (404–8) that the reinterpretation as breasts may have been shared by Ephesians in late antiquity. 2.  Coins: see e.g. RPC I 2799, with page 461. For more details, see Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 166–69; Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos, 324–26. The statue (between Dioscuri hats) is already visible on a Hellenistic bronze: Delrieux, Monnaies de la basse vallée de l’ Harpasos, pl. 28. 35. Inscriptions guarantee Lepsynos as epithet of the main Zeus at Euromos (l. lasos 151.13; SEG XLIII 709.15), though the only attestation on a coin is an old and apparently uncontrollable reading as ‘Zeus Euromeus’ (Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 169).

233

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(1)

(4)

(2)

(5)

(3)

(6)

(7)

(8)

(9)

(10)

(11)

(12)

(13)

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Appendix F    235

are seen on the coins of many other cities of Caria and other regions. Among others whose image startles the classical eye one might mention Artemis of Perge: on coins of the second century BCE a rectangular block surmounted by a head with a kalathos and veil, on later coins reduced to a decorated block with rounded top and kalathos (fig. 10. 2); Kore (or Artemis) of Sardis, who resembles a Dalek (fig. 10. 3, a coin of Silandos); the stiff twin figures, their bodies covered in breast-like buckles, of the two Aphroditai Kastnietides of Aspendos (fig. 10.4).3 A first point to make is that, as usual, such idols are identified as indigenous merely because they do not look Greek; we cannot locate them securely in a continuous indigenous tradition, though this might be because predecessors were made of perishable materials. This point, the lack of clear antecedents, was insisted on by the author of the standard study of all such depictions, Robert Fleischer;4 and even if recent discoveries in the sanctuary of Artemis at Ephesus are bringing us closer to the first form of her statue, it still cannot be placed within a tradition.5 3.  Artemis of Perge: Lacroix, Statues sur les monnaies, 154–60, with pl. XIII. 5–15; Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos, 233–54; Kore of Sardis: Lacroix, 160–67, with pl. XIV. 1–13; Fleischer, 187–201, with his acceptance of Kore in Friesinger and Krinzinger (eds.), 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos, 606; Aphroditai of Aspendos: Fleischer, 254–58; Lacroix, 145 with pl. XII. 1–4; Robert, Hellenica XI–XII, 177–88. 4.  Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos, with supplements in E. Schwertheim et al. (eds.), Studien zur Religion und Kultur Kleinasiens (FS F. K. Dörner, Leiden, 1978) I, 324–58 and Friesinger/Krinzinger (eds.), 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos, 605–9. 5.  K. Radner (‘Kompositstatuen vom Typus der Ephesia aus dem vorkroisoszeitlichen Heiligtum’, in Kosmos der Artemis, 233–63) argues that ivory pieces found in pre-Croesus layers in the sanctuary come from such multi-material, dress-wearing idols; she compares depictions of the cult statues of conquered peoples as depicted in neo-Assyrian reliefs of the eighth/seventh century BCE (which are similar in probable size but not close in details). U. Muss, in Friesinger/Krinzinger (eds.), 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos, 597–603, while stressing that the base of the statue has been found, affirms no more of its appearance than ‘Kultbild mit Schmuckbehang’.

figure 10 (opposite) . Iconography of gods on coins. 1. Zeus Lepsynos, British Museum. © Trustees of the British Museum. 2. Artemis of Perge. Paris 563. © BnF, Dept. Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques. 3. Kore of Sardis. Paris 1984/739 (Loriot). © BnF, Dept. Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques. 4 Aphrodites of Aspendos: Berlin 18268193 (Löbbecke 1906). © Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 5. Zeus Labraundos on coin of Mylasa. © American Numismatic Society. 6. Zeus Labraundos on coin of Mylasa. Harlan Berk 180 (2012) 577. 7. Kore of Sardis with Artemis of Ephesus. Berlin 18203591 (Fox 1873) © Münzkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin. 8. Athena Ilias. Roma Numismatics Electronic Sale 18 (2015) 655. 9. Artemis Astyrene. Leu Numismatik, web auction 15 (2021) 28311 9. Artemis Astyrene. Leu Numismatik, web auction 15 (2021) 28311. 10. Zeus Osogollis. Gemini II (2006), 394. 11. Zeus of Halicarnassus. Yale 2011.155.1 © Yale University Art Gallery (public domain). 12. Zeus Areios of Hydisos. Savoca Blue 9 (2018) 929. 13. Two Zeuses at Keramos. New York 1971.230.43. © American Numismatic Society.

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A hypothesis about the protuberances that cover the front of the goddess and, in various measure, that of other Anatolian deities, has found some acceptance. They cannot be breasts: they lack nipples and are found, as we have seen, in less profuse form on gods as well as goddesses. They are instead, it is suggested, the scrota of bulls sacrificed in honour of the deity and hung on a series of strings: a modern mock-up of an idol hung with scrota does indeed show a remarkable resemblance to the great goddess of the Ephesians in her canonical depiction. But the picture evoked of bull sacrifice on a massive scale in the sanctuary at Ephesus is shown to be imaginary by the archaeozoological evidence: most of the sacrificial remains are from goats.6 The visual similarity between the protuberances and bulls’ scrota remains very striking. But even if the hypothesis is correct, this remains a form of depiction that emerges for us from nowhere, without identifiable antecedents. The main problem is the significance of such ‘idols’ in the eyes of their worshippers. A point needs to be made about the chronology of such depictions. Robert has urged us to learn from the portrayals of an unnamed goddess on the coinage of Kidrama. A long series of depictions shows a standing figure with high coiffure and veil, arms outstretched, devoid of attributes. These constants suggest that the same goddess, no doubt the city’s greatest, is represented in every case. But in other respects the treatment changes, always in the direction of archaism. Under Augustus (or perhaps Caligula), she stands freely, a Greek goddess, not a statue. Under Claudius, she has become a statue of archaic aspect: her arms project stiffly from the side of her body, her legs are held tight together. Under Hadrian, ‘the idol becomes still more hieratic’: the lower body is tightly swathed, with two vertical rows of protuberances down the front.7 The phenomenon is commonplace: in Harpasa and Neapolis of Harpasos, for instance, Artemis mutates between the Hellenistic period and the early empire from a free-standing huntress to an Artemis ‘of Ephesian type’; at lasos, a single coin from the time of Commodus (?) substitutes a stiff idol for the graceful, active Artemises who have hitherto domi6.  The theory: G. Seiterle, AncW 10.3 (1979), 3ff., with the discussion by R. Fleischer, AA (1983), 81–93, esp. 86–87 on the sacrificial remains (on these cf. in brief M. Legilloux in Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum [Los Angeles, 2004], I, 75). Fleischer observes that scrota can be procured by castration without sacrifice. The theory is doubted by U. Muss, in Friesinger/Krinzinger (eds.), 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos (602n46), rejected by L. R. LiDonnici (HThR 85 [1992], 393) and S. P. Morris (in Kosmos der Artemis, 135–52, at 142 [she thinks rather of the leather bag kurša repeatedly mentioned in texts from Boğazköy]). Other deities with ‘breasts’: R. Fleischer, AA (1983), 87–88. 7.  Robert, La Carie II, 369, on what are now RPC I 2874; 2876, 2879 (cf. II 1259); III 2285–87. Cf. Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos, 301–2. It is debated (Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 519, citing Robert) whether the goddess within a temple on RPC VI 5391 temp. (now assigned to Elagabalus), shown in similar posture but with Greek clothing and a serpent at her feet, is a different goddess: if the same, there is a reversion to Greek dress.

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nated the coinage.8 Many gods and goddesses on the frieze of the temple of Hecate at Lagina (second–first centuries BCE) are impeccably Hellenic: attempts have been made to find Carian gods there, but what is most striking is the complete absence of the distinctive iconographies known later from coins.9 A partial explanation is, it is true, readily available: the cult statue had always been the same, indigenous, but the earlier die-engravers preferred to give a free rendition of the idea of the goddess conceived in Greek terms. That partial explanation will certainly, in some cases, be applicable: one may compare, for instance, the free-moving Zeus figure seen on coins of Hekatomnos and Maussollos, Carian in nothing except the double ax which he bears, with the much more hieratic ‘many-breasted’ Zeus shown on a contemporary relief.10 The Zeus Labraundeus of Mylasa, too, takes a sharp turn towards archaism between coins of the fourth century BCE and the imperial period (fig. 10. 5, 6). But the case of Aphrodite of Aphrodisias shows that a genuine archaic original does not lie behind every depiction on a late coin of an ancient-seeming statue. Known from many imitations and coins, the Aphrodite of Aphrodisias at first glance bears a broad resemblance to Ephesian Artemis: she is stiffly frontal, veiled, with arms projecting forwards; and her front is covered anti-naturalistically with four bands of figures in relief. Yet the second of these bands depicts the Three Graces in familiar Hellenistic guise; for all her stiffness, Aphrodite of Aphrodisias is a Hellenistic creation, and the conception of the goddess as presented in the four bands slots comfortably into general Hellenistic understandings of her powers.11 Except in the rare cases where an earlier depiction survives, it will usually be impossible to determine whether a statue shown on a coin is genuinely archaic, or archaizing.12 It remains true that, from a certain point, the cities were keen to portray their gods and goddesses (or some of the time, for ‘freestyle’ depictions remain very

8.  Harpasa etc.: Delrieux, Monnaies de la basse vallée de l’ Harpasos, 205. Artemis at lasos: Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 597 with pl. XV.3 = RPC IV 2 905 temp. (cf. Laumonier, 596 for the earlier coins), Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos, 228–29 with plate 92a. The differences between her image and that of the Artemis of Bargylia (linked by a shared miracle: Polybius 16.12.3) are very slight. At Mylasa, Zeus ‘goes Anatolian’ under Titus (RPC II 1197, though cf. the freer 1198). 9.  Attempts: A. Schober, Der Fries des Hekateions von Lagina (Baden bei Wien, 1933), 78; absence: P. Baumeister, Der Fries des Hekateions von Lagina (Istanbul, 2007), 63–64; cf. F. Queyrel, Gnomon 81 (2009), 632. 10.  Coins: BMC Caria, plate XXVIII. Relief: Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, plate III.2; Cook, Zeus, ii, 593 fig. 497 (IG V 2 89); Vollkommer, ‘Zeus in Anatolien’, 383 no. 142. 11.  L. R. Brody, The Aphrodite of Aphrodisias (Mainz, 2007), argues (95–96) that she was created in the range early second to first centuries BCE; she doubts (93) whether she had a predecessor. Hellenistic understandings: see ibid., 85–93. 12.  Lacroix, Statues sur les monnaies, 35, 151; on the chronology of statue representation on coins, see ibid., 192–96.

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common13) after this fashion. Yet these stiff idols of exotic aspect cannot have signified to them what they do to us. To us they say ‘indigenous, un-Greek’; yet the last thing inhabitants of Carian cities under the Roman Empire would have wished to do is to ascribe to themselves barbarian origins. Presumably the message was rather ‘traditional, ancestral, authentic’; what we read as an opposition between indigenous and Hellenic conceptions of deity, they would have seen as one between ancient and modern. The dream interpreter Artemidorus argued that it was good for ‘those who have chosen a more dignified lifestyle’ to dream of an Artemis depicted in a restrained style, such as the Ephesian or Pergaian Artemis.14 The same impulse is at work here as led to the emergence of the conception of the xoanon as a peculiarly ancient form of divine image.15 The xoana shown on the coins were put there to testify that the devotion of the Carian cities had deep roots. They also testified to the particularity of the individual city’s cults. They do not tell us what conception the citizens who handled those coins entertained of those gods’ powers. The gods on the coins, though they are cult images, are not cult images in action, in interaction with worshippers. They are symbols rather of local identity, a function that becomes explicit on ‘Homonoia coins’ that show the cult images of the two allied cities confronting one another: Kore of Sardis and Artemis of Ephesus, for instance (fig. 10. 7).16 The same processes can occasionally be seen where no continuing indigenous traditions can be postulated. Under Marcus Aurelius the Athena Ilias of Ilion turns into an idol of strikingly Carian aspect (fig. 10. 8).17 But let us concede that, in a majority of cases, the non-Hellenic iconographies revealed on coins of the imperial period are not archaizing pastiches but have early origins, as can occasionally be proved; a hieratic image of Zeus Labraundos appears on a fourth-century BCE relief, and it has recently been joined by an image of Artemis of Astyra on a coin issued by the satrap Tissaphernes (fig. 10. 9).18 What, then, do we 13.  Examples are numerous: note e.g. even Aphrodite of Aphrodisias, RPC IV 2 41, 43, 2442 (all these ‘temporary’); RPC II 1197–98 (Mylasa) gives two contemporary Zeuses, one stiff, one free form. 14.  ἀεὶ δὲ ἡ μὲν Ἀγροτέρα καὶ Ἐλαφηβόλος πρὸς πράξεις ἐπιτηδειοτέρα τῆς κατὰ ἄλλον τρόπον δεδημιουργημένης· τοῖς δὲ σεμνότερον ἐπανῃρημένοις βίον ἡ κατεσταλμένη τῷ σχήματι ἀμείνων, οἷον ἡ Ἐφεσία καὶ ἡ Περγαία καὶ ἡ λεγομένη παρὰ Λυκίοις Ἐλευθέρα: 2.35, page 159 Pack. 15.  A. A. Donohue, Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture (Atlanta, 1988); cf. Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos, 406, and especially the supposed dictum of Aeschylus cited in Porph. Abst. 2.18 that artless old cult images are held to be more divine than their more skilfully crafted successors. 16.  P. R. Franke and M. K. Nollé, Die Homonoia-Münzen Kleinasiens (Saarbrücken, 1997). 17.  RPC IV 2 95, 108 (both temporary). But the case of an ‘Anatolian’ version of Athena Nikephoros at Pergamum (G. le Rider, RN 15 [1973], 66–79) is different, because antedating 168/67 BCE. Cult places of un-Hellenic aspect are depicted on coins in the same period: Talloen, Cult in Pisidia, 55–57. On pride in antiquity, cf. C. P. Jones, ‘Multiple identities in the age of the Second Sophistic’, in B. Borg (ed.), Paideia; the World of the Second Sophistic (Berlin, 2008), 13–22, at 20–21. 18.  AA (1985), 587–94, with abb. 1–3; cf. R. Fleischer in Friesinger/Krinzinger (eds.), 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos, fig. 151.4. Relief: above, n. 10.

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learn? We learn that at a point in the past which we cannot determine images of the gods were created which depicted them in these ways. We guess that in many cases the image was created at a time when its worshippers did not speak Greek and knew little or nothing of Greek conceptions of the gods. What we do not learn is that those pre-Greek conceptions of the god in question persisted merely because the pre-Greek (if that is what it was)19 physical image survived. Conceptions of gods in human heads update themselves constantly; physical objects remain obstinately unchanged. I turn to a different aspect of the problem. It is a recurrent issue in the study of polytheism to know how a given god honoured under epithet A relates to the same god honoured under epithet B. Are they like branches of the same chain store in different towns, or do they have different powers? Or do the different possibilities apply in different cases? Iconographic evidence may be relevant to this issue. Careful modern numismatists scrupulously identify the differences between one god and another and between the same god under different epithets that are reproduced, more or less systematically, on the coins: differences of dress and posture and attributes and associated sacred animals. Such differentiations can be illustrated from a selection of the Zeuses of Caria. (The Zeuses of Phrygia are not differentiated in the same kind of way.) Zeus Osogollis of Mylasa stands relaxedly with a trident in his right hand, an eagle perched on his left, with a crab at his feet (fig. 10. 10); he can be radiate.20 The bearded Zeus of Halicarnassus stands between trees with birds (fig. 10. 11). Zeus Areios of Hydisus is a standing military figure in short tunic, cloak and helmet, shield in his left hand, a brandished spear in his right, an eagle at his feet (fig. 10. 12). On a coin of Iasos of the second century CE appears a bearded Herm which has been identified as Zeus Megistos. Zeus Pigindenos, it has been suggested, was shown with a grape-cluster.21 And the list could continue, for Zeus and for other deities. We can note in passing that these iconographic distinctions are not confined to inland Caria but extend, in the case of Zeus, to two coastal cities conventionally regarded as Greek—Halicarnassus and Iasos. These carefully preserved distinctions certainly reflect important perceived differences between the god of one sanctuary and another, even where both bear the same divine name. A coin of Keramos apparently shows two differently portrayed Zeuses greeting one another (fig. 10. 13).22 These differences are the visual equiva19.  It needs to be remembered how little we really know of the xoana of early Greece: cf. R. Fleischer in Friesinger/Krinzinger (eds.), 100 Jahre Österreichische Forschungen in Ephesos, 607, on Hera of Samos. 20.  A. Akarca, Les monnaies grecques de Mylasa (Paris, 1959), 33–45 (Labraundos), 46–49 (Osogollis). 21.  Halicarnassus: e.g. RPC III 1321, 2149, 2153; Hydisus: RPC III 2208, cf. II 1195; Iasos: RPC IV 2 2731 temp.; cf. Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 599. Zeus Pigindenos: 188n58. 22.  RPC IV 2 871 temp., taken to show Keramos’ own Zeus Labraundos with Zeus Chrysaoreus of the Chrysaorean confederacy of which (Strabo 14.2.25, 660) Keramos was the dominant member (on Zeus Chrysaoreus, see J. O. Schaefer, De Iove apud Cares culto [Halis Saxonum, 1912], 436–37; Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 204–5, 333).

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lent of the differentiating epithet; they embody the familiar local fragmentation of the single divine figure. Very probably, many of these iconographic differentiations go back much further than we can presently trace them. A drastic conclusion would be that ‘Zeus’ was heir to many different indigenous deities, or, less drastically, to an indigenous deity already worshipped under sharply differentiated aspects. But two difficulties face us in trying to exploit these images for religious history. First is the point that an iconography may remain fixed even when conceptions of the god’s power change; second is that, in order to know what an iconography may have meant to a worshipper, we normally need indigenous exegesis, and this we lack. In a majority of cases, we do not know whether a difference in local iconography reflected mere local particularism, or a god of genuinely different powers. The trees and birds that accompany Zeus of Halicarnassus doubtless mean something, but what?23 Is this an allusion to a minor local myth, or something more radical? Just occasionally one can make a more confident claim. The crab, trident and eagle of Zeus Osogollis point to that same blend of authority both on land and at sea also expressed in his unique composite name Zenoposeidon: the eagle belongs to Zeus, the crab and trident to Poseidon.24 That example may encourage one to see the Zeus Areios of Hydisus, who is depicted as a martial figure, as a similar composite power. But how important in cult practice were the distinctive traits of such figures is impossible to say.

23.  An oracular function according to Laumonier, Cultes indigènes, 631. 24.  See Parker, Greek Gods Abroad, 94.

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biblio graphy

Abbreviations of journals are those used in the American Journal of Archaeology, available at http://www.ajaonline.org/submissions/abbreviations. Abbreviations of ancient authors and standard reference works are taken from S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (ed.), The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 4th edn. (Oxford, 2012); abbreviations of epigraphical corpora and works publishing many inscriptions are taken from GrEpiAbbr, REG 133 (2020), 652–76 (also available at https://aiegl.org/grepiabbr.html). Some additions to these abbreviations appear below. What follows is not a list of all works mentioned in the notes, but of those cited by an abbreviated title (author plus short title for monographs and journal articles, short title only for collections of essays). Akyürek Şahin, N. E., and H. Uzunoğlu. ‘Neue Weihungen an Hosios und Dikaios aus dem Museum von Eskişehir’, Gephyra 19 (2020), 189–230 Ameling, W. ‘Die jüdischen Gemeinde im antiken Kleinasien’, in R. Jütte and A. P. Kustermann (eds.), Jüdische Gemeinden und Organisationsformen von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart, 29–55, Vienna, 1996 , (ed.) Die Christianisierung Kleinasiens in der Spätantike (AMS 87), Bonn, 2017 AMS: Asia Minor Studien ANRW: Temporini, H. (ed.) Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Berlin, 1972– Barr: Barrington Atlas of the Greek and Roman World, I, Atlas, cited by map no. and grid reference; II, Map-by-Map Directory, Princeton, NJ, 2000 BÉ: Bulletin Épigraphique, in Revue des Études Grecques Belayche, N., ‘De la polysémie des épiclèses: YΨΙΣΤΟΣ dans le monde Gréco-Romain’, in N. Belayche, P. Brulé, G. Freyburger, Y. Lehmann, L. Pernot and F. Prost (eds.), Nommer les Dieux, 427–42, Rennes, 2005 241

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242      Bibliography . ‘Hypsistos: A Way of Exalting the Gods in Graeco-Roman Paganism’, in J. A. North and S. R. F. Price, Religious History of the Roman Empire, 139–74, Oxford, 2011 (translated with addenda from Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 7, 2005, 34–55) . ‘La politique religieuse ‘païenne’ de Maximin Daia’, in G. A. Cecconi and C. Gabrielli (eds.), Politiche religiose nel mondo antico e tardoantico, 235–59, Bari, 2011 Berruto Martone, A. M. Dialogo tra un Montanista e un Ortodosso, Bologna, 1999 Blanchetiere, F. Le christianisme asiate aux IIème et IIIème siècles, Lille, 1981 Blanco-Pérez, A. ‘Mȇ n Askaenos and the Native Cults of Antioch by Pisidia’, in M. Paz de Hoz, J. P. Sánchez Hernández and C. Molina Vero (eds.), Between Tarhuntas and Zeus Polieus, 117–50, Leuven, 2016 BMC Phrygia. B. V. Head, Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Phrygia (in the British Museum). London, 1906 Borgeaud, P. La Mère des Dieux, Paris, 1996 Bremmer, J. N. Greek Religion and Culture, the Bible, and the Ancient Near East, Leiden, 2008 . The Rise of Christianity through the Eyes of Gibbon, Harnack and Rodney Stark, Groningen, 2010 . ‘How Do We Explain the Quiet Demise of Graeco-Roman Religion?’ Numen 68 (2021), 230–71 Brixhe, C. ‘Interactions between Greek and Phrygian under the Roman Empire’, in J. N. Adams, M. Janse and S. Swain (eds.), Bilingualism in Ancient Society, 246–66, Oxford, 2002 Brown, P. ‘The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity’, JRS 61 (1971), 80–101 . The Cult of the Saints, Chicago, 1981 Bru, H. La Phrygie Parorée et la Pisidie septentrionale aux epoques hellémistique et romaine, Leiden, 2017 Bruneau, P. Recherches sur les cultes de Délos à l’époque hellénistique et à l’époque impériale, Paris, 1970 Cadwallader, A. H. ‘St. Michael of Chonai and the Tenacity of Paganism’, in D. Kim and S. Hathaway (eds.), Intercultural Transmission throughout the Mediaeval Mediterranean: 100–1600 CE, 37–59, London, 2012 Cameron, A. The Last Pagans of Rome, New York, 2011 CGRN: Corpus of Greek Ritual Norms, summer 2022, http://cgrn.ulg.ac.be/ Chaniotis, A. ‘Ritual Performances of Divine Justice: the epigraphy of confession, atonement, and exaltation in Roman Asia Minor’, in H. M. Cotton (ed.), Cultural and Linguistic Change in the Roman Near East, 115–53, Cambridge, 2009 Chiai, G. F. ‘Zeus Bronton und der Totenkult im kaiserzeitlichen Phrygien’, in J. Rüpke, J. Scheid (eds.), Bestattungsrituale und Totenkult in der römischen Kaiserzeit, 135–56, Stuttgart, 2010 . Phrygien und seine Götter: Historie und Religionsgeschichte einer anatolischen Region von der Zeit der Hethiter bis zur Ausbreitung des Christentums, Rahden, 2020 Chiricat, E. ‘The ‘crypto-Christian’ inscriptions of Phrygia’, in Roman Phrygia, 198–214 Chuvin, P. Mythologie et géographie dionysiaques, Clermont-Ferrand, 1991 . Chronique des derniers Païens, 3rd edn., Paris, 2011

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Index

Cities treated in Appendix A, ‘Myths and Traditions of City Origins’, which is arranged alphabetically, are not included. Greek words are positioned as if transliterated into English; aspirates are ignored. Abercius of Hierapolis, 121, 128, 155; Life of, 150 ‘Achaeans’ in Phrygia, 208 Acmonia: Jewish population, 124n31; oath at, 15; synagogue, 17 Agapetos, Phrygian holy man?, 154 Ahmetler, Zeus Bronton at, 109–11 Aizanoi: cult functionaries at, 28; history, 169; topography, 22 Akamas, 207, 210, 212, 213 Akmon, 204 Alabandos, worshipped, 194 Alexander, city founder, 211 alpha/omega, 128 Amphilochos, 194 ἀναπαυέσθαι, 128 Angdisis, 46, 47, 73; elusive rituals of, 75; iconogaphy, 47 angels, 136 Apamea, Noah’s ark on coins of, 17, 205 ἀφιερόω, 218 Aphrodite, 62, 169, 182; of Aphrodisias, 237; Aphroditai Kastnietides, iconography of, 235 Apollo, 47–50, 70–73; Apollos around Hierapolis, 64–65; archegetes at Hierapolis, 14, 16, 65, 86 (slave suppliants), 192, 208; cares only for humans?, 71; Çavdarlı, sanctuary at, 49,

71; Clarian, consulted by Phrygian cities, 29, 49; healer?, 50; at Hierapolis, 64–65; and HosiosDikaios, 54; iconography of, 50; issues oracles in Phrygia?, 49–50; stelai recording consecration of persons to/ honoured by, 218; where most popular, 73. See also Apollo; Çavdarlı; epithets of Apollo Lairbenos Apollo, epithets of: Bozios, Stodmenos, Troios, 21; Kar[e]ios, 21, 25n69, 49 (oracles of?), 64–65, 208; Lykios, 48; Propylaios, 22, 47n47, 192. See also Sozon Apollo Lairbenos, 16, 21, 25, 47–48, 65, 68; consecrations to, ch.6, 133; clientele of, 95; confession inscriptions and, ch.6, 197 Apollonis, cult of, 168 Apollonius of Tyana, 145 archiereus, in imperial cult, 79–80 archigalloi, 16, 75–76, 77n43 Areadne of Prymnessos, 155 Ares, 62; in Anatolia, 179 Areyastin, Mother, 47 Artemidoros of Daldis, 238 Artemis, 50–51, 133; Artemis Anaitis, 183; Astyrene, 238; of Ephesus, 235; as healer?, 68n9; of Perge, 235 Asclepius, 31, 58–59, 68, 69n14, 74, 169, 177 Aseis. See Zeus

249

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250      Index Asiatic sarcophagi, 105 astrology, in Phrygia, 32n27 Athanasius, Life of Anthony, 153n163 Athena, 62, 170, 182; Athena Oreia, 184 Attis, 75–76; ‘mourning Attis’ on tombstones, 102 Augustine, on God’s care even for small things, 153 auto-castration, Phrygian festival for?, 76 Avircius Marcellus, 121 Babbakome, 168 ‘banqueting reliefs’, 104 ‘basket of fruits’, on doorstones, 101 benefactor cult, in hellenistic Phrygia, 168 βεννος, 11, 13n20 bird on basket, on doorstones, 97 bishoprics, Phrygian, 149 Blaundos, cults of, 15–16 body part votives, 68, 69 burial ad sanctos, 158 burial: Christian, 157–58; pagan rites, 105–6; pagans and Jews/Christians together, 126 Capitoline triad, 171n34 Caria: heroes in, 194; religion of, 175 Çavdarlı, Apollo’s sanctuary, 21, 49, 71, 92 cave, sacred, 25 Chapouthier, F., 188 charity: Christian, 144; pagan, 144n122 chastity, Christian value, 142n109, 144, 160, 162 Chonai, healing spring, 151. See also Michael, archangel Christian symbols: see cross in circle, ‘hot cross bun’ Christianity, ch. 8, 199–200; and imperial estates, 131; markers of on gravestones?, 128–29, 137; numbers of Christians, 129; patchy take up, 130; sociology of in Phrygia, 131 ‘Christians for Christians’, 126–28 churches, 149; pre-Constantinian, 127n44 Cilicia, coastal, gods in, 175–76 cities in Phrygia: religious life of, 14–15; as smallscale, 24; traditions/myths of origin, 203–14 citizenship in Phrygia, 20–21, 92–95 city and country: two-tier model?, 21, 196–97 city foundations, myths of, 18–1ppendix A coinage, 21, 24; beginnings of, 170; end of, 133 coins, as evidence, 15, 170; Cilician and Carian, 176n10 confession inscriptions, 7, 21, 30, 88–95, 197, 224; anticipate Christianity?, 137–38, 139–40; distribution, 70; divine court in, 164; Hittite

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survivals in rituals?, 163; involvement of priests in, 32, 91, 197; latest, 133; motives for, 90–91; and temple finance, 32 consecration, of persons, to Apollo Lairbenos, 83–90, 197 Cook, A. B., Zeus, 173 councillors, Christian, 125n33, 127 cremation, Christian avoidance of, 143n120 cross in circle, 121n15 ‘crypto-Christian’ epitaphs, 128 cults: financing of, 30–31; founded by individuals, 91; property of, 31 curses: Christian or Jewish?, 124–25; protecting tombs, 158 Cybele, ‘spring festival’ of?, 225 dalek, 235 Damascius, neo-Platonist, 150–51 de Hoz, M.-P, 173 dead persons: issue oracles, 114; spoken of as gods, 113 death: commemorative cult, 105; Phrygian attitudes and treatment, ch. 7, 198 dedications: Christian, 152–53; made ‘on instructions’ of gods, 91, 109 Delemen, I., 186 Demeter, 62, 183; linked with Kore, 181n31; ‘Oreia’ (false reading?), 184n44 Deuteronomy, curses from, 124n31 Dike, 23, 62, 137 Dionysus, 52–53, 180–81; birthplace traditions, 209, 210 Dioscuri, 60–61; in Anatolia, 179, 189–90 dis manibus, 171n34 divination, Christian, 160n200 Dokimos, 206 doorstones, 96–103 Dorylaos, 206–7 Dorymedon, martyr, 127 dreams, and dedications, 91 eagle, on doorstones, 97 Eileithyia, 72, 182 ‘elder’ of church, female, 122 emperor cult, 2h. 5; last evidence, 133; rare cases outside cities, 81–82 ἐνθύμιον, 89 envy, as cause of death, 115–16 ephebes, 72 epitaphs: afterlife in, 142–43; Christian, values in, 141–44; Epicureanism in, 115; pagan, 115–17

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Index    251 epithets, panhellenic and local, 21 Epitynchanos, monuments of, 146–48, 227–32 era, Phrygian, 132n68 euche formulae, 110n60 Eudaimosyne, festival, 74, 107 Eugenios, bishop of Laodikeia Katakekaumene, 156 εὐλογία, 138 Eumeneia: Christians in, 129n53, 131–32; martyrdoms at, 156; pogrom at?, 129n54 Eumeneian formula, 106, 123–26, 136, 141; comparable formulae, 124nn28, 29, 125n37 Eusebius, on a Phrygian pogrom, 129 exorcism, Christian, 159–60 family, Phrygian, 9n1 festivals, of Phrygian cities, 14n25; of villages, 74–75 floods, myths of, 18n40, 209 founder heroes (Aizanoi, Pioniai), 194 funerals, Christian, 158 funerary cult, 105–6, 198 funerary foundations, 106 Gaios of Eumeneia, epitaph of, 122 Galatia, 5 Galatians, arrival in Phrygia, 170 Gallograeci, 168 galloi, 16–17, 75–76, 77, 197, 225 Ganymede, 212 Gennadios, martyr?, 146n132 gladiatorial games, 80; Roman guilt for, 80n6 ‘god and man’ texts, 107–15, 198 god on animal, 175; with ‘breasts’, 175; with double ax, 175, 192 God, Christian, in ‘Eumeneian formula’, 141 ‘god-fearers’, 135 god/hero archegetes, 194 Goddess, the, modern deity, 183 goddesses, Greek, scarce in Phrygia, 191 gods: ‘at/ who control’ a place, 34; with ‘ethnic’ epithets, 174; omnicompetent?, 190–91; in Phrygia, distinguished locally, not functionally?, 191n65 Gordion, 170 Gorgon, 209 grave protection formulae, 220–22 graves with door facade: see doorstones Greek theonyms, enter Phrygia, 167–69 Gregory of Nyssa, 118; on martyr cults, 156

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Gregory the Wonder-Worker, 118 guilds, civic, 13–14 gymnasia, 159; gods of, 177 gymnasial culture, 169 Hanisa, 177n13 healing, 68 Hekate (Soteira), 57–58, 183, 191; stelai recording consecrations to, 103, 215–17 Helen, 190 Helios, 61, 62; and Apollo, 47; Helios Mithras, 62 Helix, of Eumeneia, 125 Hellenic league, 19n44 Hera, 62, 182 Herakles, 59, 177 heresies, in Phrygia, 162 Hermaia and Herakleia, 169 Hermes, 60, 177; in Cilicia, 179–80; in Lycaonia, 185 Hermos (river), 61 ‘hero’, applied to dead, 104 hero-cult: largely absent from Phrygia, 104–5, 184, 192; new heroes in Phrygia, 184n43; traces of, in Anatolia, 193–94 heroes, healing, 194 Hestia, 62 Hierapolis: Apollo in, 64–65; asylia at, 169; cults of, 16–17; martyrdoms at, 156; Martyrion of Philip, 154; temple of Apollo, passage below, 150–51; ‘tomba bella’, 105 hieroi, 28, 70, 85, 197; obligations of, 86–87 Highest God: see Theos Hypsistos Hittite survivals in Phrygian religion?, 163–64 holy men, 153–54 honouring, by a god, 148 Hosia Dikaia, 63 Hosios kai Dikaios, 7, 23, 35, 53–57, 63, 71, 73, 137–38, 193, 212; as healer, 68; last traces, 134; origin, 167n17 ‘hot cross bun’, Christian emblem, 129, 137 Hygieia, 62 Hyllos, 208, 214 hyper dedications/vows, 66–68, 69n14; certain goddesses not receiving, 72 Hypsistos. See Theos Hypsistos Iconium: gods at, 170; synod at, 122 imperial estates, 82 inhumation, shift to, 158 interpretatio graeca, ch. 10

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252      Index Iphimedeia, 194 Ivriz relief, 165 Jerome, against Montanism, 224 Jewish communities, 17–18 (Hierapolis), 135–36 John of Ephesus, 149 Johnson, Samuel, 119n7 Julia Severa of Acmonia, 135 Julian, emperor: on Christians, 144; pagan revival, 150 καθιερόω, 218 Kakasbos, 187–88 Kalendae, 64, 106 Kallinikos, Life of Hypatios, 149n140 Kanebos, 194 katagraphai. See Apollo Lairbenos, consecrations to κατὰ κέλευσιν/ἐπιταγήν dedications, 91 κατοικέω, 94n51 katoikoi, katoikiai: see villages Keil, J., 173 Kelainos, 205 Kidrama, goddess of, 236 kinship, Christian attitude to, 161 κοιμητήριον, 128 koinon of Phrygia, 6–7, 19 Kore (Artemis?) of Sardis, iconography of, 235 Kore, 61, 183; at Acharaka, 184; linked with Demeter, 181n31 Korybantes/Kouretes, 206 kouretes, 13, 205 Kronos, at Tlos, 179 Kybernis, 193 Lactantius, on a Phrygian pogrom, 130 Laodike, cult of, 168 Laodikeia Katakekaumene: Christian extremism around, 143; martyrdoms at, 156 Laumonier, A., 174 lay preachers, 122 Leto/Mother Leto, 50–51, 83, 183 Libanius, on pagan charity, 144n122 lions, on doorstones, 97, 100 literacy, 23, 138 ‘living in’ formula, 93–94 Lola (theonym), 198n9 Luna, Men as, 63 Lycaonia, martyrs in, 156n175 Lycia, heroes in, 193–94 Lydia, undifferentiated gods in?, 190n64

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M. Ioulios Eugenios, 146n132 M. Ulpius Appius Eurycles, 74 Macrobius, on Syrian ‘oligotheism’, 191n66 manumission, 85 marble, sources of, 2 Marsyas, 205 martyr cults, 156–57; pagan disgust over, 154n167 martyrs: Phrygian, 122, 154–57; questionable cases, 146n132 Maseis, 188 Matar, 165 Maximin Daia, 146–47, 230–31; high-priesthoods established by, 147n133 Medusa, 209 Meiros, 81 Melanthas, hero, 194 Mēn (god), 45; cares only for humans?, 71; as healer, 68; hellenistic/early imperial evidence, 171n35; Men Askaenos, 25, 133, 191; and moon, 61; origin of, 166–67; rituals of, 75 Mēn, mother of, 63 Mēn – names, 167n15 Metropolis, 47 Michael, archangel, at Chonai, 154–55; elsewhere in Phrygia, 155n169 Midas, 166, 205, 212 Mithrakania, 106, 166 Mithras, 166n14 monasticism, 160 Monimos Zenodotos, 196 Montanism, 121–22, 138, 140, 199; pagan roots?, 223–26; Jewish influence, 226 Montanus, 224 Moon, 61 Mopsos, 194, 208 Mossyna, 94 Motaleis, 25n69; gods of, 34 Motella, controls Apollo Lairbenos sanctuary?, 84 Mother Phileis, 72 Mother (of gods), 45–47, 71, 73, 183; Kasmine, 46; Kranomegalene, 46n38; Phileis, 72; Steunene, 22, 25; Tetraprosopos, 46 Mother of Mēn, 63 mystai, 12, 13; of Dionysus, 52–53 Nakoleia, late paganism at, 148–49 Nanas, prophetess, 226 Nemesis/eis, 60, 62 neobacchoi, 12 neokoroi, 28 neo-Phrygian language, 4–5, 177n12

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Index    253 Newman, J. H., 145n125 Nikator, 62 Noah (coin motif), 17, 120–21, 205 Novatians (sect), epitaphs for, 162 Nymphs, 62 ‘oligotheism’, 191 oracles/prophets: alphabetic, 49; Christian substitutes for?, 160; local, 32; scarce in Phrygia, 49n57, 148, 225–26 Orkistos, 80, 130 Otreus, 211 Ouargasos (theonym), 62n127, 198n9 oxen, 1, 200 pagans, paganism, late evidence for, 132–34, 150, 200 paganus, 149n140 palaeo-Phrygian language, 5n7 Pan, 179n19 Pandaros, 193 Panhellenion, 19n44, 20, 208 Papas/Papias (theonym), 38, 59, 61, 71, 198n9 Papias, bishop, 120, 199 Parentalia, 158–59 Passover, 106 Paul, St., 119–20; with Barnabas, mistaken for gods, 185 ‘peace to’, 125, 128 Pentecost, 106 persecution of Christians, 122, 132 Persian influence on cults, 63 Pessinous, mourning ritual at, 76; mixed (Celtic/ Phrygian) priesthood, 76, 170 Philip, daughters of, 120n11, 145 Philip, martyred apostle, cult of, 154 Philomelion, church at, 120 phratries, 10–11 Phrygia: adoption of Greek names, 168; definition of, 4–6; Galatic, 5n9; Greek alphabet/ language in, 166, 167; hellenistic colonies in, 167; Hellespontine, 4n6; Lesser, 4n6; koinon of, 19; Lydian domination over, 166; Persian domination, 166 Phrygian empire, religion of, 165 Phrygian Tales, 135n78 Phrygians, migrate from Europe?, 164 Pisidian language, 177n12 ‘Pisidian gods’, 8 Plouton, 61, 183; at Acharaka, 184 Ploutonion (Hierapolis), 17, 26, 61, 77, 151, 166, 185

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‘Pneumatics’, 127n42 Polycarp, 120 polytheism, Phrygian, logic of?, 77–78 pomegranates, 101 poor, Christian care for, 161 Poseidon, 61, 71, 185–86 Praxias, foundation of, 15 ‘pray for me/us’, Christian formula, 128 prayers, 66–67; answered, 92; for crops, 200–201; for livestock, 1 ‘pre-marriage’ (progamios) hero, 194 priest(esse)s, ch. 2; annual v. hereditary, 29–30; donations by, 28; ‘first priests’, 30; high priest(esse) s, 27, 148; length of tenure, 29–30; in poleis, 27–28; ‘of ’ villages, 10, 29; in villages, 29–30, 138 Probus, supposed persecution under, 155n172 prophets, in Phrygia, 148, 225–26 Prymneus, 211–12 purification rituals, inherited from Hittites?, 163–64 Ramsay, W. M., 173n3 religion, utility of term, 172n1 rider-gods, Anatolian, 186–88 rivers, as gods, 60–61 Robert, L.: on rider-gods, 186; on self-hellenisation, 177n14 ῥοδίζειν, 106 Roma, goddess, 80n4 Roman emperors, worshipped, ch. 5; dependent individuals’ prayers for, 81 Romans, in cities, 63; joint authors of Phrygian decrees, 63; and Phrygian gods, 171n34 Rosalia, 159 ‘Roubes’, 122–23 Runt, Hittite god, 180 Sabazios, 62 sacrifice, modest role in Phrygia?, 140; ‘end of ’, 138, 140; ‘end of ’ in Phrygia, 151 Sagaris, bishop and martyr, 155 Samothracian gods, 60–61 Sanaos, 81 sanctuaries, rural, 25–26 Sandan, omitted by Dio Chrysostom, 174n6 Sangarios (river), 61, 186 Sarapis, 64 Sarpedon, hero, 193 Sereanoi (village), cults of, 73 Severus, bishop and martyr?, at Laodikeia Katakekaumene, 156

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254      Index Skylakeus, 193 Socrates, on Phrygian character, 135, 138–39 Sophrosyne, 62 Sozon, 51, 71, 132 ‘Superior Male God’, 165 supplication, by slaves, 86 Symbiosis, 12 Syme, R., 1 Syngenika, 11 Synnada, martyrdoms at, 156 Tarhunta, 165, 188 ταῦτα, in epitaphs, 115n77 τεκμορεύειν, 20, 75 Temenos, 214 temples, property of, 87 Termessos, heroon at, 194 Tetraprosopos, 46 theatres, in Phrygia, 159 Themisonium, 170 Theodore of Sykeon, 153 Theodotos, martyr and healer, 154 theophoric names, 180n24 theos Achaios, 208n17 theos Hypsistos, 23, 58–59, 71–74, 78, 132, 136–37, 139 theos Karios, 64 Thesmophorion/Thesmophoria, 183 Thiounta: festivals, 75; phratries at, 10 ‘Thracian rider’, 186 threptoi, 85 Thynnaros, 18n42, 213 Ti. Klaudios Attalos Andragathos, 213 tilted chi, 129, 137 Tomba Bella, Hierapolis, 105 τὸν θέον σοι, μὴ ἀδικήσῃς, 220–22 Torrebos, 208 trees, sacred, 25 tribes, within cities, 13 Trophimos, martyr, 155 trqδ, Carian god, 175n8 Tryphon, martyr, 155 Tyche, 62 Tymandos, 81 tympanon, 75 Typhon, Zeus and, 180

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Ulpius Appuleius Eurycles, M., 20 ὑπὲρ εὐχῆς, Christian formula, 152–53 Upper Tembris valley, 130–31 values, in Christian epitaphs, 161–62; self abasing or proud?, 161; eye of the needle anxiety?, 161 vandalisation, of pagan monuments by Christians, 150 Veyne, P., 118n2, 134–35 Vezirhan stele, 166 village/polis borderline, 81 villages, Phrygian, 9–12; on imperial estates, 12, 82; petition emperors, 82; solidarity within, 145, 200; sub-groups within, 11–12 vine in chalice, 128 Will, Edouard, 187 wolf, and Apollo, 48 women, religious experience of, 72–73, 199 wool basket, on doorstones, 97 Xanthos, hero, 193 Xenoi Tekmoreioi, 8, 19–20, 21n50, 57, 94, 133 xoanon, 238 Zeus: at Aizanoi, 22, 62; birthplace traditions, 19n43, 22, 204–5, 209, 210; as healer?, 43–45; hieroi of Zeus Olympios Kersoullos, 88; at Hierapolis, 16; persons ‘honoured’ by, 218; universal god in Phrygia?, 70–71, 180–81, 184; where most popular, 73; ‘Zeus of X’ foundations, 33, 112 Zeus, epithets of, 16, 36–39; Alsenos and Petarenos, 3, 40–44; Ampeleites and Thallos, 2 fig. 1, 41–43; Aseis, 209; Bozios, Troios, 21; Celtic epithets, 170; Herakles, 132; Latin epithets, 39; Limnenos, 134, 148; Orkamaneites, 68; Papias, 59, 61; Pigindenos, 188; second theonym juxtaposed, 38; Zeus plus anthroponym, 38 Zeus, iconography of, 41–43; in Caria, 239–40; Zeus Labraundeus, 237, 238; Zeus Lepsynos, 233 Zoroastrians in Phrygia?, 166n14 Zotikos of Koumane, 121n16;

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