Robertson - Religion and reconciliation in Greek cities : the sacred laws of Selinus and Cyrene

AMERICAN PHILOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION

AMERICAN CLASSICAL STUDIES
VOLUME 54

Series Editor
Kathryn J. Gutzwiller

Studies in Classical History and Society
Meyer Reinhold

Sextus Empiricus
The Transmission and Recovery of Pyrrhonism
Luciano Floridi

The Augustan Succession
An Historical Commentary on Cassius Dios Roman History Books

5556 (9 B. C.A.D. 14)

Peter Michael Swan

Greek Mythography in the Roman World
Alan Cameron

Virgil Recomposed
The Mythological and Secular Centos in Antiquity
Scott McGill

Representing Agrippina
Constructions of Female Power in the Early Roman Empire
Judith Ginsburg

Figuring Genre in Roman Satire
Catherine Keane

Homers Cosmic Fabrication
Choice and Design in the Iliad
Bruce Heiden

Hyperides
Funeral Oration
Judson Herrman

Religion and Reconciliation in Greek Cities
The Sacred Laws of Selinus and Cyrene
Noel Robertson

The Sacred Laws of Selinus and Cyrene

NOEL ROBERTSON

2010

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Robertson, Noel.
Religion and reconciliation in Greek cities : the sacred laws of Selinus and Cyrene / Noel Robertson.

p. cm.(American Philological Association American classical studies ; v. 54)

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

ISBN 978-0-19-539400-9

1. Selinus (Extinct city)Religious life and customs. 2. Rites and ceremoniesItalySelinus (Extinct city) 3. Religious law and legislationItalySelinus (Extinct city) 4. Religious calendarsItalySelinus (Extinct city) 5. Inscriptions, GreekItalySelinus (Extinct city) 6. Cyrene (Extinct city)Religious life and customs. 7. Rites and ceremoniesLibyaCyrene (Extinct city) 8. Religious law and legislationLibyaCyrene (Extinct city) 9. Religious calendarsLibyaCyrene (Extinct city) 10. Inscriptions, GreekLibyaCyrene (Extinct city) 11. Religious calendarsGreek religion.I. Title.
BL793.S46R63 2009
292.08dc222009002662

For

E. L. R.

E. A. R.

S. A. R.

L. I. R.

This book is an interpretation of two unusual documents of Greek religion, which though of obvious importance have baffled understanding until now. Both are sacred laws calling for certain rites to be performed; they would normally be of interest to specialists alone. But in both, the variety of items and the strangeness of some are unparalleled. It is because old customs have been selected, and new occasions have been devised, so as to satisfy and reconcile the unequal members of a traditional society, the few and the many who are so often set against each other. Both documents are tantamount to a religious reform, otherwise hardly seen in Greek cities.

There have been three successive versions, differing considerably in the material included. The original version was much improved by expert criticism. Robert Parker at a busy time probed and queried much of it. An authoritative reader for the APA Monograph Committee supplied a searching philological critique. Kathryn Gutzwiller, chair of the committee, tactfully and patiently guided both revisions. After this long process, the book is dedicated to four family members in gratitude for their unfailing interest and forbearance.

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Ancient authors and works, as well as epigraphic and papyrological publications, are abbreviated as in Liddell, Scott, and Jones, Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed. (Oxford 1940), xvi-xlviii, together with Revised Supplement (1996), x-xxxi, or more fully. Periodicals and reference works are abbreviated as in the American Journal of Archaeology 111 (2007): 14-34, or more fully. In citing standard editions of Greek or Latin authors by the editors name I add the place and date of publication if this seems helpful. The following items are additional:

Greek inscriptions regulating sacred matters, sacred laws so called, are a large and varied class; they help us to a more realistic understanding of Greek religion than we obtain from literary works or monuments. They are seldom laws in the sense of enactments by an official body but rather customs of self-evident authority. They plunge us straightway into details of priests and processioners and cult associates, of groves and altars and offerings, of treasuries and inventories, and of ritual of every kind from personal ablutions to interstate festivals, but especially of animal sacrifice, a way of life as much as a religious ceremony. They have come to light all round the Greek world, in the homeland and in colonial areas, and from an early period, as early as any kind of public inscription. Similar details recur everywhere. In the light of sacred laws we could assert the proposition, if Herodotus had not already done so, that next to consanguinity and language Greeks are defined by their religion.