Civic Priests: Cult Personnel in Athens from the Hellenistic Period to Late Antiquity

ISBN-13: 9783110258073 / Angielski / Twarda / 2011 / 255 str.

Marietta Horster;Anja Klöckner

Opis

Images and inscriptions on monuments can show us how priests and cult personnel saw themselves and were viewed by others, illuminating the social and political identity of these figures within their polis. Dedications and donations by cult personnel, and the honours that they earned, demonstrate their claim on the city's attention and their financial power. The cityscape itself came to be shaped, in varying intensities and forms, by statues in honour of cult personnel, set up by relatives, fellow citizens and other groups. This set of cultural records, analysed in the studies presented here, is central to understanding how the roles of priests and priestesses were constructed in social and political terms in post-classical Athens. The approaches are both historical and archaeological, and elucidate the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and their perception, by themselves and by others, as citizens of the polis.

Images and inscriptions indicate how priests and cult personnel saw themselves and were viewed by others. Cultural records like dedications, honorific statues and decrees are central to understanding how the roles of priests and priestesses were constructed in social and political terms in post-classical Athens. The approaches in this study are both historical and archaeological, and elucidate the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and their perception, by themselves and by others, as citizens of the polis.

Recenzje

"This volume will thus represent an important point of reference (as well as a source of ideas) for further research on ancient Greek priesthoods, at the same time as it raises expectations for the planned second volume."
Francesco Camia in BMCR 2013.07.15

O autorze

Marietta Horster, Universität Mainz, Germany; Anja Klöckner, Universität Gießen, Germany.