Monumental Expressions of Political Identity

The Herakleion, a temple dedicated to the Phoenician god Melqart, who became identified through syncretism with the Greek hero Herakles, was the most significant building on the Western Tyrian island colony of Gades, off the southwestern coast of the Iberian peninsula.

How local elites, especially those who governed cities in the Hellenized eastern provinces of the Roman empire, constructed their identities despite owing ultimate allegiance to Rome has been the subject of much scholarship (Price 1984; Alcock 2002; Raja 2012). The Sebasteion from Aphrodisias in southern Asia Minor represents an ideal case for this question. This sanctuary to Aphrodisias’ principle deity, Aphrodite Prometer, and to the Julio-Claudian emperors was built by two elite Aphrodisian families between 20 and 60 C.E.

Although the first edition of the Olbian posthumous honorary decree to Karzoazos, son of Attalos, was published well over a century ago (Henzen 1876), it has garnered little attention, usually only referred to when the honorand’s name is included among inscriptions that contain Iranian names (Podossinov 2009). Latyschev’s edition of the text dated Karzoazos’ decree to the “Imperial period,” after Olbia had been destroyed by the Thracian invasion of Burebista in the 50s B.C.E. (IosPE I² 39).

A cult statue within a Greek temple simultaneously manifested the presence of the divinity in the human realm and communicated that deity’s ties to the local community. A marked escalation in the production of cult statues occurred in the second century B.C.E. as Greek poleis used the erection of sacred monuments to negotiate the changing political environment of this time. Among this production was the monumental cult statue group created for the Temple of Despoina at Lykosoura, which had been incorporated into the Megalopolitan synoecism of 369 B.C.E.

Between 600 and 480 B.C.E., ten Dorian Greek communities from across the Mediterranean world – six from the west (Syracuse, Epidamnus, Sybaris, Selinus, Metapontum, and Gela), one from the Propontis (Byzantium), one from north Africa (Cyrene), and two from the Greek mainland (Sicyon, Megara) – dedicated treasuries at Olympia. In the northern sector of the Altis, the treasury terrace (Schatzhausterrasse) overlooked the Sacred Road which connected the preexisting Temple of Hera to the west and the Stadium to the east.