Religion and Integration

[1] Around 342 B.C. [2], Apollodoros, son of Pasion, argued in court against the alleged citizenship of Neaera and her daughter Phano. He cited a decree by which the Plataeans were granted citizenship in 427 to show what it did mean to be an Athenian. The decree reads that ‘it is decreed that the Plataeans shall be Athenians from this day, that they shall have full rights as citizens, that they shall share in all the privileges in which the Athenians share, kai hierôn kai hosiôn’ ([Dem.] 59.104). The term hiera kai hosia is difficult to translate; in this paper I will use it in the most accepted and general translation as ‘the things belonging to the gods and the things relating to a good order among men as sanctioned by the gods’, as discussed most importantly by Connor. [3]

There are many references to sharing or partaking in ta hiera of the polis when Athenians formulate what it meant to be an Athenian. [4] Thus, an important privilege of the members of Athenian society consisted of the sharing in the religious obligations of the polis. But this sharing in ta hiera was not only perceived as an important privilege, it was also an important means to demonstrate that one was in fact an Athenian, since it was the only public activity in which everybody participated. [5] The importance of religious acts to demonstrate membership is not only clear from several court cases on citizenship; it is also shown by the fact that all important transitions in an Athenian’s life were marked by religious acts by which the community could publicly accept or reject a new member.It is the main hypothesis of the project in which I participate, that in ancient Greece religious activities were the basic means to organize society and articulate membership to polis society. Instead of focusing solely on political participation and legal rights for the definition of Athenian citizenship, we should pay attention to religious participation, creating a gliding scale of membership to the Athenian community. Under the supervision of Ancient History professor Josine Blok at the University of Utrecht, the project aims to redefine Athenian citizenship and citizen status. [6] Less theoretical, my PhD thesis aims to show how religious activities were organized to incorporate and define the membership to the Athenian community of ‘foreign’ groups, for example of the general group of metics or of the more specific group of Thracians.

Focusing on political and legal activities, scholars have arrived at a too narrow and anachronistic conceptualisation of Athenian citizenship often equating ‘the Athenians’ with politically and legally privileged adult male Athenians. This modern view on Athenian citizenship has been influenced most importantly by Aristotle’s description of the Athenian community as a politico-polis (especially Ath. Pol. 1275a). But recently Ober has stressed that Aristotle also uses the word ‘polis’ to describe a community in a more inclusive sense, the so-called geo-polis; describing a community in the sense of the territory and its inhabitants, including those who were not full-fledged citizens. [7] I propose that looking at the religious activities of different social groups offers a more multifaceted view on the Athenian community as a geo-polis.

This hypothesis leads to numerous questions: who could be perceived as members of Athenian society? If women were accepted as ‘Athenians’ through their religious participation, what about metics? Who could be perceived as ‘citizens’ and how were they differentiated from mere ‘members’? And by which means could the Athenians regulate religious activities to create and reflect membership of various social groups? The means available to polis authorities were numerous and applicable to many levels. For instance the hieropoioi, who were in charge of public sacrifices and meat distribution –through which differences in status could be created– were sent not only to large polis festivals like the Panathenaia but also to the smaller Eleusinia, where a more select group participated. The polis had control over part of the finances of numerous cults, as is shown in the inventories of the Other Gods (e.g. IG I³ 383) but also in several cult specific regulations. And many cults were regulated in detail by official decree; from the organisation of a procession to the salary to be paid to a priest. In the following some of these questions will be addressed in the context of the cult of the Thracian goddess Bendis and her Thracian worshippers.

• [1] This paper was originally written for a seminar held at Cambridge University in 2006 and was not meant to be read but rather to be heard. I have added some slight changes to make it more accessible for readers. A more detailed article on the issue will be published in the future. I would like to thank the Erfurt Univerisity for giving me the opportunity to present my ideas on Bendis and her worshippers at the Erfurt Springschool 2007 and the editors of Archäologie Online for subsequently publishing this paper on their website.
  [2] All dates are before Christ unless otherwise stated.
• [3] Connor, W. R., ‘“Sacred” and “secular”: Hiera kai hosia and the classical Athenian concept of the State’, Ancient Society 19 (1988) 161-188. Cf. Blok, J. H., ‘Oude en nieuwe burgers’, Lampas 36 (2003) 5-26. (With English summary).
  [4] E.g. Xen., Hell. 2.4.21; Dem. 23.65; Dem. 39.35; Dem. 57.4. I owe these references to drs. E. P. van ‘t Wout.
  [5] Evans, N., ‘Feast, citizens, and cultic democracy’, Ancient Society 34 (2005) 1-26.
  [6] For more information on the project you can check the website: http://www.let.uu.nl/ogc/actueel/vacatures/citizenship.html
  [7] Ober, J., ‘The nature of Athenian democracy’, in: Ober, J. (ed.), The Athenian revolution. Essays on ancient Greek democracy and political theory (Princeton 1996) 107-122, cf. Blok, J.H., ‘Becoming citizens. Some notes on the semantics of citizenship in classical Athens’, Klio 87 (2005) 7-40.