Hans-Ulrich Wiemer
Festivals in Hellenistic Cities: reflections on their meaning and functions
I.
Introduction
The reputation of Hellenistic festivals has much improved over the last two decades. This
change for the better has been slow in coming, though. Up until recently Hellenistic festivals were studied mostly and primarily with the aim of gaining access to earlier stages in
the development of Greek festivals that were regarded as more authentic and thus more
true to their original, truly religious meaning and function. In the Hellenistic period, so it
was believed, public festivals, though still being celebrated in the honour of the gods,
were losing the religious meaning and function they had originally had because they were
increasingly made to serve purposes of a non-religious nature. Seen from this angle, it
was tempting to compare the development of Greek festive culture in the period between
Alexander and Actium with the way in which the Christian festival of the birth of Christ
came to be the contemporary festival of Christmas that is no longer tied to any particular
religious observance or belief. The history of Greek festivals seemed to be one of increasing secularization that prepared the way for the so-called mystery cults and, finally,
for christianity.
This view has come in for criticism for some very good reasons: First of all,
Greek festivals are measured by inappropriate standards if meaning is defined as belief
and change is identified with decline. It seems obvious that this way of viewing Greek festivals is – knowingly or unknowingly – influenced by Christian conceptions of religion
that have long been recognized as being unsuitable for the analysis of Greek religion. For
the Greeks, religion was not a private affair between a believer and his god (or gods) but
rather a set of social practices of an essentially public nature. To be sure, the demand for
religious experiences that were both intense and specific to the individual seems in the
Hellenistic period to have been rising. Despite of this, however, the public cults celebrated in the name and on behalf of the citizenry as a whole retained their appeal; the new
cults merely provided additional options to the range of religious practices and experiences available. To participate in the collective cult of the gods still formed an essential
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part of the life that citizens of a polis were living, and the bond between the community
of citizens and their gods was not only constantly evoked in public speech but also reinforced by public action, especially by celebrating festivals of the Gods.
Now before I proceed any further I should like to define what I understand to be
the meaning of the term festival. In common parlance, its meaning seems to be pretty
clear: festival means the opposite of daily routine, of everyday life. If one takes a look at
what sociological theory, at least in Germany, has to say about the festival as a social
phenomenon, things begin to seem more complicated. German sociologists distinguish
two types of celebrations that they regard as being fundamentally different in their function and nature, calling one Fest and the other Feier, terms that can be perhaps be rendered into English as festival and ceremony respectively. According to sociological
theory, what festival and ceremony have in common is that “they keep groups and institutions alive by expressing, reflecting and explaining their aim and purpose, by re-affirming what is taken for granted by all and by creating trust and a sense of belonging which
can be relied on in everyday life.”1 This function of helping to master everyday life,
however, is according to sociological theory fulfilled by festivals in a way that is fundamentally different from how it is fulfilled by ceremonies: While a festival is being celebrated, the rules governing daily routine are suspended and often freely broken; for this
reason, emotion, ecstasy and effervescence are considered to be integral elements of festivals. In ceremonies, on the other hand, everyday life is being endowed with social
meaning; for this reason, ceremonies are considered to be social forms characterized by
orderly and dignified conduct, by rites and ritual.
Whether or not this theory really is valid as a universally applicable, if highly abstract description of human behaviour is of course a question that can only be answered
by cross-cultural and transepochal comparison and therefore exceeds the competence of a
single person specialized in the study of particular societies of the past. As a historian studying pre-modern societies in the Mediterranean I cannot, however, help the feeling that
in drawing this distinction between festival and ceremony as ideal types (in Max Weber’s
sense of the term) one generalizes from a specific variety of festive culture that sociological theorizing treats as if it were universal: the festive culture of European bourgeois
modernity.
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As an ancient historian I feel bound to point to the fact that in studying Hellenistic
festivals the distinction between festivals and ceremonies is not particularly enlightening.
The main reason for my rejecting this distinction is that in every single Hellenistic festival I know of both these two elements, temporary suspension of daily routine and the
creation of social meaning that helps to master every day life, regularly go together. They
all interrupted the monotony of daily routine by temporarily suspending its rules to a
greater or lesser degree; they all provided opportunities for relaxation and lavish spending. On the other hand, however, they reinforced the order of everyday life by legitimizing and reproducing social hierarchies and norms.
What I would like to propose in this paper is a distinction between two types of
festivals that is based on categories derived from the sociology of power. I distinguish
civic festivals from monarchical festivals. Civic festivals as I define the term are festivals
celebrated by the citizens of a Polis, monarchical festivals are festivals celebrated by
monarchs. In so defining the terms, I reject the view that every festival celebrated in a
city and with the participation of its population should be regarded as an example of one
and the same type of festival. On the contrary, civic festivals fundamentally differ from
those staged by monarchs with regard to the roles assigned to participants and to the
meaning their actions conveyed: Festivals that were organized by citizens were meant to
express the collective ideals and concepts of the citizenry; monarchical festivals, on the
other hand, were a means of monarchical self-presentation. Thus, in every civic festival
inhered the claim to represent the citizenry as a whole even if in practice there always
were different types and degrees of participation. For this reason, the community celebrating a civic festival could and wanted to be regarded as identical with the city. In monarchical festivals, on the other hand, active performers who in their majority were hired and
payed by monarchs enacted a script that had been designed at the court of this monarch,
while all others were mere spectators who had no share in the process of devising the
programme nor an active role in its staging. The programme of the festival in this case
implied and presupposed a division between performers acting on the monarch’s instructions and spectators who merely played the role of extras in a show in which the
monarch held centre-stage.
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Obvious as this distinction might seem it is by no means universally recognized.
Angelos Chaniotis, for example, in a seminal article on Hellenistic festivals treated all
festivals celebrated in Greek cities during the Hellenistic period as if they belonged to
one and the same category and therefore felt entitled to construct an ideal type of the
Hellenistic festival from all the evidence available, regardless of who devised the programme and payed for its execution.2 And he is not alone in this.
Following on from this general considerations, my argument will be twofold: I
will first try to show that my typology can in fact be fruitfully applied to Hellenistic festivals that are known from the sources, by studying both a civic and a monarchical festival that seems to correspond quite closely to one of the two types I have defined. Second,
I will discuss the question of how festivals that were celebrated by citizen-states for monarchs can be fitted in this typology. But before I do this, I should like to make two further
preliminary remarks:
First, I should like to stress that I will only deal with festivals whose semantics are
unequivocally Greek, regardless of whether they were celebrated in Greece, Asia Minor
or Egypt. In other words: Festivals that do not match this criterion are excluded even if
they were celebrated in honour of Hellenistic monarchs. To analyze the rules governing
Babylonian or Egyptian festivals is a task that I must leave to others who are more competent in this fields of study.
My second preliminary remark is on the sources we have at our disposal. Here again
it is necessary to distinguish between festivals organized by monarchs and those organized by citizen-states. Our information on monarchical festivals is extremely sketchy,
selective and one-sided. Since the programme of monarchical festivals was hardly ever
inscribed on stone, the official documentation pertaining to these festivals has perished
together with the royal archives in which it once was stored. The little that has come
down to us has been preserved because it came at one time or another to be incorporated
in literary or semi-literary accounts. This, however, means that our main sources of information are themselves heavily dependent on earlier accounts that directly or indirectly
reflected the way monarchs wanted to be seen.
The evidence for festivals organized by citizen-states is much richer. Fortunately,
quite large a number of documents has been preserved in which an assembly expresses
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the will to reform a festival that already existed or to institute a new one. Unlike students
of earlier periods of Greek history we are, therefore, often able to base our conclusions on
contemporary evidence of a documentary kind. This should not, however, mislead us into
thinking that every question we are interested in can be answered in a satisfactory way.
The main reason why there are rather narrow limits to our ability to fit those measures
into their proper context is the simple fact that we do not have the kind of detailed
background knowledge that in drawing up decrees on festivals could simply be taken for
granted. Our task is further complicated by the fact that the preserved decrees normally
shed light on one single moment in the history of a festival only; to trace the development
of a particular festival over time is, therefore, often difficult and in many cases outright
impossible. And it goes without saying that inscriptions relating to festivals usually share
the sad fate of most inscribed stones to be more or less fragmentary.
II.
Monarchical Festivals
The most circumstantial account of a monarchical festival to have survived from the
Hellenistic period concerns the festival that the second Ptolemy staged in the early third
century in Alexandreia in Egypt to celebrate the memory of his deified father. This account comes from a literary source, the work of a certain Athenaios who, while living
half a millennium after the events he described, was able to draw on information that ultimately goes back to the Ptolemaic court.3 The Hellenistic authority Athenaios used, a
Rhodian author named Kallixeinos, had already made a selection from the programme of
the festivals that lasted many days and comprised not only sacrifices and feasts, but also
athletic and musical competitions; his focus was on the great procession, and even within
this procession he concentrated on the part in which scenes from the life of Dionysos
were enacted.
Now what is crucial for my argument is the fact that this procession which traversed parts of the city and the vast palace complex on an east-westerly route, while offering to the inhabitants of Alexandreia a magnificent spectacle and many opportunities
to participate, was not an image of the city of Alexandreia nor was it intended to be any-
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thing like that. To be sure, many of those who in a great variety of roles participated in
the procession might have been citizens of Alexandreia. The procession, however, was
not a self-presentation of them as a political community. On the contrary, it showed off to
all spectators, regardless of whether they were citizens, foreigners or slaves, the riches
and the power of the reigning king. An impressive array of people, many of them dressed
in costumes, an enormous amount of precious goods and the lavish expenditure of incense, spices and wine demonstrated that the king disposed of seemingly inexhaustible
resources and at the same time indicated his willingness to distribute part of his affluence
to his loyal subjects. No less impressive than this display of wealth was the way in which
the king’s might was exhibited. That his rule had global dimensions was symbolized,
among other things, by captives from India, by camels carrying incense and spices from
Arabia and by colored Africans that brought tusks of elephants and logs of ebony as gifts
for the king. The message that this king was invincible was hammered home on the
spectators by a parade of troops lasting for several hours in which more than 57000 footsoldiers and more than 23000 cavalrymen were counted. Needless to say that this was not
the citizen militia of Alexandreia, but the army of the Ptolemaic king.
As the parade of the king’s army was meant to impress on the spectators, many of
whom were guests from abroad, the image of the king’s invincibility, so the procession
articulated a view of history that in character was dynastic and not civic, expressing aspirations and concepts that were designed and propagated by the Ptolemaic court. A whole
section of the procession glorified the defunct parents of the reigning king, and a further
one extolled the great Alexander whom the Ptolemies claimed to be related to. All three
were by unmistakeable and rather crude symbols marked as invincible monarchs who had
exercised a sort of protectorate over Greek cities. What was emphasized, were not,
therefore, their benefactions to the citizens of Alexandreia but their kingly virtues in general. Not the city of Alexandreia held centre-stage, but the Ptolemaic dynasty whose
symbols and insignia were on display during the procession. Accordingly, the procession
seems to have ended with a ceremony in which Ptolemy II and his defunct parents were
honoured by statues erected to them.
There is no denying that this festival gave the population of Alexandreia a strong
incentive to be proud of their king, provided, however, they consented to the role of sub-
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ordinate participants in a show that was not of their own making. The appeal of the show
is likely to have extended far beyond the citizens of Alexandreia as the basic message
conveyed was so simple that it could be grasped without fully understanding the Greek
symbolism of the procession. The point I would like to stress, however, is that the festival’s programme was based on an asymmetrical division of roles between performers
acting out a programme designed at the king’s court, on the one hand, and spectators who
participated in a subordinate role, on the other. The festival’s success depended on all
participants’ willingness to act according to a script that was meant to celebrate the king
and had been designed without their participation.
There is some evidence confirming my contention that the festival I have discussed can in fact be regarded as typical for monarchical festivals in general. The clearest
example is the festival staged by the Seleukid Antiochos IV in the suburb of Daphne near
his residence Antiocheia on the Orontes. From what is left of Polybios’s description of it,
we see that this festival, too, followed a programme that been devised at the court of the
king that propagated a monarchical vision of the world.4 And both the semantics and the
division of roles specific to monarchical festivals can be traced back to pre-Hellenistic
Macedonia. Philip II, at the wedding of daugther Kleopatra, is known to have devised a
procession in which his own statue was carried among those of the twelve gods, thus propagating a new conception of kingship that was to become reality after he had been killed
on precisely this occasion.5
III.
Civic Festivals
If it is true that monarchical festivals served as a means of self-representation for kings
being characterized by having hierarchically divided roles assigned to organizer, performers and spectators, festivals put on by a citizen-state clearly fall into a category of
their own. Where citizens celebrated a festival of their own, organizer and participants
were identical and those who participated were considered to be representative of the city
as a whole. In theory at least, it was one and the same community, even if the religious
community included wives and children who were not allowed to participate in the
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assemblies where political decisions were taken. A classic example is provided by the
festival of Zeus Sosipolis celebrated in Magnesia on the Maiandros which we know from
an well-preserved inscription containing the decree by which it was instituted sometime
between 196 and the late 180s.6
After having successfully brought to completion a war against their neighbouring
city Miletos, the Magnetes decreed that from now on each and every year a bull be consecrated with due ceremony, fattened duly and afterwards be lead in a procession to the altar where it was to be slaughtered as a victim to the god. During the consecration of the
bull which coincided with the time when the sowing of the grain began not only the priest
of Zeus Sosipolis and the priestess of Artemis Leukophyene – the city’s major goddess –,
but all magistrates of the city were to say a prayer for – I quote – “the well-being of the
city and its territory, of the citizens, their wives and children and for all other inhabitants
of both city and territory, for peace, prosperity, the growth of the grain and of every other
fruit and of the cattle”. The task of fattening the bull was contracted out to whoever made
the most favorable bid, and the contractor was in turn accorded the right to collect the
necessary fodder from the grain dealers and all other people doing business in the agora
of Magnesia. The procession that was to end with the bull’s sacrifice was regulated in
great detail. Not only was every priest and every magistrate obligated to go in the procession. In addition, the ephebes, the young men (neoi), the boys (paides), the victors in the
penteteric festival in honour of Artemis Leukophryene and the victors in all other panhellenic festivals were ordered to play their part in the procession. As the wording of the
prayer makes clear, however, the Magnetes wished and expected that many more would
participate.
Not content with human participation, however, the Magnetes also saw to it that
the immortal gods were seen to be present, too. For this reason, express order was given
for the the cult images of the twelve gods to be carried along in the procession, dressed in
magnificent robes, until they were solemnly seated on three sofas that were on this occasion put up on the agora. The idea that gods and men belonged to one community was
thus made a reality for all to see and was further emphasized by musical performances,
presumably hymns. It is a pity that precise information as to the route taken by the procession is not given. All we can say for certain is that it was centripetal, ending in the po-
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litical centre of the city, on the agora, where the altar of Zeus Sosipolis stood. He was not,
however, alone in receiving sacrifice on this occasion since both the local Artemis and
the Apollon from Delphi were also to be honoured in this way at the end of the procession.
The festival of Zeus Sosipolis celebrated in Magnesia on the Maiandros shows
many features that can be considered as typical for civic festivals. An old cult which had
originally been closely linked to the agrarian year, was expanded by adding a further day
to it after an existential crisis had been successfully managed. On this day, the citizenry
emphasized and reinforced their bond with Zeus Sosipolis and all the other great gods.
During the festival, the city for a few hours turned into a space of common experience for
the citizens and could in this way be re-appropriated for the community. What is most
important, the festival strengthened the emotional bond between the citizens by enabling
participants to act as active members of the community. At the same time, it reproduced
social hierarchies and norms by assigning every participant a particular role within this
community. In celebrating the festival of Zeus Sosipolis, the citizens of Magnesia presented themselves as a harmonious and well-ordered community. Apart from the cultic
and political magistrates, the ongoing and young citizens were particularly prominent in
the procession; as they were grouped together as boys, ephebes and young men, they
were singled out from the crowd of people participating. The procession was meant to be
an ideal image of the citizenry of Magnesia, and the people assembled to celebrate the
festival were regarded as representing the city as it should be. To be sure, it seems unlikely in the extreme that there ever was a time when all citizens of Magnesia did in fact
actively participate in this festival. Even those, however, who were only looking on from
afar had good reason to identify with the people that went in the procession. In principle,
there was identity between organizers, active participants and mere onlookers, and this is
one major reason why the festival of Zeus Sosipolis can and should be seen as typical for
civic festivals in general.
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IV.
Civic Festivals for Kings
If it makes sense to subsume festivals staged by monarchs within cities under an ideal
type that is diametrically opposed to what I define as a civic festival the question needs to
be raised how festivals organized by cities for monarchs fit into this typology. I believe
that in most cases they conform to the type I call civic festival. As Christian Habicht
showed many years ago, festivals put on by cities in honour of monarchs featured basically the same course of events as did other civic festivals. This holds especially true for
the procession, but also applies to the sacrifice and the feast that was usually held afterwards. After the gods had received their share of the victims slaughtered, the rest was divided among groups of people formed on the basis of citizenship and then publicly consumed. Civic festivals that celebrated in honour of monarchs were, thus, no less suited to
stabilizing the social order of the polis than were others festivals. Nor do they seem to fall
into a separate category with regard to their capacity to endow daily routine with social
meaning. The programme of civic festivals for monarchs meant celebrating monarchs as
benefactors of one’s own city and not as rulers over an empire. By serving to form a special relationship between one particular city and a monarch, they were instrumental in
coming to terms with the existence of superior political powers that were hard to resist
and worked on fundamentally different principles. Hellenistic poleis cherished the ideal
of being autonomous and independent states, but they also had to survive in a world
dominated by kings. Celebrating festivals for monarchs on one’s own terms was a means
of incorporating this disturbing reality into a city-centred view of the world. Since these
festivals commemorated only those events that were of particular relevance to one’s own
city, they ensured that festivals celebrated in honour of kings contributed to creating and
re-affirming specifically civic views of the past.
A festival celebrated in the Ionian Polis of Teos may serve as an example to illustrate this point. This festival which again is known from epigraphical evidence7 was instituted at the close of the 3rd century after a Seleukid king, Antiochos III (223–187), had
relieved the Teians from paying tribute to the Attalid kings of Pergamon and accorded
their city the status of being sacred and inviolable. The new festival, called “Festival for
Antiochos and Laodike” (Antiocheia kai Laodikeia), was instituted with the declared aim
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of expressing the gratitude they owed to king Antiochos and his queen Laodike and to do
this in a way that was to last forever. For this purpose, the Teians put up a statue of the
king in the middle of the town hall where the king had first announced his benefactions to
them. At the same time, they decreed that from now on a sacrifice to the king was to be
offered whenever at new year’s eve the newly elected magistrates assumed office and
young men were formally received into the citizen-body. The commemorative meaning
of this sacrifice was underlined by its being offered not only to the king but also to the
Charites and to Memory who together symbolized the duty of honouring one’s benefactors by grateful remembrance. The memory of Antiochos’s benefactions was thus firmly
anchored in the political centre of the city, being linked to rites de passage that were of
vital importance for the self-reproduction of the citizen-body. The festival proper was to
begin a few days later. On this day, which was registered as a holy day (hiera Hemera) in
the holy book (hiera Byblos) of the city, the magistrates and the performing artists belonging to the corporation resident in Teos were invited to a public banquet. All the other
citizens were supposed to offer sacrifice to the king and his queen among divisions of the
citizen-body that in Teos were called symmoriai. Each symmoria had its own altar where
its members met to offer sacrifice to the king and then to hold a sacrificial meal. During
the Antiocheia kai Laodikeia, people were to rest from their work, and the courts were to
remain closed. Although the citizens did not think fit to give non-citizens a share in the
sacrificial meals, they clearly wanted foreigners to take part in it. They contrived other
means of making sure that all residents participated in the celebration. The call to wear a
wreath was extended to all free inhabitants, regardless of their citizen-status, and noncitizens were explicitly called on to sacrifice and celebrate in their private houses.
Not always, however, can the line between civic and monarchic festivals be
drawn as neatly as in the cases I have so far discussed. The boundary becomes blurred
where the interests of a city were so inextricably bound up with that of a monarch or dynasty that the citizens tended to adopt the self-presentation propagated by that monarch or
dynasty. This was bound to happen where monarchs took up residence for a long time or
at regular intervals. In cities that served as residences for monarchs, the citizens developed an exclusive relationship with a monarch or dynasty that was intended to be permanent. As they took over elements from the monarchical imagination, festivals celebrated
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for a monarch became a means of presenting a city as part of an empire. To illustrate this
point, I would like to adduce an example from the city of Pergamon that until 133 served
as the residence of kings from the dynasty of the Attalids. It is known from an inscription,
now lost, whose provenance was disputed a long time, but which today can confidently
be regarded as containing a decree of the Pergamenes.8
On the occasion of a victory that Attalos III (138–133) had gained over unspecified enemies the Pergamenes decreed to receive their king ceremoniously by going to
meet him outside of the city, wearing wreaths and in their best dresses, divided into
groups consisting of priests and magistrates, victors in Panhellenic competitions, ephebes,
boys (paides) and young men (neoi), ordinary citizens, wives and daughters. The citizens
were to offer sacrifices to the king whose costs were met out of civic funds. The priest of
the king was to say a prayer, while the crowd was ordered to do the cheering. The citizens
pledged to erect a cult statue of the king that was to stand in the temple of Asklepios, located in a grandiose sanctuary outside the city, and a gilded equestrian statue of the king
that was to stand high up on the hill where Pergamon is located, in the agora, the political
centre of the city. But this non-recurring ceremony was not enough. In addition to it, the
Pergamenes decreed to institute a yearly festival to commemorate the day when the king
had first entered the territory of Pergamon on return from his campaign. On this memorial
day of the king’s victorious return the procession was to go in the opposite direction. It
was to commence at the equestrian statue of the king on the agora of Pergamon and to
end at his cult image in the sanctuary of Asklepios outside of the city.
It hardly needs stressing that the way specific roles were divided among participants in this festival conforms to what is typical of civic festivals: It was a festival celebrated by the citizens of Pergamon; organizers, active participants and onlookers are
identical in principle. The mnemonic practices, however, and the message they served to
convey were clearly geared towards the king: The statues which marked both the beginning and the end of the procession were dedicated to Attalos as victorious king and ruler
of an empire, whereas his generosity towards the Pergamenes was only mentioned in
passing. And when the king was received within the city’s walls priests and magistrates
prayed for the king – I quote – to enjoy “health and well-being, victory and rule, on the
land and on the sea, both when he attacks and when he defends himself from attack” and
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that “his rule as king may forever be unscathed and in total security”. In this festival, the
Pergamenes formulated an association with their king that was based on accepting a subordinate role as part of an empire.
V.
Conclusion
I have tried to show that not every festival celebrated in a Greek city and with the participation of its population deserves to be called a civic festival. The name of civic festival
should only be used for festivals that served as a means of civic self-presentation by expressing collective ideas on the social order of the polis that were regarded to be binding
on its citizens. The festive community was in this case identical with the citizen-body as a
whole, even though it was never the case that all citizens participated actively and noncitizens were often allowed and sometimes positively encouraged to take part. Monarchical festivals were based on a hierarchical division of roles between the monarch who
staged the festival, designed its programme and hired the performers needed for its execution, on the one hand, and the onlooking crowd, on the other, that was expected to acquiesce in its being reduced to a subordinate and mostly passive role.
The typology I have presented to you does not imply the claim that every Hellenistic festival can unambigously be classified according to this criteria as belonging to
one of these two types. On the contrary, I believe that mixed types exist, and have tried to
show how festivals put on by citizens for a monarch fit into my scheme: These festivals
functioned as a symbolic means of accommodating to the factual dependency on kings
that allowed communities organized on the polis-model to preserve a polis-centred view
of the world; they provided an institutionalized framework for remembering specific
benefactions rendered to one’s own city without adopting a dynastic view of history. In
cities, however, where monarchs continously resided, his presence tended to have a decisive influence on the way views of the past were shaped by festivals put on by the citizens for their king.
It hardly needs emphasizing that the distinction between civic and monarchical
festivals here proposed is very basic and therefore no passepartout for the analysis of
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Hellenistic festivals. One can easily imagine more complicated cases, as when, for example, the programme of monarchical festivals is overturned by a populace unwilling to acquiesce in the role assigned to it by the monarch or when a polis that puts on a festival is
itself part of federal state. It is my contention, however, that the typology I propose has
the merit of highlighting features which might easily have been overlooked if all Hellenistic festivals are grouped together. In stressing the differences between civic and monarchical festivals it prevents us from filling in the very considerable gaps in our knowledge of particular festivals by the indiscriminate use of evidence relating to essentially
different phenomena. A further advantage would seem to lie in the fact that this typology
emphasizes the link between the semantics of a festival and the division of roles among
those who celebrate it. It thus creates a theoretical link between two approaches to festivals that have recently come to be regarded as mutually exclusive, the hermeneutics of
culture and the sociology of power. And, thirdly, the ideal type of the civic festival might
serve as a criterion that allows to measure the degree to which the Hellenistic polis corresponds to the ideal of the democratic citizen-state. The civic festival as I have defined it
presupposes a political culture in which democracy is made a living reality by mass participation in public institutions. For this reason, the civic festival as a social activity cannot be dissolved from the democratic polis as a way of life. Now, the development of the
Greek polis in the late Hellenistic period is characterized by a gradual stifling of political
participation. As political life in Greek cities came to be dominated by rich families wellconnected to Roman aristocrats a new political regime gradually emerged that has been
called the rule of local notabilities. The category of the civic festival can serve as a criterion on which to pin down this process.
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1
A. Chaniotis, Sich selbst feiern? Städtische Feste des Hellenismus im Spannungsfeld
von Religion und Politik, in: M. Wörrle/P. Zanker (Eds.), Stadtbild und Bürgerbild im
Hellenismus (Vestigia. Beiträge zur Alten Geschichte 47), Munich 1995, 147–172, at
162–163, esp. 163 n. 133: „Diese Entwicklung wäre etwa mit der Säkularisierung des
Weihnachtsfestes in unserer Zeit zu vergleichen, die natürlich echte Frömmigkeit keineswegs ausschließt“.
2
W. Gebhardt, Fest, Feier und Alltag. Über die gesellschaftliche Wirklichkeit des
Menschen und ihre Deutung, Frankfurt/Main u. a. 1987, 53–74, esp. 53.
3
Athen. 5, 25–35, 196A–203B = FGrHist 627 F 2; text and translation in vol. II of the
Loeb edition of Athenaios, The Deipnosophists. Kallixeinos referred his readers to afl t«n
pentethr€dvn grafa€ (Athen. 5, 27, 197D), presumably records that were kept at the
Ptolemaic court.
4
Athen. 5, 24, 194C–195D + Diod. 31, 16, 2 = Polyb. 30, 25, 1–26, 4. One Protagorides
of Kyzikos wrote a book entitled “On the festivals in Daphne”, but its contents are almost
entirely lost to us since only two puny fragments have survived: Athen. 4, 33, 150C/D =
FGrHist 853 F1; Athen. 4, 78, 176A/B + 4, 82, 183F = F 2.
5
Diod. 16, 92, 5.
6
I.Magnesia 98 = Syll.3 589 = LSAM 32; text and translation on the handout no. II.
7
SEG 41, 1003, No. I + II; text and translation on the handout no. III.
8
I.Pergamon 246 = OGIS 332; text and translation on the handout no. IV.
15