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Athena in Anatolia

Athéna en Anatolie
Robert Parker
p. 73-90

Abstracts

This article investigates the penetration of the cult of Athena into Anatolia beyond the old-established Greek cities of the coastline. A major problem is how to treat numismatic evidence; whereas in inscriptions in many regions, Phrygia above all, Athena is almost unattested as a recipient of cult, she appears on the coinage of many cities.  I argue for a differentiated approach which will allow coin depictions to be taken as evidence for cult only under specific conditions.  If that restriction is accepted, the presence of Athena in Anatolia emerges as very uneven.   Where she is most prominent,  as Athena Oreia in Cilicia, her cult has assumed unusual characteristics which are perhaps to be explained by a substrate.

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  • 1 An honourable exception is Paz de Hoz, 1997. I thank Peter Thonemann warmly for acute and learned c (...)
  • 2 de la Nuez, 2009 treats the cults of the west and southern coasts but does not consider the issue o (...)

1That Greek gods, or at least the names of Greek gods, spread in the second half of the first millennium BC and the early Christian centuries into regions of Asia Minor where originally they had had no place is a familiar truth. But the detailed process by which this occurred has been little studied.1 This contribution will confront that problem in relation to a single deity:2 she has been chosen, of course, because of the nature of this celebratory volume, but is in fact very suitable for the purpose. Pallas’ fortunes in Anatolia are interestingly uneven.

  • 3 Phaselis: TAM II.3. 1184 (5th c.), cf. 1200. 8-9; Melanippion SEG LVII 1663, cf. QS 3. 273-8.
  • 4 J.D. Hawkins ap.Barnett, 1974, p. 902-3, on TAM I. 149. 2-3, 12; 150.6-7; but Laroche, 1979, p. 67, (...)
  • 5 BCH 4 (1880), p. 76 (cf. ZPE 15 [1974], p. 68); on Soloi see Ehling et al., 2004, p. 11, 16, 49-50 (...)

2Some aspects of the phenomenon are straightforward. Athena’s presence in the Greek cities of the west and north coasts is entirely predictable and needs no discussion; Greek settlers of course brought Athena with them. If she is more or less prominent from city to city, that variation is no different from what is to be observed on the mainland. Also to be included here are some cities of the southern coast of Lycia which are now recognised to be early Greek foundations: not just Phaselis, with its cult of Athena Polias, but also Melanippion, which displayed documents in the early second c. B.C. in a sanctuary of Athena,3 and Rhodiapolis, which did the same. Athena is called ‘goddess of the Rhodiapolitans’ in a Greek text of the Roman period: two earlier Lycian texts from Rhodiapolis speak of a Maliya wedrẽñni, and since Maliya is elsewhere attested as a Lycian calque for Athena it has been suggested that Maliya wedrẽñni is a simple translation of the familiar Greek double name Athena Polias.4 Less clear is a priesthood of ‘Polias and Lindia’ at Pompeiopolis in flat Cilicia in the 2nd/3rd c. A.D.5 Pompeiopolis succeeded Soloi, on some views (ancient and modern) a colony of Lindos on Rhodes; the priesthood had either somehow survived throughout the settlement’s very varied history since foundation by Lindos, or had been created/revived in nostalgic commemoration of that supposed foundation.

  • 6 Heberdey, Wilhelm, 1896, no. 39 (cf. Dagron, Feissel, 1987, p. 119 n. 2): cf. Hagel, Tomaschitz, 19 (...)

3At the other end of the chronological spectrum, another easy case is where Athena is associated with Zeus and Hera, as at Aigeai in Cilicia;6 here she has come in under Roman influence as one part of the Capitoline triad.

  • 7 Aigeai: Dagron, Feissel, 1987, no. 74 (SEG XXXVII 1245), 39/40 AD, an ex-priest of Zeus Polieus, At (...)
  • 8 Cf. Mitchell, 1979, p. 430-5, on Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Klaudiopolis nos. 13 and 31 (the latter i (...)
  • 9 SEG XLVI 149, and now Filges, 2006, 321 no. 1.

4Another case that potentially seems easy is that of the new Greek settlements of the Hellenistic period, the many colonies and military katoikiai. It is widely assumed that where a cult of Athena is attested in such a settlement, particularly if she bears the epithet Polias, she was brought in with that title as part of the act of foundation. The pairing of Zeus Polieus and Athena Polias is found at Aigeai (again) and Antioch on the Pyramos in Cilicia; Athena Polias is attested at Attaleia in Pamphylia, while it is often thought, because of her dominant position on the coinage, that Athena was patron deity of Seleukeia on the Kalykadnos in Cilicia.7 These views are not implausible, though it should be noted that only in the case of Antioch on the Pyramos (and, numismatically, Seleukeia on the Kalykadnos), does the evidence for the cult in question reach back into the Hellenistic period. Perhaps the greatest lacuna in our knowledge of Hellenistic religion is that in no single case can we observe a new colony being equipped with cults at the actual moment of foundation or re-foundation. A cult of Athena Polias at Klaudiopolis (as the name indicates, not a Hellenistic foundation) in Isauria/rough Cilicia shows that a cult with that epithet could be introduced later, under the influence of Athenian cultural prestige.8 On the other hand, it is impossible not to detect the influence of the Attalid cult of Athena Nikephoros on a priesthood of that goddess and Homonoia held by one Philetairos Diogenous (note the Attalid name) at Blaundos on the Lydian-Phrygian border in the late hellenistic period.9

  • 10 See e.g. Athena in the grave monument from Ayazviran, TAM V I, 468b (SGO 04/19/01), the only epigra (...)
  • 11 See Thonemann, 2013a, p. 26-9 for the policies of Alexander; Hadrian’s Panhellenion later had a sim (...)
  • 12 A rare case where we have dedications from the same sanctuary to a god under both indigenous and Gr (...)

5The harder cases lie beyond these, where Athena was taken up in originally non-Greek communities or among mixed populations: the Athena of the much-discussed ‘middle ground’. Various factors, of course, made the spread of the cult possible or even likely. The many Greek or partly Greek cities rendered the Greek gods visible to their neighbours, and the prestige of Greek art popularised their iconographic forms; the spectacular spread of Greek as the language of culture and administration encouraged the spread of Greek theonyms. Poets everywhere used the names of the best-known Greek gods in their familiar role as paradigms of particular excellences.10 Dynasts (in Lycia) and monarchs (in Bithynia and Cappadocia) put Athena on their coins. There were, at times, specific political advantages to be gained for cities by a claim of Greek origins and thus identity.11 All the same, the diffusion of actual cult of these gods across Anatolia was a very uneven process. Some never acquired a foothold, some in some places but not others; even where a Greek theonym occurs, the issue always arises of the reality behind the name. What was ‘Athena’ in a Greek dedication may have continued to be something quite different in the language actually spoken at home by the person making the dedication;12 even where the vernacular (and with it the vernacular theonym?) had disappeared, traditional practices and associations may have persisted.

  • 13 Thonemann, 2013b, p. 15-22. On Phrygian naming see Brixhe, 2013.

6A powerful illustration of what it might be better to call indifference than resistance to Athena is that of rural Phrygia. Rural Phrygia of the 2ndand 3rd centuries A.D. provides one of the religious environments of the ancient world that we can observe in most detail. One might have expected Athena in one of her aspects to have made a strong appeal to these thrifty, sober and hard-working peasants. Phrygia had been exposed to Greek colonisation since the third century B.C., to contact with Greek culture since much earlier.13 We noted earlier a Pergamene –inspired priesthood of Athena Nikephoros at Blaundos on Phrygia’s western border. Even though Phrygian probably survived to some degree as a spoken language, all Phrygians also used Greek, and in the main gave their children Greek names. Despite all this, as a recipient of offerings Athena is entirely absent from the large tracts of the eleven volumes of Monumenta Asiae Minoris Antiqua devoted to Phrygia, as from Drew-Bear and Naour’s extensive though admittedly selective survey of ‘Divinités de Phrygie’ (Drew-Bear, Naour, 1990). This cannot be a coincidence; existing goddesses, Mother and ‘Artemis’ above all, sufficed, and there was no need to introduce Athena.

  • 14 In the absence of a special study treating Athena on the coins of Asia Minor, I have sought evidenc (...)
  • 15 Obverse: by my count Acmoneia, Apameia, Eukarpeia, Eumeneia, Peltai, Synnada; on these bronze coina (...)
  • 16 The 180 or so Athenas in Szaivert, Daburon, 2000, accessible via the index, give a good overview.

7Whether that conclusion can be extended from ‘rural Phrygia’ to Phrygia without qualification is less clear; here arises the perennially difficult problem, a central methodological problem for this whole enquiry, of the value of coins as witnesses to cults.14 Some six Phrygian communities (all heavily hellenized) have a head of Athena on the obverse of bronze coins of the 1st c. BC,15 and Athenas of various conventional types16 appear on the reverses of some 31 Phrygian mints of the imperial period. The British Museum Catalogue (Head, 1906) lists just over 50 Phrygian mints active in that period, of which perhaps a third operated for limited periods or on special occasions only. Of those active regularly and for longer periods, only a small minority neglected Athena. If the doctrine that an image on a coin implies a cult (while the lack of an image implies nothing), it will follow that Athena was worshipped in several coin-issuing communities of Phrygia in the late hellenistic period and in almost all under the high Roman empire. Similar conclusions will follow for most of Anatolia, since Athena abounds on the imperial coinage almost everywhere. The question about the popularity of Athena in Asia Minor will therefore have been resolved: ultimately, she was popular everywhere. The only question that will remain (largely unanswerable) will be about the stages by which she acquired that general acceptance; some doubt may also persist as to what may underly a given Athena.

  • 17 Robert, 1969-1990, 7, p. 220-224, against Kraft, 1972, esp. p. 94-96; for the debate see works cite (...)
  • 18 Nollé, 1992, p. 84, arguing that even conventional types reflect local cults, explains their use by (...)
  • 19 Franke-Nollé, 1997, p. 67-95.
  • 20 Meadows, forthcoming.

8But the doctrine that coin images imply cults is not uncontested. In regard to the Roman period, K. Kraft argued that, since different cities in Asia Minor demonstrably shared dies presumably provided by travelling workshops, shared designs derived from the workshops’ pattern books and not from local realities. But his proof applied only to the ‘imperial’ obverses, showing the emperor, not the reverses which commonly depicted deities. Robert countered, with characteristic eloquence and indignation, that the city officials responsible for authorizing coin types were as capable of insisting on their specific requirements as any other clients of a business serving many.17 But it remains to be proved that their notion of what was relevant to the city’s self-image was necessarily based on relation to a local cult. The officials who took the decision inhabited in a sense two overlapping worlds: a world of Greek literary and visual culture, in which Athena symbolised a whole bundle of desirable attributes (valour; victory; reason; female works); a world of inherited religious practice, in which Athena might or might not have found a place. Some coin types, it is true, can be taken with some confidence as evidence for a corresponding cult: where a god dominates a city’s coinage over a long period, where the god is shown with a non-standard and therefore probably local iconography,18 where the god is shown within a temple, above all where the god represents a city on the type of homonoia coin where two deities shown in interaction symbolise the friendship between two cities. (But there are complications even in this last case: on different homonoia coins concerning Hierapolis in Phrygia, the city is represented by several different deities.19) The very singular divine figures that appear on reverses of the second century BC and embody what has been called ‘The Great Transformation in Hellenistic Coinage’20 are like the gods on homonoia coins, quintessentially local.

  • 21 Brommer, 1972. Nollé, 1995 dissents, but bases his argument, p. 66, on the a priori that ‘mit Siche (...)
  • 22 Cf. Nollé, 1986, p. 129.

9On the other hand, there are cases where it takes a leap of faith to suppose a cult behind every coin: the decisive example is the flood in the third century A.D. of mostly very similar depictions of Hephaestus, who appears eventually on coins from 21 different mints in Asia Minor though receiving little cult either there or anywhere else.21 Hephaestus belonged to the cultural koine; anyone with a literary education will have recognised and found acceptable his image on the coins. He may under the empire have come to symbolise the importance of preparation of weaponry for eastern wars. (The same factor might help to explain the popularity of Athena Promachos in the same period.22) But that does not prove cult. Again, in judging the standard helmeted heads of Athena on the obverses of the late hellenistic Phrygian bronzes, one should remember that at that date such an image, familiar from Attalid types, spoke of ‘sound money’ as much as of a goddess.

  • 23 Weiss, 2000, 628. Laodikeia on the Lykos also had a tribe.
  • 24 Hierapolis: Franke/Nollé, 1997, p. 77. Synnada: Imhoof-Blumer, 1901-2, p. 295 no. 19, an (unpublish (...)
  • 25 Thonemann, 2013b, p. 32-7; cf. Dignas, 2003; Levick, 2007, p. 111: ‘Phrygian religion (apart from i (...)

10Where does all this leave the towns of Phrygia? Eumeneia, one of the Phrygian towns that favoured a head of Athena on the obverse of its late hellenistic coins, had a tribe of Athena. A tribe is not proof of cult, merely of cultural familiarity with the idea of Athena, though as a Pergamene foundation Eumeneia may very well in fact have honoured the goddess. 23 Athena is one of the several deities who, as was noted above, represent Hierapolis on homonoia coinages; a coin of Synnada of the reign of Marcus Aurelius has ‘Polias’ inscribed over an Athena standing on a base.24 I am not aware of a civic priesthood of Athena in any Phrygian town. The argument from silence is weak, since the city cults are not in the main known in any detail; Athena may well have been honoured in Hierapolis and Synnada (both supposedly recipients of Hellenistic settlements, like Eumeneia) and some other places. On the other hand, it is not attractive to postulate a sharp divide between the religion of town and country in this Phrygian world of large villages and small towns.25 The coins show Athena to have been part of the accepted mental furniture of the inhabitants of a Phrygian town, recognisable and unobjectionable. But, with few exceptions, they do not pick out distinctive iconographies or myths or temples that would suggest a local cult in which the community took an especial pride. On present evidence Athena’s importance in practised religion was vanishingly small.

  • 26 The altar MDAI (I) 27/28 (1977-8), p. 319 no. 16 (with taf. 112. 1-3) = IKlaudiopolis 64 has nothin (...)
  • 27 TAM IV.1.32. The idea of Bosch, 1935, p. 266, that the cult goes back to Athenian cleruchs at Astak (...)
  • 28 On Bithynia see Bosch, 1935, II, p. 155: ‘sind es auch hier wieder die griechischen Kolonien, die d (...)
  • 29 Franke/Nollé, 1997, p. 6 no. 40 and p. 176 no. 1743, the latter not completely clear to my eye.
  • 30 Note e.g. the cult of Athena Polias at Klaudiopolis, note 8 above.

11The zone of indifference to Athena was perhaps much larger. Epigraphic evidence for the cult of the goddess is virtually absent from Lydia (apart from Sardis), as also from Mysia and Bithynia apart from Greek cities on or near the coast;26 the only item to mention is apparently a priesthood attested in Nicomedia in the second/third c. AD.27 Here even coins exert only modest counter-pressure: the early instances from Bithynia and Mysia track Greek presence on the coast or are royal issues,28 while in Lydia Athena abounds on coins (again with the exception of Sardis) only well into the imperial period. On homonoia coins Athena once represents Nikaia in Bithynia, once apparently Philadelpheia in Lydia.29 The problems and possibilities for these regions in the Roman period are thus much as for Phrygia: the coins show Athena to have been part of a cultural environment, not necessarily of a cult. Negative arguments can, it is true, be punctured by new evidence at any moment; in these regions and in others there are enough isolated appearances of civic cults of Athena, some apparently new in the Roman period, to show that a radically positivist approach (no inscriptions, no cult) is indefensible.30 But we have enough dedications from inland Lydia and much of Bithynia to say with some confidence that Athena was a figure of no importance in popular devotion. That she had a role in more formal and civic cults cannot be excluded, nor (except probably when shown on homonoia coins) proven.

  • 31 I.Sinope 111, a dedication to Athena Polias and Soteira, by a Roman. Her presence at Peiraieus/Amis (...)
  • 32 See Mitchell, 1982 (esp. p. 107 on the ritual) on the text published by Franchi de’ Cavalieri, 1901 (...)
  • 33 BCH 33 (1909), p. 131 no. 109 = I.Tyana 35, where see the commentary; for theophoric names see I.Ty (...)

12There is no point in pursuing the goddess further east along the southern coast of the Black Sea into Paphlagonia and Pontos; from inscriptions she is absent here too except occasionally on the coast,31 but here, in contrast to other regions, the epigraphic record is too slender to give the argument from silence much force. Galatia too, coins aside, offers nothing except a striking passage in the account of the martyrdom of St Theodotos of Ancyra and the Seven Virgins in the persecution of 312. This tells of the seven virgins being forced to play the role of ‘priestesses of Artemis and Athena’ in a ritual in which the images of the goddesses were taken amid wild music to be washed in a nearby lake. The author knows Ancyra well, and an appropriate ritual is attested: thus far the authenticity of the account is vindicated. But the attested ritual belongs to the cult of the Great Mother.32 If something similar occurred in the cult of an ‘Athena’, this was an Athena who had been denatured. More probably the pious author has chosen to speak of ‘Artemis and Athena’ (the shared ritual is itself an anomaly) in order to underline the opposition between the true Christian religion and two of the Greekest of Greek gods. From Cappadocia there is no more than an isolated dedication to ‘Athena Soteira and Epekoos’ from the region of Tyana;33 it is widely supposed that this Athena succeeded to the indigenous warrior goddess Ma (theophoric names in Athen- are very popular in the region), though further north at Comana Ma is named simply as ‘victory–bearing goddess’. Athena had been the standard reverse device on coins of the monarchs of Cappadocia from Ariarathes IV onwards, but royal gestures to Greek culture are not testimony to practical religion.

  • 34 JHS 16 (1896), p. 216 no. 4 = CEG II 867, from Ghiuk Chalar/ Gökçeler (but the chronological proble (...)
  • 35 Robert, 1987, p. 186-196.
  • 36 SEG XLVII 1563; cf. later SEG XL 956, and for coins (and the hymn: SGO 01/23/01 = PMG 1037) Robert, (...)
  • 37 Wilhelm, 1908, p. 70-75, nos. 7-8; third century: Robert, 1936, no. 54. 27.

13I turn instead to regions where Athena is more often attested, though still with some irregularity, starting in Caria and proceeding eastwards. In Caria, Greeks and Carians had rubbed against one another for, probably, centuries before their religious worlds first emerge in the written sources. What may be the very first testimony to a Carian cult concerns Athena. The people of Pedasa, Herodotus tells us (1.175), live inland above Halicarnassus, and whenever danger threatens them or those who live around them their priestess of Athena sprouts a beard, a thing which has occurred three times; the context of Herodotus’ story is Harpagos’ invasion of 546, and we assume the priestess to have been so afflicted on that occasion. To judge from the characteristic form of the toponym in –sa, Pedasa was a Carian settlement. That it really hosted a priestess of ‘Athena’ in 546 is impossible to be sure - Herodotus might be engaging in interpretatio- but not impossible. A site which is taken to be that of Pedasa was only a few miles inland from Halicarnassus (into which it was later amalgamated by Mausolus), where Athena was certainly known under her own name; it has yielded a good Greek dedication perhaps of the fifth century. 34 Pedasa might then have been as ‘Greco-Carian’ as Halicarnassus itself. A Hellenistic coin showing a head of Athena (obverse) and an owl (reverse) comes from a different but related Pidasa/Pedasa, the one near Miletus now located by scholarship at Cerd Osman Kalesi on M. Grion, whither it seems inhabitants of the Pedasa above Halicarnassus migrated when given the land by the Persian authorities (Hdt. 6. 20).35 So perhaps they took their Athena with them. But Latmos, a neighbour of this second Pedasa/Pidasa, also by the late 4th c. had a sanctuary of Athena used as a place of display for civic documents, and very unusually had a lyric hymn to her recorded on stone; 36 Latmos too is taken to be a Carian settlement by origin. Another indigenous town close to Halicarnassus, Syangela/Theangela, had like Latmos a sanctuary of Athena which served as a place of display from at least the third c.37 The Athena Myndia known only from Lycophron (Alexandra 950, 1261) will belong in this same coastal context.

  • 38 I.Stratonikeia 41b attests a statue; I.Stratonikeia 1534 refers to her in a fragment of a verse ora (...)
  • 39 Delrieux, 2008, p. 204-211 (ib. p. 176 for an argument that Neapolis too had a cult) . Homonoia: Fr (...)
  • 40 Nollé, 2009.
  • 41 Macdonald, 1992, p. 30 notes the goddess’ virtual absence from the coinage (his reference to a cult (...)

14Against all this evidence from Western Caria can be set that of the two main towns further inland, Mylasa and Stratonicea. The goddess is virtually absent from the very numerous inscriptions and even the coinage of both places (Seleucid re-foundation through Stratonicea was).38 Yet further inland to the north she recurs, if we accept an argument from coinage which in this case is strong:39 Athena appears on late hellenistic reverses of Orthosia and Harpasa, and under Domitian becomes the main type of Harpasa, where significantly she is shown within a temple, and can represent the city on a coin proclaiming homonoia with Neapolis. Orthosia is in the Maeander valley, Harpasa in a valley adjacent; at Tralles further west in the Maeander valley there was probably a sanctuary used for document display by the mid third c. BC (I.Tralles 25.13, by a probable restoration), and coins suggest a conspicuous cult also at Antioch on the Maeander.40 Perhaps the great highway of the valley and the colonies planted in it helped the cult to spread. From the far east of Caria there is little evidence except coins of the imperial period; the goddess is significantly unattested at Aphrodisias, despite the riches in inscriptions it has yielded.41

15Caria, then, defies easy classification. The distribution is not a simple one whereby Athena is confined to the coastal regions, though she is certainly prominent there. But there are major inland centres where she appears to have had little if any place. Whether the Athena of Pedasa say or Latmos or Theangela has assumed the role of an indigenous predecessor is unknowable; nothing specifically suggests it, except general probability. The lyric hymn from Herakleia/Latmos appears to present her within a context of familiar Greek mythology.

  • 42 On all this see the excellent overview of Frei, 1990, p. 1776-1780. Arykanda: I.Arykanda 108.5 (SGO (...)

16The goddess makes an early and dramatic entry into the epigraphy of Lycia when in the late 5th c. a Xanthian dynast announces, in a poem written for him in Greek, that he has ‘sacked many akropoleis with the aid of Athena sacker-of-cities’ (ML 93.7). The head of what looks to our eye like Athena duly appears on numerous coin issues of the dynastic period. From a silver vase showing the judgement of Paris which identifies Athena for a Lycian audience as ‘Maliya’ we know, very unusually, the name of a Lycian goddess with whom Athena could be roughly identified; it was noted above that the Maliya Wedrẽñni of some Lycian language inscriptions may be just a rendering of ‘Athena Polias’. But her attested role thereafter under her own name (away from the Greek settlements such as Rhodiapolis) is modest: an Arykandan who built her a temple in the second century AD while holding her priesthood provides an isolated attestation of a civic cult.42 Other goddesses are manifestly much more popular. The question then arises whether the goddess of the early dynastic coins is rightly styled ‘Athena’; should we not rather call her Maliya?

  • 43 On all this see I.Side I, p. 106-112; II, p. 424-5, 630-1: S 1; index, p. 715.
  • 44 Brandt, 1988, p. 242, referring to Imhoof-Blumer, 1901-2, p. 310 nr. 4-6. American Numismatic Socie (...)

17The coastal plain of Pamphylia to the east of Lycia was a region of Greek settlement probably going back to the second millennium, but already for that reason exposed to interaction with indigenous cultures from long before the date of our first documents. At Side, the local language Sidetic had supplanted Greek, but Athena was the ‘goddess who sits in front of Side’, the city’s protectress; she receives that title only in the Roman period, but had dominated the coinage from the beginning (when the inscriptions were in Sidetic) and had probably always had that role; her name may even have entered Sidetic. Iconographically she remained the goddess of the mainland, influenced by the Athena of Athens, but her temple was by the sea and a festival of ‘embarkation’ (epibateri-) seems to show that she eventually acquired an unusually close association with maritime life.43 Athena was not the ‘mistress of Perge’ along the coast- that was Artemis- but had a priestess there, at least in Roman times (I.Perge 173); her role as Polieus at the Hellenistic foundation Attaleia was noted earlier. Aspendos too already had a helmeted goddess resembling Athena on her coins in the fifth and fourth centuries, and a mint-mark showing a cult statue on a base implies actual worship. 44 But the goddess(es) who later stood for the city was/were the Thea(i) Kastnietis/ides, identified as Aphrodite/ai. Whether the goddess worshipped in the Achaemenid period was truly Athena, or rather a hellenized version of the Thea Kastnietis (who admittedly was later quite differently depicted), must be uncertain.

  • 45 She appears on about eleven city coinages.
  • 46 Waelkens, 1999, p. 193-197, who writes, p. 197, ‘there can be little doubt that Athena and Ares at (...)
  • 47 See e.g. Robert, 1987, p. 422-7.
  • 48 Weiss, 1992, p. 149; cf. von Vacano, 1986, p. 198b. See in general the note to I.Selge 2; the homon (...)
  • 49 On all this see Nollé, 1992, p. 92-6.

18Pisidia, inland and upland, was exposed to Athena from Pamphylia below, but there is thus far little to record (if we except the ever problematic coinages of the period of the Roman empire).45 At Sagalassos Athena and Ares make dramatic sculptural appearances as a pair in the mid second century;46 Ares has an attested importance in cult in the region,47 perhaps covering an indigenous war-god, but it is only a possibility that Athena had similar prominence in cult for similar reasons. Selge is represented by Athena on a homonoia coin of the reign of Decius, and in fact had appeared on the earliest coinage of the city c. 400 or a little after; but the type has been borrowed from Pamphylian Aspendos (as again later at Etenna) and need not attest such precocious interest in the Greek pantheon.48 Another coin of Selge, of the time of Aurelian, shows Athena striding towards a snake in a tree; on the ground on her other side a baby stretches out its arms. Athena, it has been suggested, is acting as surrogate mother (as in the myth of Erichthonios) to a child (perhaps fathered by the snake) who would grow up as a founding hero of the region – a myth that can be postulated on the basis of enigmatic coins of Etenna.49 This would represent an entry by Athena, in a familiar role, into a pre-existent local myth, a crossover between Great and Little traditions in Robert Redfield’s terminology.

  • 50 Tribe: MDAI (A) 30 (1905), p. 325-6 no. 2. Coins: Mitchell, 1979, p. 424: ‘A seated Athena, with sp (...)
  • 51 Mitchell, 1979, p. 425 n. 108, on the inscription JHS 38 (1918), 170-2, xiii: ‘the restoration cann (...)
  • 52 MAMA 8. 66 (with relief of a standing and armed Athena), Laminger-Pascher, 1992, no. 257.
  • 53 Swoboda et al., 1935, p. 32 fig. 26.

19Evidence from Lykaonia is sparse but intriguing. The main town Iconium was a double settlement where a polis of ‘Greeks’ (so Acts 14.1 ) co-existed with a Roman colony; the polis hosted a φυλὴ Ἀθηνᾶς̣ Π̣[ολιάδος(?)], and the goddess is a popular type on the coinage of both the Greek and Roman communities.50 But named dedications to Athena are missing from the catalogues of the museums both at Konya (Iconium) and Burdur, and a remarkable bilingual of the 1st c. AD from Iconium gives us a dedication in Latin to (among others) Minervae Zizim[menae], in the fragmentary Greek just [Ζι]ζζιμηνῇ. Zizimmenian Mother is a popular figure named from Zizima north of Iconium, but it seems that we must here be faced with a ‘Zizimmenian Athena’:51 that is to say the conflation of a Greek goddess with an indigenous Mother, that process so often postulated and so seldom proved, is here made manifest. The bilingual may thus set the ‘tribe of Athena (Polias?)’ in a new perspective. From Akören some 50 kms NE of Iconium comes a dedication of the Roman period by a slave to Athena of the Mouriseis.52 Warned by the bilingual from Iconium, one will wonder about the character of this Athena. But an uninscribed statuette proves, what is not surprising, that the goddess’ familiar image was part of the visual culture of the region.53

  • 54 See e.g. SNG France 2, nos. 164-195 (Soloi), 237-8 (Tarsus), 403-5 (Mallos), 414-5 (Issos) for the (...)

20In a way that could scarcely have been predicted, the two Cilicias, rough and flat, provide more and richer evidence than any other region, and this though lying (Soloi and Nagidos aside) beyond the reach of early Greek colonial settlement. Flat Cilicia’s early coinage is notably multi-cultural, and the goddess appears in the fourth century, while the region was still under Persian control, on the satrapal coins of Tarsus, Mallos and perhaps Issos as well as of Soloi; under Alexander’s satrap Balakros a type appears in all these places which juxtaposes Athena on the obverse with a figure of a somewhat hellenised but still unmistakable Baal on the reverse. Nagidos in the west also offers a fine Athena Promachos.54 Soloi may have had a cult of Athena Lindia from the time of its foundation and one can postulate a place for the goddess at Nagidos, another Greek colony, but few Greeks lived in the other cities; other gods to appear on the coins of Tarsus (the legends on which were in the fifth century inscribed in Aramaic) include Nergal, Ahura-Mazda, perhaps Anu. So we cannot confidently project back the cult we know Athena to have had at Tarsus in the time of Dio Chrysostom (33.45). These satrapal coinages, with motifs shared between cities, are not proof of local cults; they are designed to appeal to multiple users, Greek mercenaries prominent among them.

  • 55 Arr. Anab. 2.5.9; SEG XII 511. 8 and 15 (new ed. in Savalli-Lestrade, 2006, p. 126-8 [SEG LVI 1799] (...)
  • 56 See Houghton, 1984. Late hellenistic coins of Zephyrion in Cilicia show what looks like a seated At (...)
  • 57 See n. 7 above.

21There is, however, a clear example to illustrate the possibility that a different goddess of the region might be turned into Athena. According to Arrian, Alexander made sacrifice to Athena at Magarsos in B.C.55 Since Magarsos was not at this date a Greek settlement, the designation as Athena must certainly represent interpretatio of a (ultimately Luvian?) goddess. As shown on the coins of neighbouring Mallos, Athena Magarsia is an engagingly mixed figure: she has the strict frontal posture and arms stiffly extended to the sides of a north Syrian/Anatolian goddess, but her lower body is draped in an unmistakable aegis, she holds a spear and wears a helmet.56 Magarsos was, as it seems, re-founded by a Seleucid monarch as Antioch on the Pyramos, with good Greek tribes and institutions and (as we noted earlier) a cult of Athena Polias and Zeus Polieus. But there is no sign that Athena Magarsia was domesticated in the new colony as Athena Polias; as far as we can tell, the two cults existed side by side. The feelings of the mixed population of the colony about their two Athenas can unfortunately not be divined; this is the kind of lost microhistory that would have been richly revealing. Aigeai too along the coast, another Macedonian colony, hosted Zeus Polieus and Athena Polias; nothing is known here of possible predecessors.57

  • 58 Ehling et al., 2004, p. 238, nos. 33-4, republished with better text in Sayar, 2004. The supposed A (...)
  • 59 Three caves are dedicated to Athena under the title Oreia (Krisoa), two (discussed in the text) und (...)
  • 60 Apollo at Balat, Βean, Mitford, 1970, no. 4; a goddess, ib. no. 26 (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Gedifi (...)

22A different and distinctive cult of Athena apparently developed further West, in rough Cilicia, though it also appears in Cilicia of the plains (two instances south of Mopsuestia58) . It is addressed to Athena typically under the title Oreia, ‘of the Mountain’ (attested six or seven times; twice expanded to Oreia Krisoa), and its characteristic location is a cave on the southern slopes of the Taurus range, north and north east of Seleukeia on the Kalykadnos.59 Two further Athenas (Athena at Tagai, from the same region, and Athena Lamatorma from near Germanikopolis in Isauria further west) are likewise worshipped in caves and must be closely related figures; one of the finds from south of Mopsuestia in flat Cilicia also comes from outside a cave which contained many worked niches, thus giving this cave-based cult a span of a good 250 kilometres west to east. Any god could be worshipped in a cave in Cilicia,60 but in the case of Athena this location is so regular as to suggest that it was felt to be peculiarly appropriate to her.

  • 61 Keil, Wilhelm, 1915, p. 22-32 (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Seleukeia, no. 124).

23Several sites offer revealing details. The cave of ‘Athena at Tagai’ as described by Keil and Wilhelm lies two hours walk up difficult paths from Selefke (Seleuceia) along the valley of the Kalykadnos, high in the western rock face, about 15 metres wide and deep.61 A niche in the south wall contained a long decree of the council and people of Seleuceia, datable between 142-161, in honour of one Dionysodoros Theagenous. From it we learn that Dionysodoros had bought the priesthood of Athena en Tagais, which had long been offered for sale in vain, at the price of certain services: dedication to the goddess of a tympanon worth 50 denarii (on which his name was to be inscribed), and cash donations to counsellors, magistrates, people and gerousia. He had also ‘from his own funds prepared the temple and the gilding and the gilded Parian image and the under-altar (ὐποβωμίς) and the way up and the door over the entrance’: the ‘temple’, as it is grandiosely described, was therefore in the form seen by Keil and Wilhelm the work of Dionysodoros, though the cult itself was not his creation.

  • 62 Βean, Mitford, 1970, p. 202.
  • 63 Bean, Mitford, 1970, nos. 226-229 (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Damlaçalı, nos. 2-5).
  • 64 Borgia, 2003, 83 n. 13, notes 19 mints issuing Athenas, and the list could be extended.

24The cave of Athena Lamatorma is about 12 miles NNE of the site of Germanikopolis (Ermenek) at a height of c. 6000 feet. ‘The site is centred on a large cave, its entrance barred by a low wall, which had before it a sizeable enclosure now filled with a tumble of well-dressed stone and the debris of a large white marble column. Behind the cave in a sheltered hollow are the remains of two substantial buildings. We imagine a peribolos with stoa and columnar statue, built tombs perhaps and an aedicula before the actual shrine which the cave constituted; and to the rear accommodation and shelter for worshippers.’62 A broken column lying in front of the cave was erected ex voto, according to the inscription it bears (early 2nd c. AD?), by two brothers from Coropissus and two brothers and their cousin from Germanikopolis; another base dedicated to Athena bore a statuette. Two further inscriptions were carved on the walls within the cave: a fragmentary one that mentions ‘the cave’, perhaps in relation to works done in it (for the first time?), and one that reads ‘For the victory of our Master (Septimius Severus?), the city of the Germanikopolitai’.63 Like the decree of Seleukeia in the cave of Athena en Tagais, this last shows that the small Cilician poleis in some measure controlled and used these remote and rough-hewn sanctuaries; the goddess is pervasive on the coinage of the region.64 At the cave south of Mopsuestia, an otherwise unknown body of ‘Seladneis’ dedicated to Athena what if correctly read was ‘the circle of the drinking place’ (συμπόσιον).

  • 65 Durugönül, 1987; Durugönül, 1989, p. 50-51 and 128-137, figs. 44-45; Durugönül, 1999, 121-4 with Ta (...)
  • 66 Cf. the similar addition on coins of Ariobarzanes III of Cappadocia, Thierry, 2002, p. 30 plate 4.
  • 67 Sayar, 2004, abb. 7.

25A cave at Efren in the valley of the Lamos near Elaiussa Sebaste has a rock-cut figure of ‘Oreia Athena Krisoa’ in a niche beside the entrance.65 The goddess is modelled on the familiar type of the Athena Parthenos, but with some non-standard additions: on one of two pilasters that frame her figure are carved a star, a half moon and a thunderbolt, just beyond them what may be a candelabrum; behind her left shoulder appear the head and shoulders of a bridled horse. Further details have perhaps broken away; the niche above her head has the form of a scallop shell. The star and half moon make the goddess more celestial than she is in Greece itself;66 but a thunderbolt is not alien to her traditional image, nor a bridled horse. Another cave north of Seleukeia, containing several worked niches and square bowls, is identifiable not by an inscription but, again, by a standing figure of Athena (similar to that from Efren to judge from the published photo67).

  • 68 Şahin, 2009 (SEG LVIII 1649), an altar dedicated Ἀθηνᾷ ΣΕΡ [ca. 3-4] by Ailios Ioulianos; whether Σ (...)
  • 69 See Goldman, 1950, I, 313-4 nos. 32-9 (terracottas from Tarsus); Fleischer, 1968-71, a small bronze (...)
  • 70 Nollé, 2007.

26The earliest trace of Athena Oreia is one of the dedications from south of Mopsuestia, dated to a year 84 which is taken to be the Pompeian era, i.e. 17 A.D. But it could obviously go back much further. We saw earlier that a cult of Athena, but doubtless not Athena Oreia, may have been established when Seleukeia on the Kalykadnos was founded in the centre of the region where Oreia is later attested. In (probably) 42 B.C. a commander set up a verse dedication at Olba/Diokaisareia a little to the north to the ‘undefiled [goddess]’, boasting of his role in the sack of Xanthos; the goddess’ military role was therefore familiar. (A later dedication to Athena at Diokaisareia was made by a miles stationarius, but the character of the Athena is unclear.68) It is not in doubt that Athena’s normal Greek image (embracing both appearance and powers) was well-known in the region.69 Anyone who consulted one of the popular lot oracles might draw a prophecy in the name of ‘Glaukopis’ or of ‘Zeus and Athena’.70

  • 71 Meter Steunene (Paus. 10.32.3; Robert, 1987, p. 264-5; Vermaseren, 1977, no. 124); Meter Andeirene (...)
  • 72 Roller, 1999, p. 45, 80-81. Absent from Cilicia: Ehling et al., 2004, p. 118.
  • 73 Borgia, 2003, p. 76-77. Borgia, ibid., p. 79-80, tentatively identifies the underlying goddess not (...)

27What is intriguing in the cave at Efren is the familiar visual image of Athena Parthenos seen in relation to a cult title, and a cult site, so alien to what she was used to in her homeland. The cult site one might, at a pinch, explain as an adaptation to local norms, though, as noted above, it seems to have been seen as peculiarly appropriate to this goddess. The cult title Oreios moves her into very unfamiliar territory, and it is hard not to suspect the influence of a substrate. Oreios is an epithet borne by several gods, but pre-eminently by Mother, a power very often worshipped in caves; she was worshipped in a cave with the epithet Oreia at Karain in Pamphylia, further west than the attested cults of Athena Oreia but still on the south slopes of the Taurus. 71 Mother is absent from Cilicia in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, but was apparently attested as Kubaba in Aramaic at Castabala in the fifth century BC and may have left archaeological traces in earlier centuries.72 One might then speculate that Athena Oreia entered upon cave sanctuaries once occupied by Meter Oreia, though the reason for that usurpation would remain unclear: ‘hellenizing’ pressure from the Seleucid colony with its probable cult of the Greek Athena has been suggested,73 but a deliberate policy of replacing indigenous theonyms with Greek cannot be detected elsewhere. One advantage of that hypothesis is that it would explain why it was Athena who was chosen to replace Mother, in contrast to Artemis, who would seem much more suitable for a place in the wilds. But that advantage is retained even if one abandons the idea of deliberate policy: a prestigious cult could have exercised attraction without missionary pressure. The sad truth is that such processes cannot be reconstructed by the mere light of reason, unaided by specific evidence.

28That negative observation applies in some degree to the whole investigation. The factors that might have encouraged Athena or ‘Athena’ to spread interacted with innumerable different local circumstances, preferences, traditions, aspirations, micro-histories, too diverse and too specific to be recovered by intuition. Results are to some degree visible, not processes. But what can be seen is enough to bring into question the assumption we may sometimes fall into that, under the Roman empire, a homogenized Greco-Roman culture became generalised throughout Anatolia. (That assumption is brought into doubt, at least, if one follows the minimalist attitude to the evidence of coins largely adopted here. A maximalist approach will produce a quite different result. But even a maximalist approach must acknowledge, in the light of Athena Oreia and Minerva Zizimmene, that the Athena of cult practice may have differed drastically in function from the standardized image shown on the coins.) Though doubtless some phenomena were genuinely universal, in religion we are dealing with only very partial adoption of Greco-Roman deities, to some degree with just a Greco-Roman veneer. Over huge tracts Athena is, one might say, unknown as a goddess, though familiar as a name, as an iconographic type, and as an emblem of female virtue. She flourishes in Greek settlements, old and to a lesser extent new, and in a few places in the West early exposed to Greek influence. Elsewhere she puts down real roots only in Cilicia, and at the price of a transformation which leaves her Athena in name and aspect but scarcely in nature.

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Notes

1 An honourable exception is Paz de Hoz, 1997. I thank Peter Thonemann warmly for acute and learned comments on a draft of this article; in particular, my caution about recognising Athena on early Lycian and Aspendian coins is owed to him.

2 de la Nuez, 2009 treats the cults of the west and southern coasts but does not consider the issue of Athena’s absences elsewhere which largely interests me here.

3 Phaselis: TAM II.3. 1184 (5th c.), cf. 1200. 8-9; Melanippion SEG LVII 1663, cf. QS 3. 273-8.

4 J.D. Hawkins ap.Barnett, 1974, p. 902-3, on TAM I. 149. 2-3, 12; 150.6-7; but Laroche, 1979, p. 67, 115, would render ‘of the region’ rather than ‘of the city’; cf. Neumann, 2009, p. 192-3 (Malija), 421 (wedrẽñni). Rhodiapolitans: TAM II.3. 925.11-12 (cf. ib. 924, and now BÉ 2014 n° 456); on the Greek character of Rhodiapolis see Adak, 2007, p. 44. Maliya/Athena: see Barnett, loc. cit.

5 BCH 4 (1880), p. 76 (cf. ZPE 15 [1974], p. 68); on Soloi see Ehling et al., 2004, p. 11, 16, 49-50 (with emphasis on the place of Athena, and Rhodian symbols, on the coinage); the Lindian chronicle records a supposed Solian dedication at Lindos, FGrH 532 C 33.

6 Heberdey, Wilhelm, 1896, no. 39 (cf. Dagron, Feissel, 1987, p. 119 n. 2): cf. Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Anemurion no. 3; Şahin, 1979, no. 34; for coins e.g. Imhoof-Blumer, 1901-2, p. 266, 272 (Laodikeia on the Lykos), Robert, Robert, 1954, p. 263 (Apollonia Salbake).

7 Aigeai: Dagron, Feissel, 1987, no. 74 (SEG XXXVII 1245), 39/40 AD, an ex-priest of Zeus Polieus, Athena Polias and Kal- is honoured by the people; for Athena on late hellenistic coins of Aigeai see Ehling et al., 2004, p. 57 n. 415. Antioch on the Pyramos: two texts edited by P. Gauthier ap. Savalli-Lestrade, 2006, 226-230 (SEG LVI 1797-8: c. 200-180). Savalli-Lestrade, p. 229, argues that the territory of Antioch was cut out from that of Mallos (as is plausible) and that the cult was ‘quasi certainement un heritage de Mallos et remonte peut-être aux origines ‘argiennes’ de celle-ci’ (this last idea deriving from Robert). But if Mallos had no real Argive origins, as would be generally held today, there is no strong reason to explain the cult in this way. Attaleia: SEG VI 647, a Roman lady has financed annual sacrifices to Athena Polias. Athena ‘dominates the civic coinage’: Mitchell, 1979, p. 433; cf. Baydur, 1976, p. 56-8; already on hellenistic obverses Baydur, 1975, p. 49-50; for her in a temple on imperial coins see Baydur, 1975, nos. 203-7, 237-240, 249-251, 265-6. A bronze plaque probably found near Antalya attests a ‘tribe of Athena’: Robert, 1949, p. 194-6. Seleukeia: so, without argument, Mitford, 1990, p. 2148; for the coins see SNG Switzerland I, Levante-Cilicia, nos. 680-690, 702-709, 711-717; SNG France 2, nos. 887-916, 932-951, 953-957, 959-963.

8 Cf. Mitchell, 1979, p. 430-5, on Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Klaudiopolis nos. 13 and 31 (the latter is a statue of Athena explicitly designated as ‘Phidiac’).

9 SEG XLVI 149, and now Filges, 2006, 321 no. 1.

10 See e.g. Athena in the grave monument from Ayazviran, TAM V I, 468b (SGO 04/19/01), the only epigraphic attestation of the goddess in east Lydia (Paz de Hoz, 1999, p. 64); or MAMA VII 344, a rare reference from Galatia.

11 See Thonemann, 2013a, p. 26-9 for the policies of Alexander; Hadrian’s Panhellenion later had a similar effect.

12 A rare case where we have dedications from the same sanctuary to a god under both indigenous and Greek names may be that of Stallos/Zeus Astrenos from Astra in Isauria: Royer, Bahar, 2011, p. 169 on their no. 20: ‘cette inscription nous fait connaître la forme anatolienne du nom de Zeus’.

13 Thonemann, 2013b, p. 15-22. On Phrygian naming see Brixhe, 2013.

14 In the absence of a special study treating Athena on the coins of Asia Minor, I have sought evidence in von Vacano, 1986.

15 Obverse: by my count Acmoneia, Apameia, Eukarpeia, Eumeneia, Peltai, Synnada; on these bronze coinages see Thonemann, 2013b, p. 28. Apameia, Eukarpeia and Eumeneia were certainly Greco-Macedonian colonies, as was probably Peltai; Synnada claimed a connection with Athens (Thonemann, 2011, p. 55-6, and cf. n. 24 below).

16 The 180 or so Athenas in Szaivert, Daburon, 2000, accessible via the index, give a good overview.

17 Robert, 1969-1990, 7, p. 220-224, against Kraft, 1972, esp. p. 94-96; for the debate see works cited by Chiai, 2012, p. 53 n. 14, and on the role of coins more generally ib. 51 n. 3. Kraft had in fact acknowledged that, within the pattern book type ‘god in temple’, the identity of the god might vary.

18 Nollé, 1992, p. 84, arguing that even conventional types reflect local cults, explains their use by the need to avoid giving precedence to one iconography among several in which a major god would have been represented. But the evidence for these multiple cults of Athena in a given city is lacking.

19 Franke-Nollé, 1997, p. 67-95.

20 Meadows, forthcoming.

21 Brommer, 1972. Nollé, 1995 dissents, but bases his argument, p. 66, on the a priori that ‘mit Sicherheit gab es in jeder kleinasiatischen Stadt, wo das Metallhandwerk eine lange Tradition hatte, auch einen Hephaistoskult’; as evidence, apart from the special case of Olympos in Lykia, all he can quote is two instances of tribes named from the god, which prove cultural familiarity but not cult. I know only of SEG LIV 1041 (Aphrodisias) and IMylasa 123. 3. There are plausible examples of other gods over-represented on coins: Tuchelt, 1969-70 (Pan), works cited by Brandt, 2002, p. 407 n. 124 (Egyptian gods; add Peter 2006). For cautious positions taken by good connoisseurs of local cults see Frei, 1990, p. 1733 and Mitford, 1990, p. 2139-2140.

22 Cf. Nollé, 1986, p. 129.

23 Weiss, 2000, 628. Laodikeia on the Lykos also had a tribe.

24 Hierapolis: Franke/Nollé, 1997, p. 77. Synnada: Imhoof-Blumer, 1901-2, p. 295 no. 19, an (unpublished?) item from the collection of Löbbecke; Synnada also depicts, unusually for Asia Minor, what is apparently a statue (Lacroix, 1949, p. 126).

25 Thonemann, 2013b, p. 32-7; cf. Dignas, 2003; Levick, 2007, p. 111: ‘Phrygian religion (apart from its dominance at Aizanoi and Antioch) was potent outside civic structures.’

26 The altar MDAI (I) 27/28 (1977-8), p. 319 no. 16 (with taf. 112. 1-3) = IKlaudiopolis 64 has nothing to do with Athena once it is acknowledged that the inscription Ἀνδάναι is an anthroponym, not a misspelling of the goddess’ name.

27 TAM IV.1.32. The idea of Bosch, 1935, p. 266, that the cult goes back to Athenian cleruchs at Astakos in the 5th c. BC is very speculative.

28 On Bithynia see Bosch, 1935, II, p. 155: ‘sind es auch hier wieder die griechischen Kolonien, die den Kult zuerst aufwiesen’. I have noted Hellenistic or earlier Athenas in Mysia at Adramytteum, Cyzicus, Iolla, Lampsacus, Parion, Pergamum.

29 Franke/Nollé, 1997, p. 6 no. 40 and p. 176 no. 1743, the latter not completely clear to my eye.

30 Note e.g. the cult of Athena Polias at Klaudiopolis, note 8 above.

31 I.Sinope 111, a dedication to Athena Polias and Soteira, by a Roman. Her presence at Peiraieus/Amisos is inferred from the owl on the coinage, but seen as owed to a 5th c Athenian cleruchy, by Olhausen, 1990, p. 1876; see ibid. for later numismatic evidence from the region, which he takes as attesting cult.

32 See Mitchell, 1982 (esp. p. 107 on the ritual) on the text published by Franchi de’ Cavalieri, 1901, chapters 14-15. In ch. 22 male priests of the same goddesses make an appearance.

33 BCH 33 (1909), p. 131 no. 109 = I.Tyana 35, where see the commentary; for theophoric names see I.Tyana, II, index p. 534; for Athena on coins of Tyana see I.Tyana, II, p. 373. ‘Thea Nikephoros’ of Comana: Baz, 2007, nos. 67 and 76; cf. Plut. Sull. 9.7 for Ma as Athena, and Robert in Dupont-Sommer, Robert, 1964, p. 95 on the vague naming.

34 JHS 16 (1896), p. 216 no. 4 = CEG II 867, from Ghiuk Chalar/ Gökçeler (but the chronological problem posed by the sculptor’s name Makedon, pointed out by Robert, 1987, p. 196 n. 42, remains unsolved); the identification of Gökçeler as Pedasa is accepted by Robert, loc. cit. (cf. Hornblower, 1982, p. 92). Athena at Halicarnassus: e.g. SEG XLIII 713.10-2.

35 Robert, 1987, p. 186-196.

36 SEG XLVII 1563; cf. later SEG XL 956, and for coins (and the hymn: SGO 01/23/01 = PMG 1037) Robert, 1987, p. 198-200; on the temple Peschlow-Bindokat, 1977, p. 94-6.

37 Wilhelm, 1908, p. 70-75, nos. 7-8; third century: Robert, 1936, no. 54. 27.

38 I.Stratonikeia 41b attests a statue; I.Stratonikeia 1534 refers to her in a fragment of a verse oracular response; both are of the Roman period. SNG Aulock, Karien, no. 2680 is a seated Athena on a coin of Stratonicea (Julia Domna); she seems not to appear at Mylasa.

39 Delrieux, 2008, p. 204-211 (ib. p. 176 for an argument that Neapolis too had a cult) . Homonoia: Franke/Nollé, 1997, p. 66 nos. 638-9 and p. 140 nos. 1350-1. Within a temple: Delrieux, 2008, p. 31, HP 16.

40 Nollé, 2009.

41 Macdonald, 1992, p. 30 notes the goddess’ virtual absence from the coinage (his reference to a cult attested epigraphically puzzles me); for the one type see ib. p. 83 type 58. For the possibility that she was known simply as Poliouchos at Tabai in the imperial period see Robert, Robert, 1954, p. 115 (on the coins of Tabai see esp. ib. p. 134; for Apollonia Salbake ib. p. 265, 268; for Kidrama p. 346, 368). Carian cities, not mentioned hitherto, occasionally showing Athena on their coinage in the 1st c.
B.C. (?) are Hydisus and Hyllarima; under the emperors Alabanda, Attuda, Heraklea Salbake, Neapolis, Trapezopolis.

42 On all this see the excellent overview of Frei, 1990, p. 1776-1780. Arykanda: I.Arykanda 108.5 (SGO 17.16.01). When Telmessos vowed annual sacrifices to Zeus Genethlios and Athena N[ikephoros] in celebration of victories of Eumenes II (Rivista di Filologia 60 [1932], p. 446 f., lines 27-8), it was merely honouring the gods of its honorand.

43 On all this see I.Side I, p. 106-112; II, p. 424-5, 630-1: S 1; index, p. 715.

44 Brandt, 1988, p. 242, referring to Imhoof-Blumer, 1901-2, p. 310 nr. 4-6. American Numismatic Society 1998.115.69 (accessible via numismatics.org) is a specimen dated 520-460. The one hellenistic coin of Magydos too is an Athena (NC 107 [1970], p. 319). Mint mark: SNG von Aulock 4503; Peus Auction 398 (28.04.2009) Lot 288; Münzen und Medaillen Auction 30 (28.05.09), Lot 619 (I owe these references to Peter Thonemann). Thea/i Kastnietis/ides: Callimachus, fr. 200a Pfeiffer, with Kerkhecker, 1999, 207-13 and the study by L. Robert that he cites. Thonemann points to the shrine of Artemis used for display in early hellenistic Aspendos (SEG XVII 639), and wonders whether this was a divergent early interpretatio of the Thea Kastnietis.

45 She appears on about eleven city coinages.

46 Waelkens, 1999, p. 193-197, who writes, p. 197, ‘there can be little doubt that Athena and Ares at Sagalassos had originally been Pisidian deities’; numismatic evidence for Athena begins in the 1st c BC. At Termessos she is missing from the abundant epigraphic record, though found on coins. There are two individual dedications: Milner, 1998, no. 150, to Zeus, Poseidon, Athena, all the gods and the river by a man saved from drowning; AS 18 (1968), p. 85 no.43 (Vasada) (SGO 14/16/01), to Athena Glaukopis by an individual who has ‘often gone as ambassador to Rome for my native land’. Statues of Athena of course existed: I.Central Pisidia 39, I.Selge 2.

47 See e.g. Robert, 1987, p. 422-7.

48 Weiss, 1992, p. 149; cf. von Vacano, 1986, p. 198b. See in general the note to I.Selge 2; the homonoia coin is Franke-Nollé, 1997, p. 190. The fragmentary I.Selge 84 may attest a male priesthood.

49 On all this see Nollé, 1992, p. 92-6.

50 Tribe: MDAI (A) 30 (1905), p. 325-6 no. 2. Coins: Mitchell, 1979, p. 424: ‘A seated Athena, with spear and shield, carrying a figure of Nike in her hand, is by far the most popular goddess to feature on the colonial coinage, and a bust of Athena in a Corinthian helmet and wearing the aegis appears on the reverse of a city type issued under Hadrian’, citing especially von Aulock, 1976, nos. 293-6; 301-7; 308-19; 466-82.

51 Mitchell, 1979, p. 425 n. 108, on the inscription JHS 38 (1918), 170-2, xiii: ‘the restoration cannot be justified in every detail, but there seems to be no way of avoiding the identification of the Meter Zizimmene with Athena.’ On Mother Zizimmene see Mitchell, 1992, II, p. 18; Vermaseren 1987, nos. 47, 785-7.

52 MAMA 8. 66 (with relief of a standing and armed Athena), Laminger-Pascher, 1992, no. 257.

53 Swoboda et al., 1935, p. 32 fig. 26.

54 See e.g. SNG France 2, nos. 164-195 (Soloi), 237-8 (Tarsus), 403-5 (Mallos), 414-5 (Issos) for the earlier coins; ib. 196-8, 367-371, 410-3, 419-20 for Balakros. Cf. Ehling et al., 2004, p. 39. For Nagidos see e.g. SNG France 2 no. 22 (ascribed however to Aphrodisias by Kraay, 1976, p. 280). For a well-illustrated overview see Casabonne, 2000.

55 Arr. Anab. 2.5.9; SEG XII 511. 8 and 15 (new ed. in Savalli-Lestrade, 2006, p. 126-8 [SEG LVI 1799]); the goddess is still mentioned in IGRR III 889. Luvian: but Lane Fox, 2008, p. 86-7, suggests that her shrine was founded by Sennacherib to commemorate a victory over a Greek fleet in 696. For Athena Polias at Margarsos (= Antioch on the Pyramos) see n. 7.

56 See Houghton, 1984. Late hellenistic coins of Zephyrion in Cilicia show what looks like a seated Athena with a mural crown: a mixture has been suggested here too, though no non Greek element is visible (Levante, 1988, p. 135).

57 See n. 7 above.

58 Ehling et al., 2004, p. 238, nos. 33-4, republished with better text in Sayar, 2004. The supposed Athena in IGRR 3.905 (Hierapolis Kastabala) is apparently a misreading: see L. Robert in Dupont-Sommer, Robert, 1964, p. 33.

59 Three caves are dedicated to Athena under the title Oreia (Krisoa), two (discussed in the text) under other titles; another lacks an inscription but is flanked by a depiction of the goddess. There are also four dedications to Athena Oreia not demonstrably associated with caves, and another rock-cut dedication to plain Athena. For details see Borgia, 2003; Sayar, 2004. Nonnus 15. 178 speaks of the stakes to which a virgin huntress’ nets are attached as ὀρείαδος ἱστὸς Ἀθήνης. This is literary whimsy, not separate evidence for a cult title.

60 Apollo at Balat, Βean, Mitford, 1970, no. 4; a goddess, ib. no. 26 (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Gedifi İni, no. 20); Zeus Modribetos, Βean, Mitford, 1970, no. 244 (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Feriske, no. 6); Hermes, JHS 12 (1891), p. 271 no. 75 (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Meydan, no. 3), and JHS 12 (1891), p. 211, 237, nos. 18-20 (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Kızılbağ nos. 1 [dated to the 2nd c. BC], 5, 6).

61 Keil, Wilhelm, 1915, p. 22-32 (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Seleukeia, no. 124).

62 Βean, Mitford, 1970, p. 202.

63 Bean, Mitford, 1970, nos. 226-229 (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Damlaçalı, nos. 2-5).

64 Borgia, 2003, 83 n. 13, notes 19 mints issuing Athenas, and the list could be extended.

65 Durugönül, 1987; Durugönül, 1989, p. 50-51 and 128-137, figs. 44-45; Durugönül, 1999, 121-4 with Taf. 25.3-4 (the best picture); Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Lamos, no. 19. The exact location is unclear to me; Durugönül speaks of Efren, Sayar, 2004, p. 455 of a ‘village Efren in the Lamos valley north east of Elaiussa Sebaste’ (should this have been north west?). ‘Athena at Sebaste’ is one of several recipients of fines for violation of a grave at Kanytelis near Elaiussa Sebaste, plain Athena in another from the same place (Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Kanytelis, nos. 11 and 16); this may well be the same or a similar figure.

66 Cf. the similar addition on coins of Ariobarzanes III of Cappadocia, Thierry, 2002, p. 30 plate 4.

67 Sayar, 2004, abb. 7.

68 Şahin, 2009 (SEG LVIII 1649), an altar dedicated Ἀθηνᾷ ΣΕΡ [ca. 3-4] by Ailios Ioulianos; whether ΣΕΡ- derives from a praenomen or is a cult title is uncertain. ‘Undefiled goddess’: JHS 12 (1891), p. 263 (IGRR 3.852, Hagel, Tomaschitz, 1998, Olba-Diokaisareia, no. 5, SGO 19/07/01).

69 See Goldman, 1950, I, 313-4 nos. 32-9 (terracottas from Tarsus); Fleischer, 1968-71, a small bronze bought in Nizip, Vilâyet Gaziantep; Williams, 1977, a limestone altar found 15 km. east of Ceyhan; Fleischer, 1984, an unusual small limestone relief with a double Athena from Erdemlı.

70 Nollé, 2007.

71 Meter Steunene (Paus. 10.32.3; Robert, 1987, p. 264-5; Vermaseren, 1977, no. 124); Meter Andeirene (Strabo 13.1.67, 614); Meter Ouegeinos nr. Thymbriada (SEG XXXV 1407-8, 1410-1, LV 1447-9); Meter Oreia at Karain in Pamphylia (SEG VI 718-23 = XLI 1323-1330; Vermaseren, 1977, nos. 750-4); perhaps the Pamphylian cave in which irenarchs made dedications (SEG VI 686-714); for older bibliography see Robert, 1969-1990, II, p. 994 n. 4.

72 Roller, 1999, p. 45, 80-81. Absent from Cilicia: Ehling et al., 2004, p. 118.

73 Borgia, 2003, p. 76-77. Borgia, ibid., p. 79-80, tentatively identifies the underlying goddess not as Mother but as a Luvian goddess Malis, translated by a lexicographer as Athena (see Hipponax fr. 40 West, and cf. the Lycian Maliya, p. 81 above) and supposedly worshipped at Dalisandos (Basil of Seleuceia, Life of Thecla, II. 15 in Migne PG 85 p. 592, II. 30 in the ed. of G. Dagron – but the ms. gives Damalis there, not Malis). The speculations of Bing, 1991, 163-4, on a Cilician proto-Athena, do not consider the attested Athena Oreia.

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References

Bibliographical reference

Robert Parker, Athena in AnatoliaPallas, 100 | 2016, 73-90.

Electronic reference

Robert Parker, Athena in AnatoliaPallas [Online], 100 | 2016, Online since 15 April 2016, connection on 28 March 2024. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/pallas/2825; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/pallas.2825

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About the author

Robert Parker

Wykeham Professor of Ancient History
Faculty of Classics Fellow, New College
Oxford University
robert.parker@new.ox.ac.uk

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