Progress in research is often synonymous with small gains in insight. Sometimes, however, there are turning points that open up new perspectives on long-familiar phenomena. In the study of the ruler cult in the Graeco-Roman world, two works in particular have so far marked such watershed moments through their methodological and theoretical approaches, each fundamentally reshaping the field: Christian Habicht’s Gottmenschentum und griechische Städte, and Simon Price’s monograph Rituals and Power: The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor.[1] To these two foundational studies must now be added another monograph, the subject of the present review: Stefano Caneva’s ambitious book The Power of Naming: Studies in the Epicletic Language of Hellenistic Honours, which covers the period from 336 BCE to the 30s BCE, beginning with Philip II of Macedon and ending with Cleopatra VII, the last of the Ptolemaic rulers of Egypt.
This monograph—like the edited volume Practicalities of Hellenistic Ruler Cults (2020)[2]—emerged from the research project Practicalities of Hellenistic Ruler Cults , directed by Caneva at the University of Liège between 2015 and 2020. With this project, Caneva turned his attention to the topic of the Hellenistic ruler cult, which—despite the growing interest in the Hellenistic world, ‘Greek religion’, and Hellenistic monarchy since the turn of the millennium—has received surprisingly little sustained attention beyond a number of important, predominantly case-study-based publications.
Caneva’s highly systematic book consists of four clearly structured chapters, framed by a detailed and well-conceived introduction and an extensive and helpful conclusion. The study benefits from the author’s wide-ranging familiarity with the literary sources and, above all, the epigraphic, numismatic, and papyrological evidence. The strongly religious studies-oriented perspective that he adopts toward the phenomenon of ruler cult has undoubtedly proved advantageous for his research project, providing an important corrective to the political-functionalist approaches that may at times have occupied too prominent a place in earlier scholarship. The result is an intellectually stimulating study that, through its innovative focus on ‘epicletic language’, breaks important new ground and opens up productive paths for interpretation.
The introductory chapter (“Cult denominations and the dilemma of Hellenistic Royal deification: A methodological introduction”) fulfills several functions and does so successfully. The opening two sentences of the chapter reflect both the ambitious aim of Caneva’s study and his methodological self-awareness: “The question of whether Hellenistic communities deemed ritual honours able to deify honoured rulers is an especially risky one. The distance that separates modern researchers from the mentality in which such honours were conceived is enormous and has produced several misleading interpretations of this phenomenon in contemporary scholarship” (p. 21). In this first chapter, Caneva clearly develops his own research agenda while simultaneously situating it through critical engagement with previous scholarship. Of particular importance here is—unsurprisingly—his recourse to the conceptual framework of ‘epicletic language’, whose heuristic potential has become increasingly apparent in recent research on Greek religion. Caneva clearly demonstrates both the adaptability of this concept and its added value for his own line of inquiry, while also explaining the terminology he has developed for the central building blocks of his investigation, namely the categories of “root (R): the name (anthroponym or theonym) enjoying a place of primacy in a compound denomination” and “qualifier (Q): a name (anthroponym or theonym) or adjective that characterises the religious profile of the root element.” The functions of “root” and “qualifier” may be fulfilled by the following elements: “anthroponym (A): the personal name of an honoured ruler; theonym (T): the name of a deity; epithet (e): a noun or adjective accompanying and characterising an anthroponym (eA) or a theonym (eT); this category also includes the royal title basileus/basilissa and the term theos when used in compound denominations” (p. 56). At first glance, this terminology of ‘epicletic patterns’ may appear somewhat artificial (for an overview of the possible variants, see p. 395). Yet it fits well with an aspect that fundamentally shapes Caneva’s work and that deserves particular emphasis: namely, the idea that the “divinity of the Hellenistic rulers” constitutes a “social construct” (p. 40). Because of this, it must be examined through the interplay of religious, religious-studies, and sociological questions concerning “religious status” (p. 42), in order to determine the rulers’ “religious persona” (p. 48) both as a social construct and in terms of its social efficacy.
In the second chapter, Caneva begins his detailed analysis of the evidence through a series of case studies concerning combinations of royal anthroponyms and theonyms consisting of two components (“Two-member denominations combining a royal name with a theonym,”). Altogether, these comprise fourteen attestations in which either an anthroponym is combined with a theonym or vice versa. Eleven of the attestations concern royal women (p. 60), while in three cases the women honored with cultic distinctions are hetairai: Pythionike, a courtesan of Harpalus, in Babylon; and Leaina and Lamia, two courtesans of Demetrius I Poliorcetes, in Athens (both) and in Thebes (Lamia only).
The four attestations for men designated with corresponding “cultic epicleses” concern rulers in two cases and members of the royal court in the other two. Alongside the quantitative predominance of women, it is striking that the majority of the attested female examples—seven in total—originate from Egypt, whereas none of the male examples do.
The third chapter (“Three-member and multiple denominations,”) is devoted to all those cases in which the name of a ruler is connected with at least two additional elements in various combinations, vielding fourteen configurations in total (pp. 111–113). From this material, Caneva derives four categories (along with subgroups). Category I (A–eA–T) consists of name compositions made up of anthroponym, epithet, and theonym (pp. 113–136); Category II (eA–A–T), by contrast, follows the reversed order of epithet, anthroponym, and theonym (pp. 136–138); Category III (A–T–eA; pp. 139–160) comprises denominations in which the theonym is placed between the anthroponym and one or more epithets; and Category IV (eA–T–A; pp. 161–175), in turn, includes combinations in which the theonym stands between an epithet referring to the anthroponym and the anthroponym itself. Caneva does not classify two additional groupings as categories. The first consists of three-part designations beginning with a theonym (pp. 175–186), followed either by an epithet referring to the theonym and then by the anthroponym (T–eT–A), or by an anthroponym accompanied by a corresponding epithet (T–A–eA). The second grouping comprises denominations in which the adjective neos or nea precedes the theonym that follows the anthroponym (A–eneos–T; pp. 186–198). Among Caneva’s categories and groupings, Categories I and III are quantitatively dominant. Particularly striking is the fact that, apart from the Pontic king Mithridates (VI) Eupator Dionysos (pp. 129–136), all the other queens and kings in these two categories belong to the Ptolemaic dynasty and the Seleucid dynasty. One of the three examples belonging to Categories II and IV is Theophanes, the friend of Pompey and benefactor of his native city of Mytilene, designated as Theos Zeus Eleutherios Philopatris Theophanes (pp. 169–175).
The fifth chapter is devoted to the most widely attested deifying epithet for Hellenistic rulers—Theos and Thea (“Becoming Theos: The Hellenistic history of a deifying epithet”). The first subsections are organized either biographically or chronologically (“Alexander’s last years”; “The Diadochi down to 280”). After the reign of Ptolemy II Philadelphus—clearly identified as a turning point—the focus shifts toward a spatial-dynastic or dynastic perspective (“Asia Minor and Egypt in the mid-3rd century: From Ptolemies to Seleucids and the question of Antiochos II’s epithet Theos”; “Consolidation of the tradition: The Attalids and their legacy”). Before the chapter concludes with an outlook toward the “late Hellenistic East” and toward Cleopatra VII Philopator and Teos (“Coda: The late Hellenistic East, and back to Teos”), Caneva devotes two subsections primarily to Ptolemy V and Antiochus IV (“Theos and the divine epiphany of living rulers: from Ptolemy V to Antiochos IV”), as well as to the highly fascinating figure of Cleopatra Thea, a daughter of Ptolemy VI Philometor and wife of the Seleucid rulers Alexander Balas, Demetrius II Nicator, and Antiochus VII Sidetes (“Kleopatra Thea Eueteria in Antiochia-Ptolemais-Ake”).
The book concludes with the sixth chapter, a synthetic and wide-ranging discussion (“Synthesis, general observations, and further perspectives”), which extensively brings together the numerous individual investigations and various thematic strands. In this chapter, Caneva takes important steps toward constructing a ‘larger picture’, demonstrating not only his ability to produce a broad-ranging synthesis but also his keen sense for the unresolved problems and questions that still require further study before a comprehensive understanding of ruler cults in the Hellenistic world can be achieved.
Although Caneva’s text may sound highly technical and abstract from time to time because of the author’s ‘syntactic approach’, which results in a partially ‘modernistic’ language (e.g., p. 313), the study is underpinned by a wealth of detailed, conventionally structured case studies whose quality makes them, in their own right, an important scholarly contribution. Beyond the undeniable significance that The Power of Naming—enriched with a series of generally high-quality illustrations—holds for Greek religious history, Hellenistic history, and the analysis of (ancient) ruler cults, the work also deserves attention for another reason: in exemplary fashion, Caneva’s highly stimulating study demonstrates the possibilities and potential of a methodological approach that, in its fundamental structure, might be characterized as a ‘database approach’—one that, it may be assumed, will continue to gain importance within both present and future scholarship.
As much as one can gain from this highly learned study, one would nevertheless have liked to learn more in this 400-page monograph (including a forty-page bibliography representing broad engagement with the international and multilingual scholarship and a number of helpful indices) about what exactly Caneva thinks regarding the relationship between ruler cults employing epicletic language and those without such language. How can the differences in epicletic language—repeatedly and in a nuanced manner highlighted by the author in chronological, regional, local, dynastic, actor-related, and recipient-related terms—be explained within the framework of a“big picture”; or what the “religious persona” of Hellenistic monarchs might reveal about the possibilities for constructing the figures of queens and kings by cities on the one hand and by members of the dynasty on the other. One would also have welcomed further reflections on the conclusions regarding the nature of Hellenistic monarchy that might be drawn from the results of the study. It is greatly to be hoped that the author will address these aspects in future research.
In any case, Caneva has prepared the ground for further reflection on what divine honours and epicletic language for a king may reveal about the possibilities—and limits—of integrating a Hellenistic ruler into the cosmos of the polis; what new impulses emerge for the question of differences and commonalities between the practice of granting divine honours to living Hellenistic rulers by cities on the one hand and to deceased members of their own dynasties on the other; and finally, what significance the category of power had for the perception of Hellenistic kings in both the ‘classical’ Greek poleis and the ‘new’ Hellenistic cities, when cultic honours and the ‘religious language of the immortals’ were applied to a group of people who, in one respect known to all involved, always remained what they were—mortal—and who, despite all semantic and linguistic efforts, could not cross one ultimate boundary: that of immortality.
The questions raised and outlined above make one point especially clear: Caneva, who will be well aware of them, has written an exceptionally stimulating, thought-provoking, and empirically rich book, which, due to its complex arguments and wealth of material, is not always easy to read, but is undoubtedly more than worth the effort. It offers its readers a genuinely enriching experience and will almost certainly prompt a renewed perspective on a central phenomenon of Hellenistic history, while at the same time generating numerous questions that are likely to stimulate further research on the topic of divine honours for kings and queens in the Hellenistic world (and beyond). Anyone who engages in future work with the phenomenon of ruler cult in the Hellenistic world will inevitably draw on Caneva’s foundational contribution.
Notes
[1] C. Habicht, Gottmenschentum und griechische Städte (= Zetemata 14), Munich 1956 (2nd., revised edition: Munich 1970); revised and translated into English: Divine Honors for Mortal Men in Greek Cities. The Early Cases, Ann Arbor 2017; S.R.F. Price, Rituals and Power. The Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor, Cambridge 1984.
[2] Stefano G. Caneva, L. Lorenzon (eds.), The Materiality of Hellenistic Ruler Cults (= Kernos Supplements 36), Liège 2020.