This chapter traces the translocal dynamics in the exercise of religion on the Greek island of Delos, one of the eminent hot-spots of global connectivity in the Hellenistic world. Stainhauer argues that the local population, among many foreigners and immigrants, shaped their lived environment through various processes of cultural brokerage: by developing genuinely local cults such as that of Apollo, Zeus, and Athena Kynthios; by introducing new cults, sometimes upon the initiative of individuals or associations from away; and third, by locally appropriating global cults, for instance that of Isis and Serapis. Combining these dimensions, the people on Delos crafted a religious pluriverse that was moulded and tied to the local specificities of their island.

This chapter traces the translocal dynamics in the exercise of religion on the Greek island of Delos, one of the eminent hot-spots of global connectivity in the Hellenistic world. Stainhauer argues that the local population, among many foreigners and immigrants, shaped their lived environment through various processes of cultural brokerage: by developing genuinely local cults such as that of Apollo, Zeus, and Athena Kynthios; by introducing new cults, sometimes upon the initiative of individuals or associations from away; and third, by locally appropriating global cults, for instance that of Isis and Serapis. Combining these dimensions, the people on Delos crafted a religious pluriverse that was moulded and tied to the local specificities of their island.

Studies of trade are predicated on the antithesis between ‘personalised exchange’ (the Network) and ‘arms-length exchange’ (the anonymous Market). As regards ancient trade, the putative incongruity between the two has informed the view of the supremacy of personalised exchange, and the concomitant absence of market exchange. In historical analyses, furthermore, trade networks are appraised solely for their role in the distribution of raw materials and commodities. This chapter challenges these views. Focusing on a formalised kind of network, the association, it first charts the diffusion of traders’ associations to, and their integration in the economic life of, eastern Mediterranean commercial centres. Then, it investigates the mechanisms that enabled associational networks to act as fighters of trade constraints, distance-shortening entities, bridge builders between state/fiscal concerns and private profit, co-determinants of routes and prices, and as producers of knowledge and trust. Formalised networks, it is concluded, helped trade to break out of its lone-peddler mode and to amalgamate with a wider organisational world, whose newly fashioned business behaviour approximated that of the firm. In all this, this chapter is in alignment with the more recent trend among social scientists to consider networks as integral parts of market models of the economy.

In addition to being the primary locus of family interaction and daily activity, the house is a mediating space where individual lifestyles, social order and cultural conventions meet. This chapter investigates the domestic ritual material remains related to the Italian Lares compitales cult on Delos, in the 2nd and 1st centuries BCE, focusing on the shrines’ relationship with the expression and negotiation of different forms of group identities, and drawing on archaeological and textual evidence. Lares compitales shrines represent the material remains of the repeated social practice related to the expression of membership within this public cult, which in turn functioned as a means of group identity (or community) creation for freedmen, a newly formed civic group increasing in number during this period. Locating domestic space and associated activities within a liminal zone existing within, and/or confounding, the realms of public and private, this contribution contends that these shrines not only provided a physical location for certain activities related to this cult, but also performed a social function as a means of communicating and negotiating identities through the material expression of repeated social practice.

This chapter deals with local narrative traditions and the ritual acts associated with local sanctuaries (to the extent to which these can be fruitfully investigated) of Hera, whose cult titles Teleia and Basileia echo how she is portrayed in the archaic epic poetry. This is notably the case at Argos, Samos, and Perachora, where important sanctuaries of the goddess are located outside the city centre, but also in Olympia, ‘the Olympus on earth’, where the first monumental temple of the Panhellenic sanctuary of Zeus is associated with her. Her cults in Plataia, Delos, Lesbos, Corinth, Athens, and western Greece shows how her roles of spouse and sovereign overlap and to some extent come to be confused because of her complex relation to Zeus. This relation is crucial to understanding the expectations of Hera’s worshippers, although in a certain number of places the connection with Zeus is not made fully explicit.

This chapter explores how Diana Taylor’s definition of “archive” (e.g., historical artifacts and written records) and “repertoire” (performance practices) as distinct but related forms of cultural memory illuminates the representation of mythic performance in Plutarch’s Lives. More than simply applying modern performance theory to ancient texts, my analysis brings Plutarch into dialogue with Taylor, showing that he reflects upon similar theoretical problems in a distinctive way. In recounting Theseus’ visit to Delos, Plutarch describes how the hero’s defeat of theMinotaur is commemorated by object dedication and choral dance. These two acts of memory are closely intertwined, as both ritual object and mimetic dance function as vehicles to transmit specific elements of the myth. Yet Plutarch also questions the efficacy of dedications and performance practices as such vehicles, calling attention to the limits of both object endurance and mimetic song-dance. By positioning his own writing as a form capable of encompassing and surpassing both the archive and the repertoire, he ultimately reveals how the literary text itself both instantiates and complicates those very distinctions.

The first chapter is concerned with the roles of Hyperborea in hymns and sanctuaries. It brings together fragments of Archaic and Classical material related to the great sanctuaries of Apollo at Didyma, Delphi and Delos and explores the uses of the distant North in the positioning of all three sites. It looks at how the interaction of ritual and commemoration could instrumentalise boreal remoteness to frame divine presence in sanctuaries that claimed a certain centrality. The first, introductory section of that chapter revisits the themes of divine arrival and absence through the lenses of cosmography. The second section is focused on an inscribed bone tablet from the northern Black Sea, an object consecrated to Apollo of Didyma. The third section, focused on the traces of Alcaeus' hymn to Apollo, analyses the poem's story of Apollo's arrival to Delphi from Hyperborea as a cosmographic document. The fourth and final section of the first chapter looks at the Delian record through the traces of Olen's hymn to Eileithyia, and the important cultic presence of the Hyperborean Maidens on the island. With that hymnic material, this chapter aims to explore the challenges and illustrate the significance of studying cosmography through cult and place.

Chapter 4 treats the genre of the epigraphic inventory within the context of earlier Greek literature. It argues through detailed re-examination of these enigmatic texts that they are calculated in their layout and design to “display” and “replace” the dedications in their store for the viewers of the text. Moreover, whether or not they serve as ongoing useful records for the officials involved, they allow both the polis administration and the public to grapple with multiple forms of deterioration and loss.

This chapter considers the ‘vase festivals’ recorded on Hellenistic Delos as benefactions, and then considers the implications of this approach on our chronology for the period. It argues that the vase festival was a socially constrained form of competitive display, one open only to Delians and others who successfully sought and negotiated this privilege. Through the endowment and the associated display, these individuals claimed and performed a distinct superior status: as patrons of the sanctuary. But this was not an exclusive claim. It coexisted with and competed with other claims, both when they were founded and in subsequent years. As such, the dates and periods during which royal (and non-royal) individuals founded these vase festivals (Third Ptolemaea, 246/5 BC, Soteria/Antigonia, 245/4 BC, etc.) can be understood as periods of engagement by those individuals on Delos and the region. But this competitive context indicates that they should not be understood as dates for changes of control. Quite the reverse: if the vase festivals have any implication for our understanding of the broader geopolitical terrain – and they may not – they indicate that these were times when interest in the sanctuary and the region were higher, and when any specific patronage or hegemonic relationships in the sanctuary and the region were particularly contested.