An examination of the Anatolian sources of Greek theogonic traditions, syncretistic myths that took shape in admixed Ur-Aeolian–Luvian communities in the Late Bronze Age, and descendent Aeolian assemblages of mythic and cult elements that persist into the Iron Age. Essential to many of these traditions is the presence of honey, especially honey having psychotropic properties of a sort that occurs naturally along the southern and eastern shores of the Black Sea.

Exploration of Aeolian foundation traditions and the localizing of such traditions in both the eastern Aegean and Magna Graecia, and of the reflexivity and reciprocality of Aeolian ethnic identity that these mythic traditions entail.

The sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi offers an example of how an ancient cult site was transformed into a Panhellenic sanctuary as a result of political and military conflicts involving some of the leading city-states of the region. After the so-called First Sacred War in the 590s/80s BC, Delphi was launched as the center of the Greek world with its oracle and its Panhellenic games. The Doric style of the Apollo temple and other buildings on the site helped to communicate the ambitions and values of the amphictyony that was in charge of the administration of the sanctuary after the war. The standardization of architecture and sculpture was an important feature in the elite competition that took place in Panhellenic sanctuaries like Delphi, where cities from all over Greece set up costly treasuries and votive statues. Ionic monuments such as the sphinx of the Naxians alternated with Doric buildings. On the basis of recent scholarship, the Ionic order can be interpreted as a regional variation of the “Panhellenic” Doric order. As can be shown, the Ionic order corresponds with cultural values such as abundance, variety, multilingualism, and openness toward Near-Eastern and Egyptian influences that are also characteristic of Ionian poetry, philosophy, and culture.

In the second century, Ignatius and Polycarp made an impact across Asia Minor. Ignatius, travelling under guard to Rome, wrote seven letters, six to churches and one to Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. This may be behind Lucian’s idea of Peregrinus, the Cynic philosopher, before his death, sending ‘letters to all the glorious cities that were Last Wills and Testaments’. Polycarp, Ignatius’ addressee, died in Smyrna in 155, after visiting Rome the year before. As a teacher of Christianity, Polycarp challenged the established sacred canopy – a system taught (at the elite level, in Smyrna) by Scopelian of Clazomenae. Polycarp’s contacts included people whose children would have been Scopelian’s students. He performed for the masters and mistresses of the world. Polycarp, by contrast, spoke from outside the dominant culture, so that listening to him constituted a ‘journey into darkness’ (Peter Berger). Paul and Thecla, the story of a woman from Iconium converted to Christianity because of Paul the Apostle, was written in Asia Minor after Polycarp’s time. A tract in novelistic form commending sexual continence, Paul and Thecla offers an insight into the Asian Christian experience.