Civic Cults between Continuity and Change

This chapter considers the important role of the polis as a religious community. Reconstructing cultic continuities and changes reveals aspects of social response to the rupture and discontinuity posed by population movement, settlement shift, and political change. The epigraphic, literary, and archaeological evidence allows us to piece together important indications of how traditional cultic and religious identities intersected with innovation. The chapter first maps the changing religious landscape of regions before and after urban mergers and considers how and why particular cults survived or died out and what this meant for the community that resulted. It then shows the ways in which central sanctuaries and civic cults served as focal points for integrating the discrete citizen groups into the polis, and the ways in which the traditional sacred landscape was simultaneously respected and replicated in the center of the new city. Finally, it examines the ways in which these synoikized communities—and, at times, their original constitutive parts—participated in religious and theoric networks such as koina and Panhellenic festivals.

Urbanization and Economic Networks

This chapter addresses the profound economic consequences of creating new polities by merging cities, elites, and fiscal regimes into new urban centers. It argues that the Hellenistic polis functioned as a core economic node in the vast patchwork of the fiscal regimes of the Hellenistic kingdoms, shifting from the primarily village-and palace-based system of Persian rule. The chapter focuses on several interconnected spheres: the effects of urbanization on the civic economy (i.e., the polis itself and its fiscal regime), the issue of land tenure and the relationship between civic territory and royal land, and the concomitant creation of regional leagues and wider networks of exchange. The chapter considers the vexing issue of monetization and the extent to which urbanization can serve as a proxy for economic growth, relating this study to questions about premodern economies and the economic effects of empires that are important questions in other fields. Drawing on recent approaches of economic historians (in particular, the new institutional economics and more apolitical models of Mediterranean connectivity), it examines how the heavy reliance on urbanization reveals a more explicitly economic basis for Hellenistic state building than is often assumed.

Consensus, Community, and Discourses of Power

The final chapter explores the ways in which competing interests and social groups of the polis potentially threatened the unity of the synoikized city. It first discusses potential causes for disunity (competing founder cults and claims to religious and social prerogatives, the challenges of social organization). It then focuses on the ways in which these challenges were addressed and negotiated. The chapter stresses the functional role of ritual activity and symbolism in binding together communities of disparate backgrounds while simultaneously accommodating distinctiveness within a unified political community. In this context, religious and civic traditions could constitute a challenge to the authority of the Hellenistic kings, but the potential for using religious symbolism and ritual to forge a collective political identity also represented an opportunity for building consensus. The chapter engages sociological and anthropological perspectives on ritual and ritual activity, myth, symbolism, and memory to address issues of consensus, legitimacy, dialogue, and social response.

Imperial Geographies

This chapter provides a narrative overview of the urban history of this period of the formation of the Hellenistic states. It presents the restructuring of urban centers against the backdrop of the warfare and state-building activities of the early Hellenistic kings. Covering the period 322–281 (and, to a lesser extent, 281–ca. 250), it stresses both the ideological and structural roles of urbanization in underpinning the Hellenistic states. It treats both the political history of the wars of the successors and presents a detailed survey of the archaeological and historical evidence for the effects of Hellenistic imperial policy on settlement patterns in northern Greece and Asia Minor. What emerges is a picture of great political and social disruption, but also the centrality of polis institutions.

Conclusion

The conclusion reviews the arguments of the preceding chapters and considers the degree to which the civic culture and the institutions of the polis restricted and shaped the formation of the Hellenistic kingdoms. It stresses local adaptions and local agency, while positing an overall framework for understanding the central role that urbanization played in this critical period of state formation.

Introduction

The introduction highlights the two observations that underlie the book: first, a major feature of the intense power struggles that characterized the formation of the Hellenistic states was the foundation of massive urban centers; and, second, these city foundations were almost all synoikisms, the merger of smaller poleis or communities into a single city. This involved major settlement and population shifts and the reorganization, consolidation, or elimination of autonomous polities. The introduction then sketches the main problems the book addresses: the critical role that manipulating urban networks played in the creation and maintenance of large territorial kingdoms and the challenges that this forced consolidation of diverse city-state cultures presented the discrete civic, cultic, and ethnic identities of the groups forced to join these unions. It argues that this approach elucidates how the power of the kings depended on complex negotiations with cities, as well as how the traditional institutions of the Greek polis imposed limits on the authority and opportunism of the kings. At the same time, it engages the question of comparative imperial structures, exploring how this focus on centralization differentiates the Hellenistic kingdoms from other ancient empires that tended to rule through political fragmentation.