Delos

This chapter is a case study of the place where, above all, interaction between Greek and foreign cults can be observed: the island of Delos in the 2nd and early 1st centuries BC. The three Sarapieia, the sanctuary of the Syrian gods and the various sanctuaries of non-Greek gods on M. Kynthos provide detailed evidence for options and choices in naming gods in a multi-cultural environment.

Names and Epithets

This chapter is about the names and epithets of Greek gods, in particular the system of the ‘cultic double name’ by which in cult gods were mostly referred to by both their own name and an epithet, which might be either local (‘of Brauron’) or functional (‘of horses’). It discusses the history and implications of the frequent practice of omitting the name in favour of the epithet. It also treats usages in which gods were referred to by titles rather than proper names. It shows how Greek ways of referring to gods are like and unlike ways of referring to humans, and how these differences illuminate the perceived differences between the two categories of being.

Ad Maiorem Deorum Gloriam

In this chapter I consider the emergence (or greatly increased prominence) of a new type of epithet, one which does not specify but rather glorifies: epithets such as hagios, ‘sacred’, kyrios, ‘lord’, epiphanēs, ‘manifest’, sōtēr,‘saviour’, megas, ‘great’, epēkoos, ‘who listens’. I trace their individual histories, and show that hagios, kyrios, megasand epēkoosenter the Greek religious vocabulary from other religious traditions, and remain especially popular in their places of origin. But I also assess broader factors that may have fostered this new vocabulary of exaltation.

Gods of Many Nations and Their Naming in Greek

Among the regions to which the Greek language spread, only in Egypt and parts of Syria is there extensive evidence for pre-Greek divine naming as practised when Greek arrived; but a broad background can be recovered by looking at forms of naming found in earlier texts. After presenting this background, I go on to look at various classes of divine name found in Greek language texts from Anatolia, Syria and Egypt: retained indigenous names, titles substituting for names, interpretatio graecain various forms, gods with speaking Greek names not in fact found in Greece itself. The response to cultural contact varied from region to region, but in parts of Anatolia, in particular, Greek became a flexible vehicle through which distinctive forms of religious feeling could be creatively conveyed.

Conclusion

Early in its first chapter, this book evoked the Griechische Götternamen of Hermann Usener. The great Wilamowitz, thanking Usener, his quondam teacher, for the gift of the book, spoke out, after some emollient paragraphs, with a blend of hyper-protestantism and brutal frankness: “Gefühl ist alles,” he wrote, “Name ist Schall und Rauch,” “Feeling is everything, name is noise and smoke” (a common German expression for a thing of no substance)....

Supreme, Ancestral, and Personal Gods

In this chapter I consider special issues and categories: the meaning of gods said to be ‘of ‘ an individual, a form of expression found both in Anatolia and Syria, though not Greece, and perhaps having distinct origins in the two cases; the closest Greek equivalents to such gods ‘of’ an individual, namely his ‘ancestral’ gods, and the development which the concept of ancestral god underwent outside Greece; the forms of expression used to name a top god; the place of deities such as ‘the divine’ and ‘angels’ in a divine hierarchy. I enter the controversy about ‘Highest God’, siding with those who deny that this is a distinct new cult but emphasising the interest of the ‘anonymisation’ of that title.

Interpretatio

This chapter discusses the pervasive practice in the ancient world of identifying the gods of other peoples with one’s own (so –called interpretatio) so that for instance Roman writers spoke of the Greek god Zeus by the Roman name Juppiter. It asks who made these identifications, on what basis they were made, and what implicit assumptions underly them. I argue that assumptions may well have varied, but one important possibility was the belief that the gods of all peoples were indeed the same under different names. This did not mean that the differences between forms of cult in different countries, hallowed by tradition, should be abolished; it did however mean that adherents to the various ancient polytheisms did not feel hostile to one another on religious grounds.