I had been planning to read Beate Dignas’ book on the economics of sanctuaries in Asia Minor for some time, and I have finally done so: Beate Dignas, Economy of the Sacred in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor<\/em> (Oxford Classical Monographs; Oxford: OUP, 2002). \u00a0 Here I’ll merely provide some highlights from my reading; this will not be a formal review.<\/p>\n Dignas argues that many studies of sanctuaries of Asia Minor in both the Hellenistic and Roman periods have been working with problematic assumptions.\u00a0 The main assumption that Dignas challenges throughout the work is that concepts such as “polis religion” (in other words “city-state run religion”) or “state cults” or “public cults” are the most appropriate concepts when describing cults in Asia Minor.\u00a0 In other words, she suggests that the common identification of cult with city (polis) and the notion that the sanctuaries were utterly dependent on civic government is not correct.\u00a0 Dignas also feels that past attempts to categorize sanctuaries and to deal with the different categories in isolation do not find a basis in the ancient evidence.\u00a0 In particular, she challenges a stark differentiation between urban and rural cults, or between Greek and so-called indigenous sanctuaries, or between regular sanctuaries and “temple-states”.\u00a0 Here Dignas would stress similarities more than differences among these previously common categories.<\/p>\n Instead, Dignas emphasizes inscriptional evidence which points to the independence<\/em> of certain cults from the cities with which they have been associated.\u00a0 She also highlights cases when those in charge of a sanctuary (priests or what have you) sought to assert the interests of the sanctuary over against the city’s interests, usually by means of diplomatic relations with Hellenistic, Attalid, or Roman rulers.\u00a0 The relationship between the cult of Zeus at Labraunda and the polis of Mylasa serves as the ongoing illustration of this point, alongside other examples.\u00a0 The advantage of this particular case is that we possess epigraphic evidence from various points in the Hellenistic and Roman eras.\u00a0 Dignas’ focus is on the economic management of the sanctuaries, with issues of administration, land, and income.<\/p>\n Dignas proposes a triangular understanding of the relation between city, cult, and ruler, with cases of rulers siding with cults being an important factor in her argument.\u00a0 Hellenistic or Roman rulers and governors served a mediating role in these conflicts of interest, sometimes siding with a sanctuary’s leadership against the polis’ stance, and sometimes with the polis.\u00a0 This approach rightly emphasizes the request-response and ad hoc nature of both Hellenistic and Roman rule.\u00a0 She suggests that the motivations of these rulers in supporting the requests of specific cults may well have been related to concerns to honour the gods and ensure the ongoing welfare of the sanctuaries (rather than mere political interests).<\/p>\n Built into Dignas’ approach is an emphasis on continuity<\/em> in the administration of sanctuaries from the Hellenistic to the Roman periods, with little change in the overall dynamics of this triangular relationship.\u00a0 She also suggests the ongoing economic stability of many sanctuaries over this period.\u00a0 In doing so, she is correctly arguing against a far more common scholarly tradition which emphasizes the decline<\/em> of traditional cults in the late Hellenistic and, especially, in the Roman periods.\u00a0 She is definitely on the right track in deconstructing that older, previously dominant view.\u00a0 For my own views on such theories of decline, you can check out my article on “The Declining Polis<\/em>? Religious Rivalries in Ancient Civic Context.”<\/p>\n Although I feel that Dignas has a legitimate point to make regarding evidence for the independence of some sanctuaries at certain times, she sometimes tends to substitute repeated assertions regarding independence for actual evidence.\u00a0 At times the rhetoric of these assertions or claims is problematic as well. \u00a0 On one occasion, her confidence in her own claims approaches prophetic status:\u00a0 “future studies will confirm” what I [Dignas] am saying (p. 242).\u00a0 In cases when the evidence is minimal or difficult to interpret, she nonetheless proceeds full steam ahead with assuming or asserting a high level of independence.\u00a0\u00a0 Although I think she is right about some level of continuity in sanctuary life from the Hellenistic to the Roman period, the strength with which she asserts this continuity is not necessarily consonant with the fragmentary nature of the evidence she presents.\u00a0 Strong claims of either continuity (Dignas’ point) or discontinuity (far more common in previous studies) are based on very partial evidence, and it is important to be very clear about that situation.\u00a0 More nuanced statements are called for.\u00a0 Still, she is right to suggest that the evidence does point to the ongoing vitality of many cults in Asia Minor.<\/p>\n Another conceptual difficulty with somewhat far-reaching implications is Dignas’ repeated contrast between “secular” and “profane” with the modern notion of the separation of “church” and “state” as a loose analogy (e.g. p. 13).\u00a0 This is based, in part, on Dignas’ attempt to assert the independence of sanctuaries (the sacred) from the polis or civic control (profane).\u00a0 Dignas is here working against a now common claim that what we as moderns label “religion” was in fact embedded within various other dimensions of life in antiquity.\u00a0 So that what we as moderns might label a “political” factor or an “economic” factor was, in the Greco-Roman world, bound up in what we would tend to call a “religious” sphere, and vice versa.\u00a0 In other words, some scholars (including myself) would emphasize the relative inadequacy of these categories for studying cultural life in antiquity.\u00a0 On the other hand, Dignas can conclude with the claim that “a religious sphere can be distinguished within any context of life in ancient Anatolia” (p. 223).\u00a0 I find Dignas’ attempt to go back to a clear differentiation between religion and politics or the sacred and the profane quite odd.\u00a0 In reading her theoretical comments on such matters it becomes clear that Dignas is not exactly up to date on the academic study of religion generally.\u00a0 Nor does she actually engage such theoretical issues in a direct way.\u00a0 This is problematic when dealing with the subject of sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman world.\u00a0 And yet it’s important to recognize that this book began as a dissertation in a Classical Studies department, not a Religious Studies department.\u00a0 And, in an overall way, Dignas’ assertions that an independent “religious sphere” existed is based less on any theoretical consideration of the issue than it is based on her attempt to argue for the independence of many sanctuaries from the cities (which to me does not require a claim that religion was separate from other aspects of life).<\/p>\n Despite these theoretical problems, I nonetheless found Dignas’ work very useful, particularly since we generally lack monographs on the topic of cults in Asia Minor.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had been planning to read Beate Dignas’ book on the economics of sanctuaries in Asia Minor for some time, and I have finally done so: Beate Dignas, Economy of the Sacred in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor (Oxford Classical Monographs; Oxford: OUP, 2002). \u00a0 Here I’ll merely provide some highlights from my reading; this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,467],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-greco-roman-religions","category-religions-of-the-ancient-mediterranean-blog-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13649,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364\/revisions\/13649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.philipharland.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}