Kingship and Religion in Hellenistic Sicily: Balancing the Global and the Local

de Lisle, Christopher

Abstract

The relationship between religion and royal power is one of the central focuses of scholarship on the Hellenistic period. A key theme of this research has been the way ideas and practices that had global recognition throughout the Hellenistic world interacted with forms that were particular to a local context. This has been intensely, productively, and subtly explored through the lens of cultural interaction between Greek and non-Greek – especially in the case of the Ptolemaic and Seleukid kingdoms. In regions like Sicily that had long been part of the Greek cultural sphere, this lens is of limited applicability. Yet, the interaction between global and local ideas and practices was as much a part of the relationship between religion and royal power in Sicily as elsewhere in the Hellenistic world. Two cases are explored in this chapter: the Syracusan kingdom of Hieron II (r. 269-215 BC) and the short-lived regimes established by rebel leaders Antiochos Eunous, Athenion, and Salvius Tryphon in the First and Second Servile Wars (135-132 and 104-100 BC). These two case studies are chosen not because they are the only ones possible (other candidates include Agathokles of Syracuse, Phintias of Akragas, Pyrrhos of Epirus, and Sextus Pompey), but because they offer interesting common features and contrasts. Both Hieron and the rebel leaders of the Servile Wars demonstrate the central importance of synthesising local and global religious trends for establishing and maintaining royal power. However, owing to their different political circumstances, they drew on very different global and local trends and the syntheses that they constructed were also very different from each other. Thus, these case studies demonstrate that there was not a single ideal Hellenistic or local Sicilian model for the relationship between religion and political power. Instead there were a range of individual elements, some recognised globally (i.e. throughout the whole Hellenistic world) and some specific to Sicily or individual regions within Sicily, which specific regimes could draw upon or ignore, according to their specific circumstances.

Citation

de Lisle, C. (in press). Kingship and Religion in Hellenistic Sicily: Balancing the Global and the Local. In S. Kravaritou, & M. Stamatopoulou (Eds.), Religious Interactions in the Hellenistic World. Brill Academic Publishers

• Acceptance Date: Oct 19, 2022
• Deposit Date: Oct 19, 2022
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Book Title: Religious Interactions in the Hellenistic World
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1620258
• Publisher URL: https://brill.com/