Families in the Greco-Roman World by Stromberg Agneta.;Laurence Ray;

Author:Stromberg, Agneta.;Laurence, Ray;
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
ISBN: 9781441110107
Publisher: Bloomsbury UK
Published: 2019-11-23T00:00:00+00:00

In what is still the most thorough assessment of the hierophantai, Clinton, following Foucart (1900) and Martha (1882), argues that given the fact of so many hierophantai in such a short period of time the genos must have elected the priests from some or another pool of candidates.7 The positive argument for election as the method actually used depends entirely upon a letter from the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius to the Athenians about membership in the genê. It affirms, ever so briefly, some form of selection (arkhairesia), but we do not know for what kind of priestly duties this method was invoked or how it was supposed to work.8 Moreover, since the evidence speaks to contemporary institutions and does not even pretend to have any basis in that earlier period, it has little relevance for Classical Athens. More recently, Lambert and Blok have subscribed to the hypothesis of allotment (following Aleshire, 1994), on very general considerations such as the use of allotment for most magistracies of the contemporary Athenian democracy, but with no direct bearing on the manner in which families or larger cult groups might have operated.9 Consequently it would seem that the pattern of known hierophantai has been regarded so utterly at odds with the biological principle underlying patrilineal inheritance that speculations dismissing the oikos have seemed especially inviting. Alternative explanations, however, that do maintain the primacy of biological descent in some form might still provide a key by which to unlock this particular pattern, and potentially those of other Athenian priesthoods without invoking institutions that are, at best, poorly attested or inappropriate.

Underlying the hypotheses of election and allotment is the notion that the genos typically had the capacity to choose successors, or even to approve of those selected by the priest’s closest kin. In point of fact, we simply do not know how the priestly family related to its genos, much less how extensive a genos might be, and thus by what degree of affinity its members might have been related to the priest. In no case do we possess evidence that a genos ever exercised authority over such matters as priestly succession.10 Without positive evidence for any one particular method, however, it is difficult to disprove the election hypothesis: since whatever degree of biological affinity there was may simply reflect the political prominence of a single family, which in some generations might have resulted in a father being succeeded in the priesthood by a son, and in other instances, by a brother or nephew and so on. The prosopographical evidence, however, in no way requires a method such as election or sortition to explain the visible patterns. Since in no case but that of Hierokleides was Clinton (or Lambert and Blok) able to establish both the patronymic and demotic, it stands to reason that there is no positive evidence to show that these hierophantai were not related to one another. Therefore, we should hesitate to attribute much power to the genos without first exhausting the possibility that the succession principle did in fact involve biological descent and affinity.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.