The Power of Naming: Studies in the Epicletic Language of Hellenistic Honours

This book focuses on the contribution of epithets and compound denominations to the definition of the religious figure of sovereigns and other political leaders in the Hellenistic world, from Philip II and Alexander III to Kleopatra VII and the beginning of the Roman Principate. Questions and methodologies related to the political history of the Hellenistic Mediterranean are combined with the results of recent studies in the functioning of the Greek epicletic system to provide a fresh reassessment of the entanglement between honorific practices and the religious life of Hellenistic communities, from continental Greece to Egypt, from Syracuse to Bactria. Reconsidering the relationships between honours and religion also implies reversing the question of the influence of Greek religion on Hellenistic ruler cults to explore how a new tradition of ritual encounters between human power and the divine sphere may have impacted post-classical developments in Greek polytheism.