Poliad divinities and peoples' gods in ancient Greece and in the Near-East
Rival gods in ancient Greece
The term « poliad divinity »
is generally understood to mean the protecting deity of an ancient city. However, when it comes to the actual concept of « poliad divinity »
, « protector of the city »
, it may be worth conducting a rapid survey. The title polias applies to Athena[1] alone, which she is in Athens, to be sure, but also in Arcadia and in Sparta, in Argolis, in Epirus, in Euboea, in Ios, at Thera, Rhodes, Imbros and Pergamon (significant cult) and in sundry cities of Asia Minor and Magna Graecia. As for Zeus[2], he is frequently found to be polieus in Attic, at Rhodes, Thera, Cos and in Asia Minor, Magna Graecia, much in the same way as Sarapis[3] sometimes is in Egypt. One may come across an Athena Poliouchos (“mainstay of the city”) in Sparta and perhaps also in Athens, an Aphrodite[4] Poliouchos in Epirus, a Zeus Poliouchos in Antioch. One would be hard put to assert that either of the divinities invoked as poliad, polieus or Poliouchos has a privileged, nay exclusive bond to a particular city.
The apportioning of prerogatives between the three divine brothers (Zeus, Poseidon[5], Hades[6]) concerns world zones where there is no human life and the earth is given, like Olympus, as « shared by all [the gods] »
. Competition between the gods is therefore only to be expected. And there is indeed a mythology around the gods claiming dominion over their town or territory. Hera[7], in the Iliad is particularly devoted to Argos, Sparta and Mycenae. Apollo is at home in Delos and Delphi while (in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo) Poseidon reigns over Onchestos and Telphousa and refuses to surrender his territory. But we clearly have here a rather circumscribed, hardly systematic mythology. The Library of Apollodorus[8] (III, 14) theorises this apportioning business in preface to the conflict between Athena and Poseidon over the ownership of Attic. It is in the times of King Cecrops, it says, that « the gods resolved to take possession of cities in which each of them should receive his own peculiar worship »
. The matter is presented as a recurrent theme. But it should be noted that the Bibliotheca was written against an imperial background, to oppose Roman ideology; this is not without relevance... it is also worth pointing out that the accounts of conflicts between deities for the possession of a territory involve for the most part Poseidon (Poseidon and Hera over Argos, Poseidon and Dionysus[9] over Naxos, Poseidon and Zeus over Aegina, Poseidon and Helios[10] over Corinth, not forgetting, of course, Poseidon and Athena for Athens' Acropolis). It may be observed by the bye that the only place where Poseidon prevails is in Troezen over Athena. This does not fit into any discernible overall pattern.
Gods and god in the Near East
The concept of Poliad divinity seems better suited to the Near East than to Greece. In Mesopotamia, as from the most remote periods (Sumer), it can be observed that some gods have favoured dwelling places: Enki[11] at Eridu, Inanna[12] at Uruk, where they have their sanctuary. In Sumerian mythology, we follow the gods on their travels, the visits they undertake from their sanctuary to another town, say Nippur or Eridu for a banquet or other occasion.
According to the most ancient version of Deuteronomy to have reached us, the Greek version, in 32, 8-9 Yahweh, god of Israel appears as one of the gods from the assembly sitting under El. The latter and supreme god proceeds to the handing out of the diverse peoples of the known world to his sons. To Yahweh he bequeaths Israel under the name of Jacob. This text the polytheist tones of which are obfuscated in the Hebrew version of the Bible « is entirely consistent with Near-Eastern theology as a whole »
as has been noted by Albert de Pury and Thomas Römer to name but two: « each nation inherits a tutelar divinity that grants it its land, protects it from its enemies and ensures the fertility of its soil and the fecundity of the inhabitants. According to the original version of Deuteronomy 32.8, Yahweh is thus Israel's national god, just as Chemosh is the tutelar god of the Moabites, or Milkom that of the Ammonites »
.
Atop a Pantheon reduced to its bare bones sat a tutelar god, master of the country and its inhabitants thereby endowed with an indigenous god, a local like them. But the Biblical corpus, a Near-Eastern product, acquired with the emergence of Christianity a crucial importance when theorising the underpinning of the Roman Empire.
