Endowed Eponymous Festivals on Delos
Abstract
Second-century BC Delos saw the creation of more than two dozen endowments, by men
and women, Delians and aliens, and, most famously, Hellenistic royalty or their agents.
Scholars agree that these underwrote festivals (mostly eponymous: The Antigoneia,
Eutycheia, Philonideia, Ptolemaieia, Stesileia, etc.), and have focused on the political
motivation, purpose, and effects of the dozen or so royal specimens. This paper suggests
that we have misconstrued the Greek of the Delian accounts; that the endowments did
not fund eponymous festivals per se, but modest recurring ritual that was established
on the occasion of significant family events, especially marriage and death; that
this peculiar Delian phenomenon has more to say about authentic piety than grand politics,
and more in common with Hellenistic family cult than festival culture.
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https://hdl.handle.net/10161/9160Collections
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Joshua D. Sosin
Associate Professor of Classical Studies
Pronouns: he/him.One of the things that I like best about Classics is the wide range
of intellectual opportunities it offers. As an undergraduate I was interested in early
Christianity and Latin love elegy, which are about as far from my current work as
you can get! But our discipline is built for roaming and many of its earliest practitioners
would not fit neatly into the boxes that we use today.

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