Worship of Alexander (Prof. Wallace)

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1. Much has been written regarding Alexander’s divinity, mostly on whether he was worshipped in his lifetime and whether he ordered his own deification.
2. There is no reason to revisit these arguments, excellent overviews have recently been provided by Franca Ferrandini and Boris Dreyer and there is as yet no concrete evidence for Alexander’s deification during his lifetime, though it is likely (Franca Ferrandini Troisi, “La divinizzazione di Alessandro Magno: testimonianze epigrafiche”, Epigraphica 67 (2005); Boris Dreyer, “Heroes, Cults, and Divinity”, in Alexander the Great: A New History, ed. Waldemar Heckel and Laurence A. Tritle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009). Evidence for cults for Alexander the Great exists from Alexandria, Athens, Bargylia, Beroia, Ephesus, Erythrae, Iasus, Ilium, the Ionian League, Cos, Macedon, Magnesia-on-the-Maeander, Miletus, Mytilene, Pella, Priene, Rhodes, Teos, Thasus, and perhaps even Sparta (Dreyer, “Heroes, cults, and divinity”; Andrew Erskine, “Ruler Cult and the Early Hellenistic City”, in The Age of the Successors and the Creation of the Hellenistic Kingdoms (323– 276bc), ed. Hans Hauben and Alexander Meeus (Leuven: Peeters, 2014); cf. Habicht, Gottmenschentum, 17–28, 245–246, 251–252). By as early as the late fourth century bc cults to Alexander began to be associated with other cults and festivals. A law from Thasus from c. 325–300 recording the days of public festivals names twenty, including side-by-side the Duodekatheia and the Alexandreia (seg xvii 415; lscg Suppl. 69; François Salviat, “Une nouvelle loi thasienne: institutions judiciaires et fêtes religieuses à la fin du ive siècle av. J.-C.”, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 82 (1958): 244–248). It is tempting to see both festivals as associated, particularly since Alexander’s cult was elsewhere associated with the Dodekatheoi.

Philip was depicted as a thirteenth Olympian at his daughter’s wedding at Aegae in 336 (d.s. 16.92.5), Demades proposed in 324bc that Alexander be included as a thirteenth god (Ael. vh 5.12), and Lucian claimed that Alexander was added to the Dodekatheoi by a number of Greek cities (DMort 391). On the phenomenon of the thirteenth deity in GrecoRoman religion, see Otto Weinreich, “Zwölfgötter”, in Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie, ed. Wilhelm Heinrich Roscher (Hildesheim: Teubner, 1937), col. 801–848; with additions in Antonio La Penna “Il tredicesimo altare”, Athenaeum 105 (2017). On Alexander the thirteenth god, add also L. Braccesi “Alessandro tredicesimo dio. Ideologia, sepoltura, regalità”, in E.L. Manes (ed.), Storiografia e regalità nel mondo Greco (Torino, 2003), 279-85.

By the mid-third century bc cult honours for Alexander were closely associated with those for his Successors. Andrew Stewart has argued that an early third century statue of Pan-Alexander or Alexander-Panicus from Pella is evidence not only of cult for Alexander but of the association of that cult with the prominent use of Pan in the royal iconography of Antigonus Gonatas (Stewart, Faces of Power, 286–288 with fig. 99. Note seg xlvii 893, a 3rd-cen BCE epigram to Pan mentioning Antigonus Gonatas). This is not the only instance of Alexander being associated with Pan, both were painted together by Protogenes at the end of his life, sometime after 306/5bc (Plin. hn 35.106). A fragmentary decree from Cos dating from c. 250 mentions two buildings, an Alexandreion and a Ptolemaieion (Dmitrios Bosnakis and Klaus Hallof,“Alte und neueInschriften aus Kosi”, Chiron 33 (2003): 226–228, num. 13). It is not certain what purpose these buildings served. They may have been cult buildings, such as existed in numerous other citiesfor other rulers, but we cannot be certain whether they were separate buildings or one building with two names. The Ptolemaieion, for instance, might have been the gym, which in 150bc arranged a procession in honour of Ptolemy iv (i.Cos ed 45). At Bargylia the gymnasium was the centre of the cult of Alexander, so it might be the case that at Cos the gymnasium, or different sections of it, were known as both the Ptolemaieion, in whose honour it was dedicated, and the Alexandreion, since it housed the cult of Alexander. Philip Gauthier has restored the text to show that the gymnasium housed the joint cult of Alexander and Ptolemy, but whatever the case it seems that cult honours for Alexander and Ptolemy were in some way associated on Cos. The earliest Greek oracles to recognize Alexander’s divinity, before even Zeus-Ammon at Siwah, were the Sibyl of Erythrae and the oracle of Apollo among the Branchidae (Str. 17.1.43 (c814); Callisth. FGrH 124 f14).

Cults to Alexander had a long afterlife and two examples from the third century ad show how they could be renewed under the Roman Empire. A third century ad statue base from Bargylia in Caria, but which might have come originally fromIasus, records a new statue for “God Alexander” (ik.Iasos 620 = ogis 3: Θεὸν). A cult of Alexander is attested at Ephesos in the early second century AD, where his cult is assimilated to that of Augustus’ grandsons Gaius and Lucius (IK.Ephesos 719, ll.8-10: ἱερέα Ἀνακτόρων καὶ Ἀλεξάν|δρου βασιλέως καὶ Γαΐου καὶ Λουκίου || τῶν ἐκγόνων τοῦ Σεβαστοῦ). It would appear that the cult of Alexander in Bargylia was revived in the third century, perhaps as a result of Severan imitatio Alexandri and the increased popularity of Alexander at this time (Andrew Stewart, “Alexander in Greek and Roman Art”, in Brill’s Companion to Alexander the Great, ed. Joseph Roisman (Brill: Leiden, 2003), 61–66; Dahmen, Legend of Alexander, 123–151). Caracalla’s emulation of Alexander was legendary and saw him undertake a campaign against the Parthians in ad216/7 complete with a Macedonian-style phalan ( Hdn. 4.8; d.c. 78.7–9; Kühnen, Imitatio Alexandri, 176–186. Nero had earlier renamed a legion“the phalanx of Alexander the Great”, see Suet. Nero 19.2; DavidWoods,“Three Notes on Military Affairs under Nero”, Revue des Études Militaires Anciennes 3 (2006): 148–150). Severus Alexander was allegedly born in a temple of Alexander, assumed his name, and added his image to the deified emperors in his personal chapel (sha Alex. Sev. 5.1–2, 13.1–4, 25.9, 30.3, 31.4–5, 35.1–4, 50.4–5; Dahmen, Legend of Alexander, 135 with pl. 20).

1. A marble plaque from the Roman agora of Beroia in Macedon and dating to ad252 mentions an Alexandreia festival. A further inscription connects the Alexandreiawith theOlympia in Beroia, which Leschhorn has recently argued first took place in ad243, under Gordian iii (seg xlix 815, l. 6 (see also i.Beroia 68, ll. 10–11, 69, ll. 6–7); i.Perinthos-Herakleia 31, ll. 6– 7).
2. A series of late second or third century ad inscriptions from Mygdonia, near Thessaloniki, record dedications to Alexander the Great, his son Alexander iv, and his sister Thessalonice (seg xlvii 960; ig x.2 (1), 275–277); one mentions a priest of Alexander, the son of Zeus (ig x.2 (1) 278, ll.1–3: ἱε|ρεὺς· Ἀλεξάνδρου τοὺ· ἀ|πὸ Διός). The cults to Alexander at Bargylia, Beroia, and indeed at Erythrae, where a priest of Alexander is attested in the third century ad (ik.Erythrai 64), reveal the continued prominence of Alexander. As with the evidence from Pella, Cos, and Erythrae, where cults of Alexander facilitated diplomatic connections with the Antigonid, Ptolemaic, and Seleucid dynasties, so too might the cults of Alexander at Bargylia and Beroia have facilitated such contacts with the Roman emperors and reflected royal propaganda under the Severans.