| Citizenship and participation in cults in classical Athens Ever since Durkheim wrote his Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse in the early twentieth century, religion has been regarded as fundamentally social. Although his statement has readily been accepted as common knowledge not much research has since then been done to illustrate the ways in which ancient Greek religion works as an important way to define society and its constituent social identities. Structuralists have claimed to do so but they view religion, through ancient literary testimonies, as structuring society in symbolic bi-polar oppositions and by doing so have moved away from describing actual people who participated in religious acts on a daily basis. Some important exceptions do of course exist, like De Polignac s work on early cults and the origins of the Greek poleis (La naissance de la cité grecque: cultes, espace et société VIIIe-VIIe siècles avant J.-C., Paris 1984) and the numerous publications on the social dimensions of great polis festivals like the Panathenaia and the City Dionysia. The main aim of my research on cult activities in the Athenian polis in the fifth and fourth centuries BC will be to illustrate how public religious acts in Attica were the basic means to define a rapidly changing society. My thesis will focus on three ways in which religious acts played a fundamental role in defining social identities and relations in the widest sense of the word social . First, I will look at different social groups, like men and women and citizens and non-citizens, participating with each other and on their own in religious acts. For example, in the case of metics, a very large, important and recent population in fifth-century Athens, it is interesting to look at their participation at great polis festivals to see how a metic identity was shaped vis-à-vis other groups in Athenian society. We could furthermore compare this with cults in which metics predominantly participated, like the cult of the Thracian goddess Bendis. Secondly, I will look at the integration of administrative units into the polis structure by means of religious acts. For example, how religion in the demes created a particular deme identity and at the same time always defined its relationship to the superstructure of the polis. Finally, throughout my thesis it will become apparent that religion was also important to create territorial unity. Although this has long been acknowledged this still needs further stressing. My research will primarily be based on material evidence, i.e. epigraphical and archaeological sources. Literary sources offer an additional, often elitist and always male view, not to be discredited as such, but to be used with extreme caution. Material sources will facilitate us to approach the daily religious activities of the common Athenian more accurately. By illustrating the important formative role of Athenian religion in defining social structures I hope to contribute to the VICI-project, which aims to redefine the concept of Athenian citizenship by not only looking at the qualifications to receive that status but also by focusing on the activities, among which religious ones, that put citizenship into action, together creating and guaranteeing citizen-status. |
