Contenu du sommaire : Un dieu peut-il mourir ? Enquête sur la fin des cultes dans l'Antiquité gréco-romaine

The “end of cults” is easier to pinpoint in sanctuaries, which disappeared after either voluntary destruction, abandonment or reoccupation. Traditional religions, and their societies, are built on spatiality : the sacred place is both the “locus” of the divinity and a cultural and identity landmark that goes beyond its ritual use. Because Christian discourses on the “end of cults” were engaged with spatialized religious conceptions (“paganism” and Judaism), they took over this spatial symbolism for writing the story of Christianization in the Levant – thus challenging the utopian model of Jonathan Z. Smith – and for drawing the exempla of holy men. On the basis of three cases from the fourth century (Aelia Capitolina, Aphaca/Heliopolis, and Gaza), this paper analyzes how these discourses used the argument of sanctuaries.

The issue of the end of cults and temples is dealt with from a local perspective, using the case of Ostia, the harbour of Rome. Recent research and renewed historiography allow us to take a fresh look at this theme, which does not only concern late Antiquity. Its complexity is illustrated on the basis of examples relating both to the public cults of the city and to the sacra priuata practiced in the town's associations.

Given the limited number of written sources about the disappearance of cults in ancient Greece, as well as the important difficulties raised by their interpretation, the study of this phenomenon is almost exclusively possible through the analysis of the information obtained from archaeological excavations. However, identifying the abandonment of a sanctuary is often difficult, mainly because of the excavation conditions but also because of post-depositional processes that may cause the destruction of the upper stratigraphic layers. Moreover, the cult of an abandoned sanctuary may have been transferred to a new sanctuary, so that the archaeological sources cannot be sufficient to attest to the disappearance of a cult.

The academic world usually focuses on ancient Greece's major religious centers. The so-called “rural sanctuaries” only arouse limited interest : they seem to be viewed merely as short-lived and local worship phenomena. In Attica, their structural importance in the religious system is neglected, especially during the classical period. However, their smaller size and their local use made them very sensitive to any kind of change in the society. These second-rank religious sites, not often studied, provide important indicators for a thorough understanding of the society.

The following study examines the fate of the cult of the sovereigns against the backdrop of the withdrawal of the Lagid dynasty from the Aegean Sea Basin area, chiefly in Asia Minor. The dynastic cult of the Ptolemies seems to have disappeared rather systematically from that region together with their rule. However, the cults established by some city-states of their own accord for the kings of Egypt experienced a more diverse fate: some of them survived, others died off. Such cultic honors were often decided not in order to please the dominant power, but rather to acknowledge the sovereign's benefactions to the community. This kind of gratitude is a possible cause for their continuation in some cities, despite political upheavals.

In his History of the Peloponnesian War (V, 11, 1), Thucydides recounts events that occurred in Amphipolis, involving Brasidas and Hagnon, the Athenian oikist. Extensive historical studies have dealt with this subject but a fresh approach involving the history of religion may cast new light on it. Hagnon's expulsion from the city has so far been explained with political arguments but these are not the only ones to be taken into account : social, psychological, imaginary and religious factors may allow us to qualify the context in which Hagnon, who was granted the promise of a cult during his life as a city founder, was deprived of it, in a logical but still complex process. The events of – 422 in Amphipolis deserve to be examined from the perspective of cultic dynamics, which were particularly active in the last three decades of the fifth century B.C.

It is difficult to study the closing down of sanctuaries in Belgica and Lugdunensis during Late Antiquity. Methods of excavation have seldom allowed us to observe specific material elements related to their abandonment and/or dismantling. However, it is possible to highlight a large phenomenon of the organized dismantling of the great periurban civic sanctuaries between the middle of the third and the middle of the fourth century, while sanctuaries of Mithra and some other non civic sanctuaries show different and often later modalities of closing down.

Fr. 124 Wehrli of Aristoxenus, on the “barbarisation” of the Poseidonians and the end of Greek cults in Poseidonia, refers to the political and cultural attraction Rome held for a section of the Lucanian aristocratic elites during the second half of the 4
th century BC, particularly towards the end of the century. This cultural process of “self-Romanisation” was furthered by the Romans' advance into Campania and southern Italy and developed gradually over a long period of time; but it ended abruptly in 273 BC with the deduction of the colony of Paestum and the founding of a new city on the spot. The gods of the Greek city of Poseidonia were by then truly dead and had been replaced by the Roman gods of the colony of Paestum.