COLLOQUIUM: Mantha Zarmakoupi, UPENN, "Religious practices as economic agents in late Hellenistic Delos"

This paper examines the epigraphic and material evidence of private associations and domestic cults of Italian merchants in late Hellenistic Delos to address the ways in which merchants employed religious practices as economic agents in the dynamic urban economy of the island in this period.

Delos has yielded rich epigraphic evidence of different associations and groups that issued inscriptions from the third century BCE to the second century CE, while most inscriptions date from the heyday of the free port from 167/166 to 88 BCE. These inscriptions attest the geographic diversity of the mercantile influx into Delos in this period: Greeks, Italians and Phoenicians merchants came together in corporate groups that carried out cultic observances and built religious structures on the island.

While research has focused on the epigraphic evidence from public squares, sanctuaries, and private clubhouses, the role that domestic cults played in the emporium of Delos has not been addressed. The evidence for cult practices, in particular of the cult of Lares Compitales, shows that merchants employed the cult as a means to assert their corporate identity. In addition, recent research has indicated that the cult of Lares Compitales was intertwined with economic activities in the domestic sphere.

By examining the epigraphic and material evidence of the cult of Lares Compitales and Italian merchant associations, this paper will address the ways in which domestic cults alongside merchant associations operated as economic agents in late Hellenistic Delos. The altars of the Lares Compitales that stood next to the entrance of houses of Italian merchants rendered omnipresent this groupin the commercial cityscape of Delos, and strengthened the bonds of its urban economy with the Agora of the Competaliastes—where the public monument of the Lares Compitales stood. Both private and public manifestations of the Lares Compitales were a means of fashioning the corporate identity of the Italian merchant community and promoting its economic interests.