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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/12/2021, SPi
For my family
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Preface
This book tackles the controversial notion of soteria and the bewildering plurality
of gods called ‘saviour’ as a lens through which to explore larger issues concerning
Greek polytheism. The idea came from a then newly published inscription from
Aegae in Aeolis in Epigraphica Anatolica 2009, which speaks ambiguously of a cult
of an unidentified ‘Saviour’ goddess (Soteira) on the one hand, and of a new cult of
Seleucus I and Antiochus I as ‘Saviours’ (Soteres) on the other. From this arises a
series of intriguing questions never tackled before: who is this ‘saviour’ goddess?
What did it mean to call a divinity Soter or Soteira? What was the relationship
between kings and gods similarly called ‘saviour’ in Greek antiquity? The elaborate
text from Aegae is only one among several thousand inscriptions scattered all over
the Greek Mediterranean which attest to a similar phenomenon. The language of
‘saving’ is ubiquitous in the Greek world and especially in the Greeks’ dealings
with their gods, yet its centrality in Greek religion has long been obscured by its
later prominence in Christianity. This book investigates what it meant to be
‘saved’ and the underlying concept of soteria in ancient Greece. Yet it goes beyond
Greek religious vocabulary and cult epithets to investigate the lived religious
experience and thought world of the Greeks.
Inscriptions such as the one from Aegae constitute the most important source
for this project. I was first introduced to the art of epigraphy as a graduate student
at Oxford, and in the course of writing this book I have come to appreciate much
more fully its importance to historians. This is especially true when studying the
religious sensibility and lived experience of the Greeks, which, of all aspects of
ancient Greek religion, I have always found most gripping. Yet the material for the
book is not restricted to inscriptions on stone; it also includes archaeology,
numismatics, prose, and poetry, and the topic reaches beyond Classical antiquity
to early Christianity. The search for some of the least known archaeological sites
has led me up lonely hilltops in Arcadia and down dangerous highways in
modern-day Turkey. The time-span covered by these sources is also long; indeed
longer than I originally intended. In the course of research it became clear that the
subject of soteria cannot be restricted neatly to the Classical and Hellenistic
periods, but must embrace what came both before and after it. The result is a
study which spans from the late Archaic period to the early centuries of
Christianity, though the focus remains on Classical and Hellenistic Greece.
The writing of this book was completed in the Department of Classics and
Archaeology at the University of Nottingham thanks to a period of research
leave, after I first started it in the Department of History at Lancaster
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viii
University. Various other institutions have also provided valuable facilities and
stimulating environments for research: the British School at Athens, the Sackler
Library at Oxford, and the Fondation Hardt at Geneva have all been superb in
providing the necessary resources and intellectual stimuli. In 2020 my visit to the
Center of Hellenic Studies, Harvard, had to be postponed owing to the global
health crisis; nevertheless I am grateful to the CHS for its generous support with
electronic resources and for the opportunity to join their lively virtual community.
I would never have found the courage to tackle such a complex subject had it
not been for the unfailing support and exacting standards of Robert Parker:
I could not have hoped for a wiser and kinder teacher in my life. The reviewers
of Oxford University Press are most perceptive in their observations and insights.
Jan Bremmer, Emily Kearns, Barbara Kowalzig, and Teresa Morgan have read part
or the bulk of the manuscript at various stages of its preparation and provided
valuable comments. Bruno Currie, Lindsay Driediger-Murphy, Gunnel Ekroth,
John Ma, and Shane Wallace kindly discussed with me specific issues. I am
grateful to all of them for generously sharing their time, knowledge, and expertise,
and for challenging me to bring this book to a higher standard. For technical
support, I thank Sergio Quintero Cabello for producing the maps with great skill.
Friends in various parts of the world have been pillars of support in the back-
ground: they all know who they are.
The greatest and deepest debts I owe and can never repay are to my family: to
my parents for unconditional support and the freedom to take the path less taken,
to my sisters for all that they have done heroically, and to the little ones I wish
I could bring with me. This book is dedicated with love to my family and to Faye,
who is 26 as I write.
S. F. Jim
February 2021
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List of Illustrations
Cover illustration: Votive relief to Asclepius from the south slope of the Athenian acropolis,
Athens, Acropolis Museum, NM 1341 (© Acropolis Museum, 2012, photo by Socratis
Mavrommatis).
Disclaimer: The author has made every reasonable effort to clear permissions for the use of
Fig. 3, the elephant graffito in El-Kanais, which was first published in A. E. P. Weigall,
Travels in the Upper Egyptian Deserts (Edinburgh, London, 1909), pl. 31, and subsequently
reprinted in A. Bernand, Le Paneion d’El-Kanaïs (Leiden, 1972), pl. 54.1. Unfortunately the
original publishing house, William Blackwood and Sons, is no longer in operation and
cannot be contacted. The author would like to ask any rights-holders of this image to get in
touch should any issues come to light.
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Ancient authors and reference works are referred to as in OCD⁴, and occasionally
LSJ (1996). Epigraphical publications are abbreviated following Supplementum
Epigraphicum Graecum and the recently published ‘List of Abbreviations of
Editions and Works of Reference for Alphabetic Greek Epigraphy’ (accessible
via https://www.aiegl.org/grepiabbr.html). Abbreviations of periodicals follow those
in the American Journal of Archaeology (AJA) 95 (1991), 1–16 (as expanded at
http://www.ajaonline.org), and are supplemented by those in L’Année Philologique.
To the above epigraphic publications should now be added the Corpus of
Ptolemaic Inscriptions, 3 vols (Oxford, 2021–). At the time of writing this book
only the first volume of CPI is published, though a useful concordance of all CPI
texts is provided in the appendix of A. Bowman and C. Crowther (eds) (2020), The
Epigraphy of Ptolemaic Egypt (Oxford), 269–312.
Translations of quoted texts, where cited from existing editions, are indicated in
the footnotes. Where no translator is stated, the translations are my own. The
spelling of familiar Greek names is Latinized following OCD⁴, whereas Greek
personal names in inscriptions are Hellenized. All dates refer to unless other-
wise indicated.
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Introduction
‘Saviour’ Gods in Greek Polytheism
At some point during the fourth century , a workman in Athens brought an
offering to the shrine of Asclepius. ‘Saved’ apparently from some ‘mighty rocks’,
he thanked Asclepius with a marble relief, depicting himself and his mules
drawing a wagon and approaching the god and his family. Was he injured in a
landslide together with his animals, but fortunately restored to health by the god?
Far away from the Greek mainland, in Byblos in Syria, Apollodoros set up a stone
altar to a god whose name is no longer preserved, but who carries the epithet
‘[S]aviour’ ([S]oter): the inscription tells us that the god had saved him from the
trembling of the earth. In Kollyda in Lydia, a married couple set up a marble altar
to Zeus ‘for the safety (soteria) of themselves and their children’ after two people
were struck dead by lightning. They were not, as one might expect, praying for the
‘salvation’ of the deceased (perhaps their acquaintances?), but their own self-
preservation from the anger of the god.¹
At first sight there appears to be nothing which connects these snapshots, taken
from the lives of little-known individuals separated by time and place. Yet their
different hopes and experiences are expressed similarly with the cognate words
sozein (‘to save’), Soter (‘saviour’), and soteria (‘deliverance’, ‘preservation’,
‘safety’). The same language is used in innumerable prayers, dedications, and
sacrifices all over the Greek world to invoke the gods, asking them for protection,
safety, and deliverance—this is arguably the blessing most frequently sought in the
exchange of charis between man and gods. But what did it mean to be ‘saved’ in a
religion without doctrine, and to whom should the Greeks appeal in a world where
multiple gods reigned? This book is about the multiplicity of ‘saviour’ gods and the
associated blessing of soteria which they could dispense or withdraw. It focuses on
the power of ‘saviour’ gods in the lives of the Greeks, how worshippers searched
for soteria as they confronted the unknown and unknowable, and what this can
reveal about their hopes and beliefs.
The concept of soteria had close, and even entangled, relations with
Christianity. The word is also used in Christian writings, not least the New
Testament, to signify deliverance from the consequences of sin and attainment
¹ IG II/III² 4356 = IG II/III³ 4, 672 (fourth century ); Dussaud (1896), 299 (undated); TAM V.1
360 (33/4 ).
Saviour Gods and Soteria in Ancient Greece. Theodora Suk Fong Jim, Oxford University Press.
© Theodora Suk Fong Jim 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780192894113.003.0001
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 3/1/2022, SPi
of a blessed afterlife through the mediation of Christ the Saviour. Yet as the above
episodes show, the concept goes back to Greek antiquity, where it had a different
meaning or meanings and entailed a different experience. Its centrality in ancient
Greek religion, however, has been obscured by its later importance in Christianity.
In their concern not to impose Christian notions on Greek polytheism, many
historians may have avoided the Greek concept altogether; or perhaps they have
simply taken it for granted given its prevalence in Greek society. Either way, the
result is that its place in Greek religion is left largely unexplored. Where Greek
soteria is occasionally discussed, scholars have sometimes anachronistically attrib-
uted aspects to the Greek notion which were alien to it.² The challenge for
historians therefore is to set aside our own cultural assumptions and expectations,
and to rethink what we think we know about the Greek word by a thorough
examination of the concept in its ancient context.
Yet this book is not simply about the Greek concept and religious language. At
the heart of the present study is the lived religious experience and thought world
of the Greeks, which the religious vocabulary and cult epithets can help to unravel.
What did the Greeks have in mind when calling a god ‘saviour’? How did they
imagine and experience soteria? This book’s particular emphasis is on worship-
pers’ religious world-views, and how their choices and behaviour were shaped by
their beliefs and perceptions of the divine. After about two decades of lively
debates on the term ‘belief ’, and the extent to which it can apply to the study of
ancient Greek religion, most historians now agree that ‘belief ’ is a useful and even
necessary interpretative tool in understanding Greek religion, that is, if the term is
used broadly in a sense devoid of Christian overtones, and if important distinc-
tions are recognized between belief in Greek polytheism and that in Christianity.
In the present study ‘belief ’ refers to worshippers’ religious world-view, presup-
positions, and statements about the gods. Nevertheless, beyond this broad con-
sensus the investigation of belief seems to have come to a standstill, and much
remains unresolved as to how we can penetrate the beliefs of ancient worshippers
and explore the variety of beliefs they entertained.³ The study of soteria is closely
intertwined with these issues. Not only is the experience of soteria one of the
clearest contexts where belief comes into play, it also illuminates a spectrum of
beliefs ranging from everyday dependence on divine protection to more height-
ened beliefs in the miraculous and extraordinary. In particular, this study will
investigate worshippers’ beliefs through the lens of divine naming—names and
cult titles of gods—which remain a relatively new area of enquiry in Classics.⁴
Despite increased scholarly interest in cult epithets and divine names, the focus
3
⁵ But see the insights of Scheid (2003), 35: ‘to discover the theology behind the practice, we shall
focus on the name of the deity, the deity’s epithets, the objects surrounding the deity’s religious image,
and the ritual actions performed around it’; Parker (2017a), 173: ‘naming—so all modes of address,
including epithets—is essential to a study of ancient and perhaps modern religious psychology’.
⁶ e.g. Parker (1983), 281–307, on ‘Purity and Salvation’; Adluri (2013), Philosophy and Salvation in
Greek Religion, and its various chapters.
⁷ See Chapter 1.
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threats, relief from famine, or deliverance from other natural disasters. Unlike
some studies in Greek religion which emphasize the role of either the polis or the
individual at the expense of the other,⁸ this study will attend both to individuals
and to collectives, and demonstrate that the two perspectives are compatible and
provide the necessary complement to each other. Subsequent chapters will exam-
ine more closely the diversity of ‘saving’ experiences of communities and their
members, and the possible interactions and influence between them.⁹ Whatever
the situation and the object concerned, soteria implies safety or preservation from
some force threatening it, whether real or potential, encountered or perceived.
Underlying the concern for soteria is the Greek world-view about the unpredict-
ability of divine action and the instability of human fortune. The importance
attached to soteria in Greek antiquity is further demonstrated in the many Greek
personal names beginning with the root sos-.¹⁰ Whether they relate to personal
circumstances at birth or in life, these personal names must reflect to a certain
extent the hopes and desires of individuals.¹¹ Their prevalence is one index of the
deeply-seated need for soteria in Greek society.
The seemingly simple, yet notoriously difficult, question of ‘what is a god’ has
stimulated lively discussions among historians.¹² What, then, is a ‘saviour god’,
and how did a god become a ‘saviour’? The earliest known literary references to
Greek gods as soteres are in the Homeric Hymns, where the word refers to
Poseidon and the Dioscuri in their capacity to save at sea. From at least the late
Archaic period, Soter came to be applied as a cult epithet to an increasing number
of major and lesser gods. So quickly did the epithet spread from one god to
another and from place to place that, by the end of the Hellenistic period, there
was hardly any region in the Greek Mediterranean where we do not find traces of
divine ‘saviours’. A god might be called Soter in thanks for and commemoration of
the deliverance he effected for an individual or community; the epithet was
usually, though not exclusively, used retrospectively after divine aid. But one
5
could also call upon a god as Soter before a risky enterprise or during a crisis.¹³
Depending on the means, initiatives, and vows of worshippers and worshipping
communities, a momentary address to a god as Soter might sometimes be
transformed into a permanent cult for the god under that title.¹⁴ More often
than not, however, the evidence does not permit us to determine whether an
established cult under that epithet lay behind a reference to a Soter, and therefore
in this study I have included occurrences of the epithet regardless of whether a
permanent cult is attested, and whether Soter was used as a permanent epithet or
temporary form of address.
Until recently, divine names and epithets have remained probably the most
under-studied aspect of the divine, and yet this is one of the most illuminating
areas for analysing the gods and the Greeks’ perceptions of them. A cult epithet is,
at the most basic level, a ‘focusing’ device for identifying or focusing attention on a
particular aspect of divine power or a particular cult site of a god.¹⁵ Thus Zeus
Meilichios singles out Zeus’ ‘kindly’ aspect from his other faces, whereas Zeus
Panamaros picks out his cult in Panamara from his many sanctuaries in Asia
Minor. Innumerable cult epithets are attested in the Greek world and new ones
continue to be brought to light with new epigraphic finds. Some of these epithets
were specific to a single deity—such as Phoibos (‘Pure’, ‘Radiant’) for Apollo, and
Phytalmios (‘Producing’, ‘Nourishing’) for Poseidon, whereas others could apply
to more than one god in the Greek pantheon as the divine function they denoted
was not the preserve of a single divinity—such as Epekoos (‘Listener’), Epiphanes
(‘Manifest’), Hegemon (‘Leader’), and Soter (‘Saviour’). Soter was by far the most
popular and widely shared ‘trans-divine’ epithet of this latter kind.¹⁶ Usually used
to invoke a god’s ‘saving’ power within a circumscribed field, Soter could be borne
independently by different gods who could lay claim, if in varying ways, to the
power to ‘save’. Consequently we shall encounter many divinities similarly called
Soter in the masculine, or Soteira in the feminine: Apollo Soter, Heracles Soter,
Zeus Soter, Athena Soteira, Artemis Soteira, Kore Soteira, to name but a few.
This system of cult epithets raises important questions about the unity and
multiplicity of the divine. Given that multiple epithets could be applied to the
same god, how much difference is there between the innumerable Zeuses bearing
different epithets? On one level Zeus Meilichios simply represented an aspect of
¹³ e.g. Arr. Anab. 6.19.4–5, Indica 20.10, 21.2: Nearchus sacrificed to Zeus Soter before setting sail.
¹⁴ e.g. Xen. An. 3.2.9, 4.8.25: the Greek troops sacrificed to Zeus Soter and other gods in fulfilment of
a vow, and instituted games and contests in their honour. On cults founded by private individuals, see
e.g. IG IV 840 = IG IV².2 1236; IG IV 841; I.Egypte métriques, no. 109.
¹⁵ Parker (2003); Parker (2017a), ch. 1. Note that a theonym can be combined with both types of
epithets, the topographical and the functional, and it is not uncommon to find Soter being attached to a
double cultic name: e.g. [Ἀ]π̣όλλωνι Κενδρεισηνῳ σωτῆρι (IGBulg III 919), Ἀπόλλωνι Νισυρείτῃ σωτῆρι
(SEG XLIX 1718), Ἀρτέμιδι Περγαίαι Σωτείρα[ι] (IG XII.3 1350), and Ἀπόλ[λωνι] Διδυμεῖ Σωτῆρι (IG
XII.4 566).
¹⁶ Brulé (2007), 329, uses the phrase ‘épiclèses trans-divines’.
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Zeus, and therefore was not intrinsically different from Zeus without any epithet
or with other epithets. But on another level Zeus Meilichios could be depicted with
a different iconography, was invoked separately from Zeus under another epithet,
and received different offerings and cultic actions, as if he had an autonomous
status.¹⁷ Drawing on cognitive dissonance theories, Versnel resolves this apparent
paradox by arguing for the capacity of the human brain to entertain multiple
perceptions of the divine, and to shift from one conception to another by switch-
ing between different registers, so that ‘gods bearing the same name with different
epithets were and were not one and the same, depending on their momentary
registrations in the believer’s various layers of perception’. Given the Greeks’
ability to shift their perception unconsciously from one image of Zeus to another,
the multiplicity of Zeuses in the Greek world was perhaps taken for granted by the
ancients: to ordinary Greeks it was probably a non-issue, even though it may seem
problematic to us today.¹⁸ The phenomenon of ‘trans-divine’ epithets, however,
raises a further set of questions. If the application of different epithets to the same
god could create, as it were, different gods, to what extent then did the sharing of
the same epithet by different gods render them similar in character and function?
How much difference was there between the plurality of gods called Soter? These
are some questions which we shall explore in the course of this study.¹⁹
If the Greek ‘saviour’ gods did not grant ‘salvation’ after death, what power did
they actually exercise, and how did they affect the everyday life of the Greeks? In
comic fantasy, the birds in Cloudcuckooland imagine themselves as new gods
dispensing blessings to mankind: protection of crops, health, wealth, longevity,
happiness, life, peace, youth, laughter, dances, festivals, and even bird’s milk.²⁰ To
this fairly impressive list of divine functions we may add sustenance of life,
marriage, childbirth, child-rearing, coming of age, law and order, justice, political
stability, military victory, trade, craft, and so on. Though involved in many of these
spheres of life, ‘saviour’ gods were not normally the source of the above blessings;
instead, their role was to maintain worshippers’ existing well-being (soteria) in
these fields, or they might be called upon to lend aid in times of trouble so that the
equilibrium in life could be restored and a state of safety or security be attained.
Under normal circumstances the Greeks were unlikely to invoke Zeus Soter for
rain and fertility of the fields. Agricultural prosperity was usually subsumed
within regular sacrifices for ‘the health and safety’ of the polis, and only when
crop failure became a reality would we see the Greeks praying to Zeus Soter
¹⁷ A much-cited example is Xen. An. 7.8.1–6, where Xenophon, despite his regular worship of Zeus
Basileus, had incurred the wrath of Zeus Meilichios for not sacrificing to him. On Zeus Meilichios, see
Cook (1914–40), vol. 2.2, 1091–1160; Jameson, Jordan, and Kotansky (1993), 81–103.
¹⁸ Versnel (2011), esp. ch. 1, quotation at 82 (Versnel’s italics). Non-issue: but see a rare instance of
reflection by Socrates in Xen. Symp. 8.9.
¹⁹ See Chapter 4.
²⁰ Ar. Av. 586ff., 731–4, 1061–71. On areas of divine intervention, see also Mikalson (1983), 18–26;
Burkert (1987), 12–29; Parker (2005b), chs 17–18.
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7
explicitly for favourable weather conditions.²¹ They were unlikely to invoke Zeus
Soter for military success unless in situations of military crisis, and so on.²² When
the Greeks called upon Zeus Soter, they were not invoking a different god from
Zeus without an epithet, but a particular aspect of divine power subsumed within
Zeus’ divine persona. It was usually only when specific needs for ‘deliverance’,
‘protection’, and ‘rescue’ arose that the Greeks would activate this aspect of divine
power by invoking the gods under the epithet Soter. It can therefore be hard to
identify the workings of ‘saviour’ gods outside specific situations when the Greeks
needed deliverance from particular troubles. The power to ‘save’ was a subset of
the gods’ multivalent power, and in many ways the most important.
Multifarious as divine involvement might be, the interventions of ‘saviour’
gods were most clearly discernible in those areas involving the greatest dangers
and human anxieties. Warfare and seafaring gave rise to the largest number of
divine ‘saviours’: Zeus, Artemis, Athena, and Heracles were all popular military
‘saviours’, and Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, the Dioscuri, Heracles, Isis,
Poseidon, and Tyche, among others, are all attested as maritime ones, if with
varying frequency. Political liberation from internal and external threats tended to
be attributed to Zeus Soter, as was deliverance from natural catastrophes such as
earthquakes.²³ Cures from particular illnesses could be sought from Asclepius as
well as, though less often, his family members and Isis, whereas Apollo presided
over plagues.²⁴ These are just some broad spheres in which ‘saviour’ gods were at
work. Their ‘saving’ operations were more highly varied than can be outlined here,
and subsequent chapters will demonstrate the diverse nature of these gods and
their wide-ranging power in the life of the Greeks.
Among the plurality of ‘saviour’ figures available for help, Zeus was probably
the most popular in the Greek world. He was invoked in so many spheres of life
other than the military and political that, as a speaker in Alexis puts it, Zeus Soter
was by far the ‘most useful’ (χρησιμώτατος) of gods to mortals.²⁵ Little less
impressive was the range of ‘saving’ functions of his daughter Artemis. Not only
could she intervene in military operations, she was also, inter alia, a protectress of
the household and a saviouress in sailing. As the examples of Zeus and Artemis
demonstrate, the multiplicity of divine power was the mark of a major Olympian
figure; by contrast, the power of minor divinities was much more delimited.
Asclepius and Hygieia specialized in healing, the Dioscuri in maritime rescue,
Eileithyia in childbirth, and so on. Heroes, though they could also ‘save’, rarely
²¹ e.g. a group of villagers prayed to Zeus Chalazios Sozon (‘Zeus of Hail who Saves’) in Hasluck
(1904), 21–3, no. 4. Other instances related to agriculture will be discussed in Chapters 2 and 3.
²² See especially Chapter 2.
²³ Political liberation: I.Priene 11 = I.Priene IK 6, and other examples in Chapter 2. Earthquakes:
Dussaud (1896), 299; I.Anazarbos, no. 49; Aristid. Or. 49.38–41 (Hieroi Logoi III) Keil.
²⁴ See Chapters 2 and 3. But neither Asclepius nor Apollo was frequently called Soter in these
particular spheres as they were the chief averters of diseases even without the epithet.
²⁵ Alexis fr. 234 K.–A. = Ath. 15.693a.
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carried cult epithets as their power was limited to specific functions in restricted
localities.²⁶ It is important to realize, however, that the demarcation of timai
between different gods is not as rigid as we may think; overlaps, extensions, and
even changes in divine functions are not uncommon. Contrary to what we might
expect, Asclepius Soter could also, exceptionally, be a god of the battlefield and a
saviour at sea.²⁷ Such transgressions are nevertheless restricted and temporary,
and the established powers of the different gods usually held one another in
check.²⁸
Despite their potential to ‘save’, it would be misleading to assume that ‘saviour’
gods were necessarily benevolent helpers of mankind. In fact many of them were
major Olympian figures with both a dark and a positive side. Thus Zeus Chalazios
Sozon (‘Zeus of Hail who Saves’) could send or withdraw rain and hail at his will,
and might have been conceptualized differently from the usual Zeus Soter. Apollo
could send plague as well as cure it. Poseidon could cause storms to rise just as he
could quell them. In one of the episodes which we shall examine later in greater
detail, Poseidon Soter saved the Greek navy, not by protecting it from a storm, but
by wrecking the enemy forces.²⁹ Asclepius and the Dioscuri are exceptions to this
in bringing only aid rather than harm to mankind. How, then, did the Greeks deal
with the multifaceted power of the gods as a simultaneous source of evil and
blessings? Versnel’s idea of shifting foci mentioned earlier is illuminating in this
respect: the human cognitive system could accommodate different and even
contradictory perceptions of, say, Poseidon as a ‘saviour’ who was himself a
most dangerous destructive force. Yet the insights of Versnel and Parker could
be complemented and pushed further by considering the function of the epithet.
In the Greeks’ dealings with their gods, the epithet Soter probably provided a
means of coping with the multivalent nature of divine power. By focusing
attention on the ‘saving’ aspect of the gods, the epithet could bring to the fore
the positive and protective aspect of a divine persona, allowing the other, threat-
ening aspects of divine power to recede temporarily into the background. In other
words, the epithet was a lens by which worshippers could focus on one aspect of
the god and distance themselves from others.
In his discussion of God in the Old Testament, the biblical scholar Westermann
distinguishes between what he calls the ‘saving god’, who intervenes in crises, and
the ‘blessing god’, who keeps the world running by providing rain, crops, and so
on. This is a variant of the distinction in anthropology between ‘high-intensity’
and ‘low-intensity’ rituals.³⁰ It is tempting to think, from what we have just seen,
that the Greek ‘saviour’ gods were predominantly responsible for ‘saving’ rather
²⁶ Heroes: some rare examples are Achilles Soter in the Black Sea (IGDOP 50), Sosipolis in Elis
(Paus. 6.20.2–5, 6.25.4). See also other heroes and heroines in Kearns (1990).
²⁷ IG II/III² 4357 = IG II/III³ 4, 673; IG IV².1 128.57–78; AvP VIII.3, no. 63.
²⁸ Parker (2005b), 388; Parker (2011), 87. ²⁹ Hdt. 7.192, to be discussed in Chapter 1.
³⁰ Westermann (1979), 26–9, 44–5. Anthropological distinction: see e.g. Van Baal (1976).
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syvemmältä. Risti-Kolmio-Kartano oli jossakin monien mailien
päässä.
Katsoen mieheen tyttö nauroi, niin kuin vain Kitty Reid voi nauraa.
»Te vain teette pilaa minusta», torui mies. »Niin kaikki tekevät.
Eikä se ole ihme, olen itse nauranut itselleni koko päivän.»
»Nytpä tiedän varmasti, että olette hyvä haltia tai enkeli tai jokin
muuta sentapainen», tuumi Patches sovittaen jalkansa jalustimeen.
»Mutta yksi asia teidän täytyy sanoa minulle, ennen kuin lähden
askeltakaan edes illallista kohden. Kuinka pitkä matka on laitumen
kulmaukseen?»
»Niin, minä olin tietenkin kuullut teistä», jatkoi tyttö. »Phil kertoi
minulle viime kerralla käydessään meillä, kuinka te olitte yrittänyt
ratsastaa villillä oriilla. Phil pitää teitä aivan suurenmoisena
miehenä.»
»Niinkö?»
»Ymmärrän.»
Tyttö jatkoi: »Ettekö voi, jollei elämä täällä tyydytä teitä, lähteä
muualle?»
»Mitä hullutuksia!»
»Kuinka niin?»
»En tiedä muuta, kuin että hän sanoo nimensä olevan Patches.»
»Juoksuaitaa?»
»He tietävät, että meillä on niin kiire, ettemme ehdi pitää tarkkaa
huolta karjastamme», virkkoi Rovasti.
Iltahämärissä.