Local authority and civic Hellenism: Tarcondimotus, Hierapolis-Castabala and the cult of Perasia

Abstract

In the mid first century BC, a dynast named Tarcondimotus asserted his authority over parts of Smooth Cilicia. Tarcondimotus' successful accommodation of the differing expectations of Roman magistrates, local Greeks and Cilicians was connected to his patronage of the Greekpolisof Hierapolis-Castabala. Through such patronage, he collaborated with municipal elites to interweave Greek and local traditions into the city's culture and cult in ways that produced innovative expressions of civic Hellenism. Likewise, while Hierapolis-Castabala was under Tarcondimotus' protection, its cult to the goddess Perasia, a local manifestation of the ancient Hittite deity Kubaba, embodied these unique cultural expressions. During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, Perasia retained her traditional name and her cult enjoyed distinctively local rites in which her priestesses walked upon fiery coals. Such unique qualities prevented Greeks and Romans during the centuries following Tarcondimotus' rule from associating her with any single goddess worshipped in Greece or Italy. In sum, by patronising Hierapolis-Castabala, Tarcondimotus presented himself as the defender of Greek civic life and theHierapolitaiwere able to persist in their unique expressions of Greek civic performance and cult in the turbulent transitional period between Seleucid and Roman rule.

The house of Tarkondimotos: a late Hellenistic dynasty between Rome and the East

“…Syme (1995: 164-65) proposes dates of 14-12 BC, 4-1 BC or sometime after AD 17. Officially autonomous civic bodies appointed members of the (indirectly) ruling dynasty and their immediate associates as magistrates within civic institutions as part of the wider reciprocal programme of benefaction and mutual support (see also Andrade 2011). An issue of bronze coins issued at Hieropolis Kastabala in 10/9 BC bears the portrait and name of the Roman proconsul of Kilikia, Paullus Fabius Maximus (ΦΑΒΙΟΣ ΜΑΞΙΜΟΣ), on the obverse and the ethnic and civic magistrate ΙΕΡΑΠΟΛΕΙΤΩΝ ΔΡΥΑΣ in three lines, all within a wreath, as the reverse type (RPC 1:2941).…”