Laudator Temporis Acti

Jon D. Mikalson, Religion in Hellenistic Athens (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), pp. 43-44 (discussing Inscriptiones Graecae II² 410):

In the phrase "for the health and safety" I see a sign of a changed religious outlook, one whose concern is now becoming defensive, perhaps even pessimistic in contrast to the higher expectations and optimism of the fifth century. Athens no longer is militarily and economically preeminent, threatening others. Under the power of Macedon she is now the one threatened and will remain threatened throughout the Hellenistic period. Athens' needs are now different from what they were in the fifth century, and we should not be surprised to see state cult accommodating itself to these new needs. "Health and safety" had always been gifts of the gods,⁹⁷ but so had many others. But in the turbulent times of the last half of the fourth century and in the following centuries, the obtaining of health and safety plays an increasingly large role in state cult. "For health and safety" soon becomes formulaic in state decrees treating sacrifices and other religious matters, and various types of gods promising these come to the fore.

Asclepios' cult was very strong in the fourth century and remained so throughout the Hellenistic and Roman periods. In 332/1 the newly enfranchised Amphiaraos himself, the proprietor of a healing sanctuary and obvious favorite of the Lycourgan age, is given a gold crown worth 1,000 drachmas, because "he takes good care of the Athenians and the others who come to his sanctuary for the health and safety of all those in the land" (Schwenk #40). That the healing gods provide health and safety is understandable, but their greater prominence, vis-à-vis the fifth century, is also revealing.⁹⁸ What IG II² 410 indicates is the extension of such concerns among the official documents of state cult to deities not fundamentally concerned with healing.⁹⁹

97. Mikalson 1983, 16–24, 42, 45–48, 53, 55–56, 67–68, 71, 89.

98. See, e.g., Garland 1992, 132–35.

99. The only prior attestation of the phrase "for health and safety" in state documents is IG II² 223 B.5 of 343/2, a decree which Phanodemos proposed. On this text see below, chapter 4, p. 132.

References are to:

• Jon D. Mikalson, Athenian Popular Religion (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1983)
• Robert Garland, Introducing New Gods (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992)
• Cynthia J. Schwenk, Athens in the Age of Alexander: The Dated Laws and Decrees of the Lycourgan Era, 338–322 B.C. (Chicago: Ares, 1985)

Excerpt from Inscriptiones Graecae II² 410:

...ἐφ' ὑγιείαι καὶ σωτηρίαι τῆς βουλῆς καὶ τοῦ δήμου τοῦ Ἀθηναίων καὶ παίδων καὶ γυναικῶν καὶ τῶν ἄλλων κτημάτων τῶν Ἀθηναίων...

Some of the inscription is translated by Allen Brent, Ignatius of Antioch and the Second Sophistic (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 206), pp. 285-286, in a discussion of "Public celebrations of ritual for safety (σωτηρία) and wellbeing (ὑγιεία)".