Ritual ties, ‘portable communities’, and the transmission of common knowledge through festival networks in the Hellenistic world

Abstract

Panhellenic festivals, such as at Olympia, have long been understood as a unifying factor in the Greek world as it expanded during the archaic and classical periods. In the Hellenistic period, this took a new turn as individual cities began organising inter-urban festivals of their own, modelled on the great panhellenic games. Delegates, athletes, and performers travelled across the Mediterranean, leaving behind a trail of honorific monuments, victory lists, and civic decrees—data that lends itself for analysing degrees of connectivity. Standard network models ascribe innovation to random (‘weak-tie’) contacts, yet these inter-urban connections were anything but random. Participation was predicated on a common view of the past and a sense of connectivity in deep time, such as mythical kinships. Time plays a role in lending authenticity and prestige to the festival—cities often used the past as reason to connect in the present, while the record of their actions in stone reified their strong ties for future generations. This chapter examines some of the innovative strategies of cities in reactivating ‘old’ bonds while seeking out new ones, and the powerful role of ritual in generating common knowledge, linking together this ‘portable community’ in profound ways.