Figure 1 (above): General view of the island of Delos.
The Religious Network of Delos
The Influence of Changing Political Circumstances
Introduction |
The connection between Delos and its neighbouring islands, the Cyclades, has been strong since at least the Archaic period. This becomes clear when we consider the evidence: poems on Delos, specifically the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and the Hymn to Delos by Callimachus, mention Delos as having a leading role in a dance, while an example of pottery from the early fifth century BC shows two maenads (ecstatic women) dancing, one of them called Euboea and the other Delos. [1] The metaphor of the Dance of the Islands shows, I think, very nicely what is going on in the Cyclades from very early on: Delos held a central position in the network of the Cycladic islands, as is exemplified by the importance of the cult of Apollo that was established on the island, as well as by the fact that a body of representatives from the different cities and tribes on the Cyclades met at Delos. [2] These two aspects together made Delos the center of the Cycladic network in both religion and politics.
At the end of the sixth century BC, Delos began to see the first meddling from major powers into its own affairs. Around this time, Athens, governed at the time by the tyrant Peisistratos, removed a number of graves from the island that were visible from the sanctuary. [3] Touted as an act of piety, it marked the first occurrence of Athenian interference into Delian affairs. As time progressed, Athens, from the start of the fifth century BC until 314 BC, assumed control of Delos and used it to further its own goals. After 314 BC, Delos was under the influence (not control per se) of different Hellenistic kings as well as the island of Rhodes, until in 166 BC the Romans took over Delos and handed it back to the Athenians. We have seen that Delos has had quite some shifts in its political climate over the course of the fifth through second century BC. The topic of my research, then, is this: How has the religious network changed and what aspects of this network have remained the same as a result of changing political circumstances? I will use Social Network Theory, which has gained a lot of popularity in the last decade, in order to analyse the dynamics of the Delian religious network as a function of the political climate. |
Social Network Theory |
Before I can discuss the results, I first need to give a basic layout of social network theory and how it can be used to analyse the Delian religious network. My discussion of social network theory will be based on the work done by Malkin on this subject. [4] This explanation will only cover those parts of network analysis that will be useful for this research.
The general layout of a network can be described as follows: there is a set of nodes, the entities in the network, which are connected to other nodes via ties, the connections between these nodes. Along ties, there is a flow of resources: this flow can be material goods, but it can also be intellectual and ideological ideas. This is the basic layout of a network. On top of that, there are several different types of nodes, ties and flows that can alter the functionality and connectivity of a network. The concept of the centrality of a node is important in this research. A central node is a node that has a high central location in a network, which means that it is positioned at the heart of important exchanges that take place in a network. In the Greek world (at least in the pre-Roman period), there was no central hub to which all settlement referred back. Instead, there were regional hubs, which can be most adequately described as central hubs of a part of a network. The island of Delos was one of those regional hubs, with its religious network reaching out to a significant subset of the full Greek network. Delos, in short, was a very important center in the Greek world. Ties between nodes can be either strong or weak. A strong tie means that two nodes have a close relationship with one another and that there is a large exchange of resources (flow) along the tie. A weak tie means that two nodes are lightly connected. It is important to note that a weak tie is one of the most important aspects in the creation of networks. A weak tie tends to be located at the edge of a network, and therefore it is most likely to connect two different networks together by its connections between two nodes of different networks. As a result, the weak ties make network stable by connecting the different parts of a network.. A 'small world', which is a network that has few nodes in between any two nodes,can be formed by random links. Random links are ties between two nodes that lie relatively isolated from each other, and create connections between distant parts of a network. These random links increase the connectivity within the network. Nodes that connect distant parts of a network are known as bridges. A central node is a special type of bridge: since almost all nodes connect to it, passing from one side of the network to the other is often done most efficiently by going through the central node. |
Figure 2: Partial Social Network Map of the Internet.
Figure 3: Visualization of a network.
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Primary Source:
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The sanctuary of Delos gives us one very important source with which we can work: the Delian temple inventories. The temple inventories at Delos are not only interesting because of their very existence (there have been only three (!) locations where such inventories have been found [5]), but also because the inventories span a time period that starts in the period of Athenian control over Delos and end even past the loss of independence in 166 BC. [6]
Despite the wealth of information that the temple inventories offer us, we must be very careful when drawing conclusions from this evidence. We have inventories from only a select few years, and besides that, the inventories probably do not exhaustively list all items in a temple, but rather a selection of the most prestigious gifts. Therefore, we must avoid being too conclusive, and should be even more careful about trying to quantify the presence of a certain dedicant: the best we can do is observe whether someone or some settlement returns relatively often. In my research, I have studied the major temple inventories as they have been catalogued by Hamilton (2000). |
Figure 4: The temple of Isis at Delos. This temple is one of the markers that tell us that there was an increasing presence of religions from outside the Greek world present in the Delian religious network.
Results |
During the period from the fifth to the second century BC, a number of powerful political powers have tried to take control or associate with the religious network that was associated with Delos. The Athenians, for one, tried to empty Delos as a city, in order to take control of the religious network without an actual city to contest them. We see, then, that Athens tries to appropriate the religious network of Delos. Athens itself did not have a large network associated with it, and therefore the addition of the city to the Delian network had very little effect on the network of Delos. When the Delians cut off Athens in 314 BC when they gained their independence, the loss of Athens likewise did not constitute a large loss for the Delian network: Athens just did not have that large an impact on the network of Delos.
During the period of independence, several Hellenistic kings tried to associate themselves with Delos, and connected their own network to the Delian network. As a result, the religious network of Delos increased in size: before it only encompassed the islands of the Aegean sea and the Aegean coasts, but now it reaches the coasts of modern Egypt, Lybia and the Middle East. It should be said, however, that throughout the period of time that I have looked at, the Cycladic islands have always been part of the religious network of Delos. The conclusion of this research is that there has been quite some continuity in the Delian network: despite changing political circumstances, the Cyclades were always part of the Delian network and therefore form a strongly tied core in the Delian religious network. Besides this continuity, we see that different influencing political actors, be it Athens, the Ptolemies, the Antigonids or the Seleucids, each brought their own network into the Delian network. The Delian network, then, is a sum of its core network that was unchanging throughout antiquity and the networks that were associated with political actors that tried to connect to Delos. |
Notes
[1] Constantakopoulou (2007), 26.
[2] Laidlaw (1933), 58.
[3] Laidlaw (1933), 57.
[4] Malkin (2007), 1-9 & Malkin (2011), 1-64.
[5] Constantakopoulou (2015), par. 2.2.
[6] Brynmawr College. 'Delian Inventories'.
[2] Laidlaw (1933), 58.
[3] Laidlaw (1933), 57.
[4] Malkin (2007), 1-9 & Malkin (2011), 1-64.
[5] Constantakopoulou (2015), par. 2.2.
[6] Brynmawr College. 'Delian Inventories'.
Figures
- Figure 1: General view of the Delos island, Greece. By Vijinn. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delos#/media/File:Delos_general.jpg
- Figure 2: Partial Map of the Internet. By The Opte Project. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_theory#/media/File:Internet_map_1024.jpg
- Figure 3: Visualization of the social network analysis. By Martin Grandjean. http://www.martingrandjean.ch/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Graphe3.png
- Figure 4: Temple of Isis in Delos, Greece. By Bernard Gagnon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delos#/media/File:Temple_of_Isis,_Delos_03.jpg
Bibliography*
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- Bruneau, P. & Ducat, J. (1965). Guide de Délos. Parijs: E. de Boccard.
- Brynmawr College. 'Delian Temple Treasures'. http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/delian.html (accessed 04-03-2016, 21:10).
- Constantakopoulou, C. (2007). The Dance of the Islands: Insularity, Networks, the Athenian Empire, and the Aegean World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Constantakopoulou, C. (2015). 'The Social Dynamics of Dedication in the Delian Inventories of the Third Century: Audience, Function and Temporality'. http://www.chs-fellows.org/2015/08/03/delian-inventories-of-the-third-century-audience-function-and-temporality/ (accessed 05-03-2016 16:34).
- Hamilton, R. (2000). Treasure Map: a Guide to the Delian inventories. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
- Laidlaw, W. A. (1933). A History of Delos. Oxford: B. Blackwell.
- Mair, A. W. 'Hymns of Callimachus'. http://www.theoi.com/Text/CallimachusHymns2.html (accessed 28-05-2016, 17:40).
- Malkin, I. (2011). A small Greek world: networks in the Ancient Mediterranean. New York: Oxford University Press, 1-64.
- Malkin, I., Constantakopoulou, C., Panagopoulou, K. (2007). 'Preface: Networks in the Ancient Mediterranean'. Mediterranean Historical Review 22.1, 1-9.
- Reger, G. (1994). Regionalism and Change in the Economy of Independent Delos. Berkeley: University of California Press.
- Rutherford, I. (1998). 'The Amphikleidai of Sicilian Naxos: Pilgrimage and Genos in the Temple Inventories of Delos'. Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 122, 81-89.
*: This bibliography represents full literature used for research, which is more than what is referenced in the notes on this page.
Written by: Sjoerd Bruin ( 03-06-2016)