Patronage, networks and ritual strategies: Macedonians on Samothrace

Sandra Blakely, Emory University 

Contemporary with their territorial expansion, and funded by their military triumphs, Macedonians in the fourth century BC poured financial and cultural investment into the mystery cult of the Great Gods of Samothrace. Monumental constructions through the time of Arrhidaios rendered the sanctuary a Macedonian space at the same time that it became the most international of the mystery rites focused on Kabeiroi. The motivations behind this Macedonian largesse may be queried through critical frameworks derived from patronage, mobility, and identity studies.  Monumental votives offered a route to eclipsing even Eleusis in the splendor of the sanctuary, and should be counted as one of the many Macedonian strategies to claim Hellenic authenticity.  Significant dynamics within the rites, however, point beyond the Greek mainland. The enduring role for pre- and non-Greek divinities has inspired hypotheses for Thracian origins for the rites: while these lie beyond proof, the first region into which the Macedonians expanded have a confirmed enthusiasm for the island’s gods.  Macedonian patronage thus cemented alliances with polities already committed to Samothrace’s gods. The rites were also long recognized as guarantors of safety in travel at sea, a ritual promise whose practical effectiveness may be gauged by analysis of the rites’ extensive epigraphic network, dated between the 2nd century CE and AD. Social network analyses of strong and weak ties, modularity clusters, and eigenvector centrality highlight a rich range of distinctive local uses of the rites, which integrated those promises into the webworks of legend, ritual practice, and local identities in locations from Alexandria to Cyzicus.  Macedonians are strikingly absent from the festivals which provide the strongest indices of the formation of these networks: its cities did not participate in the theoria and proxenia  which tied local polities to the island and its authority.  The records of Macedonian initiates, additionally, all fall within the Imperial period – suggesting a deployment of the rites more calculated to cement Macedonians with Romans than with the broader Greek network of cities who positioned the mysteries in their local identities.