Parthenos through the Inscriptions

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This essay focuses on the three inscriptions on stone discovered in the sanctuary of the goddess Parthenos in ancient Neapolis and on two inscribed Attic decrees that mention the goddess and her role as a patron deity of Neapolis. These texts provide details about the administrative apparatus of this sanctuary and the sanctuary’s role as a political centre of Neapolis. They also reveal how this sanctuary, and probably others like it, located in frontier zones and serving diverse communities, brought together the various groups that frequented it. Individuals from different ethnic and civic backgrounds were able to tap into associations of divine powers, names and epithets of gods, and cultic iconographies to venerate deities, including Parthenos, in ways that made sense to them. In so doing, they created a toolkit that rendered religious practices in the Mediterranean more fluid and flexible than previously understood.