Bendis, Deloptes and Asklepios: Reconsidering Reciprocal Formations of Iconography and Placement of Newcomer Cults in the Piraeus

Abstract

In the fifth century BCE, Athenians intensified the worship of non-Athenian and non-Greek deities, a fact which has resulted in massive scholarly attention (Garland 1992; Parker 1996; Neumann 2022). While the legal facet of this procedure has been extensively analysed (Parker 1996; 2011), the spatial aspect of the establishment of new cults – the ‘placemaking’ – has been mainly neglected. This article re-examines the placement of the cults of Asklepios, Bendis and Deloptes, commonly assumed to have been a healing hero and a paredros of Bendis. Based on the iconographical analysis of Piraean votive reliefs for these divinities in combination with the spatial and temporal setting of these attestations, I argue that the Athenians provided space for this first wave of officially accepted religious newcomers close to the Zea harbour. At the temenos, which is usually identified as the Asklepieion and its immediate surroundings, several originally non-Athenian cults were installed during the Peloponnesian War, making it an anchoring point for the divine new arrivals.