Blackwell Reference Online

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We no longer need to demonstrate the reality of an Arcadian ethnic identity (Jost 2002b; Nielsen 1999, 2002: 52–87). But can we speak in the same way of an Arcadian religious system and, if so, in what sense? Did there exist a structure of cults and myths that can be considered distinctive to Arcadia? At first sight the answer is “No”: the political structure of the region was based upon its cities, and its religion was based upon their local pantheons. However, from the fourth century onwards the Arcadian people tended to become unified, and one can ask whether, so far as religion was concerned, there was not an Arcadian “culture,” a unitary and distinctive way of worshiping the gods and of imagining them. The existence of distinctively Arcadian deities that were worshiped throughout Arcadia will furnish the first part of the answer. The analysis of local pantheons will supply another. Could there also have been an Arcadian mythical world that, whilst appropriating universal themes, generated distinctive tales connected to the land of Arcadia?Few deities distinctive to Arcadia were worshiped throughout the region as a whole. However, the following are sufficiently distinctive to merit attention: Pan, Zeus Lykaios, and, in all probability, Despoina.When Evander settled at Rome with his Arcadian followers, he began by founding a cult of Pan, “The most ancient and the most worshiped ... log in or subscribe to read full text