2012/03/01 by William Van Andringa · 2 citations
Arts and Humanities · #Ancient Mediterranean Archaeology and History #Archaeology and Historical Studies #Ancient Egypt and Archaeology
paper · doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199572069.003.0005
openalex publication_date 2012/03/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
Pompeian citizens were surrounded by the sacred. Not only were there a lot of cult places in the town, there were also crowds of statues of divinities inside each sanctuary, usually set up as votive offerings. In a world of polytheism, the gods were never alone. Each divinity had multiple aspects and zones of competence, and the association with other gods in sanctuary spaces allows us to define their ‘personalities’ more sharply. This chapter studies the statues found in the sanctuaries of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and shows that the collocation of gods in a sanctuary and their association with the emperor or with local notables was a way of defining the religious interests of the cult in question. Most prominent here are the statues of ancestral divinities, embodiments of the city's religious and historical memory of the city.