Chapter 7 - Socially Embedded Benefaction on Delos

Summary

This chapter considers the ‘vase festivals’ recorded on Hellenistic Delos as benefactions, and then considers the implications of this approach on our chronology for the period. It argues that the vase festival was a socially constrained form of competitive display, one open only to Delians and others who successfully sought and negotiated this privilege. Through the endowment and the associated display, these individuals claimed and performed a distinct superior status: as patrons of the sanctuary. But this was not an exclusive claim. It coexisted with and competed with other claims, both when they were founded and in subsequent years. As such, the dates and periods during which royal (and non-royal) individuals founded these vase festivals (Third Ptolemaea, 246/5 BC, Soteria/Antigonia, 245/4 BC, etc.) can be understood as periods of engagement by those individuals on Delos and the region. But this competitive context indicates that they should not be understood as dates for changes of control. Quite the reverse: if the vase festivals have any implication for our understanding of the broader geopolitical terrain – and they may not – they indicate that these were times when interest in the sanctuary and the region were higher, and when any specific patronage or hegemonic relationships in the sanctuary and the region were particularly contested.