Introduction. Beyond Isolation: Re-positioning Ruler Cults in the Hellenistic Culture

The five contributions of this volume are a selection of the papers presented at the panel Meet the New Gods, Same as the Old Gods? Formulary, Ritual, and Status in Hellenistic Ruler Cult, hosted by the 8th Celtic Conference in Classics, Edinburgh, June 25-28, 2014. The call for papers had a dual purpose, which I could figuratively resume as «zooming in» on the fine-grained linguistic and pragmatic specificities of Hellenistic cultic honours for human beings, and «zooming out» in order to understand the place of such honours in relation to the broader social, political and cultural processes of the period. This methodological approach is a response to the special success that the study of Hellenistic ruler cults has enjoyed in the last decades 2. The once dominating paradigm interpreted ruler cults as a religious and moral paradox in Greek history, and more specifically as a token of the decline of the polis political, cultural and religious system during the Hellenistic period. Such decline would have left space to an attitude of submissive collaboration with Hellenistic dynasts and/or to a process of Orientalization of Greek traditions 3. Conversely, the recent scholarship has given back