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Abstract
The term ‘theoric network’ can be understood either as a network made up of all the cities that send festival delegates (theoroi) to one particular festival, together with the city that organizes the festival itself, or as the overall ‘hyper-network’, comprising the sum of all such theoric networks. The paper explores the issue of whether contemporary ‘social network theory’ provides a valid working model for understanding theoric networks (or the theoric network), looking at such issues as connectivity, clustering, and the Strogatz–Watts principle.
Keywords:
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the other participants for many useful comments. I would also like to thank the two anonymous readers. All errors of fact or judgement that remain are, of course, my own.
Notes
[1] On theoria, CitationRutherford, ‘Theoria’; CitationDillon, Pilgrims; CitationZiehen, ‘Theoria’; Ziehen, ‘Theoros’.
[2] On theoroi-announcers, CitationPerlman, City and Sanctuary; CitationBoesch, THEOROS; CitationDaux, ’Théore et théorodoque’.
[3] For one attempt, see CitationRutherford, ‘The Keian Theoria’; also SIG 3.585 with Dittenberger's comments ad loc.
[4] CitationChaniotis, Die Verträge; see below.
[5] Catchment area: see CitationBhardwaj, Hindu Places of Pilgrimage.
[6] Amphictionies: see CitationTausend, Amphiktyonie und Symmachie.
[7] Colony and metropolis, in general: CitationGraham, Colony and Mother City; for Miletus: CitationGünther, Das Orakel von Didyma; CitationDebord, Aspects Sociaux, 18–20; CitationEhrhardt, Milet und seine Kolonien.
[8] Sommer, this volume.
[9] CitationPlassart, ‘La liste des théorodoques’.
[10] Some guidance is provided by the accounts of the naopoioi from fourth-century Delphi, which record visitors who made token donations towards the rebuilding of the temple; the geographical range of visitors is surprisingly small: see Rutherford, ‘The Keian Theoria’.
[11] CitationCole, Theoi Megaloi.
[12] See CitationBruneau, Recherches, 93–113.
[13] Ptolemaia: see RE s.v.; on Hadra vases: CitationCook, Inscribed Hadra Vases, nos. 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10.
[14] Androcles of Phalasarna: see below.
[15] See the excellent survey in Cole, Theoi Megaloi.
[16] See CitationRutherford, ‘The Koan-Delian Ritual Complex’; CitationSokolowski, Lois sacrées, no. 156b.
[17] Cf. CitationMalkin, ‘Networks’, 62; CitationMalkin, ‘Apollo’; for a recent parallel from Cyrene, see CitationDobias-Lalou, ‘Voyageurs Cyrénéens’.
[18] Androkles of Phalasarna; Perlman, City and Sanctuary, 88 and 91.
[19] Text in Boesch, THEOROS, 17; CitationRigsby, ‘Theoroi for the Koan Asklepieia’.
[20] CitationStrogatz, Sync, 127ff.
[21] See CitationLatour, Reassembling the Social.
[22] See other papers this volume.
[23] See Wasserman and Faust, Social Network Analysis, 125ff.
[24] See Wasserman and Faust, Social Network Analysis, 291ff.
[25] For CitationBourdieu, ‘The Forms of Capital’.
[26] CitationBarabási, Linked, 65ff.; the principle was first formulated in Albert and CitationBarabási, ‘Emergence of Scaling in Random Networks’.
[27] See CitationStrogatz and Watts, ‘Collective Dynamics of “Small-World” Networks’.
[28] See CitationParker, ‘Athenian Religion Abroad’.
[29] CitationSourvinou-Inwood, ‘What Is Polis Religion’, 297–98. In the case of the Samothracian network we may want to go for the second option, since the Samothracian polis seems to have sent its own theoroi to the festival: see Cole, Theoi Megaloi.
[30] There may, however, be cases where it makes more sense to assign the destination of the theoroi to a different category, and that could be accommodated within the framework of network theory also. The term for a network which does not plot the relation between a group of agents, but represents how they are affiliated to an entity of a different category is ‘affiliation network’.
[31] For synchronization in networks, see Strogatz, Sync.
[32] See below for Kos.
[33] The Koan Asklepieia: SEG 33.671 is Koan decree in honour of Kaphisophon, a Koan doctor practising in Alexandria, who led an Alexandrian theoria to Kos (220–210 BC); see CitationHerzog, ‘Ein koische Artz’; also SEG 27.510, a decree for a doctor who heals theoroi visiting the Asklepieion. The celebrity of the Koan Asklepieia is also implied in the decrees recording recognition of Koan inviolability, for which see CitationHerzog and Klaffenbach, Asylieurkunden and CitationRigsby, Asylia, 106–153.
[34] See Bruneau, Recherches; Rutherford, ‘The Koan-Delian Ritual Complex’.
[35] See CitationHorden and Purcell, The Corrupting Sea, 224–30; Constantakopoulou, ‘Proud to be an Islander’.
[36] IG12.9.207, especially 18ff. On the Euboean confederation: Le Guen, Les associations 1.48, n. 169.
[37] Plassart, ‘La liste des théorodoques’, cols. 3 (bottom)–4 (top).
[38] For Delphi it comes down to three pieces of evidence: a Delphic theoros is attested from Kydonia (IG2.2.844); the city of Elyros in the south-west is known to have had its own thearodokos at Delphi (IC2.13.1; interestingly, nearby Tarrha also had an old link with Delphi: Pausanias, Perieg. 10.16); and a decree from Praisos in the east allows for the possibility of delegations going from there to Olympia and Delphi: IC3.6.7b).
[39] CitationHornblower, Thucydides and Pindar, 191–96.
[40] See Rutherford, ‘The Keian Theoria’.