the methods of religious observance known from other cities in the Greco-Roman
world. Also at Palmyra, the worshiper could reach the god by burning incense (the
most common act) or by libation, through sacrifice proper (varying from small
birds to large animals), by hosting the deity on a bed with cushions (a rite called
lectisterniumin Latin), or by placing offerings on a table in front of the image (in
Greek: trapezomata), and above all by “sacred banqueting,” dining and drinking
in a religious setting under the auspices (or even in the symbolic presence) of the
deity (sometimes called theoxenia). The complex sacrificial system at Palmyra cor-
responded thus at least partially to that in vogue in other cities of the Greek east,
trading material and immaterial matters between man and god in an empire-wide
process that further developed in a world dominated by Rome. Needless to say, these
broad Greco-Roman patterns of religious behavior will also have affected the way in
which indigenous, non-classical religious aspects functioned in the society of an
“oriental” city such as Palmyra (Kaizer 2004). On the other hand, the available sources,
especially the inscriptions, often give the impression that on a popular level religious
life in the Near East hardly changed under Roman rule (Teixidor 1977). Standard
religious formulae, which must have had a bearing on the essence of the act of
worship, were applied in the inscriptions in seemingly unimaginative fashion, but that
is of course not to say that these formulaic patterns continued to refer to unchanged
religious notions.
Mythological and Religious Interest in the Past
in the Second Sophistic
There is one source which will always need special mention in a discussion of reli-
gious life in the Near East in the imperial period, namely the pamphlet On the Syrian
Goddess, traditionally ascribed to the famous satirist Lucian, who wrote in the
second centuryad. On the Syrian Goddess, or De dea Syria(DDS) as it is more
commonly known, describes the temple and the cult of the Syrian goddess Atargatis
at Hierapolis (“the holy city”), present-day Mabog in northern Syria. It is the only
literary text we have that deals in detail with the cult of one particular, and import-
ant, temple in Syria under Roman rule, and – as a contemporary account of the
cult by someone who claims to be an insider – potentially our best access to pagan
worship in the region. However, any interpretation of this invaluable short text is
as frustratingly difficult as its contents are fascinating. DDSis in the first place the
masterly accomplishment of an author – whether indeed Lucian, who claims else-
where to come from another north Syrian city, Samosata, or whether another, unknown
(but equally skilled) literator – who produced on the linguistic level a complicated
and nearly perfect imitation of the style of the work of Herodotus (Lightfoot 2003).
Naturally, the observation that the author of DDSdeliberately parodied the tech-
nique and fashion of the Greek historian who was known at least since Cicero (Leg.
1.5) as “the father of history” has serious consequences for the way in which we can
use his text for historical purposes. Can we build any theories on the information
about the cult given in DDS, for which there is no unequivocally corroborative
452 Ted Kaizer