degeneration of the polis,including its religious life, are based more on a
debatable selection, interpretation, and employment of evidence—informed
by an underlying model of decline—than they are by the weight of the
evidence itself. Indeed, I shall argue that despite changes and develop-
ments in the Hellenistic and Roman periods, we can properly speak of the
continuing vitality of civic life, especially in its social and religious aspects.
I begin by discussing and questioning notions of decline in the study
of the polis(Models of Decline in the Study of the Polis), before outlining
ways in which this notion has influenced studies of ancient religious life
in this context (Models of Decline in the Study of Social-Religious Life). I
then provide evidence for the continuing vitality of civic life by using the
inscriptional evidence for small social-religious groups in the cities of
Roman Asia (Evidence for the Vitality of the Polisin Asia Minor). This evi-
dence gives us a glimpse into the importance of networks of benefaction,
and provides a picture of the polisas a locus of identity, pride, co-operation,
and competition among various levels of society. Finally, I discuss how this
overall picture of the polismight inform our discussion of religious rivalries
(Implications for the Study of Religious Rivalries).
MODELS OF DECLINE IN THE STUDY OF THE POLIS
Pausanias, the ancient travel guide, makes a sarcastic statement which
provides us with a rare description of how an ancient Greek defined the polis:
“From Chaironeia it is two and a half miles to the polisof Panopeus in
Phokis: if you can call it a poliswhen it has no civic offices, no gymnasium,
no theatre, and no market-place, when it has no running water at a foun-
tain and they live on the edge of a torrent in hovels like mountain huts. Still,
their territory has boundary stones, and they send delegates to the Phokian
assembly” (Pausanias, Descr.10.4.1; trans. adapted from Levi 1971). Evi-
dently, Pausanias viewed the buildings and related institutions that accom-
panied civilized Hellenistic life as the essence of a Greek polis,and he
qualifies his sarcasm by noting that Panopeus did, at least, participate in
its regional political assembly. Conspicuously absent from Pausanias’s
description, however, is something that seems to be the focus of many
modern attempts to define what is or is not a real polis:the idea that with-
out true autonomy, or genuine democracy on the model of classical Athens,
there is no polisat all, or at best only a polisin decay.
According to the common view, changes that took place in the fourth
centuryBCEled to the failure of the Greek polis,followed by a steady degen-
eration of virtually every political, social, cultural, and other facet of civic
life in the Hellenistic and Roman periods (cf. Tarn and Griffith 1952, 47–125;