reference to the sanctuary’s refurbishment in a contemporary inscription of 335/4
BC (IGii^2 333), and a statue of Good Fortune by Praxiteles is supposed to have stood
outside the Prytaneion, center of Athens’ political life (Aelian,Varia Historia9.39).
Good Fortune also appears, however, to have been invoked in private contexts, such
as a fourth-century votive relief dedicated by a family to a rather idiosyncratic group:
‘‘to Zeus Fulfiller and of Friendship, to the god’s mother Friendship, and to the god’s
wife Good Luck’’ (Copenhagen 1558;IGii^2 4627). The cult of Good Fortune
does appear outside Athens too, but in many cities the figure who would rise
to prominence in the hellenistic period was the potentially ambivalent Fortune
(Tyche). Inscriptions offer evidence for her cult already in the fourth century on
Thera, Amorgos, and Rhodes and at Mylasa, and Pausanias mentions a number
of sanctuaries of Fortune which appear to be prehellenistic; his information is
often unspecific – at Argos the temple is of the ‘‘very ancient Fortune’’ (2.20.3),
and at Pharai the statue is ‘‘ancient’’ (4.30.3) – but he indicates a date by naming
fourth-century sculptors as responsible for statues at Megara (1.43.6) and Thebes
(9.16.1). The increasing popularity of the cult in the hellenistic period is reflected in
contemporary literature and art (Matheson 1994), and plausibly explained as due to
the significance of personal luck in the uncertain post-Alexander world. At a state
level, too, the idea of the city’s Fortune was especially useful to newly founded cities
in Asia Minor which had no traditional patron deity to call upon. The concept is first
given physical form in Eutychides’ Tyche of Antioch statue ca. 300 BC, a seated
female figure wearing a crown representing the city’s fortifications, while a youth
swimming at her feet represents the river Orontes; according to Pausanias (6.2.7) the
statue was ‘‘greatly honored by the local people.’’ Another hellenistic statue type
shows Fortune holding a cornucopia, and sometimes a plump child, symbolic of
the material well-being she has the power to bestow on individual worshipers.
Fortune’s attributes bring us to a final example which is not a new figure, but rather
a hellenistic development of the earlier cult of Nemesis. The city of Smyrna, which
had been destroyed by the Lydians in the early sixth century, was refounded in the
early years of the third century by Alexander’s generals Antigonos and Lysimachos
(Strabo C464). Pausanias’ account of this refoundation (7.5.2) is problematic, and
fails to shed much light on why the people of Smyrna ‘‘now believe in two Nemeseis
instead of one,’’ but it does locate the goddesses’ sanctuary on the slopes of Mount
Pagos, exactly where the new city was situated. A number of inscriptions from the
Roman imperial period indicate more precisely that the sanctuary stood on the south
side of the new Smyrna’s agora, and we have useful evidence for the appearance of the
hellenistic cult statues from later coins (Figure 4.2). The Nemeseis are shown holding
a measuring-rod and a bridle, which remain their two most constant attributes in later
art, and which are conveniently explained by an epigram in theGreek Anthology
(16.223): ‘‘we must do nothing beyond measure nor be unbridled in our speech.’’
Another epigram (12.229) suggests that the way the goddesses pull at a fold of the
peplos might reflect an apotropaic gesture of ‘‘spitting under the fold’’ to avert
Nemesis’ attentions. These features are all absent from the fifth-century statue of
Nemesis at Rhamnous, which, like personifications in contemporary vase-painting, is
indistinguishable from any other female figure. The concept which the Smyrna
statues represent has not necessarily changed, but the way in which it is expressed is
typically hellenistic (Stafford 2000:97–103, 2005c).
Ogden / Companion to Greek Religion 1405120541_4_004 Revise Proof page 83 30.10.2006 4:25pmPersonification 83