CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Religious System in Arcadia
Madeleine Jost
We no longer need to demonstrate the reality of an Arcadian ethnic identity (Jost
2002b; Nielsen 1999, 2002:52–87). But can we speak in the same way of an Arcadian
religious system and, if so, in what sense? Did there exist a structure of cults and
myths that can be considered distinctive to Arcadia? At first sight the answer is ‘‘No’’:
the political structure of the region was based upon its cities, and its religion was
based upon their local pantheons. However, from the fourth century onwards the
Arcadian people tended to become unified, and one can ask whether, so far as religion
was concerned, there was not an Arcadian ‘‘culture,’’ a unitary and distinctive way of
worshiping the gods and of imagining them. The existence of distinctively Arcadian
deities that were worshiped throughout Arcadia will furnish the first part of
the answer. The analysis of local pantheons will supply another. Could there also
have been an Arcadian mythical world that, whilst appropriating universal themes,
generated distinctive tales connected to the land of Arcadia?
Three Pan-Arcadian Deities and their Cults
Few deities distinctive to Arcadia were worshiped throughout the region as a whole.
However, the following are sufficiently distinctive to merit attention: Pan, Zeus
Lykaios, and, in all probability, Despoina.
When Evander settled at Rome with his Arcadian followers, he began by founding a
cult of Pan, ‘‘The most ancient and the most worshiped among the gods of the
Arcadians’’ (Dionysius of Halicarnassus 1.32.3). Pan, born in Arcadia, was, according
to Pausanias (8.26.2) an indigenous god (epicho ̄rios) for the Arcadians and he was one
of the First Gods at Megalopolis (8.31.3). At the time of the creation of the Arcadian
League in the fourth century, he was, alongside Zeus Lykaios, the symbol of national
unity on the coinage (Jost 1985:184). Beyond Arcadia he had the same reputation:
Pindar qualified him as ‘‘ruler of Arcadia’’ (fr. 95 Snell-Maehler) and Lucian also has