Wo nur sind die Bürger von Pergamon?

Eine Phänomenologie bürgerlicher Unscheinbarkeit im städtischen Raum der Königsresidenz

Abstract

For more than a century, archaeologists have equated the city of Pergamon with the capital of the Attalid kingdom. In contrast, this article investigates the ›dark side‹ of power, providing for the first time an archaeological perspective on the Pergamon of a broader citizenry and the manifestations of civic life within the urban space of the royal city.

To the question of civic visibility, Hellenistic honorific decrees present the chief hermeneutic key. These texts describe, in abundant φαίνεσθαι terms, municipal honorific practice vis-à-vis dynasts and local euergetes, a pivotal means of communal self-appearance. The Ionic city of Priene, with its agora a monumental arena for the civic honorific habit, is an ideal setting in which to study the Hellenistic ethos to make the polis manifest, with deft configurations of architecture, statuary, and inscriptions.

For Pergamon, this article discusses three distinct forms of civic expressions in the light of epigraphic and archaeological evidence: first, citizens’ munificence and the donation of public buildings; second, the honorific habit of the demos both vis-à-vis the king’s philoi and the royal house and the municipal ruler cult. The last part aims at mapping the civic sphere of Pergamon and examines the Upper Agora – the presumed core of the polis – with respect to its alleged civic character.

As a result we can establish, for the Pergamene demos, an extraordinary dynamic in the struggle for presence. Evidence confronts us with an almost complete »blank space« of civic initiative under the first two kings, Attalos I and Eumenes II, suggesting severe political constraints imposed on the Pergamene demos by the Attalids. Only in the final years of Attalid rule, the citizenry entered rather suddenly into direct honorific dialogue with King Attalos III, and in doing so, emerge into visibility with and ›through‹ the ruler.