Bendis, Deloptes and Asklepios: Reconsidering Reciprocal Formations of Iconography and Placement of Newcomer Cults in the Piraeus.

In the fifth century BCE, Athenians intensified the worship of non-Athenian and non-Greek deities, a fact which has resulted in massive scholarly attention (Garland 1992; Parker 1996; Neumann 2022). While the legal facet of this procedure has been extensively analysed (Parker 1996; 2011), the spatial aspect of the establishment of new cults – the 'placemaking' – has been mainly neglected. This article re-examines the placement of the cults of Asklepios, Bendis and Deloptes, commonly assumed to have been a healing hero and a paredros of Bendis. Based on the iconographical analysis of Piraean votive reliefs for these divinities in combination with the spatial and temporal setting of these attestations, I argue that the Athenians provided space for this first wave of officially accepted religious newcomers close to the Zea harbour. At the temenos , which is usually identified as the Asklepieion and its immediate surroundings, several originally non-Athenian cults were installed during the Peloponnesian War, making it an anchoring point for the divine new arrivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]