Divine Cohabitations in Sanctuaries of the Graeco-Roman World

This study sets out to gain a better understanding of the workings of ancient polytheism by exploring one of its fundamental modus operandi: the cohabitation of gods in sanctuaries. Cohabitation is broadly understood as the permanent or temporary sharing of sacred precincts, cultic buildings, and sacrificial structures by two or more deities, rendered present through their effigies, or merely presentified on the altar at the moment of sacrifice, or in the cult place for the time of a dedication. This phenomenon is tackled from the angle of its linguistic expression through the analysis of the specific Greek lexicon used in Antiquity to qualify a god or a group of gods as the co-inhabitant(s) of another or others. The study of this terminology, attested by literary, epigraphic and papyrological sources from Classical times to Late Antiquity, imposes a large chronological and geographical framework that allows us to gain a wide vision of the problem across the Late Classical, Hellenistic and Roman Mediterranean.