The power of naming

The way in which the religious figure of sovereigns and political leaders was named in the Hellenistic world is modelled on the human power of naming the gods. The political history of the Hellenistic Mediterranean, from Sicily to Bactria, can benefit from the most recent contributions on how to name and address the gods - the so-called «epicletic» system - to provide a fresh reassessment of the entanglement between honorific practices and the religious life at that time. Reconsidering the relationships between honours and religion also implies reversing the question of the influence of Greek religion on Hellenistic ruler cults. This perspective allows us to explore how a new tradition of ritual encounters between human power and the divine sphere may have impacted post-classical developments in Greek polytheism.