Civic Identity and Sacred Memory at the margins of Epic Geography: Paris/Alexandros, the Adresteia Legacy and the Representational Repertoire at Parion

OANNES - Uluslararası Eskiçağ Tarihi Araştırmaları Dergisi, cilt.8, sa.2, ss.384-399, 2026 (TRDizin)

This article examines Parion’s place within the epic and sacred geography of

the Troad through the relationship among civic identity, sacred memory and

public representation. It begins from the premise that the city’s identity

cannot be reduced to a single origin narrative, fixed etymology or

uninterrupted cultic continuity. Its central argument is that a distinctive

Parian repertoire of civic memory and representation can be reconstructed

from bodies of evidence belonging to different periods and carrying unequal

evidentiary weight. Colonisation and eponymic traditions, local sacred

genealogy, sacred topography, public commemoration and numismatic

imagery served different functions within this repertoire. Although Parion was

an Archaic foundation outside the Homeric narrative, its location between the

Propontis, Hellespont and Troad enabled later associations with the region’s

epic past. Strabo provides the principal textual basis for discussing Adrasteia,

Apollo Aktaios, Artemis, the reported transfer of sanctuary material and the

Altar of Hermokreon. Athenagoras’ contested Alexandros passage offers a

specific textual record of a taphos, bronze eikōn, sacrifice and festival in the

agora, while the Paris/Alexandros identification remains a defensible but nonexclusive

modern reading. The Gorgoneion, Apollo Aktaios, Eros/Cupid and

Pario Conditori types document the circulation of selected images and sacred

or founding references without establishing collective belief, ritual continuity

or a single political programme. In the Roman period, local, sacred and epic

memories were rearticulated through colonial status and imperial visual

codes.