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Article

Italian

ID: <

10.4000/mythos.1723

>

·

DOI: <

10.4000/mythos.1723

>

Where these data come from
Soter and Soteria since the 5th century at the Greek age thresholds: some considerations

Abstract

Soter and soteria, deriving from soter, do not always correspond to ‘’saviour’’ and ‘’salvation’’. This particular rendering nevertheless enables a deeper, more telling semantic component to be grasped which, over the course of time, became inherent to the two lexical items. Establishing a time frame is therefore necessary: when did soter and soteria become lexical items of acute relevance in Greek culture, no longer pertaining only to the realm of the divine when seeking help from the (saving) gods in adverse circumstances, but also to humanity in the form of the unconditional trust placed in an exceptional individual to deal with a seemingly intractable crisis? Unconsciously one may be led to believe that soter, and soteria with soter, represent the salient characteristics of the modern era of Greek history — Hellenism — and are harbingers of its transformation in a charismatic sense. But further reflection shows that this factual and ideological scaffolding, which peaked immediately in the wake of Alexander, was already present in the Hellenic world at least as far back as the second half of the 5th century B.C., if not even in the decades (or the re-examination of those decades) during which Persia loomed menacingly and the Greeks were almost miraculously saved from an enemy capable of annihilating them. A real turning point, in both qualitative and quantitative terms, was encapsulated in the progress achieved through the crucial struggle for hegemony over Hellas. It was then that long-standing equilibriums were overturned and the critical nature of the various situations that had to be dealt with became evident; only by drawing back from the customary institutional and mental frameworks, where possible with the aid of extraordinary human agents (recourse to a soter), could a solution be found capable of healing the malaise gripping the polis — a remedy that in the final analysis coincides with soteria.

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