Ancient cities often adopted elaborated foundation myths to define civic identities. In accordance with the well-known Greek tradition, many Cilician cities claimed to have been founded by Greek gods or heroes. But some other, regardless of their strong Classical and Hellenistic tradition, looked to further references, which were closely linked to indigenous religious traditions (such as, for instance, Mopsos or Sandan). This means that, from a historical and political perspective, not all the Hellenised cities of Cilicia needed or wanted to define their identity through a pure Greek foundation myth. As far as Rome’s foundation myths, few attestations are known, almost all of which connected with Roman colonies or with the main cities of the region, Tarsos and Anazarbos. This paper aims at a re-assessment and an overview of various sources – written sources, inscriptions, numismatic evidence and, when possible, archaeological information – with the aim of delineating how this process affected the cities of Hellenistic and Roman Cilicia. We will try to understand how and why Cilician cities decided to revive ancient mythical traditions, or to create new mythical points of reference. Final aim is trying to delineate possible cultural trends or, as an alternative, original solutions in the choices of urban and civic self-propaganda.
Emanuela Borgia (Wed,) studied this question.