The Hymn to Demetrios Poliorketes and the King Worship during the Hellenistic Period

Foreign Literature Studies ›› 2021, Vol. 43 ›› Issue (1): 81-91.

The Hymn to Demetrios Poliorketes and the King Worship during the Hellenistic Period

Yang Lijuan

Published:2021-03-05
About author:Yang Lijuan is a professor at the School of Chinese Language and Literature, Northeast Normal University (Changchun 130024, China), specializing in ancient Greek literature and modern and contemporary Western literary theory. Email: yanglj315@nenu.edu.cn
Supported by:
“A Study of the Transformation of European Literature in the Hellenistic Period” (18AWW007) sponsored by the National Social Science Fund of China

Abstract

Abstract: The Athenian hymn to Demetrios Poliorketes, the king of Macedonia, is a typical work that reflects the phenomenon of king worship during the Hellenistic period. The hymn praises Demetrios as a godlike figure and reveals the deteriorating situation of the Athenian city-state due to its inability to sustain democracy and independence. At that time, as the traditional religious belief of ancient Greece had declined, people's deification of their rulers was not worship in the religious sense, but “performance” for the purpose of fulfilling political wishes, which indicated that the ideas and concepts with distinct tendencies of pragmatism and individualism had already appeared on the stage of history.

Key words: Demetrios, hymn, during the Hellenistic Period, deification of the king, politicizati-on of religion

Yang Lijuan. The Hymn to Demetrios Poliorketes and the King Worship during the Hellenistic Period[J]. Foreign Literature Studies, 2021, 43(1): 81-91.

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