Reconsidering the Fictionality of Enslavement to Deities in the Hellenistic and Roman East

In this article, I offer a critique of a common trend in classical and religious studies scholarship: the treatment of human enslavement to deities as fictional, metaphorical, or otherwise unreal. In conversation with postcolonial and feminist historiographical and philosophical interventions, I explore what assumptions operate in metaphorizing or fictionalizing ancient Mediterranean deities and their role in socioeconomic affairs, including slavery. After providing an overview of how historians and philosophers have challenged some Western historiographical norms that govern the treatment of deities as unreal, I examine inscriptions from three sites (Delphi, Leukopetra, and the Bosporan Kingdom) and how the sale, dedication, and enslavement of humans to deities occurs. I end by analyzing how scholars have often continued to treat such inscriptions, noting how there tends to be a common reading of enslavement to a deity as fictional or a religious smokescreen.