Andrew SCHOLTZ What's in a Name? Pandemic koinonia and Aphrodita Pandamos on Hellenistic Cos

Scholars as different as Sokolowski and Halperin largely agree in understanding Aphrodite Pandemos as sponsor "of the entire citizenry," a reading most often applied to the Athenian evidence, though one that has proved influential for non-Athenian instances as well. Yet this civic-Athenian model, however valid for Athens itself, will not do for Hellenistic Cos, where the epithet "Pandamos" referred, I would argue, to Aphrodite as an "extra-civic" deity, one who embodied both a desire for the benefits of foreign commerce and immigration, and a perceived need to control the traffic that flowed through what could be viewed as a point of exposure and vulnerability for any polis, namely, its port.

By all indications, Aphrodita Pandamos ranked high among the gods of the Coan state. Hence the attraction of Sokolowski's suggestion that her epithet commemorated synoecism "comme c'Ètait le cas ý AthËnes." What then to make of Pandamos' conspicuously "extra-civic" tendencies (e.g., compulsory non-citizen sacrifice), not to mention her close association (shared priestess and temenos) with Aphrodita Pontia, patron of seafarers? Harpocration glosses pandemos as pankoinos, "common to all," a meaning by no means confined to civic contexts. Indeed, the adjective pandemos can stress a collectivity above and beyond that of any single polis, and so it did on Cos, where the epithet "Pandamos" referred, I would argue, to the extra-civic scope of Aphrodita's community of worshippers. I would further argue that we should view Pandamos' cult within the context of what I term "pandemic koinonia," a strategy to dedicate the non-citizen element to the common good. Hence the complementary meanings of Aphrodita under her separate aspects. For as Pontia, she consecrated the harbor - a point of permeability and transience located nearly at the political heart of the island - to the well-being of the polis. As Pandamos, she sponsored a koinonia embracing, yet simultaneously excluding, the metic "Other."