Cultural records such as dedications, honorific statues and decrees are keys to understanding the manifold and diverse social roles and religious functions of priesthoods in the cities of Asia Minor and the Aegean islands from the classical period to late antiquity. These texts and images indicate how the priests and priestesses saw themselves and were viewed by others. The approaches in this volume are historical, religious, and archaeological, and they elucidate the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and the perception of priests and priestesses as citizens of the polis. The volume focuses on developments from the Hellenistic period into Imperial times. Subjects include: gendered priesthoods and family traditions, the topography of honorary statues and the presentation of funerary monuments, federal and civic priesthoods as well as priests of private cult-foundations, benefactions and social pressure, and the religious, social and political functions of priests and priestesses within cities.

Images and inscriptions on monuments can show us how priests and cult personnel saw themselves and were viewed by others, illuminating the social and political identity of these figures within their polis. Dedications and donations by cult personnel, and the honours that they earned, demonstrate their claim on the city's attention and their financial power. The cityscape itself came to be shaped, in varying intensities and forms, by statues in honour of cult personnel, set up by relatives, fellow citizens and other groups. This set of cultural records, analysed in the studies presented here, is central to understanding how the roles of priests and priestesses were constructed in social and political terms in post-classical Athens. The approaches are both historical and archaeological, and elucidate the religious functions that the cult personnel fulfilled for the city, and their perception, by themselves and by others, as citizens of the polis.

The financing and maintenance of cults, the administration of sacred places, and ways of expressing religiosity are important aspects for understanding the organisation of human communities in ancient times. Among other things, the study examines the amount of land held by sacred places, the agricultural use made of the land, possible sources of income from leasing out the land, regulations for protecting the 'sacred land', together with a possible change in religiosity when dealing with the property of the gods (7th - 4th cents. BC).

The Prosopographia Imperii Romani (PIR) is a a Whoa (TM)s Whoa of Imperial Rome, containing the personal data and biographies of Roman office-bearers. Its objective is to bring together the whole elite from the Roman Empire in the Early and High Imperial Age. The PIR is written in Latin. The present volume contains all those whose names begin with the letter S.