5. Priests—Dynasts—Kings: Temples and Secular Rule in Asia Minor*

Ulrich Gotter

The aim of this essay is to explore the complex relationship between sacred authority and secular power in Asia Minor, focusing exclusively on cases of personal rule. My dramatis personae will include rulers as priests and priests as rulers. More specifically, I will consider the role of sacred office for the exercise and mediation of “mono rule” in Asia Minor beyond the Greek polis; that is to say, in a territory which has been considered to display in principle a traditional tendency towards the integration of secular and religious power. To map the field, I have constructed three different case studies: first, the union of king and priest, figuring king Archelaus of Cappadocia at the Corycian Cave; second, the major examples of the so-called Anatolian temple states; and finally the dynastic priesthoods of Pessinous in Galatia and Olba in Rough Cilicia. At the core of the essay lie the expansion of priestly rule and the relationship between priestly rule and both cities in the immediate neighborhood and the superstructures (Hellenistic monarchies and Roman Empire) in which they were embedded.

The most striking manifestation of the relationship between priestly and secular power in Asia Minor is the extreme case of regime change. An example of such a regime change and its significance for the local sacred office can be found in an extraordinary monument in Rough Cilicia: the list of priests at the temple of Zeus above the Corycian Cave. [1]

The evidence is not unproblematic, as the temple was transformed into a Christian church in late antiquity. [2] Originally, the list of priests was attached to one of the antes of the pagan temple, before the blocks were incorporated into the north wall of the large Christian basilica. However, in the process of rebuilding, care was taken not to separate contiguous pieces at random, [3] so that, with two exceptions, [4] the parts remained in the correct order.

The monumental list of names consists of three clearly separated sections. [5] The first (A) covers the priests from the third to the first century BC; the second (B) and third (C) cover the office holders of imperial times (from the Hadrianic period onward, as the name poplios Ailios indicates [6] ). In contrast to the later sections, the Hellenistic part, which will mostly concern us here, is complete. The first 130 lines are of one piece, while thereafter the hand changes from line to line. [7] The high point of this monument is that the Hellenistic list can be dated fairly precisely, assuming, as is more than likely, that the list records annual offices. [8] This not only allows us to date the erection of the shrine almost to the year, but also provides us with the uninterrupted annals of the priests of Zeus for (at least) 214 years. [9] The fixed point of reference for the list is the last name on the first section (A). On the lowest of the blocks, one can clearly read: Arkhelaos Arkhelaou. [10]

This combination of names is so rare that the identity of this priest is beyond doubt. He is Archelaus (son of Archelaus, son of Archelaus, son of Archelaus), king of Cappadocia. In 36 BC, the triumvir M. Antonius had invested him with this honor, [11] and Augustus had confirmed him after Actium, although Archelaus had fought on the side of Antonius (Plutarch Antony 61.1; Cassius Dio 51.2.1–2). [12]

After the death of Amyntas of Galatia (25 BC) Archelaus’ territory was extended by imperial fiat: between 25 and 20 he was allocated the seaboard of Rough Cilicia, west of the river Lamos, as Strabo testifies (Strabo 12.2.1). [13] Only the polis Seleucia, with its generous fertile plain in the alluvial area of the river Calycadnus was exempt from this (Strabo 12.1.4; 14.5.6). [14] We need to assume that Archelaus took over the priestly office at the Corycian Cave pretty much at the same time as he assumed his rule over the territory: the imported dynast linked himself programmatically with the most dignified sacred place of the region, in the immediate hinterland of his residence at Elaioussa Sebaste. Such an act only seems to make sense at the start of his rule in Rough Cilicia. If we accept this premise, we can date the list with only a five-year margin of error. The first priest mentioned was in office between 239 and 235 BC, and the temple, which later was to be surmounted by the church, was erected between 82 and 77 BC. [15]

The list of priests is not only a convenient catalogue of letter forms in the first century BC and an immense collection of Luwian names. It also casts some light on a sparsely illuminated phenomenon: the significance of cults for secular rule. The key is the striking empty space below the name Arkhelaos Arkhelaou. With, or rather after, King Archelaus the list of priests was not continued on that ante. Since there is no evidence of a sudden change in the epigraphic habit, we are left with only two possible interpretations of that lacuna: (1) Archelaus held the office of priest once (that is for one year) and abolished it thereafter, at least in its traditional form; (2) with his rule, Archelaus also assumed the office of priest and remained, as long as he reigned, priest of Zeus in perpetuity.

I would tend towards the former solution: the annalistic list of priests was meant to demonstrate the tradition and continuity of the office. Within this framework it was possible to render in graphic terms—by adding a beta after the name—if and when a priest held the office for more than one year. [16] Archelaus did not use that possibility; there is no β after his name. Thus the permanent occupation of the office would have had to be planned from the start, and that again would have required a specification, for instance the formula dia biou. If Archelaus had tied the office of priest of Zeus firmly and permanently to his rule over the Cilician seaboard, one would moreover assume that his successor (Archelaus II [17] ) should have done the same. But the inscription does not testify to that, and the empty space after Arkhelaos Arkhelaou would seem to speak against it.

In any case—and thus the decision between the two possible solutions hardly affects my argument—the rule of Archelaus in Rough Cilicia meant a decisive break for the priesthood at the Corycian Cave and its self-representation. Either an annual office was dynastically occupied and thus taken out of circulation, or it was ended symbolically. An abolition of the office in this sense, however, did not mean that with it the cult or its practices were ended as well. Yet, the change by Archelaus did affect the representation of the cult in the person of the priest, as it had been manifest in the keeping of the list at the ante of the temple of Zeus. The closure of the list did not affect the practice of the cult, but it affected the position of the priest in a regional context.

What can we conclude from this for the relationship between the priest and secular power on the Cilician coast? What rationale underlay the intervention of Archelaus in the morphology of the regional priesthood?

I can only read this as a calculated neutralization of a position which Archelaus must have seen as a latent risk for his rule. The nature of this handicap becomes clearer if one looks at who was priest of Zeus during the 213 years documented by the list. Although, apart from Archelaus, none of the others is known to us in any other context, much can be learned from the names themselves. Most importantly, the office holders appear to have been strongly rooted both in the region and within the regional elite. The list is full of (mostly theophoric) Luwian names. This holds true for the entire period covered by the list, although the proportion between indigenous and Greek names changes gradually in favor of the latter, especially towards the end of the list. The frequent combination of Luwian with Greek names in the same family indicates that even the bearers of Greek names should be considered as members of the regional and probably autochthonous elite. That the office holders belonged to a small, exclusive circle follows from the filiations from which family links over generations can easily and safely be reconstructed. [18] And the exclusivity did not diminish over time. On the contrary, as the increasing incidence of tenure for a period of two years indicates, [19] the circle of acceptable candidates shrank from the beginning of the first century BC. Possibly, with Zēnophanēs Teukrou [20] the priests included a member of the Teucrid family, which, based on evidence at the temple of Zeus in Olba (see below), ruled over the mountainous territory to the north. His presence may be seen as another indicator of the prestige which the priests at the Corycian Cave enjoyed in the region.

Even if one cannot say anything specific about the practical functions of the priests, and about the role which they played beyond the cult, the constellation appears to be sufficiently clear from Archelaus’ perspective. As a dynastic newcomer, not at all linked to the region, he was confronted with the most important sacred center of his new territory, whose personnel was deeply rooted in the region’s traditional ruling elite. He sought to neutralize this structure of local authority, which threatened to become a problem for his as-yet-underdeveloped legitimacy, by taking on the priestly office himself and subsequently either changing its character or abolishing it.

This interpretation is rendered even more plausible by the fact that Archelaus acted similarly in Cappadocia, albeit by different means. The master of the temple and priest of Ma (Enyo) in Comana was not only the highest sacral authority in the kingdom of Cappadocia; in certain circumstances he could become a serious threat for a weak ruler (see below). This menace must have been quite real for Archelaus, since he became king solely by order of Antonius, without being visibly rooted in, or unanimously acclaimed by, the powerful local aristocracy (Strabo 12.2.11). [21] Against this background it can hardly be a coincidence that he founded a city in Comana, [22] which was not subject to the priest of Ma. In contrast to the renaming of Elaioussa in Sebaste and of Mazaca in Caesarea, the name Hierapolis indicates that the foundation was not addressing the Roman benefactor but rather staking a claim for the city’s participation, within the Cappadocian context, in the cultic capital of the local temple of Ma.

In sum: Archelaus I did not become priest of the cult of Zeus at the Corycian Cave because he—as the son and grandson of priests of the Ma in the Pontic Comana—had a particular affinity to the priesthood. It makes equally little sense to assume that he possessed a particular sacral qualification for his promotion to king of Cappadocia and ruler of the coast of Cilicia. [23] The contiguity of territorial rule and sacral authority in the list at the Corycian Cave does not suggest any far-reaching concept, but was simply due to the specific situation—and was probably only very ephemeral.

The textbook example of a close tie between sacral authority and secular power is supposed to be the so-called Anatolian temple states. It is generally thought that they manifested a traditional, structural, and permanent connection between local rule and priestly office. In what follows I will show that such a connection did not correspond with the regional concept of priesthood and that the combination of priestly authority and territorial power in one person was not the rule but the exception.

The literature considers the following to have been Anatolian temple states: Zela, Comana, and Cabira (Ameria) in Pontus; Comana and Venasa in Cappadocia; the temple of Men near Antiochia ad Pisidiam; Pessinous in Galatia; as well as Olba in Rough Cilicia. [24] Most of these formations were part of larger political units: Zela, Comana, and Cabira belonged to the kingdom of Pontus; Comana and Venasa to the Cappadocian king; Antiochia, until the treaty of Apamea, belonged to the realm of the Seleucids, as did Olba until the last of the Seleucids. How close the connection of Pessinous was to the Seleucid Empire before 188 is difficult to tell; [25] after the peace of Apamea it belonged, like the rest of Galatia, to Pergamum, until the Romans granted independence to the Galatians in 166.

In order to understand the relationship between priesthood and local territorial rule, it is important to note that there was not a single certified personal union of king and priest. This is all the more remarkable if one considers how important these priests and their territories were for at least some of those monarchies. Strabo reports, for instance, that in Cappadocian Comana the priest of Ma was appointed for life and—after the ruler himself—occupied the second rank in the kingdom (Strabo 12.2.3). The third highest rank was also occupied by a priest appointed for life, namely the priest of Zeus Dakiēos in Venasa (Strabo 12.2.5–6). Thus the Cappadocian king was flanked, so to speak, by priestly authorities.

The masters of the temple in the kingdom of Pontus were hardly less significant. The priest of Ma of (Pontic) Comana, which is supposed to have been modeled after the Cappadocian sanctuary, was, according to his rank (kata timēn), the second man after the king. During the exodus of the goddess, which was performed twice a year, he even wore a diadem (Strabo 12.3.32). It is possible that the king took off his own diadem for that period of time, thereby underlining the eminent role of cult and priest for the kingdom. [26]

The temples of Cabira and Zela, and their priests, who also served for life, likewise enjoyed great significance for the Pontic rulers. When swearing officially, the Mithradatids addressed the Men in Cabira, and the royal oath was: “by the Fortune (tukhē) of the king and by Men of Pharnaces” (Strabo 12.3.31). Finally, the temple of Anaitis in Zela, probably an old Persian cult, was marked by rites of particular sacrality, which, as Strabo writes, led the inhabitants of Pontus to Zela, where they made their oaths in relation to important matters (Strabo 12.3.37).

In extreme cases, the importance of these cults and the distinction of their priests in Pontus and Cappadocia could pose considerable problems for a ruler. We know of at least two situations in which priests became a direct threat to the king. The first case occurred in Pontus, when Dorylaos, the priest of Comana, took sides with the Roman Republic in one of the wars fought by Mithradates VI against Rome and tried to use his prestige to bring Pontus to abandon Eupator. Dorylaos’ failure led to his execution and to the dishonoring of his family (Strabo 12.3.33). The second case occurred in 51 BC in the Cappadocia of King Ariobarzanes III, Eusebes Philorhomaios, whose rule was as insecure as had been those of his two predecessors. [27] Just one year earlier, in 52 BC, his father Ariobarzanes II had been assassinated by domestic opponents, [28] and the rule of Ariobarzanes III could only be stabilized through the rapid intervention of the Roman proconsul Cicero (Cicero Ad familiares 15.2.4–8, 15.4.6). The most important antagonist of the Cappadocian kings in this tense situation was the priest of Comana, who played the Parthian card and, by gathering the disaffected, could threaten Ariobarzanes with force. The situation relaxed only when Cicero, supported by Roman troops, insisted that the priest had to leave the country (Cicero Ad familiares 15.4.6).

These two cases show how much power a priest of one of the important sanctuaries could accrue when the local king was weak, and what centrifugal consequences this could have for the monarchy. No wonder, therefore, that the kings tried everything in their power to neutralize the politico-religious capital of the temples, or to link it with their own persons. In Cappadocian Comana, the priests of Ma, as Strabo remarks, were usually recruited from the royal family (Strabo 12.2.3)—apparently not as a legally codified secondo-geniture, but in order to guarantee maximum loyalty of the priests towards the king. In Pontus at least, Mithradates VI appointed reliable followers as priests of Ma (Strabo 12.3.33), [29] hoping that these would also remain loyal to him. Under these circumstances a truly autonomous dynasty of priests could not develop either in Cappadocia or in Pontus. Yet the king never assumed the most important priestly office himself, either in those two countries, or in Antiochia ad Pisidiam. The demands which running the cult posed for the priest’s way of life may have been a very practical obstacle. Thus rule and priesthood remained perpetually separate in the Hellenistic monarchies.

But what did the internal structures of the temple states look like? In what ways were sacred authority and secular rule connected with each other? Or to put it more precisely: what kind of rule did the priests exercise towards which subjects?

That the notion of autocratic rule, which is raised in the literature, is not unproblematic, is again suggested by Strabo. And Strabo, especially with reference to the Cappadocian and Pontic temple states, cannot be accused of not knowing what he was writing about. He characterizes the conditions in Cappadocian Comana thus:

Strabo’s description offers anything but a straightforward classification of the power relations. The only certainty is that the priest of Comana was the absolute master over the temple servants (hierodouloi) and that he commanded a considerable territory and its revenues. Much less clear is the situation of those living in Comana who were not temple servants. Here, Strabo avoids assigning a clear hierarchy between king and priest. The inhabitants of the town were in principle subjects to the kings and obeyed the priests merely in most affairs. This juxtaposition itself suggests that the priest possessed merely a de facto, but not a formal and regular commanding power.

This conclusion does not amount to an overinterpretation of the quotation. For it would have been more economical for Strabo at this point to have formulated a clear ruler-subject relationship between the temple master and those who were not temple servants; it would also have fitted better with his general line of argument. The fact that he did not do so therefore means that such a relationship did not exist.

This interpretation is supported by Strabo’s description of the conditions in Zela, which points in a similar direction: In this case, too, the priest—in effect acting as the plenipotentiary of the king—was master only over the temple servants (who were markers of the Pontic and Cappadocian temple states as well as of Pisidian Antioch), while he commanded the temple territory as well as his personal territory (as a fief?).

Where the problem of the temple states with respect to rule lay exactly, becomes unequivocally clear if we consider Pompey, after his victory over Mithradates, re-organizing the affairs of Pontus. He dissolved two of the three sanctuaries—not as cults, but as political units: he transformed Zela into a town, just like Cabira, which he renamed Diospolis (Strabo 12.3.37). [32] By incorporating surrounding territory (royal land?) the new poleis integrated temple territory and their own khōra into a single larger political unit (Strabo 11.8.4). In Comana, Pompey was somewhat more sensitive. He did not make the cult, which was rich in tradition, subject to the town of Comana, but appointed his comrade in arms, Archelaus, in the place of the priest who was loyal to Mithradates. At the same time, however, he created a political unit which, compared to the traditional organization of the temple territory, represented a radical innovation. By describing Pompey’s break with tradition precisely, Strabo sheds a brighter light on the traditional order of Comana than any other source. Central for our question concerning the rule of the priests in the temple states is the fact that Archelaus required a double competence—after the Pontic king had gone—in order to rule over a territory which exceeded the temple land and included a population which did not consist exclusively of temple servants. On the one hand, he became priest of Ma and master of the temple servants; on the other, he became leader (hēgemōn)—a strongly artificial title—of the remaining inhabitants of the territory. Effective rule over both groups could obviously not be achieved with the traditional priestly office in a temple state alone. This, however, allows only one conclusion for the pre-Pompeian period: even under the Mithradatids, the priests never possessed sovereignty over those who were not temple slaves; moreover, it was not within the horizon of expectations of the participants, for otherwise the artificial title of Archelaus would simply have been unnecessary. In these circumstances we cannot speak of a traditional connection between sacred authority and territorial rule in the temple state of Comana. Archelaus, who, unlike the priests in the kingdom of Pontus, was expected to exercise real rule under Roman auspices, had to be more than a priest.

This conclusion is confirmed by sources other than Strabo. For under Mithradates VI, Comana struck its own so-called semiautonomous coins. This is a mere town coinage with the inscription KOMANŌN, and resembles the coinage of other Pontic towns, which were probably also initiated by the king. [34] By contrast, the coins bear no reference to the priest. This strongly suggests that the inhabitants of the town Comana were not subjects of the master of the temple state. Thus during the time of the Mithradates, there were two separate units exercising political power in and around Comana: a settlement behaving like a polis, and the temple with its land and slaves.

This reconstruction also solves a problem connected with the history of the Men-temple at Antiochia ad Pisidiam. For in the third century BC, Antiochos I or II founded a colony with settlers from Ionia, at a distance of just three and a half kilometers from the sanctuary. [35] The hierarchical relationship in which this Antiochia may have stood to the old temple state has hitherto caused some headaches. As S. Mitchell and M. Waalkens state: Yet this notion collides head-on with Strabo’s report, which makes it unequivocally clear that the end of the traditional priesthood came only with the reduction of Antiochia to a Roman colony in the time of Augustus (Strabo 12.8.14). [37] If one accepts the interpretation of a temple state put forward above, the problem solves itself: for the question, in what power-relationship the new polis stood to the old temple state, does not pose itself strictu sensu. Because the priest of Men could not exercise an overarching territorial rule just as his colleagues in Pontus and Cappadocia could not, and because the temple with its land and slaves was not dissolved in pre-Roman times, both units coexisted in the same place, like other combinations which were or would become common elsewhere in Asia Minor. Given the configuration we know about, anything else can simply not be expected.

In summary, we can note the following for the temple states in Cappadocia, Pontus, and Pisidia: their priests did not, by the standards of the Hellenistic world, exercise political power. On the one hand, they were closely integrated with the surrounding kingdoms; on the other hand, they could not integrate different types of subjects under their aegis. They might have been autocratic, but only towards the temple slaves and only with respect to the temple’s own land. Under these circumstances the term temple states for these formations is in principle misleading, and actually obsolete. The most important priests in the kingdoms of Pontus and Cappadocia and at Antiochia ad Pisidiam were—to put it pointedly—nothing other than particularly privileged administrators of temple possessions—masters of a domain, as it were—invested with the kind of authority which allowed them to be extraordinarily functional in the context of the sacred household of their respective monarchies. The fact that the combination of sacred authority and aristocratic provenance occasionally turned these office holders into a considerable danger for the ruler was inevitable, but it has nothing to do with the temple masters having had a traditional competence to rule.

This negative result regarding the combination of sacred authority and secular power in Asia Minor notwithstanding, the file on Anatolian temple states cannot yet be closed. For there are two exceptions, regarding significantly different constellations: the Cybele-temple of Pessinous in Galatia, and the cult of Zeus of Olba in Rough Cilicia.

The characterization by Strabo of both situations is in itself remarkable. While he regularly mentions the existence of hierodouloi with regard to the remaining temple states, he denies us any such information with respect to both Pessinous (Strabo 12.5.3) and Olba (14.5.10). Instead, the term dunasteia is used in connection with both priesthoods, which suggests hereditary rule. Moreover, in the case of Pessinous one can deduce from his correspondence with the Pergamene king Attalus II that he possessed the freedom to take autonomous decisions and room for political maneuvering. [38] The correspondence documents the joint plans of priest and king for political and military intervention in Galatia.

Yet while the information for the temple rule of Pessinous in general, and particularly for the first century BC, is very sparse, we are on much more solid ground with respect to Olba. In order to put alternative relationships between cultic authority and secular power into sharper profile, the dynasty of priests in Olba will take center stage in the following considerations. It makes sense to start again with Strabo, who offers the only available synthetic treatment of the Cilician temple state. Despite a whole series of mistakes and imprecisions, [39] Strabo here provides a framework within which other evidence can be accommodated. Several relevant points can thus be made:

1. The temple rule of the Teucrids was organized as dunasteia, as a hereditary rule, based at the sanctuary of Zeus Olbius. The master of the temple was at the same time priest and dynast. [40]
2. Rule over a cult meant the rule over a territory, which Strabo here seems to conceive as the whole of Rough Cilicia.
3. Near the sanctuary was a city, Olba, which the cult could be understood to belong to.

Even though Strabo is wrong in his statement that the Teucrid dynasty ruled over all of Rough Cilicia, [41] a considerable amount of territory was linked to the political domination over the temple. This is indicated by inscriptions and signs on dozens of towers between the rivers Lamus and Calycadnus, which refer to the temple of Zeus Olbius and thereby circumscribe the expanse of the Olbian dunasteia. [42] This Olbian territory was a patchwork of different elements. As shown by honorary inscriptions for the priestly dynast of the early first century BC, as well as by later coins, [43] the temple state consisted—on the level of organized groups—of the tribes of the Kennatai and Lalasseis as well as the polis Olba. In this way, the rule of the Teucrids in Rough Cilicia in many respects, albeit on a smaller scale, resembled the monarchical regimes in Hellenistic states. The coherence of the territory and its subjects was essentially provided by the person of the ruler. Those subject to his rule were and remained disparate: a city, tribes which were organized as koinon, and a rural population that lived in villages and small settlements surmounted by towers and fortresses of the dynast. In contrast with the Hellenistic monarchs, however, it was not merely, or primarily, the much-lauded victoriousness of the ruler that had an integrating function, [44] but the common cult, which apparently represented the central communicative platform of the curious union between Lamus and Calycadnus. The temple of Zeus Olbius was and remained the point of reference for both ruler and subjects. In this sense the priestly rule among the Teucrids was indeed a temple state.

Against the background of the conditions outlined for the remainder of Asia Minor, the question poses itself—how was it that the exceptional combination of religious authority and secular power occurred in mountainous Cilicia of all places? One essential facet, surely, is the specific embedding of the Olbian temple state in the Seleucid kingdom. Unlike the temples of Pontus and Cappadocia, the temple of Zeus Olbius possessed no cult function for the Seleucid monarchy overall. [45] The Syrian kings were obviously less interested in the religious capital of the Teucrids than in their politicomilitary potential in an inaccessible mountainous area, which always remained peripheral for the Seleucid realm. Thus all the evidence suggests that the career of the Teucrid dynasty began with the foundation of Seleucia at the Calycadnus by Seleucus Nicator in the early third century BC. The location of the town and of its fertile plain immediately below the slopes of the Taurus made well-ordered and amicable conditions in the adjacent mountainous area an absolute necessity. And in the first century BC the priests themselves referred to a connection between their shrine and Seleucus Nicator, who was said to have dedicated a building (or a part of it) in the Zeus-Olbius-complex. [46] Yet, a permanent and direct intervention of the Seleucids in the Olbian territory cannot be found, and this too may be attributed to functional causes. In the perspective of the Seleucids and their foundation of Seleucia at the Calycadnus one rather needed a power that was independent and capable of acting in the mountainous region of the Taurus. [47] Thus, the chief priest in Olba—unlike, for instance, those in the temple states of Pontus and Cappadocia—was not appointed by the monarch. Instead, his rule was the product of dynastic hereditary succession.

With the bankruptcy of the Seleucid Empire, the relationship between the priestly dynasts and the monarchs changed again. When strife arose over the succession during the first century BC, the mountainous area of Olba temporarily became the last refuge of Seleucids in distress. [48] In return for their loyalty, the priestly dynasts were made titular Brothers of the Kings (that is, of the Seleucid rulers Philip I and Philip II). [49] Perhaps the change in the title of the Olbian dynasts was also related to their altered role in the Seleucid kingdom. Originally simply called hiereus , [50] from the early first century BC at the latest, they began to call themselves arkhiereus megas. [51]

The close connection between rule and priesthood within the Teucrid state also dictated the choreography of regime change. When the dynasty of the Teucrids ended (probably in the early Tiberian period [52] ) it was not enough for the new man in the Olbian territory—like Archelaus at the Corycian Cave—merely to neutralize the religious authority of the sanctuary of Zeus Olbius in ephemeral ways. Indeed, the Roman favorite Markos Antonios Polemon, who had no power base in the region, [53] clad himself in the traditional robes of the Olban priestly dynasts and called himself on his coins as they did: ARKHIEREUS MEGAS. [54] In Olba, unlike in the remaining temple states, religious authority and secular power were indeed inextricably linked. It ought to be stressed, though, that this mélange was—even by Anatolian standards—the exception, not the rule.