ProQuest Dissertations - Historia Antigua

community. This was very different from the Roman practice of founding colonies, inwhich the three colonial founders returned to Rome to continue their careers.As a symbol of the political health of the Greek colony, the heroon was anideological threat to the dominance of the new, Latin colony. Thus, the Latin coloniststiled the roof, constructed a protective wall around the shrine, and buried it.Thematerial from the fill dates from the fourth through the beginning of the third centuryBCE, so it seems that the Latin colonists buried the heroon very shortly after thecolonization in 273 BCE.The significance of the burial is that it removed the heroonfrom sight and from its original festal use without impinging on the sacred nature of thesite. The Latin colonists respected the hero divinity by not destroying the sacellum;rather, their action sent a clear message of the change in political authority to theremaining Greek and Lucanian inhabitants.The other change to the religious landscape of Paestum stemming from thepolitical conversion of Latin colonization was the ritual burial of the ekklesiasterion andits associated sanctuary. The ekklesiasterion had been the political meeting place for theGreek colony and was used in the same capacity by the later Lucanian populace, as seenby a stele found there with a painted Oscan inscription to Jupiter in Greek letters. 89TheLucanians also built a small temple, perhaps a reconstruction of a more ancient structure,in the area of the ekklesiasterion. This temple was probably to Zeus Agoraios, based on86 We have no evidence that the commissioners remained in the colonies, as a rule. Moreover, while thecommissioners became patrons of the colony, they were not apotheosized upon their death as protectors ofthe colony, as Greek founders could be.87 Greco, D'Ambrosio, and Theodorescu (1996), pp. 39-41.88 Greco (2001b), p. 49.89 Ibid., p. 53. Cf. Greco, D'Ambrosio, and Theodorescu (1996), pp. 43-45.