Dea in limine. Culto, immagine e sincretismi di Ecate nel mondo greco e microasiatico

The image of Hecate is widely divergent. While Hesiod admired her, she is rarely found at sanctuaries [e.g. Lagina, Caria] or in ancient texts and was later considered unimportant and appaling. She was responsible for crossroads, magic, the moon, female rites of passage as well as doors and gates, including the one to the underworld. The study focusses on evidence for the goddess in the Greek world, the Black See Region, Asia Minor and Northern Africa. Its first part investigates the different aspects of Hecate, changes of iconography, and her representation in the literary and mythical context. The second part analyses, on the basis of a systematic and critical catalogue, the literary, epigraphical, pictorial, and other archaeological evidence in detail. The cult of Hecate probably came from Caria, where the goddess functioned as a sentinel of the realm of the dead together with Hermes, and reached Ionia in Archaic times. She was frequently represented in a threefold manner, for the first time by Alcamenes on the Athenian Acropolis, or with a torch. The heyday of her cult was in Hellenistic and Roman times, e.g. in the context of the Eleusinian Mysteries.