Insediamenti dei Seleucidi dalla Mesopotamia ad Ai Khanum, tra tradizione e innovazione. Riflessioni sul culto del fondatore.

The paper offers a comparison between archaic greek colonization and the colonization of Alexander and the Hellenistic age in the East, especially during the Seleucid kingdom (from Seleucus I down to Antiochos IV). New research methods allow indeed historians to explore differences and similarities (especially about the relationship between Greeks, Macedonians and local people and the dynamics of mutual acculturation). One of the most important elements of archaic colonization is the heroic cult accorded to the oikistes after his death: despite the lack of information, such cult is to be found in some hellenistic new poleis too, with some changes (the timai for the founder-king, with a problematic link to the dynastic cult) but also in continuity with the past (the cult of the ktistes Kineas in the bactrian greek city at Ai Khanum, and the memory of Delphi and the Seven Sages).