Tarentine terracottas and the heoric cult in a colonial area.

Abstract

The main goal of this paper is to present an interpretation of the tarentine terracotta figurines usually known as “Banqueters” relating them to the heroic cults that have a large diffusion around the Greek world specifically during the Archaic age. The political use of the past by the emergent rulers can be a proficuous approach to the heroic cults and the colonial area provides an example: the oikistes cult has many similarities with motherland’s situation at the moment of poleis’s emergence.