Theoi Soteres

Abstract Sōtēr is a frequently used cultic epithet of Greek gods, as is its feminine form, Sōteira. The epithets describe a superhuman agent who saves a human worshiper in a crisis that often involves a threat not just to one’s well-being, but one’s life. Both words are also used as simple names for a superhuman power, and there is a generalizing plural (theoi) sōtēres, “savior gods”. This study looks at the pre-Christian use of these terms and tries to answer a few basic questions: who were the divinities that received these epithets, how were they used, and what did they imply? The corpus of texts on which this study relies will be almost exclusively epigraphical.