Introduction
The tragedy of Rhesus, traditionally attributed to Euripides, provides the oldest extant evidence on the cult of Rhesus in the Balkan peninsula. The rest of our information must be pieced together from late literary sources, which are not always above suspicion, and from the archaeological record. Fragmentary and open to doubt as it is, the evidence does nonetheless suggest that the cult of Rhesus, or of a figure closely related to him (specifically, the so-called Heros Equitans, on which more in section 2 below), was indigenous to ancient Macedonia and Thrace. To the extent that they can be reconstructed, matrices of Rhesus-cult that appear to be epichoric in that area are incompatible with the standard modalities of, at least, Athenian hero-cult – although they do bear comparison with some Greek cults for denizens of subterranean chambers. The topic has been dealt with in detail in an earlier article of mine; here I shall supplement that paper’s argument with considera...

