Abstract
Recent research has overturned a long-accepted thesis that hero worship went into decline in Greek religion during the Hellenistic and Roman eras. On the contrary, literary and epigraphic texts clearly show that the semantic sphere of the hero continued to exert an important function in the culture of Greek communities throughout antiquity, and also saw a considerable extension of its sphere of application in the sphere of honors for the deceased in the periods of interest to us. In this context, the seminar approached the problem of the heroisation of the deceased in the Greek world during the Hellenistic and Imperial periods from the perspective of a focused lexical study : the contexts of use of the verb aphērōïzō and the derived noun aphērōïsmos. This point of view made it possible to discuss in which ritual and discursive contexts an actor (an institution or an individual) could attribute to himself the authority to recognize a deceased person, with whom he was associated by strong public or private ties, the honor of being acknowledged as a new member of the community of heroes. At the crossroads between the history of words and religious and social history, we have highlighted the deliberative dimension of the verb aphērōïzō, namely its intimate link with the performative dimension of decree or dedication through which the actor sanctions the authority of his honorific initiative.
