ABSTRACT
In the preceding pages, I showed how the salutary ideology intersected in a number of ways with the everyday life of elites, both imperial and civic, citizen and noncitizen, by allowing them to express at the local level a range of social and religious values and concerns, including philotimia, euergesia, patronage, and piety. Salvation as a ruling ideology was therefore a successful “program.” In the late third century, however, something happened. It is difficult and perhaps ultimately impossible to sort out precisely why, on the one hand, the emperors beginning with Diocletian no longer expected the provinciales to affirm the salutary ideology in the same way as before and, on the other, the elites discontinued the age-old custom of honoring their rulers through the formula hyper sôtêrias.
