Kakasbos

Kakasbos is a local Anatolian rider-god venerated in northern Lycia, western Pamphylia and Pisidia, known almost entirely from crudely carved votive stelai that show him on horseback brandishing a club. The short Greek dedications follow a fixed pattern in which a worshipper fulfils a vow, and the god appears to have protected against wild dangers of the uplands rather than being housed in any temple or formal sanctuary. From the early Roman Imperial period he was regularly assimilated to Herakles, the two names sometimes appearing together on the same monuments.

Domains

• protection from wild dangers
• horsemanship

Powers

• to ride down wild beasts and dangers with an upraised club

Sources

• Kakasbos is an indigenous rider-god of northern Lycia and Pisidia, worshipped from the late Hellenistic and Roman periods as a mounted, club-bearing protector and later identified with Herakles.: İnci Delemen, Anatolian Rider-Gods: A Study on Stone Finds from the Regions of Lycia, Pisidia, Isauria, Lycaonia, Phrygia, Lydia and Caria in the Late Roman Period, Asia Minor Studien 35 (Bonn: Habelt, 1999) (secondary); Louis Robert, Documents de l'Asie Mineure méridionale: Inscriptions, monnaies et géographie (Geneva & Paris: Droz, 1966) (secondary); Aslı Candaş, The Kakasbos/Herakles Cult: A Study of Its Origins, Diffusion and Possible Syncretisms (MA thesis, Bilkent University, Ankara, 2006) (secondary)