Apotropaia and Phylakteria: Confronting Evil in Ancient Greece
Apotropaia and Phylakteria: Confronting Evil in Ancient Greece

Author: Maria G. Spathi

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2024-05-02

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1803277505

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The belief in the existence of evil forces was part of ancient everyday life and a phenomenon deeply embedded in popular thought of the Greek world. Stemming from a conference held in Athens in June 2021, this volume addresses the apotropaia and phylakteria from different perspectives: via literary sources, archaeological material, and iconography.

Savage Energies
Savage Energies

Author: Walter Burkert

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2001-04

Total Pages: 140

ISBN-13: 9780226080857

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We often think of classical Greek society as a model of rationality and order. Yet as Walter Burkert demonstrates in these influential essays on the history of Greek religion, there were archaic, savage forces surging beneath the outwardly calm face of classical Greece, whose potentially violent and destructive energies, Burkert argues, were harnessed to constructive ends through the interlinked uses of myth and ritual. For example, in a much-cited essay on the Athenian religious festival of the Arrephoria, Burkert uncovers deep connections between this strange nocturnal ritual, in which two virgin girls carried sacred offerings into a cave and later returned with something given to them there, and tribal puberty initiations by linking the festival with the myth of the daughters of Kekrops. Other chapters explore the origins of tragedy in blood sacrifice; the role of myth in the ritual of the new fire on Lemnos; the ties between violence, the Athenian courts, and the annual purification of the divine image; and how failed political propaganda entered the realm of myth at the time of the Persian Wars.

Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives
Initiation in Ancient Greek Rituals and Narratives

Author: David Dodd

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-05

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1135143730

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Scholars of classical history and literature have for more than a century accepted `initiation' as a tool for understanding a variety of obscure rituals and myths, ranging from the ancient Greek wedding and adolescent haircutting rituals to initiatory motifs or structures in Greek myth, comedy and tragedy. In this books an international group of experts including Gloria Ferrari, Fritz Graf and Bruce Lincoln, critique many of these past studies, and challenge strongly the tradition of privileging the concept of initiation as a tool for studying social performances and literary texts, in which changes in status or group membership occur in unusual ways. These new modes of research mark an important turning point in the modern study of the religion and myths of ancient Greece and Rome, making this a valuable collection across a number of classical subjects.

Inner Purity and Pollution in Greek Religion
Inner Purity and Pollution in Greek Religion

Author: Andrej Petrovic

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0198768044

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Was Ancient Greek religion really 'mere ritualism'? Early Christians denounced the pagans for the disorderly plurality of their cults, and reduced Greek religion to ritual and idolatry. This work argues that there was an important place for belief in Greek rituals, examining notions of inner purity and pollution as a manifestation of such belief.

Ancient Greek Cults
Ancient Greek Cults

Author: Jennifer Lynn Larson

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2007

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 0415324483

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Incorporating recent archaeological discoveries and scholarly perspectives, Jennifer Larson explores the variety of cults celebrated by the Greeks, how these cults differed geographically, and how each deity was conceptualized in local cult titles and rituals. This volume will serve as a companion to the many introductions to Greek mythology, showing a side of the Greek gods to which most students are rarely exposed. Surveying ancient Greek religion through the cults of its gods and goddesses, heroes and heroines, Ancient Greek Cults: A Guide is detailed enough to be used as a quick reference tool or text, yet provides a readable account focusing on the oldest, most widespread, and most interesting religious practices of the ancient Greek world in the Archaic and Classical periods. Including an introductory chapter on sources and methods, and suggestions for further reading, this book will allow readers to gain a fresh perspective on Greek religion.

Death and the Maiden
Death and the Maiden

Author: Ken Dowden

Publisher: Other

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13:

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Many Greek myths concern the plight of virgins; here, Dowden sets these myths in their Greek geographical, historical and cultural context. This book should be of interest to advanced students of classics, ancient history, mythology and religious studies.

Popular Religion and Ritual in Prehistoric and Ancient Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean
Popular Religion and Ritual in Prehistoric and Ancient Greece and the Eastern Mediterranean

Author: Giorgos Vavouranakis

Publisher: Archaeopress Publishing Ltd

Published: 2019-01-14

Total Pages: 188

ISBN-13: 1789690463

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This volume features a group of select peer-reviewed papers by an international group of authors, both younger and senior academics and researchers, on the frequently neglected popular cult and other ritual practices in prehistoric and ancient Greece and the eastern Mediterranean.

Hellenistic Architecture and Human Action
Hellenistic Architecture and Human Action

Author: Annette Haug

Publisher:

Published: 2020-11-10

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 9789088909092

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This book examines the mutual influence of architecture and human action during a key period of history: the Hellenistic age. During this era, the profound transformations in the Mediterranean's archaeological and historical record are detectable, pointing to a conscious intertwining of the physical (landscape, architecture, bodies) and social (practice) components of built space. Compiling the outcomes of a conference held in Kiel in 2018, the volume assembles contributions focusing on Hellenistic architecture as an action context, perceived in movement through built space. Sanctuaries, as a particularly coherent kind of built space featuring well-defined sets of architecture combined with ritual action, were chosen as the general frame for the analyses. The reciprocity between this sacred architecture and (religious) human action is traced through several layers starting from three specific case studies (Messene, Samothrace, Pella), extending to architectural modules, and finally encompassing overarching principles of design and use. As two additional case studies on caves and agorai show, the far-reaching entanglement of architecture and human action was neither restricted to highly architecturalised nor sacred spaces, but is characteristic of Hellenistic built space in general.

Beneath the Dust of Time
Beneath the Dust of Time

Author: Jacques R. Pauwels

Publisher:

Published: 2009

Total Pages: 220

ISBN-13: 9781903292198

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Aims to explain the origin and meaning of the names of peoples (e.g. Greeks, Germans), countries (e.g. Spain), continents (Europe, Africa), seas (Baltic), mountains (Alps, Pyrenees), rivers (Nile, Rhine, Danube), and cities (Rome, Babylon). These names are generally extremely old, and many can be traced back to migrants who had fled from their desertifying homeland in North Africa and who spoke non-Indo-European languages such as Etruscan. Pauwels has written a book for the general public, but historians, geographers, and linguists will also benefit from reading it (...). [He] is a scholar who knows how to tell an intriguing story. Too few of his colleagues possess that talent.

The Conquest All Over Again
The Conquest All Over Again

Author: Susan Schroeder

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2011-03-23

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 1836242190

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The Spaniards typically portrayed the conquest and fall of Mexico Tenochtitlan as Armageddon, while native people in colonial Mesoamerica continued to write and paint their histories and lives often without any mention of the foreigners in their midst. This title addresses key aspects of indigenous perspectives of the conquest.