Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion

ISBN-13: 9780415202725 / Angielski / Twarda / 2001 / 448 str.

Matthew Dillon

Opis

Modern scholars have seen women's most important religious activity in classical Greece as their participation in fertility rituals. Matthew Dillon's wide-ranging study makes it clear that women engaged in numerous rites and cults besides such festivals, and that their role in Greek religion was actually more important than that of men. Women invoked the gods for help in becoming pregnant, venerated the god of wine, worshipped exotic gods new to the Greek pantheon, used magic and potions for both erotic and pain-relieving purposes - and far more besides. While traditional scholarship has seen such involvement in religion as escapist, Dillon's presentation of the evidence aims to prove that this denigrates women's religiosity, and the real importance which they attached to their mediation with the divine.

Recenzje

'Highly recommended ... no collection of classical, religious or gender studies would be complete without it.' - Choice

'A work of considerable scholarship, and one on which the author is to be congratulated.' - Minerva

'It makes accessible a substantial body of disparate material.' - JACT Review

;Wisely, this important contribution to understanding the female dimesion of ancient religion does not make the worship of goddesses a central concern.' - International Review of Biblical Studies

Spis treści

Introduction Part 1. Public religious roles for girls and women 1. Women as Dedicators 2. The public religious roles of girls and adolescent women in Athens 3. Women Priests Part 2. Segregated and ecstatic religious rites 4. Women-only festivals 5. Women at the margins of Greek Religion 6. Prostitutes, foreign women and the Gods Part 3 Sacrificial and domestic rituals 7. From adolescent girl to woman, wife and mother 8. Women, sacrifice and impurity 9. Women and the corpse: Morning Rituals

O autorze

Dillon, Matthew