Tales of archaic Greek city foundations continue to be told and retold long after the colonies themselves were settled, and this book explores how the ancient Greeks constructed their memory of founding new cities overseas. Greek stories about colonizing Sicily or the Black Sea in the seventh century B.C.E. are no more transparent, no less culturally constructed than nineteenth-century British tales of empire in India or Africa; they are every bit as much about power, language, and cultural appropriation. This book brings anthropological and literary theory to bear on the narratives that...

This volume brings together essays by archaeologists, historians, and literary scholars in a comprehensive examination of the Greek archaic age. A time of dramatic and revolutionary change when many of the institutions and thought patterns that would shape Greek culture evolved, this period has become the object of renewed scholarly interest in recent years. Yet it has resisted reconstruction, largely because its documentation is less complete than that of the classical period. In order to read the text of archaic Greece, the contributors here apply new methods--including anthropology,...

The Raft of Odysseus looks at the fascinating intersection of traditional myth with an enthnographically-viewed Homeric world. Carol Dougherty argues that the resourcefulness of Odysseus as an adventurer on perilous seas served as an example to Homer's society which also had to adjust in inventive ways to turbulent conditions. The fantastic adventures of Odysseus act as a prism for the experiences of Homer's own listeners--traders, seafarers, storytellers, soldiers--and give us a glimpse into their own world of hopes and fears, 500 years after the Iliadic events were supposed to have...

Myths and legends of this rebellious god, who defied Zeus to steal fire for mankind, thrive in art and literature from ancient Greece to the present day. Prometheus' gifts to mortals of the raw materials of culture and technological advancement, along with the curse of despair that followed the enlightenment of humankind, have formed the basis of a poetic and powerful embodiment of the human condition.
Seeking to locate the nature of this compelling tale's continuing relevance throughout history, Carol Dougherty traces a history of the myth from its origins in ancient Greece to its...

Challenging the conventional perception of ancient Greece as the paradigm for unified models of culture, this study offers an alternative view of archaic and classical Greece. It is one in which the contact, conflict and collaboration of a variety of "subcultures" combine to comprise what we now understand as "Greekness." The volume argues for the recognition and analysis of cultural contact within Greece, focusing on the micromechanics of cultural exchange, the permeability of cultural boundaries, and the significance of Delphi's geographically marginal, yet symbolically central, location as...

Challenging the conventional perception of ancient Greece as the paradigm for unified models of culture, this study offers an alternative view of archaic and classical Greece. It is one in which the contact, conflict and collaboration of a variety of "subcultures" combine to comprise what we now understand as "Greekness." The volume argues for the recognition and analysis of cultural contact within Greece, focusing on the micromechanics of cultural exchange, the permeability of cultural boundaries, and the significance of Delphi's geographically marginal, yet symbolically central, location as...