This book analyzes the relationships between Athenian myths and the institutions that informed them. In particular, it examines how myths encode thoughts on ritual, the code of the warrior, marriage, and politics. Combining traditional historical and literary criticism with the approaches of anthropologists, feminist critics, and cultural historians, the authors study specific examples of the epic and tragedy, as well as funeral orations and the Parthenon marbles, to illuminate the ways mythic media exploited the beliefs, concepts, and practices of fifth-century Athens, simultaneously...

In this book, Wm. Blake Tyrrell and Larry J. Bennett examine Sophocles' Antigone in the context of its setting in fifth-century Athens. The authors attempt to create an interpretive environment that is true to the issues and interests of fifth-century Athenians, as opposed to those of modern scholars and philosophers. As they contextualize the play in the dynamics of ancient Athens, the authors discuss the text of the Antigone in light of recent developments in the study of Greek antiquity and tragedy, and they turn to modern Greek rituals of lamentation for suggestive analogies. The result...