Initiation has often been accepted as a common phenomenon with a coherent meaning in the Greek world, and seen as the key to understanding a wide range of cultural and literary artefacts. In this volume, an international group of experts in Greek religion and society challenge the privileged status of initiation as a paradigm in classical studies. The case studies used range widely, from the ancient Greek wedding and adolescent haircutting rituals to initiation in Greek myth, tragedy and comedy. The collection will be useful for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Classical...
Initiation has often been accepted as a common phenomenon with a coherent meaning in the Greek world, and seen as the key to understanding a wide rang...
The ancient Greeks commonly resorted to magic spells to attract and keep lovers--as numerous allusions in Greek literature and recently discovered "voodoo dolls," magical papyri, gemstones, and curse tablets attest. Surveying and analyzing these various texts and artifacts, Christopher Faraone reveals that gender is the crucial factor in understanding love spells. There are, he argues, two distinct types of love magic: the curselike charms used primarily by men to torture unwilling women with fiery and maddening passion until they surrender sexually; and the binding spells and debilitating...
The ancient Greeks commonly resorted to magic spells to attract and keep lovers--as numerous allusions in Greek literature and recently discovered ...
In this study of poetic form in early Greek elegy, Christopher A. Faraone argues against the prevailing assumption that it was a genre of stichic poetry derived from or dependent on epic verse. Faraone emphasizes the fact that early elegiac poets composed their songs to the tune of an aulos (a kind of oboe) and used a five-couplet stanza as a basic unit of composition. He points out how knowledge of the elegiac stanza can give us insight into how these poets alternated between stanzas of exhortation and meditation, used co-ordinated pairs of stanzas to construct lengthy arguments about...
In this study of poetic form in early Greek elegy, Christopher A. Faraone argues against the prevailing assumption that it was a genre of stichic poet...
The Getty Hexameters looks in detail at a series of forty-four magical verses inscribed on a recently discovered lead tablet from Sicily in the fifth century BC, which is now in the Getty Museum, Los Angeles. Divided into two sections, the volume consists of a general introduction to the new inscriptions, together with a critical text and English translation, photographs, and drawings. The second section contains a collection of eleven interpretative essays which treat various aspects of the text, including religious and civic context, date and poetic language, transmission, and...
The Getty Hexameters looks in detail at a series of forty-four magical verses inscribed on a recently discovered lead tablet from Sicily in the fifth ...
