Together, and for the first time in any language, the 24 essays gathered in these volumes provide a composite picture of the history of religion in ancient China from the emergence of writing ca. 1250 BC to the collapse of the first major imperial dynasty in 220 AD. It is a multi-faceted tale of changing gods and rituals that includes the emergence of a form of "secular humanism" that doubts the existence of the gods and the efficacy of ritual and of an imperial orthodoxy that founds its legitimacy on a distinction between licit and illicit sacrifices. Written by specialists in a variety of...

This volume is the first English-language survey of Homeric studies to appear for more than a generation, and the first such work to attempt to cover all fields comprehensively. Thirty leading scholars from Europe and America provide short, authoritative overviews of the state of knowledge and current controversies in the many specialist divisions in Homeric studies. The chapters pay equal attention to literary, mythological, linguistic, historical, and archaeological topics, ranging from such long-established problems as the "Homeric Question" to newer issues like the relevance of...