Inadequately documented, ancient Greek religion can all too easily be reduced to the dry analysis of archaeological remains and so-called ritual objects'. This authoritative new work attempts to bridge the gap that usually divides Greek religion from Greek history, setting it firmly in the thick of contemporary events and politics. How did people actually worship the gods? Was Socrates's trial a crisis for religion or the state, or both? These are among the key issues addressed in what promises to be the definitive work on the subject for many years to come.
Inadequately documented, ancient Greek religion can all too easily be reduced to the dry analysis of archaeological remains and so-called ritual objec...
This is a defense of the Athenian democracy by a great radical historian. Geoffrey de Ste. Croix shows how even its oddest features made sense, and illustrates the different factors influencing Athenian politics--for instance, trade and commercial interests mattered very little. Though written in the 1960s, these hitherto unpublished essays remain fresh and innovative.
This is a defense of the Athenian democracy by a great radical historian. Geoffrey de Ste. Croix shows how even its oddest features made sense, and il...
This book is the first attempt that has ever been made to give a comprehensive account of the religious life of ancient Athens. The city's many festivals are discussed in detail, with attention to recent anthropological theory; so too, for instance, are the cults of households and of smaller groups, the role of religious practice and argumentation in public life, the authority of priests, the activities of religious professionals such as seers and priestesses, magic, the place of theatrical representations of the gods within public attitudes to the divine. A long final section considers the...
This book is the first attempt that has ever been made to give a comprehensive account of the religious life of ancient Athens. The city's many festiv...
"There is something of a paradox about our access to ancient Greek religion. We know too much, and too little. The materials that bear on it far outreach an individual's capacity to assimilate: so many casual allusions in so many literary texts over more than a millennium, so many direct or indirect references in so many inscriptions from so many places in the Greek world, such an overwhelming abundance of physical remains. But genuinely revealing evidence does not often cluster coherently enough to create a vivid sense of the religious realities of a particular time and place. Amid a vast...
"There is something of a paradox about our access to ancient Greek religion. We know too much, and too little. The materials that bear on it far ou...
