Ancient sources and modern scholars have often represented the Athenian festival of Adonis as a marginal and faintly ridiculous private women s ritual. Seeds were planted each year in pots and, once sprouted, carried to the rooftops, where women lamented the death of Aphrodite s youthful consort Adonis. Laurialan Reitzammer resourcefully examines a wide array of surviving evidence about the Adonia, arguing for its symbolic importance in fifth- and fourth-century Athenian culture as an occasion for gendered commentary on mainstream Athenian practices.
Reitzammer uncovers correlations of...

Rediscovers the symbolism of women's rituals in ancient Athens. A timely contribution to studies of the ways gender and sexuality intersect with religion and culture in ancient Greece.