The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion (Oxford Handbooks)

The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion (Oxford Handbooks)

Language: English

Pages: 736

ISBN: 0199642036

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


This handbook offers a comprehensive overview of scholarship in ancient Greek religion, from the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods. It presents not only key information, but also explores the ways in which such information is gathered and the different approaches that have shaped the area. In doing so, the volume provides a crucial research and orientation tool for students of the ancient world, and also makes a vital contribution to the key debates surrounding the conceptualization of ancient Greek religion.

The handbook's initial chapters lay out the key dimensions of ancient Greek religion, approaches to evidence, and the representations of myths. The following chapters discuss the continuities and differences between religious practices in different cultures, including Egypt, the Near East, the Black Sea, and Bactria and India. The range of contributions emphasizes the diversity of relationships between mortals and the supernatural - in all their manifestations, across, between, and beyond ancient Greek cultures - and draws attention to religious activities as dynamic, highlighting how they changed over time, place, and context.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Obtain a good posterity. (467–71) As Athenian servants of Creusa, the young women of the chorus seem not only to resemble the two maiden goddesses in performing the ritual of supplication, but also to adopt the point of view of the Athenian spectators in characterizing the family of the founding king Erechtheus as palaion: this genos belongs to the heroic past of Athens. Unlike the monody sung by Ion at the beginning of the tragedy, the hymnic supplication delegated to the two maiden goddesses

of the diversity was itself the product of different prohibitions. Sanctuaries put up regulations prohibiting particular practices as readily as they put up regulations as to what was to happen. A fine example is provided by a fifth-century regulation from the sanctuary of Herakles on Thasos: ‘To Thasian Herakles it is not permitted (to sacrifice) goat or pig. And not for a woman. And no ninths are given. And no perquisites are cut. And no games’ (IG XII, suppl. 414). In this sanctuary what could

sprinkling of fibulae, and the eleven that Blinkenberg discovered fade into insignificance when placed in the context of the total of 1592 fibulae of identifiable type which he reported; fibulae were clearly a standard offering at Lindos (Blinkenberg 1931: 71, 75–6). However, more substantial offerings from Gela and Akragas purportedly dedicated at Lindos in the Archaic period are recorded in the Hellenistic inscription known as the Lindian Chronicle. Evidence from the Lindian Chronicle The

Writing Myth: Mythography in the Ancient World, ed. S. M. Trzaskoma and R. S. Smith, 55–73. Leuven. Brust, M. 2005. Die indischen und iranischen Lehnwörter im Griechischen. Innsbruck. Bryce, T. R. 2003. ‘History’, in The Luwians, ed. H. C. Melchert, 27–127. Leiden. Burkert, W. 1992. The Orientalizing Revolution. Cambridge, MA, and London. Burkert, W. 2003. Kleine Schriften II Orientalia. Göttingen. Burkert, W. 2004. Babylon Memphis Persepolis. Cambridge, MA, and London. Byrne, R. 2007. ‘The

BCE, Alexander campaigned through Bactria and north-western India, and established a number of garrison settlements populated by Greek and Macedonian soldiers. In a treaty of 303 BCE, the lands south of the Hindu Kush (Arachosia and north-west India) were ceded by Seleukos I to the Indian emperor Chandragupta Maurya. The remaining Greek settlements north of the Hindu Kush, in Bactria, remained nominally part of the Seleukid empire until the mid-third century BCE, when they became independent

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