The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece

Description

In classical Greece women were almost entirely excluded from public life. Yet the feminine was accorded a central place in religious thought and ritual. The public symbolism of religion included powerful figures like Hera, Artemis and Athene; female worshippers often breached the boundary between public and private space; and both men and women negotiated gendered identities through their performance of ritual. This volume explores the often paradoxical centrality of the feminine in Greek culture, showing how out of sight was "not" out of mind. The contributors adopt perspectives from a range of disciplines, such as archaeology, art history, psychology and anthropology, in order to investigate various aspects of religion and cult, including the part played by women in death ritual, the role of heroines, and the fact that goddesses had no childhood, at the same time posing questions about how we know what rituals meant to their participants. This is an exploration of the ways in which religion and ritual reveal women's importance in the Greek "polis", showing how ideologies about female roles and behaviour were both endorsed and challenged in the realm of the sacred.

Sue Blundell is a part time lecturer in Classical Civilisation at Birkbeck College, University of London and Associate Lecturer for the Open University. She is the author of Women in Ancient Greece (British Museum Press, 1995) Margaret Williamson is Senior Lecturer in Classical Studies at St. Mary's University College, University of Surrey. She is the author of Sappho's Immortal Daughters (Harvard University Press, 1995).