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Dance plays an important role in many religious traditions, in rites of passage, processions, healing rituals or festivals. But it is also controversial, especially in Christianity. Colonial European Christian discourses tend to separate dance from religion(s) and spirituality. This volume explores dance as “Third Space”, following Homi Bhabha's postcolonial metaphor. The “Inter-Dance approach” combines interdisciplinary theoretical considerations with case studies. International experts examine dance controversies and discourses from the early church to World Christianity, as well as in Hasidic Judaism, Greek mysteries, Islamic Sufism, West African Togolese religions, and Afro-Brazilian Umbanda. Christian dance theologies are unfolded and the boundary-crossing potential of dance in interreligious and intercultural encounters is explored. The volume breaks new ground in how dance as ephemeral performative art, embodied thought and gendered discourse can transform studies of religion.

Heliogabalus and Elagabalus are names given since late antiquity to the mythical or legendary avatar of Varius Avitus Bassianus. Varius was Roman emperor AD 218–222, ruling as Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. He was simultaneously High Priest of the Syrian sun god Elagabal. Heliogabalus and Elagabalus, names derived from Elagabal, are often used as misnomers for Varius himself, but more properly designate his avatar, who is far better known than Varius. The Varian avatar, under these and other names, survives and thrives in historiography, as well as in more avowedly creative literature, music, dance, the visual arts, and popular culture. This book, the third in Varian Studies, is partly based on the Varian Symposium, held in Cambridge in 2005. It contains studies of the historical Varius, of some of his courtiers, of his god Elagabal, and of his avatar, Heliogabalus or Elagabalus.

The analysis of the dynamic nature of rituals has become a heuristic tool for the investigation not only of religious behaviour and beliefs, but also for the study of social practice and communication in ancient and modern societies. From public assembly gatherings and funerals to celebration of cult feasts or the honouring of individuals, rituals mark socially important occasions, define beginnings and endings, and aid social transitions. Thus, rituals carry all kinds of messages intended to support and express the performance of those involved, and to create the desired results. The present volume brings together a collection of articles on rituals in the Graeco-Roman world, focussing on the interconnection between ritual as a means of communication and communication as a ritual phenomenon. In regarding rituals as an interface in the realm of cultural practices, the contributors demonstrate the manifold function of ritual communication in the life of ancient communities.

Antiquity: Greeks and Romans in Context provides a chronological introduction to the history of ancient Mediterranean civilizations within the larger context of its contemporary Eurasian world. Innovative approach organizes Greek and Roman history into a single chronology Combines the traditional historical story with subjects that are central to modern research into the ancient world including a range of social, cultural, and political topics Facilitates an understanding of the ancient Mediterranean world as a unity, just as the Mediterranean world is in its turn presented as part of a larger whole Covers the entire ancient Mediterranean world from pre-history through to the rise of Islam in the seventh century A.D. Features a diverse collection of images, maps, diagrams, tables, and a chronological chart to aid comprehension English translation of a well-known Dutch book, De oudheid, now in its third edition

The renowned Basler Homer-Kommentar of the Iliad, edited by Anton Bierl and Joachim Latacz and originally published in German, presents the latest developments in Homeric scholarship. Through the English translation of this ground-breaking reference work, edited by S. Douglas Olson, its valuable findings are now made accessible to students and scholars worldwide.

Covering important themes and issues which are linked to historic and specific sanctuaries, this book will provide students with an accessible yet authoritative introduction to ancient Greek sanctuaries.

Ever since Jesus walked the hills of Galilee and Paul travelled the roads of Asia Minor and Greece, Christianity has shown a remarkable ability to adapt itself to various social and cultural environments. Recent research has demonstrated that these environments can only be very insufficiently termed as "rural" or "urban". Neither was Jesus' Galilee only rural, nor Paul's Asia only "urban". On the background of ongoing research on the diversity of social environments in the Early Empire, this volume will focus on various early Christian "worlds" as witnessed in canonical and non-canonical texts. How did Early Christians experience and react to "rural" and "urban" life? What were the mechanisms behind this adaptability? Papers will analyze the relation between urban Christian beginnings and the role of the rural Jesus-tradition. In what sense did the image of Jesus, the "Galilean village Jew", change when his message was carried into the cities of the Mediterranean world from Jerusalem to Athens or Rome? Papers will not only deal with various personalities or literary works whose various attitudes towards urban life became formative for future Christianity. They will also explore...

Borders Cuts Images. History and Theory. Editorial, edited by Linda Bertelli and Maria Luisa Catoni Maria Luisa Catoni, Cut as a device. An example from Classical Antiquity. Camilla Pietrabissa, Cutting down the interpretation of drawings. The case of Watteau. Maja-Lisa Müller, Framing representation. The hybrid zones of intarsia. Costanza Caraffa, The photographic cut and cutting practices in photographic archives. Sara Romani, From cuts to clues, hidden narratives within the details of Carl Durheim’s photographic portraits (1840-1860). Laura Di Fede, A look from outside. Foreign photographers in Palermo between the 19th and 20th centuries. Agnese Ghezzi, Framing the ‘delegated gaze’. Handbooks for travelers and the making of anthropological photography in Italy at the end of the 19th century. Linda Bertelli, Chronophotography as an archive. The dialogue between the physiologist and the artist in Le Mouvement by Étienne-Jules Marey (1894). Sonia Colavita, The aesthetics of cut in found footage film. The case of Decasia by Bill Morrison. Maria Giusti, Rediscovering censorship to understand the struggle for the contemporaneous age-oriented movie rating systems. Laura Forti, ...

Experience, Narrative, and Criticism in Ancient Greece pursues a new approach to ancient Greek narrative beyond the taxonomies of structuralist narratologies. Focusing on the phenomenal and experiential dimension of our response to narrative, it triangulates ancient narrative with ancient criticism and cognitive approaches, opening up new vistas within the study of classical literature while ably deploying the ancient material to demonstrate the value of a historical perspective for cognitive studies. Concepts such as immersion and embodiment help to establish a more comprehensive understanding of ancient narrative and ancient reading habits, as manifested in Greek criticism and rhetorical theory. The thirteen chapters presented here tackle a broad range of narrative genres, broadly understood: besides epic, historiography, and the novel, tragedy and early Christian texts are also considered alongside non-literary media, such as dance and sculpture. Authored by international specialists in the language, literature, and culture of ancient Greece, each chapter utilizes a rich set of theoretical and methodological tools drawn from cognitive studies, phenomenology, and linguistics...

Using Euripides' play Helen as the main point of reference, C. W. Marshall's detailed study expands our understanding of Athenian tragedy and provides new interpretations of how Euripides created meaning in performance. Marshall focuses on dramatic structure to show how assumptions held by the ancient audience shaped meaning in Helen and to demonstrate how Euripides' play draws extensively on the satyr play Proteus, which was part of Aeschylus' Oresteia. Structure is presented not as a theoretical abstraction, but as a crucial component of the experience of performance, working with music, the chorus and the other plays in the tetralogy. Euripides' Andromeda in particular is shown to have resonances with Helen not previously described. Arguing that the role of the director is key, Marshall shows that the choices that a director can make about role doubling, gestures, blocking, humour, and masks play a crucial part in forming the meaning of Helen.

Combines multiple theoretical perspectives and diverse media to examine the relation between music and memory in ancient Greece and Rome.

The first systematic study of the impact of ideas about ancient Greek and Roman dance on modern theatrical and choreographic practices. With contributions from experts in a range of fields, the volume presents a wide conspectus on an under-explored but central aspect of classical reception, dance and theatre history, and the history of ideas.

Completely revised and updated, the fourth edition of this established dictionary offers entries on all aspects of the classical world. With reception and anthropology as new focus areas and numerous new entries, it is an essential reference work for students, scholars, and teachers of classics and for anyone with an interest in the classical era.

Paths of Song: The Lyric Dimension of Greek Tragedy analyzes the multiple and varied evocations of choral lyric in fifth-century Greek tragedy using a variety of methodological approaches that illustrate the myriad forms through which lyric is present and can be presented in tragedy. This collection focuses on different types of interaction of Greek tragedy with lyric poetry in fifth-century Athens: generic, mythological, cultural, musical, and performative. The collected essays demonstrate the dynamic and nuanced relationship between lyric poetry and tragedy within the larger frame of Athenian song- and performance-culture, and reveal a vibrant and symbiotic co-existence between tragedy and lyric. Paths of Song illustrates the effects that this dynamic engagement with lyric possibly had on tragic performances, including performances of satyr drama, as well as on processes of survival and reputation, selection and refiguration, tradition and innovation. The volume is of particular interest to scholars in the field of classics, cultural studies, and the performing arts, as well as to readers interested in poetic transmission and in cultural evolution in antiquity.

The T&T Clark Encyclopedia of Second Temple Judaism provides a comprehensive reference resource of over 600 scholarly articles aimed at scholars and students interested in Judaism of the Second Temple Period. The two-volume work is split into four parts. Part One offers a prolegomenon for the contemporary study and appreciation of Second Temple Judaism, locating the discipline in relation to other relevant fields (such as Hebrew Bible, Rabbinics, Christian Origins). Beginning with a discussion of terminology, the discussion suggests ways the Second Temple period may be described, and concludes by noting areas of study that challenge our perception of ancient Judaism. Part Two presents an overview of respective contexts of the discipline set within the broad framework of historical chronology corresponding to a set of full-colour, custom-designed maps. With distinct attention to primary sources, the author traces the development of historical, social, political, and religious developments from the time period following the exile in the late 6th century B.C.E. through to the end of the Bar Kokhba revolt (135 C.E.). Part Three focuses specifically on a wide selection of...

One of the greatest aesthetic attractions in the ancient world was pantomime dancing, a ballet-style entertainment in which a silent, solo dancer incarnated a series of mythological characters to the accompaniment of music and sung narrative. Looking at a multitude of texts and particularly Lucian's "On the Dance", a dialogue written at the height of pantomime's popularity, this innovative cultural study of the genre offers a radical reassessment of its importance in the symbolic economy of imperial and later antiquity. Rather than being trivial or lowbrow, pantomime was thoroughly enmeshed in wider social discourses on morality and sexuality, gender and desire and a key player in the fierce battles about education and culture that raged in the ancient world. A close reading of primary sources, judiciously interlaced with a wealth of interdisciplinary perspectives, makes this challenging book essential for anyone interested in the performance culture of the Greek and Roman world.

This volume explores the relationships between masterworks of Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes and critical events of Athenian history, by bringing together international scholars with expertise on different aspects of ancient theatre. It raises questions about how tragic and comic plays composed in late fifth century mirror the acute political and social crisis unfolding in Athens in the wake of the military catastrophe in 413 BCE and the oligarchic revolution in 411 BCE. It is of particular interest to seasoned classical scholars as well as to those interested in Greek drama and Athenian history.

A comprehensive survey of historical and contemporary Jewish dance.

Explores the origins and development of ancient drama, especially comedy, on Sicily and its relationship to the political situation.

Singing for the Gods develops a new approach towards an old question in the study of religion - the relationship of myth and ritual. Focusing on ancient Greek religion, Barbara Kowalzig exploits the joint occurrence of myth and ritual in archaic and classical Greek song-culture. She shows how choral performances of myth and ritual, taking place all over the ancient Greek world in the early fifth century BC, help to effect social and political change in their own time. Religious song emerges as integral to a rapidly changing society hovering between local, regional, and panhellenic identities and between aristocratic rule and democracy. Drawing on contemporary debates on myth, ritual, and performance in social anthropology, modern history, and theatre studies, this book establishes Greek religion's dynamic role and gives religious song-culture its deserved place in the study of Greek history.

The Music of Tragedy offers a new approach to the study of classical Greek theater by examining the use of musical language, imagery, and performance in the late work of Euripides. Naomi Weiss demonstrates that Euripides’ allusions to music-making are not just metatheatrical flourishes or gestures towards musical and religious practices external to the drama but closely interwoven with the dramatic plot. Situating Euripides’ experimentation with the dramaturgical effects of mousike within a broader cultural context, she shows how much of his novelty lies in his reinvention of traditional lyric styles and motifs for the tragic stage. If we wish to understand better the trajectories of this most important ancient art form, The Music of Tragedy argues, we must pay closer attention to the role played by both music and text.

Erotic Geographies in Ancient Greek Literature and Culture addresses the following question: how does a place "get a reputation?" The Athenians associated sexual behaviors with particular places and their inhabitants, and this book decodes the meaning of the sexualization of place and traces the repercussions of these projections. Focusing on Corinth, Sparta, and Lesbos, each section starts from the fact that there were comic joke words that made a verb out of a place name to communicate a sexual slur. Corinth was thought of as a hotbed of prostitution; Sparta was perceived as a hyper-masculine culture that made femininity a problem; Lesbos had varying historically determined connotations, but was always associated with uninhibited and adventurous sexuality. The cultural beliefs encoded in these sexualized stereotypes are unpacked. These findings are then applied to close readings, ultimately demonstrating how sensitivity to the erotics of place enables new interpretations of well-known texts. In the process of moving from individual word to culture to text, Erotic Geographies recovers a complex mode of identity construction illuminating the workings of the Athenian imaginary as...

Specially written for students and enthusiasts, David Wiles introduces ancient Greek theatre and cultural life.

From archaic Sparta to classical Athens the chorus was a pervasive feature of Greek social and cultural life. Until now, however, its reception in Roman literature and culture has been little appreciated. This book examines how the chorus is reimagined in a brief but crucial period in the history of Latin literature, the early Augustan period from 30 to 10 BCE. It argues that in the work of Horace, Virgil, and Propertius, the language and imagery of the chorus articulate some of their most pressing concerns surrounding social and literary belonging in a rapidly changing Roman world. By re-examining seminal Roman texts such as Horace's Odes and Virgil's Aeneid from this fresh perspective, the book connects the history of musical culture with Augustan poetry's interrogation of fundamental questions surrounding the relationship between individual and community, poet and audience, performance and writing, Greek and Roman, and tradition and innovation.

With a new introduction and some revisions, these reprinted essays on Classical Greek satyr plays suggest new critical approaches to this important dramatic genre. Griffith argues that satyr plays presented audiences with sophisticated, multilayered narratives of romance, escapist adventure, and musical-choreographic exuberance, amounting to a “parallel universe” to that of the accompanying tragedies in the City Dionysia festival. The class and status distinctions between heroic/divine characters and the rest (choruses, messengers, servants, etc.) that are so integral to Athenian tragedy are shown to be present also, in exaggerated form, in satyr drama, with the satyr chorus occupying a role that also inevitably recalled for the Athenian audiences their own (often foreign-born) slaves. The satyr plays’ stylistic fusion of adventure and romance, elegant sophistication and rustic naïveté, anticipates in many respects the later developments of Greek pastoral and prose romance.

Bacchylides: Politics, Performance, Poetic Tradition combines close literary analysis of Bacchylides' poetry with detailed discussion of the central role poetry played in a variety of differing political contexts throughout Greece in the early fifth century BC. In Bacchylides' praise poetry, David Fearn argues, the poet manipulates a wide range of earlier Greek literature not only to elevate the status of his wealthy patrons, but also to provoke thought about the nature of political power and aristocratic society. New light is also shed on Bacchylides' Dithyrambs, through detailed discussion of the evidence for the kuklios khoros ('circular chorus') and its relation to a variety of different religious festivals, especially within democratic Athens. The links created between literary concerns and cultural contexts reinvigorate these underappreciated poems and reveal their central importance for the self-definition of political communities.

The Partheneion, or “maiden song,” composed in the seventh century BCE by the SpartanpoetAlcman, is the earliest substantial example of a choral lyric. A provocative reinterpretation of the Partheneion and its broader context, Alcman and the Cosmos of Sparta excavates the poem’s invocations of widespread and long-lived cosmological ideas that cast the universe as perfectly harmonious and invested its workings with an ethical dimension. Moving far beyond standard literary interpretations, Gloria Ferrari uncovers this astral symbolism by approaching the poem from several angles to brilliantly reconstruct the web of ancient drama, music, religion, painting, and material culture in which it is enmeshed. She shows, for example, that by stringing together images of horses, stars, and birds, the poem evokes classical antiquity’s beloved dance of the constellations. Instrumental in shaping the structure of the lyric, this dance symbolizes the cosmic order reflected in the order of the state, which the chorus would have enacted in a ritual performance of the song. With broad implications for archaeology, art history, and ancient science, Ferrari’s bold new analysis dramatically...

Biographical note: Lucia Athanassaki,University of Crete, Greece; Ewen Bowie, Corpus Christi College, Oxford, UK.

In the ancient Greek-speaking world, writing about the past meant balancing the reporting of facts with shaping and guiding the political interests and behaviours of the present. Ancient Historiography on War and Empire shows the ways in which the literary genre of writing history developed to guide empires through their wars. Taking key events from the Achaemenid Persian, Athenian, Macedonian and Roman ‘empires’, the 17 essays collected here analyse the way events and the accounts of those events interact. Subjects include: how Greek historians assign nearly divine honours to the Persian King; the role of the tomb cult of Cyrus the Founder in historical narratives of conquest and empire from Herodotus to the Alexander historians; warfare and financial innovation in the age of Philip II and his son, Alexander the Great; the murders of Philip II, his last and seventh wife Kleopatra, and her guardian, Attalos; Alexander the Great’s combat use of eagle symbolism and divination; Plutarch’s juxtaposition of character in the Alexander-Caesar pairing as a commentary on political legitimacy and military prowess, and Roman Imperial historians using historical examples of good and...

Understanding Greek Religion is one of the first attempts to fully examine any religion from a cognitivist perspective, applying methods and findings from the cognitive science of religion to the ancient Greek world. In this book, Jennifer Larson shows that many of the fundamentals of Greek religion, such as anthropomorphic gods, divinatory procedures, purity beliefs, reciprocity, and sympathetic magic arise naturally as by-products of normal human cognition. Drawing on evidence from across the ancient Greek world, Larson provides detailed coverage of Greek theology and local pantheons, rituals including processions, animal sacrifice and choral dance, and afterlife beliefs as they were expressed through hero worship and mystery cults. Eighteen in-depth essays illustrate the theoretical discussion with primary sources and include case studies of key cult inscriptions from Kyrene, Kos, and Miletos. This volume features maps, tables, and over twenty images to support and expand on the text, and will provide conceptual tools for understanding the actions and beliefs that constitute a religion. Additionally, Larson offers the first detailed discussion of cognition and memory in the...

The Maya of Mexico and Central America have performed ritual dances for more than two millennia. Dance is still an essential component of religious experience today, serving as a medium for communication with the supernatural. During the Late Classic period (AD 600-900), dance assumed additional importance in Maya royal courts through an association with feasting and gift exchange. These performances allowed rulers to forge political alliances and demonstrate their control of trade in luxury goods. The aesthetic values embodied in these performances were closely tied to Maya social structure, expressing notions of gender, rank, and status. Dance was thus not simply entertainment, but was fundamental to ancient Maya notions of social, religious, and political identity. Using an innovative interdisciplinary approach, Matthew Looper examines several types of data relevant to ancient Maya dance, including hieroglyphic texts, pictorial images in diverse media, and architecture. A series of case studies illustrates the application of various analytical methodologies and offers interpretations of the form, meaning, and social significance of dance performance. Although the nuances of...

Traces the concept of kosmos as order, arrangement, and ornament in ancient philosophy, literature, and aesthetics.

Offers a new explanation of how the plays of Plautus and Terence worked as musical theatre.

This book argues for a new way of reading tragedy that attends to how bodies in the ancient plays pivot between subject and object, person and thing, living and dead, and so serve as vehicles for confronting the edges of the human. At the same time, it explores the ways in which Greek tragedy pulls up close to human bodies, examining their physical edges, their surfaces and parts, their coverings or nakedness, and their postures and orientations. Drawing on and advancing the latest interplays of posthumanism and materialism in relation to classical literature, Nancy Worman shows how this tragic enactment may seem to emphasize the human body, but in effect does something quite different. Greek drama instead often treats the body as a thing that has the status and implications associated with other objects, such as a cloak, an urn, or a toy for a dog. Tragic Bodies urges attention to key scenes in Greek tragedy that foreground bodily identifiers as semiotic materializing. This occurs when signs with weighty symbolic resonance distil out on the dramatic stage as concrete sites for contention and conflation orchestrated through proximity, contact, and sensory dynamics. Reading the...

A collection of specially commissioned studies in which leading world specialists explore all aspects of the ancient pantomime dancer's performance skills, popularity, and social impact, while paying special attention to the texts that formed the basis of this distinctive art form, the forerunner of modern ballet.