Restless Dead

1. Auflage 2013
ISBN: 978-0-520-28018-2
Verlag: University Of California Press

Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Trade Paperback, Format (B × H): 154 mm x 228 mm, Gewicht: 491 g

During the archaic and classical periods, Greek ideas about the dead evolved in response to changing social and cultural conditions—most notably changes associated with the development of the polis, such as funerary legislation, and changes due to increased contacts with cultures of the ancient Near East. In Restless Dead, Sarah Iles Johnston presents and interprets these changes, using them to build a complex picture of the way in which the society of the dead reflected that of the living, expressing and defusing its tensions, reiterating its values and eventually becoming a source of significant power for those who knew how to control it. She draws on both well-known sources, such as Athenian tragedies, and newer texts, such as the Derveni Papyrus and a recently published lex sacra from Selinous.

Topics of focus include the origin of the goes (the ritual practitioner who made interaction with the dead his specialty), the threat to the living presented by the ghosts of those who died dishonorably or prematurely, the development of Hecate into a mistress of ghosts and its connection to female rites of transition, and the complex nature of the Erinyes. Restless Dead culminates with a new reading of Aeschylus' Oresteia that emphasizes how Athenian myth and cult manipulated ideas about the dead to serve political and social ends.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Johnston, Sarah Iles

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Sonstige Religionen: Kult, Riten, Feiertage, Zeremonien, Gebete
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsgeschichte Religionen der Antike
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Sonstige Religionen Sonstige Religionen: Heilige & Traditionelle Texte, Mythologie

Über Autor(innen)

Johnston, Sarah Iles
Sarah Iles Johnston is Arts and Humanities Distinguished Professor of Religion and Professor of Classics at the Ohio State University. Her many books include Ancient Greek Divination and, with Fritz Graf, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets.

Sarah Iles Johnston is Associate Professor of Greek and Latin at Ohio State University. She is author of Hekate Soteira: A Study of Hekate's Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature (1990) and coeditor of Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and Art (1997).