Most of the work done on tracing persistent themes and images in the Oresteia has failed to take account of the associations of the theme or image for the original audience. Some of these associations are with certain highly emotional rituals. In evoking the ritual the poet evokes also some at least of the emotion which generally accompanies its performance. I will take here as an example the association of the manner of Agamemnon's death, the fatal bath and the fatal (...) robe, with the ritual of the funeral. This will I hope help to enrich our own emotional reaction to Aeschylus' presentation of this event, as well as to shed light on certain problematic passages. (shrink)

These lines are the first reaction to the false news of the death of Orestes. Their attribution has been much discussed. What prompts my intervention is the recent development, on this important problem, of a confident unanimity which seems to me certainly mistaken. I have been unable to find a single translator, editor, or commentator in recent years who gives the lines to Electra. The case for Electra was best made by Headlam–Thomson in 1938, and a few extra points were (...) added very hesitantly by Winnington-Ingram in 1946. From the wealth of detailed argument in Headlam–Thomson, which has been ignored rather than refuted, I will mention and briefly develop just two points, before going on to add some of my own. (shrink)

This article reconsiders the historical and typological relation between Greek maturation rituals and Greek mystery religion. Particular attention is given to the word κλεινός (‘illustrious’) and its ritual uses in two roughly contemporary Late Classical sources: an Orphic-Bacchic funerary gold leaf from Hipponion in Magna Graecia and Ephorus’ account of a Cretan pederastic age-transition rite. In both contexts, κλεινός marks an elevated status conferred by initiation. (This usage finds antecedents in Alcman'sPartheneia.) Without positing direct development between puberty rites and mysteries, (...) the article argues on the basis of shared vocabulary and other ritual elements that age-transitions influenced the ideology of mystery cults. It is further claimed that puberty rites and mysteries performed similar functions in their respective social contexts, despite obvious differences of prestige and visibility. Age-transition rites have been analysed in Bourdieu's terms as ‘rites of institution’, in which young elites were publicly affirmed in civic roles: private mysteries can be described in analogous but opposed terms as rites of ‘counter-institution’, in which familiar ritual language and symbols of elite status were used to construct an alternative ‘imagined community’ of mystery initiates. (shrink)

En el presente artículo nos proponemos reconocer y analizar el uso de la técnica de la ring-composition o estructura anular en los cantos corales de Antígona de Sófocles en relación con los elementos de los cultos eleusino y dionisíaco que atraviesan la obra. Nuestra hipótesis consiste en que, lejos de ser un factor de mera articulación formal, la ring-composition cumple con una función dramática pues cohesiona, con su juego de paralelismos, las alusiones a los misterios con el fin de presentar (...) la acción como un ritual iniciático fallido. En esta primera parte trataremos el marco general de análisis y el canto de entrada del coro. (shrink)

Polis religion has become the dominant model for the description of ritual activity in ancient Greek communities. Indeed, scholars have invoked polis religion to try to resolve the much-debated question of the definition of magic vs. religion, arguing that particular ‘magical’ practices, and their practitioners, do not belong to ‘collective polis religion.’ However, the relationship to polis religion of a ‘magical’ practice such as the writing of binding spells is surely more ambiguous, as well as of other cult activity relating (...) (in various ways) to the worship of Dionysos. Further examination suggests that defining what it means for ritual activity to be integrated within the schema of polis religion becomes increasingly difficult as we examine the variety of cult organisations and the different levels and types of involvement by the polis. This paper argues that social network theory may be able to overcome these conceptual difficulties. This approach can offer an alternative, more fluid construction of ancient Greek religion, which allows us to take account of coexisting, sometimes overlapping, networks of ritual activities. (shrink)