Hunting and its imagery continued to play a significant role in archaic and classical Greece long after hunting had ceased being a necessity for survival in everyday life. Drawing on vase paintings, sculpture, inscriptions, and other literary evidence, Judith Barringer reexamines the theme of the hunt and shows how the tradition it depicts helped maintain the dominance of the ruling social groups. Along with athletics and battle, hunting was a defining activity of the masculine aristocracy and was crucial to the efforts of the Athenian elite to control the social agenda, even as their political power declined. The Hunt in Ancient Greece examines descriptions of hunting in initiation rituals as well as the ideals of masculinity and adulthood such rites of passage promoted. Barringer argues that depictions of the hunt in literature and art also served as striking metaphors for the intricacies of courtship, shedding light on sexuality and gender roles. Through an exploration of various representations of the hunt, Barringer provides extraordinary insight into Athenian society.

This book opens the world of the ancient Greeks to all readers through easily accessible entries on topics essential to understanding Greek high culture and daily life. The ancient Greeks provided the foundation for Western civilization. They made significant advances in science, mathematics, philosophy, literature, and government. While many readers might have heard of Plato and Aristotle, however, or be familiar with the classic works of Greek tragedy, most people know significantly less about daily life in the ancient Greek world. This encyclopedia opens the world of the ancient Greeks, spanning Greek history from the Bronze Age through Roman times, with an emphasis on the Classical and Hellenistic Eras. The encyclopedia provides roughly 270 easily accessible entries on topics essential to understanding everything from Greek high culture to daily life. These entries are grouped in topical sections on the arts, science and technology, politics and government, domestic life, and other subjects. Sidebars on particularly noteworthy people, places, and concepts provide related information, while primary documents allow readers to delve into the mindset and feelings of the ancient Greeks themselves. Extensive bibliographic references give curious readers direction for further research.

Examining every aspect of the culture from antiquity to the founding of Constantinople in the early Byzantine era, this thoroughly cross-referenced and fully indexed work is written by an international group of scholars. This Encyclopedia is derived from the more broadly focused Encyclopedia of Greece and the Hellenic Tradition, the highly praised two-volume work. Newly edited by Nigel Wilson, this single-volume reference provides a comprehensive and authoritative guide to the political, cultural, and social life of the people and to the places, ideas, periods, and events that defined ancient Greece.

In Nature Ethics: An Ecofeminist Perspective, Marti Kheel explores the underlying worldview of nature ethics, offering an alternative ecofeminist perspective. She focuses on four prominent representatives of holist philosophy: two early conservationists (Theodore Roosevelt and Aldo Leopold) and two contemporary philosophers (Holmes Rolston III, and transpersonal ecologist Warwick Fox). Kheel argues that in directing their moral allegiance to abstract constructs (e.g. species, the ecosystem, or the transpersonal Self) these influential nature theorists represent a masculinist orientation that devalues concern for individual animals. Seeking to heal the divisions among the seemingly disparate movements and philosophies of feminism, animal advocacy, environmental ethics, and holistic health, Kheel proposes an ecofeminist philosophy that underscores the importance of empathy and care for individual beings as well as larger wholes.

Aimed at readers of all levels--from student to classics buff to serious scholars--this sourcebook looks at sport and recreation in ancient Greece through translated accounts of ancient Greek and Latin authors. It examines such diversions as the ancient Olympic Games, athletic clothing, women in sports, dining, dancing, and fishing. Sport and Recreation in Ancient Greece offers a wide range of topics geared to students' interests, new translations into readable English that facilitate their introduction to the subject, and a rich assortment of illustrations. The questions following each translation help students understand the passages, while the presentation of contradictory evidence challenges them to evaluate different points of view, both in the study of ancient culture and in their own daily lives. Successfully tested in college classrooms for a ten years, this book provides an excellent springboard for the study of ancient Greek history, classical literature, or sports history.

From the Archaic to the Roman imperial period, an impressive number of gods and goddesses are attested in the Greek world under the titles of Soter and Soteira ('Saviour'). Overseeing the protection of individuals and cities, these gods had the power to grant an essential blessing - soteria ('deliverance', 'preservation', 'safety'). This book investigates what it meant to be 'saved' and the underlying concept of soteria in ancient Greece. It challenges the prevailing assumption that soteria was a predominantly Christian concern, and demonstrates instead its centrality and significance in the relationship between the Greeks and their gods. This book focuses on the power of 'saviour' gods in the life of the Greeks, how worshippers searched for soteria as they confronted the unknown and unknowable, and what this can reveal about the religious beliefs, hopes, and anxieties of the Greeks. It goes beyond religious vocabulary and cult epithets to investigate worshippers' thought world and lived experience, the different choices individuals made among the plurality of gods in the Greek pantheon, the multiple levels on which divine 'saviours' operated, and the values attached to the Greek notion of soteria. Building on existing paradigms in the study of Greek polytheism, and combining close analysis of epigraphic, literary and material evidence, this book argues that soteria for the Greeks entailed a very different experience from the Christian, eschatological notion of 'salvation', and that what was offered was 'salvation' on earth.

The oath was an institution of fundamental importance across a wide range of social interactions throughout the ancient Greek world, making a crucial contribution to social stability and harmony; yet there has been no comprehensive, dedicated scholarly study of the subject for over a century. This volume of a two-volume study explores how oaths functioned in the working of the Greek city-state (polis) and in relations between different states as well as between Greeks and non-Greeks.

Women's mobility is central to understanding cultural constructions of gender. Regarding ancient cultures, including ancient Greece, a re-evaluation of women's mobility within the household and beyond it is currently taking place. This invites an informed analysis of female mobility in Greek myth, under the premise that myth may open a venue to social ideology and the imaginary. Female Mobility and Gendered Space in Ancient Greek Myth offers the first comprehensive analysis of this topic. It presents close readings of ancient texts, engaging with feminist thought and the 'mobility turn'. A variety of Olympian goddesses and mortal heroines are explored, and the analysis of their myths follows specific chronological considerations. Female mobility is presented in quite diverse ways in myth, reflecting cultural flexibility in imagining mobile goddesses and heroines. At the same time, the out-of-doors spaces that mortal heroines inhabit seem to lack a public or civic quality, with the heroines being contained behind 'glass walls'. In this respect, myth seems to reproduce the cultural limitations of ancient Greek social ideology on mobility, inviting us to reflect not only on the limits of mythic imagination but also on the timelessness of Greek myth.

The clothing and ornament of Greek women signalled much about the status and the morality assigned to them. Yet this revealing aspect of women's history has been little studied. In this collection of new studies by an international team, ancient visual evidence from vase-painting and sculpture is used extensively alongside Greek literature to reconstruct how women of the Greek world were perceived, and also, in important ways, how they lived.