Animals in Ancient Greek Religion

This book provides the first systematic study of the role of animals in different areas of the ancient Greek religious experience, including in myth and ritual, the literary and the material evidence, the real and the imaginary.

An international team of renowned contributors shows that animals had a sustained presence not only in the traditionally well-researched cultural practice of blood sacrifice but across the full spectrum of ancient Greek religious beliefs and practices. Animals played a role in divination, epiphany, ritual healing, the setting up of dedications, the writing of binding spells, and the instigation of other ?magical? means. Taken together, the individual contributions to this book illustrate that ancient Greek religion constituted a triangular symbolic system encompassing not just gods and humans, but also animals as a third player and point of reference.

Animals in Ancient Greek Religion will be of interest to students and scholars of Greek religion, Greek myth, and ancient religion more broadly, as well as for anyone interested in human/animal relations in the ancient world.

The editor does an excellent job of framing the whole with a separate introduction and a concluding chapter, and the opening three chapters by McInerney, Gilhus, and Kearns are suggested reading for those new to ancient animal studies, religious or otherwise. Together these contributions offer sensible historiography and valuable bibliography and establish several recurring themes: the entanglement of human, animal, and supernatural; the diversity and place of animals in religious thought and cult; the evolving nature of ancient Greek religion. Although blood sacrifice has long been the focus of animals in Greek religion, this book gently prods us to reconsider its centrality. The non-Greek comparisons with the ancient Near East and Egypt, and with modern India, may especially appeal to some readers.

Tyler Jo Smith, University of Virginia, Religious Studies Review

This volume provides great insight and a range of stimulating papers focused around a topic of great interest. The diversity of approaches and materials and the interesting nature of the case studies analysed considerably enrich our knowledge of and reflections on animals across the full spectrum of ancient Greek religious beliefs and practices.

Bruno D'Andrea, ARYS: Antiquity, Religions and Societies