Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece

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Description

During the archaic and classical periods, Greek ideas about the dead evolved in line with changing social and cultural conditions―most notably changes associated with the development of the polis, such as funerary legislation, and changes because of increased contacts with cultures of the ancient Near East. In Restless Dead, Sarah Iles Johnston presents and interprets these changes, the use of them to build a complex picture of the way in which in which the society of the dead reflected that of the living, expressing and defusing its tensions, reiterating its values and in the end becoming a source of significant power for individuals who knew easy methods to keep an eye on 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 focal point 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 upfront, 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.


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