A novel about the reappearance of the Greek god Dionysus in the modern world in the aspect and form of Priapus. Imagine the combined Wellesley and Smith College Field Hockey teams as his Baccantes. The novel, in sequences, is indebted to the play, The Baccae, by Euripides. Laetitia Lowell, a philologist at Wellesley College, on a solo field trip to the ruins of Pompei and Herculaneum, on the slopes of Vesuvius, lost, she falls in with a procession of dreamy-eyed women dancing to the music of tambourines, flutes, drums and cithars, in barbaric dress of blue chitons, bare legged, bare breasted, and holding what appears to be a thyrsus. Bacchantes! After two thousand years! She follows what she believes to be masquerades, hoping to find her way back to Pompeii. Suddenly, she is hemmed in by the hennaed and kohl eyed women, to witness what appeared to be a rite. When the troop stops before a grotto, a venerable man who appeared to be a high priest, summons a young man from the grotto who is attired in a golden robe. His hair is Doric blonde. A magnificent Greek kouros. The young man sits on a plinth at the entrance of the grotto. The women chant choral dithyrambs out of the Bacchae of Euripides. He opens his robe to disclose a huge flaccid male member that gradually becomes erect with the intensity of the dancing and singing -- then with a moan he ejaculates, spurting semen in a fountain spray in which the women dip kerchiefs and phallic ornaments to empower the objects as symbols of fertility. The young man is imprisoned in the grotto. Later, she escapes with the young man, Demetrius Angeli, who is worshipped by this recondite and remote sect in time, as Dionysus in the aspect of Priapus. For his sanity and safety, she brings him to the USA. He and his Wellesley and Smith College new world bacchantes (field hockey players) are then persecuted as a dangerous cult by a lady Attorney General. What ensues is the eternal confrontation and dynamism of Dionysan and Appollonian opposites. * * * Myths have no life of themselves. They wait for us to give them body. Let but one person in the world respond to their call, they offer us their vitality unimpaired. From Albert Camus, 1946.

Recent scholarship has acknowledged that the intertextual discourse of ancient comedy with previous and contemporary literary traditions is not limited to tragedy. This book is a timely response to the more sophisticated and theory-grounded way of viewing comedy's interactions with its cultural and intellectual context. It shows that in the process of its self-definition, comedy emerges as voracious and multifarious with a wide spectrum of literary, sub-literary and paraliterary traditions, the engagement with which emerges as central to its projected literary identity and, subsequently, to the reception of the genre itself. Comedy's self-definition through generic discourse far transcends the (narrowly conceived) 'high-low' division of genres. This book explores ancient comedy's interactions with Homeric and Hesiodic epic, iambos, lyric, tragedy, the fable tradition, the ritual performances of the Greek polis, and its reception in Platonic writings and Alexandrian scholarship, within a unified interpretative framework.

Seers, Shrines and Sirens (1965) surveys the history of Greek religion during the great formative and revolutionary era of the sixth century BC. It treats, among other subjects, the rise to prominence of the Delphic oracle, the growth of religious festivals and mysteries, the worship of Dionysus, including the development of the drama and appearance of the Orphic and Pythagorean sects. The sixth century was above all a time when prophets, supermen and sibyls flourished and their impact is discussed in detail.

No Laughing Matter is a wide-ranging collection of new studies of the comic theatre of Athens, from its origins until the 340s BCE. Fifteen international scholars employ an array of approaches and methodologies that will appeal to Classics and Theatre scholars while still remaining accessible to students. By including discussions of fragmentary authors alongside Aristophanes, the collection provides a broad understanding of the richness of Athenian comedy. The collection showcases the best of the new scholarship on Old and Middle Comedy, using the most up-to-date texts and tools. No Laughing Matter has been prepared in tribute to Professor Ian Storey of Trent University (Peterborough, Ontario), whose work on Athenian comedy will continue to shape scholarship for many years to come.

Essays that explore early Christian texts and the broader world in which they were written This volume of twelve essays celebrates the contributions of classicist Judith Perkins to the study of early Christianity. Drawing on Perkins's insights related to apocryphal texts, representations of pain and suffering, and the creation of meaning, contributors explore the function of Christian narratives that depict pain and suffering, the motivations of the early Christians who composed these stories, and their continuing value to contemporary people. Contributors also examine how narratives work to create meaning in a religious context. These contributions address these issues from a variety of angles through a wide range of texts. Features: Introductions to and treatments of several largely unknown early Christian texts Essays by ten women and two men influenced or mentored by Judith Perkins Essays on the Deuterocanon, the New Testament, and early Christian relics

This is the second volume of A Social and Economic History of the Theatre to 300 BC and focuses exclusively on theatre culture in Attica (Rural Dionysia) and the rest of the Greek world. It presents and discusses in detail all the documentary and material evidence for theatre culture and dramatic production from the first two centuries of theatre history, namely the period c.500 to c.300 BC. The traditional assumption is laid to rest that theatre was an exclusively or primarily Athenian institution, with the inclusion of all sources of information for theatrical performances in twenty-two deme sites and over one hundred and twenty independent Greek (and some non-Greek) cities. All texts are translated and made accessible to non-specialists and specialists alike. The volume will be a fundamental work of reference for all classicists and theatre historians interested in ancient theatre and its wider historical contexts.

Examines the concept of gender in relation to Greek drama