Among maternal deities of the Greek pantheon, the Mother of the Gods was a paradox. She is variously described as a devoted mother, a chaste wife, an impassioned lover, and a virgin daughter; she is said to be both foreign and familiar to the Greeks. In this erudite and absorbing study, Mark Munn examines how the cult of Mother of the Gods came from Phrygia and Lydia, where she was the mother of tyrants, to Athens, where she protected the laws of the Athenian democracy. Analyzing the divergence of Greek and Asiatic culture at the beginning of the classical era, Munn describes how Kybebe, the Lydian goddess who signified fertility and sovereignty, assumed a different aspect to the Greeks when Lydia became part of the Persian empire. Conflict and resolution were played out symbolically, he shows, and the goddess of Lydian tyranny was eventually accepted by the Athenians as the Mother of the Gods, and as a symbol of their own sovereignty. This book elegantly illustrates how ancient divinities were not static types, but rather expressions of cultural systems that responded to historical change. Presenting a new perspective on the context in which the Homeric and Hesiodic epics were composed, Munn traces the transformation of the Asiatic deity who was the goddess of Sacred Marriage among the Assyrians and Babylonians, equivalent to Ishtar. Among the Lydians, she was the bride to tyrants and the mother of tyrants. To the Greeks, she was Aphrodite. An original and compelling consideration of the relations between the Greeks and the dominant powers of western Asia, The Mother of the Gods, Athens, and the Tyranny of Asia is the first thorough examination of the way that religious cult practice and thought influenced political activities during and after the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.

Among maternal deities of the Greek pantheon, the Mother of the Gods was a paradox. Conflict and resolution were played out symbolically, Munn shows, and the goddess of Lydian tyranny was eventually accepted by the Athenians as the Mother of the Gods and a symbol of their own sovereignty.

In Politics, Money, and Persuasion, distinguished philosopher John Russon offers a new framework for interpreting Plato's The Republic. For Russon, Plato's work is about the distinctive nature of what it is to be a human being and, correspondingly, what is distinctive about the nature of human society. Russon focuses on the realities of our everyday experience to come to profoundly insightful assessments of our human realities: the nature of the city, the nature of knowledge, and the nature of human psychology. Russon's argument concentrates on the ambivalence of logos, which includes reflections on politics and philosophy and their place in human life, how humans have shaped the environment, our interactions with money, the economy, and the pursuit of the good in social and political systems. Politics, Money, and Persuasion offers a deeply personal but also practical kind of philosophical reading of Plato's classic text. It emphasizes the tight connection between the life of city and the life of the soul, demonstrating both the crucial role that human cognitive excellence and psychological health play in political and social life.

Until the 1980s, historical treatments of ancient religion focused mainly on myth, cult and ritual as a way to interpret the mental structures or primary emotions of ancient peoples, but, in the last few decades, a “political turn” in the study of religion has taken hold. This volume serves to diversify our understanding of the political conceptualizations and implementations of religious practice in the ancient Mediterranean region from the 7th Century BCE to the 4th Century CE, in both Greek and Roman contexts. The underlying question taken up here is: in what situations was Greco-Roman religious practice articulated, communicated, and perceived in political contexts, both real and imagined? Written by experts in the fields of archaeology, linguistics, art history, historiography, political science and religion, the chapters of this volume engage the plurality and the diversity of the Greco-Roman religious experience as it receives and negotiates power relations.

One of the most important works of history in Western literature, by the freshest and liveliest of all classical Greek prose authors, Herodotus's Histories is also a key text for the study of ancient Greece and the Persian Empire. Covering a central and widely studied period of Greek history, Book V not only describes the revolt of the east Greeks against their Persian masters, which led to the great Persian Wars of 490–479 BC, but also provides fascinating material about the mainland Greek states in the sixth century BC. This is an up-to-date edition of and commentary on the Greek text of the book, providing extensive help with the Greek, basic historical information and clear maps, as well as lucid and insightful historical and literary interpretation of the text. The volume is suitable for advanced undergraduates, graduate students, teachers and scholars.

A landmark study of ancient Greek and Roman cults, from the nocturnal mysteries at Eleusis to the cults of Dionysus and Mithras. Mystery cults are one of the most intriguing areas of Greek and Roman religion. In the nocturnal mysteries at Eleusis, participants dramatically reenacted the story of Demeter’s loss and recovery of her daughter Persephone; in the Bacchic cult, bands of women ran wild in the Greek countryside to honor Dionysus; in the mysteries of Mithras, men came to understand the nature of the universe and their place within it through frightening initiation ceremonies and astrological teachings. These cults were an important part of life in the ancient Mediterranean world, but their actual practices were shrouded in secrecy. Mystery Cults in the Ancient World makes plentiful use of artistic and archaeological evidence, as well as ancient literature and epigraphy, to reconstruct the sacred rituals and explore their origins. Greek painted pottery, Roman frescoes, inscribed gold tablets from Greek and Southern Italian tombs, and the excavated sites of religious sanctuaries all contribute to our understanding of ancient mystery cults. Not only is this clearly written book a significant contribution to the study of these cults, it is also accessible to a general readership. More than any other book on ancient religion, it allows the reader to understand what it was like to participate in these life-altering religious events.

The work of Thucydides on the Peloponnesian War has not only decisively influenced our notion of history up until the present day; the complexity of his account also constitutes a particular challenge to philological and historical interpretations alike. Besides focusing on the political and military aspects, by virtue of its unpretentious, downright scientific perspective on historical events and their driving forces, this work set standards that have hardly been surpassed since. In the light of the remarkable sobriety with which Thucydides presents historical reality as a natural realm of existence beyond all theological, ethical or ideological embellishments, the history of thought and the hermeneutical implications behind this model of history are equally fascinating. This volume endeavours to explore the nature of the relation between historical reality and literary portrayal in Thucydides' historical work. New insights are provided from different perspectives on the question of how the contemporary 5th-century and the present-day reader is directed by the author as a violent teacher.