The Athenian Adonia in Context : The Adonis Festival as Cultural Practice

by: Reitzammer, L.

The Athenian Adonia in Context
The Adonis Festival as Cultural Practice

By Laurialan Reitzammer

Series: Wisconsin Studies in Classics

Description
Ancient sources and modern scholars have often represented the Athenian festival of Adonis as a marginal and faintly ridiculous private women's ritual. Seeds were planted each year in pots and, once sprouted, carried to the rooftops, where women lamented the death of Aphrodite's youthful consort Adonis. Laurialan Reitzammer resourcefully examines a wide array of surviving evidence about the Adonia, arguing for its symbolic importance in fifth- and fourth-century Athenian culture as an occasion for gendered commentary on mainstream Athenian practices.

Reitzammer reveals correlations of the Adonia to Athenian wedding rituals and civic funeral oration and provides illuminating evidence that the festival was a significant cultural template for such diverse works as Aristophanes' drama Lysistrata and Plato's dialogue Phaedrus. Her fresh approach offers a timely contribution to studies of the ways gender and sexuality intersect with religion and ritual in ancient Greece.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations and References
Introduction
Adonis and the Adonia: Trends in Representation, Ancient and Modern
Weddings: Stairway to Heaven
Funerals: Aristophanes's Adôniazousai
Philosophy: Gardening for Fun in Plato's Phaedrus
Conclusion
Figures
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Index Locorum

Reviews
"Uncovers remarkable and unsuspected depths in the works of such figures as Aristophanes and Plato. This is the most compelling and sophisticated study available of any single Athenian ritual and the most challenging to received notions about the wider role of religion in city-state society." —Richard P. Martin, Standford University

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