Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion (Classic Reprint) - Tapa blanda

Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion is not, despite the title, an introduction to Greek Religion. Beginners to the subject should look elsewhere, first, and return to this book later. Instead this is a study of the foundations (or alternatively depths) of Greek religion. It is not an easy read, nor intended to be, but it is an undeniable classic and amazing work of scholarship.

Most of us are aware of the classical stories of Greek religion, Zeus, the minotaur, wax wings etc. Instead in this book Jane Ellen Harrison focuses on the rituals, mysteries and other features of the older religion that gave birth to these myths. Rather than godly beings consuming ambrosia on top of a mountain these are beliefs of ghosts, demons and potentially vengeful spirits which must be placated, or disaster will occur. As Harrison writes "Great things in literature, Greek plays for example, I most enjoy when behind their bright splendours I see moving darker and older shapes." This work provides insights, showing us the darker, older shapes moving behind classical Greek religion. Once you understand it you will not see the old stories in the same light ever again.

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Introduction to investigate. Had ritual received its due share of attention, it had not remained so long neglected. I would guard against misapprehension. Literature as a starting-point for investigation, and especially the poems of Homer, I am compelled to disallow; yet literature is really my goal. I have tried to understand primitive rites, not from love of their archaism, nor yet wholly from a single-minded devotion to science, but with the definite hope that I might come to a better understanding of some forms of Greek poetry. Religious convention compelled the tragic poets to draw their plots from traditional mythology, from stories whose religious content and motive were already inH omers days obsolete. A knowledge of, a certain sympathy with, the milieu of this primitive material is one step to the realization of its final form in tragedy. It is then in the temple of literature, if but as a hewer of wood and drawer of water, that I still hope to serve. As the evidence to be set before the reader is necessarily somewhat complex in detail, and the arguments of the successive chapters closely interdependent, it may be well at the outset to state, as simply as may be, the conclusions at which I have arrived, and to summarize briefly the steps of the discussion. In Chapter I. it is established that the Greeks themselves in classical times recognized two forms of ritual, Olympian and Chthonic. It is further seen that the characteristic ritual of Homeric days was of the kind known to them as Olympian. Sacrifice inH omer takes the form of an offering to the god to induce his favour. I ts formulary is do ut des. Moreover the sacrificial banquet to which the god is bidden is shared by the worshipper. In sharp contradistinction to this cheerful sacrificial feast, when we examine the supposed festival of Zeus at A thens, theD iasia, we find rites of quite other
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)