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 uncovers 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.

About the Author
Laurialan Reitzammer is an assistant professor of classics at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

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

"[This] study of the Adonia as offering cultural critiques played out in specific texts is a major innovation. . . . A model for new readings of other seemingly marginal rites."-Journal of Hellenic Studies



Book Information
ISBN 9780299308247
Author Laurialan Reitzammer
Format Paperback
Page Count 248
Imprint University of Wisconsin Press
Publisher University of Wisconsin Press
Weight(grams) 393g
Dimensions(mm) 229mm * 152mm * 13mm