Greek and Roman Festivals: Content, Meaning, and Practice PDF
Preview Greek and Roman Festivals: Content, Meaning, and Practice
GREEK AND ROMAN FESTIVALS This page intentionally left blank Greek and Roman Festivals Content, Meaning, and Practice Editedby J. RASMUS BRANDT and JON W. IDDENG 1 3 GreatClarendonStreet,Oxford,OX26DP, UnitedKingdom OxfordUniversityPressisadepartmentoftheUniversityofOxford. ItfurtherstheUniversity’sobjectiveofexcellenceinresearch,scholarship, andeducationbypublishingworldwide.Oxfordisaregisteredtrademarkof OxfordUniversityPressintheUKandincertainothercountries #OxfordUniversityPress2012 Themoralrightsoftheauthorshavebeenasserted FirstEditionpublishedin2012 Impression:1 Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthispublicationmaybereproduced,storedin aretrievalsystem,ortransmitted,inanyformorbyanymeans,withoutthe priorpermissioninwritingofOxfordUniversityPress,orasexpresslypermitted bylaw,bylicenceorundertermsagreedwiththeappropriatereprographics rightsorganization.Enquiriesconcerningreproductionoutsidethescopeofthe aboveshouldbesenttotheRightsDepartment,OxfordUniversityPress,atthe addressabove Youmustnotcirculatethisworkinanyotherform andyoumustimposethissameconditiononanyacquirer BritishLibraryCataloguinginPublicationData Dataavailable LibraryofCongressCataloginginPublicationData Dataavailable ISBN978–0–19–969609–3 PrintedinGreatBritainby MPGBooksGroup,BodminandKing’sLynn Acknowledgements The present publication collects eleven out of fourteen papers deliv- ered at the international seminar What Is a Festival?, 19–21 May 2006,atRosendalBaronyintheHardangerfjord,southofBergen,on the western coast of Norway. To this collection has been added a twelfthonebyMaryBeard,areworkedversionofanarticlepublished seventeen years ago in an anthropological book on shamanism and mostlyunknown to classicalscholars andstudents alike (see below). Theeditorsregretthelongproductiontimeduetoaseriesofunfore- seencircumstancesduringtheperiodofcollectingandpreparingthe typescripts.fortheprinter. Theediting of all typescripts,except that ofMaryBeard,wasfinishedbyspring2010. The seminar was born out of the preparations for a cross-disci- plinary project Ancient Festivals, which aimed to foster and sustain thevulnerablefieldofClassicsinNorwayinthewakeoftheBologna reform.Though a lack of funding ultimatelyled to theproject being putonice,itisoursincerehopethattheideasputforwardduringthe project’s inception will one day be picked up and brought forward again, as the subject opens up interesting collaborations between archaeologists, historians, philologists, scholars in ancient religions, anthropologists,andsociologists. This cross-disciplinary collaboration also laid the foundation for theseminarwheretheparticipantswereaskedtoreviewtheclassical synchronic description of ancient festivals and look at the festivals’ origins, as well as their social function and meaning, from both a synchronicandadiachronicpointofview.Itwasalsotheintentionof the organizers to bring in scholars not only from different areas of classical research, but also from different countries, so that various researchtraditionscouldberepresented.Amongthefourteenspeak- ersthefollowingcountrieswererepresented:Denmark,France,Ger- many, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK,andtheUSA. The seminar was made possible thanks to contributions from the University of Oslo and the foundations Stiftelsen Thomas Fearnley, Heddy og Nils Astrup and Sigval Bergesens d.y. og hustru Nanki’s almennyttige stiftelse. We are extremely grateful to all financers and vi Acknowledgements hope that the present publication can be considered as a small, but visible,tokenofmoneywellspent. We should further like to present our special thanks to Professor Emeritusinarthistory,PerJonasNordhagen,fromtheUniversityof Bergen,whogavetheparticipantsanunforgettabletourofNorway’s medieval capital on the day of their arrival in Bergen. Furthermore, we are very grateful to the professional and hospitable staff of the RosendalBarony,whodidtheirutmosttomaketheparticipantsfeel at home. Our thanks are also extended to Stig Oppedal and Alex Chepstow-Lusty,whodiligentlycopy-editedallthepaperswrittenby non-native English speakers. For any mistakes which remain the editorstaketheblame. A special thanks goes to Mary Beard, Cambridge University. She was originally invited to the seminar, but was not able to come due to other commitments. However, in an attempt to improve the balance between the Greek and the Roman contributions in this publication, she, at short notice, accepted to rework an article pre- viously published by N. Thomas and C. Humphrey (eds.). Shaman- ism, History, and the State, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994, 164–90. We are much indebted to both The University of Michigan Press for letting us publish this reworked edition of the article, and to Oxford University Press for accepting it. In the event what we publish here is significantly different from the earlier ver- sion,andcoversawiderrangeoftopicsthataddresstheconcernsof this volume. Sincere thanks go to the staff of Oxford University Press for their professional handling of this publication from our first preliminary request to the final product. These expressions of thanks are also extended to OUP’s two anonymous peer-reviewers, who both made veryvaluablesuggestionstoimprovethequalityofthepublication.In particularweshouldliketothankMsHilaryO’Shea,who,amongthe many editors we requested, was the one to answer and support this project at an early stage when it was only a castle in the air without anyfinancialfoundation. Last,butnotleast,weshouldliketothankalltheparticipants,who allcontributedinmakingtheseminarasuccessfulevent,inparticular to those who had the time and energy to rewrite their papers into what makes up this book. We were very touched by their many expressions of thanks afterwards. One participant even returned home and boasted that he had been to Paradise, and in one way he Acknowledgements vii was closer to the truth than he could have imagined; on leaving Bergen, heading south towards Rosendal, we actually drove through avillagecalledParadis. J.RasmusBrandtandJonW.Iddeng Oslo,June2011 This page intentionally left blank Contents Abbreviations xi ListofFigures xii NotesonContributors xv Introduction 1 SomeConceptsofAncientFestivals J.RasmusBrandtandJonW.Iddeng 1. WhatisaGraeco-RomanFestival? 11 APolytheticApproach JonW.Iddeng 2. AncientViewsonFestivals 39 ACaseofNearEasternMediterraneanKoine WalterBurkert 3. GreekFestivalsandtheRitualProcess 53 AnInquiryintotheOlympia-cum-Heraia andtheGreatDionysia SynnøvedesBouvrie 4. PelopsJoinstheParty 95 TransformationsofaHeroCultwithinthe FestivalatOlympia GunnelEkroth 5. ContentandForm 139 SomeConsiderationsonGreekFestivalsandArchaeology J.RasmusBrandt 6. ThePoliticalProcessinthePublicFestival 199 ThePanathenaicFestivalofAthens JeniferNeils 7. TalkingofFestivals 217 TheStatusofChorusesandChoregia ScottScullion
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