The Sacred and the Feminine in Ancient Greece

In Classical Greece women were almost entirely excluded from public life. Yet the feminine was accorded a central place in religious thought and ritual. The public symbolism of religion included powerful figures like Hera, Artemis and Athene; female worshippers often breached the boundary between public and private space; and both men and women negotiated gendered identities through their performance of ritual. This volume is a lively and colorful exploration of the ways in which religion and ritual reveal women's importance in the Greekpolis, showing how ideologies about female roles and behavior were both endorsed and challenged in the realm of the sacred.