The following sample list offers choices of required readings for the M.A. in Classical Antiquities, Special Field: Greek Mythology and Religion. Students are expected to consult with their advisor before choosing the readings, which will form the basis of their special field examination.

I. Primary Readings. All readings may be done in English. Note that the list assumes that you will devote most of your effort to literary sources. If you wish to devote substantial time to art and archaeology as sources for myth and religion, you may discuss modifications with your advisor.

• Aeschylus, Oresteia, Prometheus Bound, Suppliants
• Apollodorus, Library
• Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica
• Euripides, Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, Hecuba, Electra, Iphigenia in Tauris, Bacchae
• Hesiod, Theogony
• Homer, Iliad, Odyssey
• Homeric Hymns to Apollo, Demeter, Hermes, Aphrodite
• Pindar, Olympian 1, Pythian 8, Nemean 6, Isthmian 8
• Plutarch, Theseus
• Sophocles, Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus, Ajax, Electra, Philoctetes, Trachinian Women

II. Introduction: Mythology

A. Required

• Kirk, Geoffrey, The Nature of Greek Myths (Penguin 1974).
• Kirk, Geoffrey, Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and Other Cultures (Berkeley 1970).

B. Choose at least one.

• Bremmer, Jan, Interpretations of Greek Mythology (Totawa, NJ 1986).
• Edmunds, Lowell, ed., Approaches to Greek Myth (Johns Hopkins 1990).
• Graf, Fritz, Greek Mythology (Johns Hopkins 1993).

III. Introduction: Religion

A. Required

• Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion (Harvard 1985).

B. Choose at least one.

• Bremmer, Jan, Greek Religion [Greece & Rome New Surveys in the Classics 24] (Oxford 1994).
• Mikalson, Jon, Athenian Popular Religion (Chapel Hill 1983).
• Mikalson, Jon, Religion in Hellenistic Athens (Berkeley 1998).
• Parker, Robert, Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford 1996).

IV. Cults, Forms of Worship, and Issues. Choose two, or one with follow-up to be arranged with your advisor.

• Burkert, Walter, Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (Berkeley 1983).
• Burkert, Walter, Ancient Mystery Cults (Harvard 1987) and George Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton 1961).
• Detienne, Marcel, and Jean-Pierre Vernant, eds., The Cuisine of Sacrifice Among the Greeks (Chicago 1989).
• Foley, Helene, The Homeric Hymn to Demeter: Translation, Commentary, and Interpretive Essays (Princeton 1994).
• Kearns, Emily, The Heroes of Attica (Oxford 1989).
• Kurtz, Donna and John Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (Cornell 1971).
• Larson, Jennifer, Greek Heroine Cults (Wisconsin 1995).
• Otto, Walter, Dionysus: Myth and Cult (Indiana 1965) and Thomas H. Carpenter and Christopher A. Faraone, eds., Masks of Dionysus (Cornell 1993).
• Parke, H.W., Festivals of the Athenians (Cornell 1977) and Erika Simon, Festivals of Attica: An Archaeological Commentary (Wisconsin 1983).
• Parker, Robert, Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion (Oxford 1983).

V. Myth and Religion in Greek Literature. Choose two, or one with follow-up, in consultation with your advisor.

• Bowie, A.M., Aristophanes: Myth, Ritual and Comedy (Cambridge 1993).
• Clauss, James J. and Sarah Iles Johnston, eds., Medea: Essays on Medea in Myth, Literature, Philosophy and Art (Princeton 1997).
• March, Jennifer, The Creative Poet: Studies on the Treatment of Myths in Greek Poetry (London 1987).
• Mikalson, Jon, Honor Thy Gods: Popular Religion in Greek Tragedy (Chapel Hill 1991).
• Nagy, Gregory, The Best of the Achaeans: Concepts of the Hero in Archaic Greek Poetry (Johns Hopkins 1979).
• Page, Denys L., Folktales in Homerıs Odyssey (Harvard 1973).
• Segal, Charles, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripidesı Bacchae (Princeton 1982).

VI. "Big ideas" books. Choose two, or one with follow-up, in consultation with your advisor.

• Burkert, Walter, Structure and History in Greek Mythology and Ritual (Berkeley 1979).
• Buxton, Richard, Imaginary Greece: The Contexts of Mythology (Cambridge 1994).
• Gordon, R.L., ed., Myth, Religion and Society: Structuralist Essays by M. Detienne, L. Gernet, J.-P. Vernant, and P. Vidal-Naquet (Cambridge 1981).
• Lloyd-Jones, H., The Justice of Zeus (Berkeley 1971).
• Nietzsche, F., The Birth of Tragedy, along with M.S. Silk and J.P. Stern, Nietzsche on Tragedy (Cambridge 1981).
• Nilsson, Martin, The Mycenean Origins of Greek Mythology (Cambridge 1932).
• Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Sours and Belief in Immortality Among the Greeks (New York 1925).
• Seaford, Richard, Reciprocity and Ritual: Homer and Tragedy in the Developing City-State (Oxford 1994).

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