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Mythology and Religion: Greece

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.

• 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).

• 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).

• 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).

• 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).

• 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 Homer1s Odyssey (Harvard 1973).
• Segal, Charles, Dionysiac Poetics and Euripides1 Bacchae (Princeton 1982).

• 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).