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Mythology and Religion: Rome

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

I. Primary Readings. All readings may be done in English.

A. Greek Myth

• Aeschylus, Oresteia, Prometheus Bound, Suppliants
• Euripides, Medea, Hippolytus, Bacchae
• Hesiod, Theogony
• Homer, Iliad, Odyssey
• Homeric Hymns to Apollo, Demeter, Hermes, Aphrodite
• Sophocles, Antigone, Oedipus Tyrannus, Oedipus at Colonus, Trachinian Women

• Cicero, De Divinatione, De Natura Deorum
• Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, Bk 1
• Ovid, Fasti
• Vergil, Aeneid
• Beard, Mary, John North, Simon Price, Religions of Rome, v. II, A Sourcebook (Cambridge 1999).

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: Roman Religion

A. Required

• Beard, Mary, John North, Simon Price, Religions of Rome, vol. I, A History (Cambridge 1998).

• Beard, Mary, John North, edd., Pagan Priests (London 1990).
• Ogilvie, R.M., The Romans and their Gods in the Age of Augustus (New York 1969).
• Scullard, H.H., Festivals and Ceremonies of the Roman Republic (London 1981).
• Turcan, R., The Cults of the Roman Empire (Oxford 1996).
• Warde Fowler, W., The Roman Festivals (London 1899).
• Warde Fowler, W., The Religious Experience of the Roman People (London 1911).

IV. Topics in Roman Religion. Choose three items (spanning two different categories) in consultation with your advisor.

A. Republican Religion

• Beard, Mary, "The Sexual Status of the Vestal Virgins," JRS 70 (1980), 12-27.
• Beard, Mary, "The Roman and the foreign: the cult of the "Great Mother" in imperial Rome," in N. Thomas and C. Humphrey, edd., Shamanism, History, and the State (Ann Arbor 1994) 164-90.
• Gruen, E., "The Bacchanalian Affair," in Studies in Greek Culture and Roman Policy (Berkeley 1990), 34-78.
• Linderski, J., "The augural law," Aufstieg und Niedergang der r?mischen Welt II.16.3 (1986), 2146-312.
• Parke, H.W., Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy (London 1984).
• Scheid, John, "The Religious Roles of Roman Women," in A History of Women: from Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints, ed. P. Schmitt Pantel (Cambridge MA 1992), 377-408.
• Spaeth, Barbette Stanley, The Roman Goddess Ceres (Austin 1996).
• Vermaseren, M. J., Cybele and Attis: the Myth and the Cult (London 1977).

• Ferguson, J., The Religions of the Roman Empire (Cornell 1970).
• Fishwick, D., The Imperial Cult in the Latin West (Etudes préliminaires sur les religions orientales dans l1empire romain, Leiden 1961).
• Potter, David, Prophets and Emperors: Human and Divine Authority from Augustus to Theodosius (Cambridge MA and London 1994).
• Price, Simon, Rituals and Power: the Roman Imperial Cult in Asia Minor (Cambridge 1984).
• Versnel, H., Triumphus (London 1970).
• Weinstock, S., Divus Iulius (Oxford 1971).

• Beck, Roger, "The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of their Genesis," JRS 88 (1998), 115-128.
• Cumont, F., The Mysteries of Mithra (New York 1956).
• Takács, Sarolta A., Isis and Serapis in the Roman World (Leiden and New York 1995).
• Ulansey, David, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World (Oxford 1989).
• Vermaseren, M.J. and C.C. van Essen, The Excavations in the Mithraeum of the Chruch of Santa Prisca in Rome (Leiden 1965).
• Witt, R.E., Isis in the Ancient World (Johns Hopkins 1997).

• Chuvin, Pierre, A Chronicle of the Last Pagans (Harvard 1990).
• Fowden, G., "The Pagan Holy Man in Late Antiquity," JHS 102 (1982), 33-59.
• Lowe, R., Pagans and Christians (New York 1986).
• Salzman, M., On Roman Time: the Codex-Calendar of 354 and the Rhythms of Urban Life in Late Antiquity (Berkeley 1990).

• Faraone, C. A. and D. Obbink, edd., Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion (Oxford 1991).
• Fowden, G., The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind (Cambridge 1986).
• Gager, J.G., Curse Tablets and Binding Spells (Oxford 1992).
• Luck, G., Arcana Mundi (Johns Hopkins 1985).

• Bremmer, J. and N.M. Horsfall, Roman Myth and Mythography (London 1987).
• Feeney, D., Literature and Religion at Rome: Cultures, Contexts and Beliefs (Cambridge 1998).
• Feeney, D., The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition (Oxford 1991).
• Gale, M., Myth and Poetry in Lucretius (Cambridge 1994).
• Galinsky, K., Aeneas, Sicily, Rome (Princeton 1969).
• Hickson, F.V., Roman Prayer Language: Livy and the Aeneid of Vergil (Stuttgart, 1993, Beiträge zur Altertumskunde, Band 30).
• Levene, D.S., Religion in Livy (London 1993).
• Miller, J., Ovid1s Elegiac Festivals (Frankfurt am Main and New York 1991).
• Whitaker, R., Myth and Personal Experience in Roman Love-Elegy (G?ttingen 1983).

• Dumezil, G., Archaic Roman Religion, 2 vols. (Chicago 1970).
• Liebeschutz, J.H.W.G., Continuity and Change in Roman Religion (Oxford 1979) and John North, "Conservatism and change in Roman religion," Papers of the British School at Rome 44 (1976), 1-12.
• Rives, James, Religion and Authority in Roman Carthage from Augustus to Constantine (Oxford 1995).
• Zanker, Paul, The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Ann Arbor 1988).