- Title Pages
- Preface
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction the Greek Gods in the Twentieth Century
- 1 What is A Greek God?
- 2 Canonizing the Pantheon: The Dodekatheon in Greek Religion and its Origins
- 3 Gods in Greek Inscriptions: Some Methodological Questions
- 4 Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans
- 5 Sacrificing to the Gods: Ancient Evidence and Modern Interpretations
- 6 Getting in Contact: Concepts of Human—Divine Encounter in Classical Greek Art
- 7 New Statues for Old Gods
- 8 Zeus at Olympia
- 9 Zeus in Aeschylus: The Factor of Monetization
- 10 Hephaistos Sweats or How to Construct an Ambivalent God
- 11 Transforming Artemis: From the Goddess of the Outdoors to City Goddess
- 12 Herakles Between Gods and Heroes
- 13 Identities of Gods and Heroes: Athenian Garden Sanctuaries and Gendered Rites of Passage
- 14 Early Greek Theology: God as Nature and Natural Gods
- 15 Gods in early Greek Historiography
- 16 Gods in Apulia
- 17 Lucian's Gods: Lucian's Understanding of the Divine
- 18 The Gods in the Greek Novel
- 19 Reading Pausanias: Cults of the Gods and Representation of the Divine
- 20 Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells
- 21 <i>Homo Fictor Deorum Est</i>: Envisioning the Divine in Late Antique Divinatory Spells
- 22 The Gods in Later Orphism
- 23 Christian Apologists and Greek Gods
- 24 The Materiality of God's Image: The Olympian Zeus and Ancient Christology
- 25 The Greek Gods in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century German and British Scholarship
- Epilogue
- Index
The Gods in the Greek Novel
The Gods in the Greek Novel
- Chapter:
- (p.362) 18 The Gods in the Greek Novel
- Source:
- The Gods of Ancient Greece
- Author(s):
Jan N. Bremmer
Andrew Erskine
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
If we look, in the ‘ideal novel’, at the frequency of mention of significant named divinities (such as Aphrodite, Dionysos, Artemis, Zeus, Isis), as well as of theos and theoi in general, we find that novels are characteristically interested in only one or two of them – and for specific reasons. At an extreme, Heliodorus is not really interested in any god specifically. Yet there is a real sense of piety supported by the novel, even in the unlikely hands of Achilles Tatius, and the reader is, in some novels at least, meant to raise questions about the ‘hand of god’ in the action. The acid test is the efficacy of prayer in the text, where the divinity can sometimes respond in delayed and mysterious ways. The novel is a useful document for getting inside ancient piety.
Keywords: Novel, Heliodorus, Achilles Tatius, Prayer, Piety, Aphrodie, Dionysos, Artemis, Zeus, Isis
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- Title Pages
- Preface
- Illustrations
- Notes on Contributors
- Abbreviations
- Introduction the Greek Gods in the Twentieth Century
- 1 What is A Greek God?
- 2 Canonizing the Pantheon: The Dodekatheon in Greek Religion and its Origins
- 3 Gods in Greek Inscriptions: Some Methodological Questions
- 4 Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans
- 5 Sacrificing to the Gods: Ancient Evidence and Modern Interpretations
- 6 Getting in Contact: Concepts of Human—Divine Encounter in Classical Greek Art
- 7 New Statues for Old Gods
- 8 Zeus at Olympia
- 9 Zeus in Aeschylus: The Factor of Monetization
- 10 Hephaistos Sweats or How to Construct an Ambivalent God
- 11 Transforming Artemis: From the Goddess of the Outdoors to City Goddess
- 12 Herakles Between Gods and Heroes
- 13 Identities of Gods and Heroes: Athenian Garden Sanctuaries and Gendered Rites of Passage
- 14 Early Greek Theology: God as Nature and Natural Gods
- 15 Gods in early Greek Historiography
- 16 Gods in Apulia
- 17 Lucian's Gods: Lucian's Understanding of the Divine
- 18 The Gods in the Greek Novel
- 19 Reading Pausanias: Cults of the Gods and Representation of the Divine
- 20 Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells
- 21 <i>Homo Fictor Deorum Est</i>: Envisioning the Divine in Late Antique Divinatory Spells
- 22 The Gods in Later Orphism
- 23 Christian Apologists and Greek Gods
- 24 The Materiality of God's Image: The Olympian Zeus and Ancient Christology
- 25 The Greek Gods in Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century German and British Scholarship
- Epilogue
- Index
