- 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
Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans
Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans
- Chapter:
- (p.81) 4 Metamorphoses of Gods into Animals and Humans
- Source:
- The Gods of Ancient Greece
- Author(s):
Jan N. Bremmer
Andrew Erskine
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
Richard Buxton discuss five examples of narratives which relate in some way to divine metamorphosis, whether as animals or humans, for the purpose of presenting themselves to mortals. The narratives studied are the following: Athena’s encounter with Telemachos in the Odyssey, Apollo in the Hymn to Apollo, Thetis’ relationship with Achilles, Dionysos in the Bacchae and Zeus’ serial metamorphoses in pursuit of his erotic ambitions. After drawing conclusions about each of these metamorphoses and epiphanies, Buxton concludes by considering what light this material might shed on the old problem of how far Greek religion was essentially anthropomorphic.
Keywords: Anthropomorphism, Metamorphosis, Epiphany, Animals, Athena, Dionysos, Thetis, Zeus, Apollo
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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
