Giulia Sfameni Gasparro

Attilio Mastrocinque

Concetta Giuffrè Scibona

Foreign cults of female divinities were often accepted among different cultures and female cults were often reshaped after new models. The transcultural nature of many goddesses and the related problems are at the core of this book, which is dedicated to a prominent scholar in this field, G. Sfameni Gasparro. Social, political and cultural factors are especially taken into account in order to explain different iconographies, names, and kinds of worship which were adopted for goddesses in different areas and times. The multifaceted nature of many female cults is focussed thanks to different methodologies, according to the topics which are investigated.

Studies in Greek and Roman Religion in Honour of Giulia Sfameni Gasparro

Demeter, Isis, Vesta, and Cybele

Bona Dea and the Cults of Roman Women

Attilio Mastrocinque examines the intriguing link between magic and Gnosticism. There were two main reasons why Christian thinkers identified Gnosticism with magic: the fact that the roots of Gnosticism lay in the Hellenistic Judaism influenced by the Chaldeans and the Magi, and the need felt by orthodox Christians to distinguish themselves from Christian Gnostics by proving that the latter were magicians.

From Jewish Magic to Gnosticism

Sophia Papaioannou

Patricia A. Johnston

This volume brings together a variety of approaches to the different ways in which the role of animals was understood in ancient Greco-Roman myth and religion, across a period of several centuries, from Preclassical Greece to Late Antique Rome. Animals in Greco-Roman antiquity were thought to be intermediaries between men and gods, and they played a pivotal role in sacrificial rituals and divination, the foundations of pagan religion. The studies in the first part of the volume examine the role of the animals in sacrifice and divination. The second part explores the similarities between animals, on the one hand, and men and gods, on the other. Indeed, in antiquity, the behaviour of several animals was perceived to mirror human behaviour, while the selection of the various animals as sacrificial victims to specific deities often was determined on account of some peculiar habit that echoed a special attribute of the particular deity. The last part of this volume is devoted to the study of animal metamorphosis, and to this end a number of myths that associate various animals with transformation are examined from a variety of perspectives.

Attilio Mastrocinque

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