Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Beyond the polis: rethinking Greek Religion
- Chapter 2 Parmeniscus’ journey: tracing religious visuality in word and wood
- Chapter 3 On tyrant property turned ritual object: political power and sacred symbols in ancient Greece and in social anthropology
- Chapter 4 Rethinking boundaries: the place of magic in the religious culture of ancient Greece
- Chapter 5 The ‘local’ and the ‘universal’ reconsidered: Olympia, dedications and the religious culture of ancient Greece
- Chapter 6 ‘The sex appeal of the inorganic’: seeing, touching and knowing the divine during the Second Sophistic
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter 3 - On tyrant property turned ritual object: political power and sacred symbols in ancient Greece and in social anthropology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Figures
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 Beyond the polis: rethinking Greek Religion
- Chapter 2 Parmeniscus’ journey: tracing religious visuality in word and wood
- Chapter 3 On tyrant property turned ritual object: political power and sacred symbols in ancient Greece and in social anthropology
- Chapter 4 Rethinking boundaries: the place of magic in the religious culture of ancient Greece
- Chapter 5 The ‘local’ and the ‘universal’ reconsidered: Olympia, dedications and the religious culture of ancient Greece
- Chapter 6 ‘The sex appeal of the inorganic’: seeing, touching and knowing the divine during the Second Sophistic
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
For it is only by repetition that signs and practices cease to be perceived or remarked; that they are so habituated, so deeply inscribed in everyday routine, that they may no longer be seen as forms of control – or seen at all. It is only then that they come to be (un)spoken of as custom, (dis)regarded as convention – and only disinterred, if at all, on ceremonial occasions, when they are symbolically invoked as eternal verities.
Jean Comaroff and John ComaroffINTRODUCTION
In the first two chapters of this book I referred variously to ancient Greek religion as a ‘symbolic system’, a ‘language’ which allows those fluent in it to ‘make sense’ of the world they inhabit. The model of polis religion draws on such a conception of ancient Greek religion insofar as it posits the existence of religion as a more or less coherent symbolic order, which maps onto the structures of Greek society. I turn next to an investigation of this notion.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Rethinking Greek Religion , pp. 55 - 89Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012