Explores 'polis religion' - a leading paradigm in current studies on ancient Greek religion - and shows ways of moving beyond it.
Introduction; 1. Beyond the polis: rethinking Greek religion; 2. Parmeniscus' journey: tracing religious visuality in word and wood; 3. On tyrant property turned ritual object: political power and sacred symbols in ancient Greece and in social anthropology; 4. Rethinking boundaries: the place of magic within the religious culture of ancient Greece; 5. The 'local' and the 'panhellenic' reconsidered: Olympia, dedications and the religious culture of ancient Greece; 6. 'The sex appeal of the inorganic': seeing, touching and knowing the divine during the Second Sophistic; Conclusion.
Julia Kindt is Senior Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney. She has a doctorate in Classics from the University of Cambridge and was a Harper Schmitt Fellow, a Catherine Graham Fellow and a Collegiate Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago. She has published widely on ancient Greek religion, oracles and divination, and Greco-Roman historiography.