...Demeter, Isis, Vesta, and Cybele: studies in Greek and Roman religion...

[icymist]

This collection of studies is a Festschrift in honour of Giulia Sfameni Gasparro. The first part consists of four studies devoted to various examples of the goddess Demeter. The first text, “A brave netherworld: the Orphic Hades as utopia,” written by Alberto Bernabé (10-23), aims at portraying the Orphic representation of life in the kingdom of Persephone. The basis of the analysis are gold tablets from, among other places, the area of Magna Graecia; the fragments of the poems ascribed to Orpheus; a few fragments from Plato and other authors; and ceramics. The gathered material was analysed by the author on two levels, individual and social. He points out that in the case of the social sphere the thiasos is the main focus. Its members took part in the same rite, which stems from the fact that the privileged destiny was available only to the chosen ones. Bernabé concludes that, since the Orphics assumed that there was no true life in this world, they created a utopian vision of the future world, which was free from any human indispositions. Hades, in contrast to its depiction in Homer, appears to be a utopian world of truth and equality.

http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-12-15.html

[Ilsa]

1. Thank you or posting. I'm going to

do a little reading tomorrow! Looking forward to it.