Beyond Mysteries: the Local World of Ancient Eleusis: (199 Religions in the Graeco-Roman World)

Situated at the crossroads between Athens, Boiotia, Megara, and Salamis, Eleusis was exposed to the changing fortunes in a connected world. From the Athenian perspective, Eleusis marked the fringes of their territory. From everybody else’s point of view, it was a destination or a gateway: to Athens, the Saronic region and the Aegean, Central Greece, or the Peloponnese. In the midst of these itineraries, the Eleusinians had their own ideas about the world writ-large. This volume delves into the local horizon of the site, its agents and stakeholders, the stories that moved them, and the places where interactions took place.

Table of Contents:
Preface List of Figures and Tables Contributors 1 Beyond Mysteries: Introduction to the Local Horizon of Ancient Eleusis  Hans Beck and Sebastian Scharff Part 1: Settings and Surroundings 2 Eleusis in Its Economic and Environmental Setting  Anton Bonnier 3 Along the Mystery Highway: Eleusis and Thebes in the Archaic Age  Hans Beck 4 Between Argos and Athens: Eleusis as a Contested Space  Jeremy McInerney Part 2: Saronic Dimensions 5 Late Bronze and Early Iron Age Eleusis in a Saronic Context: Political Geography and Ritual Practice  Sarah C. Murray 6 Eleusis in the Gulf of Distorting Mirrors: Demeter’s Look-Alikes and Her Saronic Reflections  Irene Polinskaya 7 Between Locality and Diffusion: Εleusis in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter and the First-Fruits Decree  Christy Constantakopoulou Part 3: Sites and Cults 8 Healing across the Gulf: Eleusis and the Asklepios Cult  Roy van Wijk 9 Between Προσβατήριος and Πατρός: Poseidon at and around Eleusis  Shannon M. Dunn 10 The Eleusinian Deities in Ionia  Julietta Steinhauer 11 Votive Reliefs from Eleusis in a Local, Regional, and Transregional Perspective  Anja Klöckner Part 4: Civic Life 12 Listmaking, Accountability, and Gender in Eleusinian Myth and History  Athena Kirk 13 Eleusis as a Place of Competition: the Eleusinian Games  Sebastian Scharff 14 The Public Enactments of the Deme Eleusis: between Mysteries and Military  Stephen Lambert Part 5: Stories and Myths 15 Centrality Reconsidered: Eleusis, Athens, and Mythotopography  Angela Ganter 16 Eleusis and Athens at War: Myth, Conflict, and Identity  Oliver Grote 17 Eleusis, Theseus and the Burial of the ‘Seven against Thebes’  Christoph Michels 18 The Profanation of the Mysteries in the Attic Orators: between Rhetorical Use and Historical Evidence  Priscilla Gontijo Leite Part 6: Afterlives 19 Sacred Diplomacy: Eleusis as a Mediator between the Athenian Polis and the Roman Empire  Margarita Sardak 20 Plutarch’s Eleusis  Chandra Giroux 21 Eleusis at the Intersection of Antiquity and Modernity: the mystēria, Altered Consciousness, and the Neuroscience of Transformational Experience  Michelle Zerba

About the Author :
Hans Beck is Professor and Chair of Greek History at the University of Münster. He has published widely on local constellations in Central Greece and the Peloponnese, including Localism and the Ancient Greek City-State (Chicago, 2020). He is the recipient of the Anneliese Maier Research Prize and an Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Sebastian Scharff holds a postdoctoral research fellowship in the Department of Humanities at the University of Trento. He has published extensively on Greek religion, interstate relations and ancient athletics, including Eid und Außenpolitik (Steiner, 2016) and Hellenistic Athletes (CUP, 2024).