Tragedy, Ritual and Money in Ancient Greece

Richard Seaford is Emeritus Professor of Ancient Greek at the University of Exeter. He is the author of numerous papers and books on ancient Greek texts from Homer to the New Testament, among which are Money and the Early Greek Mind: Homer, Philosophy, Tragedy (Cambridge, 2004) and Cosmology and the Polis: The Social Construction of Space and Time in the Tragedies of Aeschylus (Cambridge, 2012). He has a particular interest in uncovering the relationship between the economy, ritual, philosophy, and drama. He is currently completing a historical comparison of early Greek with early Indian thought. He has been a Fellow of the National Humanities Center (USA), a Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and Honorary President of the British Classical Association. His research has been funded by the Leverhulme Foundation and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. Rrobert Bostock was awarded a Ph.D. in Classics from the University of Exeter in 2007. He is an Adjunct Associate Lecturer at the University of New England, Australia.

Foreword; Part I. Tragedy: General: 1. Homeric and tragic sacrifice; 2. Dionsysos as destroyer of the household: Homer, tragedy and the Polis; 3. Dionysos, money and drama; 4. Tragic money; 5. Tragic tyranny; 6. Aeschylus and the Unity of Opposites; Part II. Performance and the Mysteries: 7. The 'Hyporchema' of Pratinas; 8. The politics of the mystic; 9. Immortality, salvation and the elements; 10. Sophocles and the mysteries; Part III. Tragedy and Death Ritual: 11. The last bath of Agamemnon; 12. The destruction of limits in Sophocles' Electra; Part IV. Tragedy and Marriage: 13. The tragic wedding; 14. The structural problems of marriage in Euripides; Part V. New Testament: 15. 1 Corinthians 13.12: 'Through A Glass Darkly'; 16. Thunder, lightning and earthquake in the Bacchae and The Acts of The Apostles; Part VI. The Inner Self: 17. Monetisation and the genesis of the Western subject; 18. The fluttering soul; Part VII. Inida and Greece: 19. Why did the Greeks not have Karma?; Part VIII. Money and Modernity: 20. Form and money in Wagner's Ring and Aeschylean tragedy; 21. World without limits.