Experiencing Festivals in Ancient Greece

What did it feel like to participate in a Greek festival? How did smells, sights, and sounds engage ordinary citizens in the proceedings? How was such experience incorporated in the textual and material representation or commemoration of festivals? This book addresses these questions, partly with the help of new methods and material, and partly by looking afresh at some canonical sources, both literary and visual, with an eye to the personal, the sensory, and the emotive elements that have been occluded by more documentary scholarship. The volume is organised around the different ways in which festivals could be experienced. These modalities – sense, emotion, wonder, communion, and imaginings – reflect some of the most exciting contemporary approaches to ancient history, brought to bear, in novel ways, upon the scattered traces of Greek and Roman festival culture. Through this series of readings the volume opens up new perspectives on ancient religious experience and practice which will be of interest to scholars of literature, art, and religion alike.