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 elses 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.
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: Demeters Look-Alikes and Her
Saronic Reflections
Irene Polinskaya
7 Between Locality and Diffusion: leusis 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 and : 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 Plutarchs Eleusis
Chandra Giroux
21 Eleusis at the Intersection of Antiquity and Modernity: the mystria,
Altered Consciousness, and the Neuroscience of Transformational Experience
Michelle Zerba
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).
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