ABOUT THIS BOOK
Philosophers have often reflected on the Ancient Greeks' concepts of time, but an anthropological approach is necessary to understand their practical concept of time as tied to space. The Greeks not only spoke of time unfolding in a specific space, but also projected the past upon the future in order to make it active in the social practice of the present. Hesiod's history of humanity was intended to establish justice in the modern city; Bacchylides sang the celebration of the Athenian hero Theseus in a present-day cultic and ideological framework; the city of Cyrene used the heroic act of its founding to reaffirm its civic identity; and the Greeks embossed poetic texts on leaves of gold to ensure the ritual passage of the dead to a blessed afterlife. Explicating these examples, Poetic and Performative Memory in Ancient Greece shows how the Ancient Greeks' collective memory was based on a remarkable faculty for the creation of ritual and narrative symbols.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Translator's Preface
Chapter I. Spatio-temporal poetics of the past in ancient Greece: "Memory is the present of the past."
Chapter II. The Succession of Ages and Poetic Pragmatics of Justice: Hesiod?s narrative of the Five Human Species
Chapter III. Creation of Gender and Heroic Identity between Legend and Cult: The Political Creation of Theseus by Bacchylides
Chapter IV. Regimes of Historicity and Oracular Logic: How to Re-found a Colonial City?
Chapter V. Ritual and Initiatory Itineraries toward the Afterlife: Time, Space, and Pragmatics in the Gold Lamellae
Chapter VI. By Way of Conclusion: Returns to the Present
Bibliography
Index