FURTHER READING
Mary Beard, John North, and Simon Price, Religions of Rome, Vol.
1, A History (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press,
1998).
Gideon Bohak, “Traditions of Magic in Late Antiquity.” Available
online. URL: http://www.lib.umich.edu/pap/magic/. Down-
loaded on April 16, 2007.
Jean Bottéro, Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia, trans. Teresa Laven-
der Fagan (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001).
Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Th eir Religious Beliefs and Practices
(London: Routledge, 1988).
James H. Breasted, Development of Religion and Th ought in Ancient
Egypt (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1972).
Jan N. Bremmer, Greek Religion (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University
Press, 1994).
Anthony Bullock, “Ancient Greek Religion.” Available online. URL:
http://www.greekreligion.org/. Downloaded on April 17, 2007.
Walter Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, trans. John
Raff an (Oxford, U.K.: Basil Blackwell, 1985).
Michael Coe, ed., Th e Olmec World: Ritual and Rulership (Princ-
eton: Princeton University Press, 1995).
Stephanie Dalley, Myths from Mesopotamia: Creation, the Flood,
Gilgamesh and Others (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press,
1989).
Mircea Eliade, Shamanism: Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy (Princ-
eton, N.J.: Bollingen/Princeton University Press, 1970).
Israel Finkelstein and Asher Silberman, Th e Bible Unearthed: Ar-
chaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its
Sacred Texts (New York: Free Press, 2001).
Benjamin R. Foster, Th e Epic Of Gilgamesh: A New Translation (New
York: Norton, 2001).
John G. Gager, ed., Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the An-
cient World (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1992).
Harry A. Hoff ner, Hittite Myths, ed. Gary M. Beckman (Atlanta,
Ga.: Scholars Press, 1998).
Erik Hornung, Conceptions of God in Ancient Egypt: Th e One and
the Many (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1996).
Erik Hornung, Akhenaten and the Religion of Light (Ithaca, N.Y.:
Cornell University Press, 1999).
Norman Bancroft Hunt, Shamanism in North America (Toronto,
Canada: Key Porter Books, 2002).
Sarah Iles Johnston, Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide (Ca m-
bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2004).
Peter David Joralemon, “In Search of the Olmec Cosmos: Recon-
structing the World View of America’s First Civilization.” In
Olmec Art of Ancient Mexico, ed. Elizabeth Benson (New York:
Abrams, 1996).
Gwendolyn Leick, A Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology
(London: Routledge, 1991).
Jon D. Mikalson, Ancient Greek Religion (Oxford, U.K.: Blackwell,
2005).
Mary Ellen Miller and Karl Taube, Th e Gods and Symbols of Ancient
Mexico and the Maya (New York: Th ames and Hudson, 1993).
Robert Parker, Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford, U.K.: Claren-
don, 1996).
James Rives, Religion in the Roman Empire (Malden, Mass.: Black-
well, 2007).
Serge Sauneron, Th e Priests of Ancient Egypt (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell
University Press, 2000).
Byron E. Schafer, ed., Religion in Ancient Egypt: Gods, Myths,
and Personal Practice (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press,
1991).
John Scheid, An Introduction to Roman Religion, trans. Janet Lloyd
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003).
Robert Turcan, Th e Gods of Ancient Rome (New York: Routledge,
2001).
Greg Woolf, ed., Ancient Civilizations: Th e Illustrated Guide to Be-
lief, Mythology, and Art (San Diego: Th under Bay Press, 2005).▶ resistance and dissent
introduction
People can resist and dissent from government, religion, or
society. Th e degree to which a culture tolerates dissent tells
about what was important to the culture’s people. Studying
what resistance and dissent means can be a tricky business.
For example, India’s Emperor Asoka (r. 268–233 b.c.e.) was
tolerant of religious faiths other than his own, even building
places of worship for them, but this did not mean he cared
little about his religion. To the contrary, he was a very devout
Buddhist, but his faith included the principal of tolerance of
others. Th us, when trying to learn about a culture, both the
motives for resistance and dissent and the motives for repress-
ing resistance and dissent need to be examined carefully.
In general, ancient governments reacted to dissent bru-
tally. Dissenters were seen as enemies just as foreign armies
were, and both dissenters and prisoners of war were primary
candidates for torture, humiliation, and sacrifi ce to gods. Of-
ten, governments did not need to react forcefully to dissent
because society would take care of the problem for them. In
cultures, there is a strong impulse among ordinary people to
see to it that everyone conforms to the rules. It may seem to
them to be just a matter of fairness—no one should be allowed
special privileges—or it may be out of fear of government or
religion. Many an ancient government reacted to dissent or
rebellion by killing not only the dissenters but also the entire
families of dissenters and even complete villages, towns, or
cities. Few people would wish to risk their families’ lives by
dissenting, and both family and community would put pres-
sure on dissenters to shut up and conform to the rules. In-
deed, the community might take it upon itself to kill or exile
a dissenter.
Many mythologies have accounts of dissenters. In my-
thologies in general, the fates of dissenters are horrible.
People who dissent from religious customs bring down
the wrath of capricious gods or make a mess of the natu-
ral world. Floods, droughts, seasons that fail to come or to
leave, earthquakes, wildfi res, and other affl ictions of the
natural world are blamed on dissenters. Th us, dissenters are
affl icted with boils and diseases or die in horrible ways. Th e
end of their dissent can bring the world back to an orderly
existence, or the mythology may say that an entire nation orresistance and dissent: introduction 869