formed the symbolic heart of the house. The hearth became emblematic of the
family’s fertility and continuity, with new brides being introduced to it, and new
babies being symbolically carried around it. Festivals associated with Demeter and
Dionysus drew women out of their houses and brought them into the visible, political
space of the city, temporarily dissolving the critical boundary between the city and the
home. The traditional order of the city was renewed and restored as the women
returned to their houses. Women presided over the harmony-restoring rites associ-
ated with disruptive changes to the composition of the family: birth, marriage, and
death. But these changes concerned the state too, and so on these occasions the
women again had to become visible as they moved out into the public sphere with
their rituals. Women’s rites often formed them into protective circles around the
vulnerable individuals in the process of transition, the corpse of the dead person on
his way to Hades, the newly arriving bride, and the newborn baby.
Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge(Chapter 20) explores the intersection between reli-
gion and sex. ‘‘Sexuality’’ is a modern concept that can only be applied anachronis-
tically to ancient society. To circumvent this problem, the study is targeted upon two
intimately related Greek terms:aphrodisiaand Aphrodite herself. It can be shown that
a series of ostensibly unrelated myths of love and sex are structured in accordance
with a coherent underlying imagery, notably that of integrative desire, violence,
building tension, and calming appeasement. This is found in particular in the Hesio-
dic account of her birth from the foam produced when the sky-god’s severed genitals
were cast into the sea, a myth which in many ways establishes the extent of her
‘‘honor,’’ that is, of the realm over which she presided. But related imagery may also
be found in Hesiod’s account of the production of Pandora, the first woman, the
traditional account of the choice of Paris, and the tragic accounts of Hippolytus and
the Danaids. Much of this imagery was reflected in various ways in the practices of her
cults. Her familiar patronage of sexual relations and of those coming to sexual
maturity aside, Aphrodite’s calming integrative function made her a suitable protec-
tress of social cohesion, whilst her capacity to induce madness and inspire vigorous
action made her a suitable protectress of military action. She was a protectress of
maritime enterprises both because she was a daughter of Sky and Sea, but also because
she was held to apply her calming, integrative powers to the elements. A social group
particularly dear to Aphrodite was that of the courtesans. The chapter concludes with
a special study of the latter-day myth of ‘‘sacred prostitution’’ in Corinth. The only
significant source for this notion is Strabo, and it can be demonstrated that he has
erroneously projected into the remote Corinthian past a custom familiar to him from
his own, Augustan, day and from his home region of Asia Minor, as found in the cult
of the goddess Ma at Comana.
We turn then to the varieties of more secretive religious activity, those of mysteries
and magic (Part VII), beginning with investigations of the deities of the two principal
mystery cults, that of Dionysus and that of Demeter and Kore.Susan Guettel Cole
(Chapter 21) analyzes the cults of the ever-mobile and adventitious (though actually
already Mycenaean) Dionysus. His willing worshipers experienced him through a
positive form of ritual ‘‘madness,’’ which was radically distinguished from the wanton
and destructive madness experienced by those who resisted his cult. Wine was
originally the primary concern of Dionysiac ritual. The consumption of wine, like
Dionysus himself, could lead to a pleasant and harmless madness, when done in
Introduction 13