Myth and Society in Ancient Greece Author:Jean-Pierre Vernant Jean-Pierre Vernant delineates a compelling new vision of ancient Greece that takes us far from the calm and familiar images of Polykleitos and the Parthenon, and reveals a culture of slavery, of blood sacrifice, of perpetual and ritualized warfare, of ceremonial hunting and ecstasies. — In his provocative discussions of various institutions and ... more »practices including war, marriage, and the city state, Vernant unveils a complex and previously unexplored intersection of the religious, social, and political structures of ancient Greece. He concludes with a genealogy of the study of myth from antiquity to the present, and offers a critique of structuralism.
Jean-Pierre Vernant is Professor Emeritus of Comparative Study of Ancient Religions at the College de France in Paris.« less