ebooks -- digital book, Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion.

Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion No Synopsis Available.

Matthew Dillon, Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Pp. x, 436. ISBN 0-415-20272-8. $95.00.

In this very useful book, Matthew Dillon successfully carries out his plan to offer, as he puts it, "a serious start on [the] study of girls and women in classical Greek religion" (x). His sober, informative, and well-researched assessment provides a fine place for students and professional scholars alike to begin studying -- or to make new forays into -- women's religious roles in Athens and elsewhere, primarily in the classical period. Dillon expresses two additional purposes in writing this book. First, he aims to support the view that Athenian and other Greek women did "have the greatest share ... in matters concerning the gods," just as Euripides' Melanippe maintains (1). Second, he aspires to offer "a representative range of the iconographic evidence and its relationship to the literary and epigraphic evidence for girls' and women's cult activities" (4-5), in order to facilitate future studies on ancient Greek women and religion. Dillon accomplishes the second purpose in his study. In relation to the first purpose, he amply demonstrates that women had a very great share in divine matters, though not necessarily "the greatest."