Rites of Passage in Ancient Greece: Literature, Religion, Society (review)

This volume of twelve essays, with an introduction by its editor, Mark W. Padilla, contains the writings of classical scholars engaged in one of their area's liveliest dialogues, that concerning rites of passage in ancient Greek culture. The nature and meaning of passage rituals and myths are examined in a variety of contexts: seven essays focus on tragedy; two on cults of Dionysus; one on Homer and the novel; and two question the rite of passage as a theoretical construct. The variety and generally high caliber of these essays yield an invigorating revisit to ancient Greek tragedy in its historical and critical contexts.

The four essays in the book's first section focus on depictions of male rites of passage in particular plays. Dora C. Pozzi's "Hyllus' Coming of Age in Sophocles' Trachiniae" looks at the generational transference of authority from father to son, with Herakles' heroism seen yielding to a more civil way of life for Hyllus. Robin Mitchell-Boyask's essay, "Euripides' Hippolytus and the Trials of Manhood (The Ephebia?)," argues that the title character's passage from adolescence to adult citizenship is achieved in effect after his death, reminding Athenian audiences that the failure to mature socially is a real possibility and that, were such failure to become widespread (as was popularly feared in the United States during the late 1960s), the consequences for the city-state would prove disastrous. In "Euripides's Ion: Generational Passage and Civic Myth" Charles Segal offers a close reading of the play's rites of passage, enhanced by an astute analysis of the tripartite temporality of tragic drama (the eternal, the cyclical, and the urgent). Rituals are shown to activate perceptions of the past, present, and future in both individuals and social groups. For example, the ritual myths of Athens's founding are reworked by Euripides so as to engender in the audience personal identification with birth and social criticism of civic history. Barbara Goff's essay, "The Violence of Community: Ritual in the Iphigeneia in Tauris," sees rites of passage as indicators of—and as Euripides' unsettling response to—the war-time anxiety of the Athenians, and rites created by Athena at the end of the play "do not celebrate a triumphant city but rather seek to construct one" (121).

Part Two features three essays on female rites of passage in Greek tragedy. Phyllis B. Katz's "Io in the Prometheus Bound: A Coming of Age Paradigm for the Athenian Community" draws on contemporary medical literature to argue that Io exhibits pre-marital anxiety symptoms that seem to have been fairly common among Athenian girls. William Blake Tyrrell's "Antigone's Unnoticed Rite of Passage" ingeniously takes Antigone's thoughts on how marriage and motherhood would have affected her decision-making as the view of one who has (hypothetically) completed the pertinent rites of passage. He situates her position in the context of changes in contemporary laws governing funerary rites. Bella Zweig's "Euripides' Helen and Female Rites of Passage" sees an affirmation of traditional religious values in Euripides' play, especially in its emphasis "on specific women's rites of transition, and on the reconciliation of female divinities" (172).

Part Three has two essays that concern Dionysian cults. Jan N. Bremmer's "Transvestite Dionysos" offers an illuminating review of evidence linking adolescence and cross-dressing in ancient Greek myths and rituals and identifies a stronger mythological basis to Dionysus' description in Euripides' Bacchae than has generally been recognized. Greta L. Ham's essay, "The Choes and Anthesteria Reconsidered: Male Maturation Rites and the Peloponnesian Wars," discerns in the boyhood-themed iconography on Athenian cups dating from the last quarter of the fifth century not escapist fantasy but a "cultic response to the decimation of the population through war and plague" (202).

Part...