Greek religion is quickest understood from J. Bremmer’s concise and stimulating Greek Religion (Oxford: 1994). Fuller, and authoritative, is W. Burkert, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical (Oxford: 1985). First port of call for Greek prayer is S. Pulleyn, Prayer in Greek Religion (Oxford: 1997). For hymns, other than the big literary collections, we have W. D. Furley and J. M. Bremer, Greek Hymns: Selected Cult Songs from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period, 2 vols. (Tubingen: 2001), where the first volume has a fine introduction and the hymns in English translation. The Homeric Hymns are available in several English translations; for example, M. L. West, Homeric Hymns. Homeric Apocrypha. Lives of Homer, Loeb Classical Library (Cambridge, MA: 2003), J. Cashford, The Homeric Hymns, Penguin Classics (London: 2003), D. J. Rayor, The Homeric Hymns (Berkeley: 2004) and M. Crudden, The Homeric Hymns, Oxford World’s Classics (Oxford: 2001). The hymns of Callimachus are available inF. Nisetich, The Poems of Callimachus (Oxford: 2001), S. Lombardo and D. Rayor, Callimachus: Hymns, Epigrams, Select Fragments (Baltimore: 1988) and A. W. Mair, Callimachus: Hymns and Epigrams, Loeb Classical Library (London: 1955). Processions have never received single-minded attention except, in a pioneering piece of coverage in the great German encyclopaedia, by F. Bomer, ‘Pompa’, RE 21.2(1952), cols. 1878-1994. Otherwise English readers should turn to W. Burkert, Greek
Religion: Archaic and Classical (cited above), pp. 99-102, J. Bremmer, Greek Religion (cited above), pp. 39-40 and more generally to H. W. Parke, Festivals of the Athenians (London: 1977), which is good for the data though rather basic in interpretation. The details of Eleusis can be found in G. E. Mylonas, Eleusis and the Eleusinian Mysteries (Princeton: 1961), Chapter 9. Good starting points for magic are J. G. Gager, Curse Tablets and Binding Spells from the Ancient World (New York: 1992) and D. Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds: A Sourcebook (New York: 2002). Oracles are adequately dealt with for general purposes in H. W. Parke, Greek Oracles (London: 1967) and R. Flaceliere, Greek Oracles, trans. D. Garman (London: 1965).
World History
