Girls and Women in Classical Greek Religion, 2003, 448 p., 55 photo. n.b., br. -

Modern scholars have seen women's most important religious activity in classical Greece as their participation in fertility rituals. Matthew Dillon's wide-ranging new study makes it clear that women engaged in numerous rites and cults besides such festivals, and that their role in Greek religion was actually more important than that of men. Women invoked the gods for help in becoming pregnant, venerated the god of wine, worshipped exotic gods new to the Greek pantheon, used magic and potions for both erotic and pain - relieving purposes - and far more besides. While traditional scholarship has seen such involvement in religion as 'escapist', Dillon's skilful presentation of the evidence proves that this denigrates women's religiosity, and the real importance which they attached to their mediation with the divine.