Juliette Harrisson - Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World

This collection of essays, predominantly by up-and-coming scholars, speaks to the desideratum in scholarship for a wide-ranging view of the Classical afterlife. Its editor Juliette Harrisson has drawn on the work of an international group of scholars to produce a diverse selection of essays, which between them cover aspects of the period from Archaic Greece to Late Antiquity. Beginning with an editorial discussion of the interface between writing, practice and belief, the books four parts deal with material evidence from Greece; evidence from Etruria and provincial Rome; and literary and late antique approaches to afterlife belief and practice. This will be a useful collection for anyone wishing to grasp the parameters of the growing field of study of the Classical afterlife.

Emma Gee, University of St Andrews, UK

Human beings have speculated about whether or not there is life after death, and if so, what form that life might take, for centuries. What did people in the ancient world think the next life would hold, and did they imagine there was a chance for a relationship between the living and the dead? How did people in the ancient world keep their dead loved ones alive through memory, and were they afraid the dead might return and haunt the living in another form? What sort of afterlife did the ancient Greeks and Romans imagine for themselves? This volume explores these questions and more.

While individual representations of the afterlife have often been examined, few studies have taken a more general view of ideas about the afterlife circulating in the ancient world. By drawing together current research from international scholars on archaeological evidence for afterlife belief, chiefly from funerary sites, together with studies of works of literature, this volume provides a broader overview of ancient ideas about the afterlife than has so far been available.

Imagining the Afterlife in the Ancient World explores these key questions through a series of wide-ranging studies, taking in ghosts, demons, dreams, cosmology, and the mutilation of corpses along the way, offering a valuable resource to those studying all aspects of death in the ancient world

Juliette Harrisson is a Senior Lecturer in Ancient History at Newman University in Birmingham, UK. Her primary research interests lie in Roman period myth and religion, and in the reception of ancient Greece and Rome in modern popular culture, especially film, television and novels. Her monograph, Dreams and Dreaming in the Roman Empire: Cultural Memory and Imagination was published in 2013, and she is also the co-editor of Memory and Urban Religion in the Ancient World (with Martin Bommas and Phoebe Roy).

Edited by Juliette Harrisson

First published 2019
by Routledge
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2019 selection and editorial matter, Juliette Harrisson; individual chapters, the contributors

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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Harrisson, Juliette, editor.
Title: Imagining the afterlife in the ancient world / edited by Juliette Harrisson.
Description: First [edition]. | New York: Routledge, 2018. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018015173 (print) | LCCN 2018027309 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781315097879 (ebook) | ISBN 9781351578400 (web pdf) |
ISBN 9781351578394 (epub) | ISBN 9781351578387 (mobi/kindle) |
ISBN 9781138299795 (hardback: alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Future lifeHistoryTo 1500. | DeathReligious
aspectsTo 1500. | Future life in literature.
Classification: LCC BL535 (ebook) | LCC BL535 .138 2018 (print) |
DDC 202/.3093dc23LC
record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018015173

ISBN: 978-1-138-29979-5 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-09787-9 (ebk)

Typeset in Times New Roman
by Florence Production Ltd, Stoodleigh, Devon, UK

Dis Manibus Chris Upton,
much-missed colleague and friend.
And for Mum, Dad, and Ed, of course, always;
and for Justin, who puts up with me.