Jan N. Bremmer - Initiation into the Mysteries of the Ancient World

The basis of this book are the four public lectures I had the honour to give as the inaugural Gastprofessor fr Kulturgeschichte des Altertums at the Mnchner Zentrum fr Antike Welten, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitt, Munich, in the academic year 20112012. They appear here as Chapters I, III, V and VI: I have retained their oral character but have added notes. I cannot say enough how much my wife Christine and I enjoyed Munich in general and the LMU in particular, a really great university. I am particularly grateful to Klaus Vollmer and Martin Hose who did so much to bring us to Munich; Martin also introduced me to the past and present world of German Classics and academia, always being able to come up with interesting anecdotes and shrewd insights. From the immediate colleagues I would also like to mention Susanne Goedde, Stefan Ritter, Rolf Schneider and Walther Sallaberger as well as Peter Marinko-vic and Klaus Baltzer, who equally did so much to make me feel at home. From the graduates, Martin Schrage, Verena Schulz and Isabella Wiegand in particular enriched our social life, as did our old friends Hans and Geertje Teitler-Morsink and our newly made friend Siegfried Friedenberger and others from Nihao; on a more practical level, I was greatly helped by my student assistants Johannes Isepy and Henry Gordon. Most of all, though, I would like to thank my secretary Sandra Zerbin who made my life in the university so pleasant with unfailing good humour and discreet efficiency: I still miss our coffee breaks, Sandra.

I continued to work on my lectures as a Visiting Research Scholar at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World in New York during the academic year 20122013. Here I also wrote two new chapters (Chapters II and IV) in order to present a more rounded picture of the ancient Mysteries. I am most grateful to the director Roger Bagnall for the chance to spend a year in this inspiring environment, where I profited from stimulating seminars by Luigi dAlfonso, Rod Campbell and, especially, Robert Hoyland as well as from many pleasant conversations with Li Zhang.

The book was completed in Erfurt, where I am a Fellow at the Max-Weber-Kolleg fr kultur- und sozialwissenschaftliche Studien of the Universitt Erfurt in 20132014. I am most grateful to Jrg Rpke and Martin Mulsow for their invitation to this intellectually invigorating environment. There are few better places in Europe to study ancient and modern religion, and I have greatly profited from the methodological discussions of its seminars as well as from the weekly Kolloquium of Veit Rosenberger and Katharina Waldner.

I would also like to thank Brill (Leiden), the Franz Steiner Verlag (Stuttgart) and Vinciane Pirenne-Delforge of the journal Kernos for their permission to reprint the articles mentioned below. For this book I have corrected, standardised, updated, and, as far as possible, reduced overlaps in these chapters.

While working on this book I have incurred a number of debts, which I have mentioned at the end of each chapter. Naturally, I have also learned many things about the Mysteries from my colleagues and friends, in particular Christoph Auffarth, Walter Burkert, Ken Dowden, Richard Gordon, Fritz Graf, Albert Henrichs, Robert Parker and the late Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood. Bob Fowler kindly read the whole of my manuscript and saved me from a number of mistakes and obscurities, Mirjam Engert Kotwick generously helped to read the proofs, and Orla Mulholland skilfully corrected the English of my main manuscript. Last but not least, my wife Christine accompanied me on my journeys to Munich, New York and Erfurt, and happily endured the spell of the ancient Mysteries. I am grateful to them all.

For Giulia Sfameni Gasparro

Our material has hardly increased since, but the flourishing of the study of Greek religion in recent decades does enable us to look at the existing evidence with new eyes, and this may perhaps lead to some new insights. As always, the proof of the pudding will be in the eating.