Was Greek Thought Religious? : On the Use and Abuse of Hellenism, from Rome to Romanticism

by Louis A. Ruprecht, Jr.

• ISBN13: 9780312295622
• ISBN10: 0312295626
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Trade Book
• Copyright: 2002-06-29
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

The Greeks are on trial. They have been for generations, if not millennia, fromRome in the first century, to Romanticism in the nineteenth. We debate the place of the Greeks in the university curriculum, in New World culture--we even debate the place of the Greeks in the European Union. This book notices the lingering and half-hidden presence of the Greeks in some strange places--everywhere from the US Supreme Court to the Modern Olympic Games--and in so doing makes an important new contribution to a very old debate.

Author Biography

Louis A. Ruprecht Jr., the author of several books on Greek thought, is Visiting Assistant Professor of General Humanities in the Tift School of Education, Mercer University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Preface	xvii
Was Greek Thought Religious? The View from the Courts	1	(24)
The Son Supplants the Father: Seduction, Socratic Piety and the Life of Virtue	25	(14)
Pausanias at Olympia: The Greece Inside Rome	39	(20)
The Short Pagan Career of Julian, the Apostate: Hellenism as Culture	59	(18)
Icons and Incarnation: Hellenism Becomes a Heresy	77	(16)
``A Mingle-Mangle of Heathenisme'': Renaissance Theater, Renegade Theater	93	(18)
Childe Harold's Heyday: Lord Byron and the Levant Lunatics	111	(14)
From Greece to Germany from Aegina to Munich: Charles Cockerell and the Discovery of the Pedimental Sculpture from the Temple to Aphaia	125	(16)
The Ethos of Olympism: Greek Religion for the Modern World	141	(26)
Appendix One George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824): A Chronology	167	(8)
Appendix Two Charles Robert Cockerell (1788-1863): Grand Tour Itinerary	175	(4)
Appendix Three Johann Martin Wagner (1777-1858): Itinerary of His Greek Journey 1812-1813	179	(6)
Notes	185