The Locrian Maidens: Love and Death in Greek Italy Review

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The Locrian Maidens: Love and Death in Greek Italy ReviewThis is an extraordinary book. Redfield spent almost 30 years writing it (an approach that unfortunately is no longer possible in our decadent "publish-or-perish" age), and you can see it immediately. The book is not for everyone. It is extremely dense. Each paragraph is packed with data and ideas, presented succinctly without any redundancy. If you know nothing about Greek religion or modern anthropology of religion (Lévi-Strauss and Victor Turner are particularly important sources of inspirations), you will probably fail to understand many sections. But even so it is worth the attempt.
At first sight the subject of the book is rather special - Epizephyrian Locri, a little known Greek colony in Italy that we mainly know from its splendid archaeological finds. To decipher the meaning of these finds (and of a handful of far from reliable stories that we have concerning Locri), Redfield embarks on a long digression, analysing some of the basic principles of Greek culture and religion in order to show in the second part of the book what specific use the Locrians are likely to have made of these principles. In the process we learn a lot about the position of women in Greek thought (the best analysis of the subject I have ever seen), about rituals involving young girls, about ancient economy, about Orphism and Pythagoreanism, and dozens of other subjects.
Redfield's interpretative approach is very unusual, but extremely convincing. If you like the works of J.-P. Vernant, Redfield will perhaps seem as a much more sophisticated version of it. His analysis of Locrian iconography is astonishing, as are his interpretations of some well known Athenian rituals, such as the Arrhephoria.
I have read the book several times already, and I keep on reading it over and over again. Whenever I lecture on the Greek gods (I teach at Charles University, Prague), I take the trouble, go through the index and read once again what Redfield has to say on each of the gods - and every time I find something I did not notice previously. In my view, this is exactly what a proper book should do, working as an inexhaustible mine of ideas and inspiration that you never grow weary of. Redfield has succeeded marvellously.The Locrian Maidens: Love and Death in Greek Italy Overview
Athens dominates textbook accounts of ancient Greece. But was it, for the Greeks themselves, a model city-state or a creative, even a corrupt, departure from the model? Or was there a model? This book reveals Epizephyrian Locri--a Greek colony on the Adriatic coast of Italy--as a third way in Greek culture, neither Athens nor Sparta. Drawing on a wide range of literary and archaeological evidence, James Redfield offers a fascinating account of this poorly understood Greek city-state, and in particular the distinctive role of women and marriage therein.

Redfield devotes much of the book to placing Locri within a more general account of Greek culture, particularly with the institution of marriage in relation to private property, sexual identity, and the fate of the soul. He begins by considering the annual practice of sending two maidens from old-world Locris, the putative place of origin of the Italian Locrians, to serve in the temple of Athena at Ilion, finding here some key themes of Locrian culture. He goes on to provide a richly detailed overview of the Italian city; in a set of iconographic essays he suggests that marriage was seen in Locri as a life transformation akin to the eternal bliss hoped for after death.

Nothing less than a general reevaluation of classical Greek society in both its political and theological dimensions, The Locrian Maidens is must reading for students and scholars of classics, while remaining accessible and of particular interest to those in women's studies and to anyone seeking a broader understanding of ancient Greece.


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