Customer Reviews

Haunted Greece and Rome: Ghost Stories from Classical Antiquity

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In selecting this book for purchase I read the editorial review that accompanies the Amazon listing so I was not disappointed when "Haunted Greece and Rome" arrived: this is not a collection of ghost stories but a discussion of supernatural stories from ancient Greece and Rome. Not very much has been written on this subject and what does exist is around 100 years old. D. Felton sorts through the different ancient ghost stories explaining the differences between how people today treat ghosts and how the ancients thought of them, corrects some misconceptions in past books and explains ancient views toward what we term the supernatural. The author includes a chapter titles "Problems of Definition and Classification where the various ghostly manifestations are discussed from revenants (an embodied ghost) to crisis apparitions (ghosts appearing to give a warning) to poltergeists and continual apparitions.

The author provides individual chapters to discuss the more famous haunted house tales by Plautius, Pliny the Younger and Lucian. D. Felton provides a very good discussion comparing Pliny's haunted house story with that of Lucian (in the latter's Philopseudes). Some authorities have considered Lucian's story to be copied from Pliny but the author deftly shows that Lucian's story has only superficial similarities. In the final chapter, the author discusses modern ghost stories that may have been influenced by ancient ones, citing Oscar Wilde's `Canterbury Ghost" and Dickens's "A Christmas Carol."

This is a short book with 95 pages of text but also includes extensive notes and an excellent bibliography that brings the book to 137 pages (148 if the index is included). If one is interested in researching ancient ghost stories this is an invaluable volume. The book is based upon D. Felton's dissertation but it has been rewritten to appeal to a general audience as well as classicists and folklorists. I found the wring excellent and the book held my attention throughout.