Customer Reviews

The Locrian Maidens: Love and Death in Greek Italy

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This 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.