Worshipping Virtues: Personification and the Divine in Ancient Greece

A scholarly investigation of the worship of abstracts and allegorical personifications in ancient Greece. Adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, Emma Stafford considers the ways in which Greeks perceived incarnations of abstractions or non-human ideals in religion, poetry, drama, in architectural sculpture and figurative statues. The book also discusses why the majority of personifications were female and explores the relationship between grammatical and biological gender. The useful introduction is followed by six case studies: Themis, Nemesis, Peitho, Hygieia, Eirene and Eleos. Literary and epigraphic evidence is presented in English translation.