Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and the Dead in Ancient Greece

Topics of focus include the origin of the goes (the ritual practitioner who made interaction with the dead his specialty), the threat to the living presented by the ghosts of those who died dishonorably or prematurely, the development of Hecate into a mistress of ghosts and its connection to female rites of transition, and the complex nature of the Erinyes. Restless Dead culminates with a new reading of Aeschylus’ Oresteia that emphasizes how Athenian myth and cult manipulated ideas about the dead to serve political and social ends.

"[This work] will represent the principal study of ancient Greek beliefs in the intervention of the dead, a topic of acute relevance to the study of classical literature, Greek religion, and the later cultures that spawned curse tablets and versions of Christianity." --David Frankfurter, author of Religion in Roman Egypt

"This is an incontestably useful book. . . . The author’s scholarship is remarkable and her competence indisputable. Her laudably courageous and original analysis of the Erinyes leads us from archaic poetry, via the purificatory rituals and reforms of cult brought about by the mysterious Epimenides, to the Orphic tradition recently discovered in the Derveni papyrus--all of which enables Sarah Johnston to conclude by proposing an enthralling rereading of Aeschylus’ Oresteia." --Philippe Borgeaud, author of The Cult of Pan in Ancient Greece