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Savage Energies: Lessons of Myth and Ritual in Ancient Greece. By Walter Burkert. Trans. Peter Bing. Fwd. by Glen W. Most. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Pp. xiv + 110.)
This book, a translation of Wilder Ursprung: Opferritual und Mythos bei den Griechen, published in 1990 by Klaus Wagenbach, appears to bea new offering from one of the most important scholars of ancient Greek myth and religion, but it is in fact not original material. On close inspection of the notes, it becomes evident that the book is composed of five separate papers written and published or delivered between 1964 and 1970, and, with one exception, no revisions to the text or the notes of the pieces were made for this edition.
As such, the book will not add substantially to the ongoing debate over the nature and meaning of Greek myth. Nor does it offer a conspectus of Burkert's tremendous contribution to the field. Instead, it can be read as a primer on the point of view that he has come to champion, that ancient myth can best be understood as complementary to ritual, each explaining and enacting the other. The complex of ritual and myth in the religious life of the Greeks functions, in Burkert's view, to...