Thucydides identified the period of the Peloponnesian War as one in which a concern with divine engagement in the affairs of mortals was particularly intense. This chapter explores a variety of evidence for this heightened concern and asks what forms it took. On the one hand, we find extravagant investment in religious festivities and display. Faced with the uncertainty of war, states and individuals lean into these elements of cultic life and seek thereby to create or claim the sort of prosperity and ease of engagement with the gods chiefly possible in times of peace. On the other hand, we find dissenting voices and worries about the neat picture of prosperity and cohesion such festivities promote. The heightened stakes of the War, where divine favour or displeasure could bring victory or destruction, provide a particular impetus for divergent voices and divergent attitudes to how engagement with the gods should be approached and represented. The chapter explores these dynamics at three levels from the macro to the micro. First, it tackles interstate discourse and competition. Second, it examines the internal dynamics within a single city-state: Athens. Third and finally, it zooms in further to discuss a single cult: the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Leviticus has shaped both Jewish and Christian theology and practice over the centuries. The final chapter examines its influence in the rest of the Old Testament and into the Second Temple period and the New Testament. Levitical theology also influenced a Christian understanding of sacred space in church architecture as well as helping shape the Christian liturgical year.

The association of individual lyric poets with precise features and values was active beyond textual knowledge of their poems. Accordingly, this chapter contributes to the reconstruction of the imperial afterlife of lyric by shifting the analysis to material evidence, such as portraits of lyric poets, and to cults and legends concerning real or mythical singers which lived on in the Greek collective memory, especially locally. In the Greek East, where the display of local identities was part of the reaction to imperial globalisation, different lyric traditions had the potential to activate links with specific places. Together with ongoing (re-)performances of lyric at symposia, festivals and within the imperial court, these manifestations give us a glimpse into the wider circulation and creative recasting of song traditions and lyric icons, both within and beyond elite circles. More importantly, they all account for the continued cultural and political purchase of song and music under Rome.

Commensurate with its vast geography and long history, the Ottoman Empire had varied artistic and architectural cultures. Ottoman visual sources reflect the cultural identities, intellectual priorities, and personal as well as political aspirations of artists and patrons. They are instructive about methods of production, the circulation of goods (artworks, artifacts, and raw materials), and creative practices in palaces and urban centers. This chapter focuses on painting and architecture and surveys the available visual materials, demonstrating some of the innovative ways in which recent research has treated Ottoman painting and architecture.

In The Prelude (1805/1850), Wordsworth reimagines time through the ritual calendar and festivals of revolutionary France. The Revolution’s rituals, moreover, complicate the common notion that Wordsworth retreats from politics into poetry. By way of ritual, Wordsworth enters what Walter Benjamin calls now-time or higher time, moments in which the past – via memory – becomes simultaneous with the present. Such now-times allow Wordsworth to juxtapose, on the one hand, his own past calling to a poetic vocation with, on the other hand, the Revolution’s founding vocation to bring liberty. In that juxtaposition, Wordsworth’s own faithfulness to his poetic calling tacitly critiques the Revolution’s infidelity to its origins. The higher time of ritual, then, mediates between Wordsworthian memory and revolutionary history. Wordsworth provides foundations for many Victorian liturgies. His sacralization of material reality, his resistance to the market’s dehumanizing rituals, his imbrication of memory and higher time – each of these undergoes further elaboration as the century unfolds.

Festivals are one of the main contemporary forums in which Indigenous Australian public ceremony is staged, learned, shared and increasingly, revived. In this chapter we review the literature on public ceremony at Indigenous festivals, focusing on Junba at the Mowanjum festival in the Kimberley and Kun-borrk/Manyardi at the Stone Country and Mahbilil festivals in western Arnhem Land/Kakadu. We consider festivals as serving several purposes: Firstly, as a forum for cultural revival, reclamation, and maintenance, supporting language and song revival and reclamation work by local individuals, groups and Indigenous businesses. Secondly, as a forum for education and diplomacy, serving as powerful statements of Indigenous sovereignty, identity, law and diplomacy which educate the broader public. Thirdly, as a site for continuity and innovation of practice. We examine how performers in the Kimberley use Junba to transform society to address inequity and discrimination in wider Australian society, and performers in western Arnhem Land use Kun-borrk/Manyardi at festivals to support interdependence and reciprocity enacted as part of regional ceremonial practices and ideologies of being ‘different together’.

This chapter considers the ritual laws in the latter part of Exodus and throughout much of Leviticus and Numbers, which cover sacrificial activities, consecration of and rules for priests, permitted/forbidden foods, matters of purity, religious festivals, types of sins, the handling and disposal of blood, and vows and donations to the cult of Yahweh.

Jesus was a Jewish preacher and, for some Jews, a Messiah. His first followers lived in Jewish contexts. Only gradually did the differences between Christians and the followers of other religions become visible. Thus, there was a parting of the ways between Christians and Jews, but it was never complete. Jews and Christians always observed and influenced each other. Christians also set themselves apart from the many groups they called pagans. Although they believed in the existence of the gods, they considered them to be demons. They also developed their own rituals and created places where they met, so that Christianity became increasingly recognisable as a religion in its own right.

Chapter 4 gives an account of the role of repertoire and travel in German public theatre and how the Theater an der Ruhr works against national understandings of canonised theatrical repertoires. It examines why German repertoire theatres do not discard plays after a season but reperform them for years, even decades, and what consequences this has for actors and their self-cultivation, as well as for the building of an ethico-aesthetic tradition in an institution. This system goes hand in hand with the closely knit notion of the ensemble in German theatre. This chapter explores these notions through a case study of the transnational repertoire of the Theater an der Ruhr and their long-term collaborations with international theatre-makers from precarious parts of the world, known as the ‘international theaterlandscapes project’. I accompanied the Theater’s journey to Algeria and witnessed first-hand their cooperation with Algerian and Tunisian artists after the ‘Arab spring’, focusing on the way in which theatre develops forms of transnational diplomacy and troubles national narratives of cultural heritage.

This chapter explores the religious practice of characters in the five ‘ideal’ Greek novels, arguing that despite these works’ overall presentation of a world that is in many ways ‘realistic’, their representation of religion diverges from ‘reality’. At one end of the spectrum the behaviour of the rustic couple Daphnis and Chloe is almost hyper-religious, and it is only in Longus’ novel that we find a full range of traditional religious practices, including vows and libations. In the other four many features correspond to behaviour in the ‘real’ world – prayers, offerings, sacrifices, feasts and festivals: but libations are sometimes not poured when they might be expected; rituals associated with marriage or burial are omitted or played down; and, most strikingly, the practice of making a vow to a god at critical moments to secure help or rescue, a practice documented in the ‘real’ world by epigraphy and literature from the archaic period down to at least the third century AD, is wholly absent. Possible reasons for this absence are briefly discussed: is it simply a generally soft-focus and elliptical account of religious behaviour, or is it the avoidance of a device which, if deployed, would risk short-circuiting characters’ tension-creating peril in cliff-hanging situations?

This chapter assesses the cultural and broader symbolic significance of the symposium in Plutarch’s biographical and philosophical works. It begins by situating Plutarch’s references to the symposium in their cultural context, by examining the symposium/convivium as a key social institution in the Roman imperial period. Next, the chapter discusses the symbolic dimension of conviviality in Plutarch’s oeuvre, through characteristic examples from the Lives and Moralia. It underlines that, for Plutarch, the symposium serves as a tool for evaluating moral character, as well as for conducting cross-cultural comparison. In addition, Plutarch’s interest in philosophical dietetics turns consumption patterns and behaviour at symposia into an important point of focus and concern. The last two sections look closely at Plutarch’s two surviving sympotic works, the Banquet of the Seven Sages and Table Talk. It discusses their genre and literary techniques, their relationship to the philosophical tradition of sympotic writing initiated by Plato and Xenophon, and the central role they both assign to philosophical enquiry.

Chapter 18 opens by asking readers to list places in their communities where people go to learn new things. The chapter describes types of places that support public engagement, offers resources for finding specific places or events, and addresses practical considerations. Zoos, libraries, and different types of museums, as well as event-based opportunities such as different types of festivals, are addressed. Suggestions are also given for using one’s own institution. For example, many universities host programs for school-aged children or participate in local events such as cultural celebrations. Practical considerations related to such places and events include timing (once or recurring); registration, rules, and fees; specific space and resources (booth, table, electricity, internet access); audience typical at the venue; and individual and team logistics. The chapter includes resource lists related to these various suggestions. Its Closing Worksheet asks readers to find three places or events where they might take the demonstrations they have developed and to note about each one specifics such as dates and contacts, as well as some of their demonstration’s logistical needs.

The story of how medieval polyphony and song have been approached in more recent times is the subject of our final chapter. We look at how the appearance of modern editions of medieval poetry allowed composers in the first half of the twentieth century, such as Carl Orff and Benjamin Britten, to set medieval song-texts to new music. It would take until after World War II, however, for the music of medieval polyphony and song to reach wide audiences, and we chart the history of the recordings, concerts, and festivals that have brought this music to listeners from 1950 onwards. We examine the approaches of the pioneering ensembles and directors who first performed and recorded this music in the 1950s and 1960s, looking at their influences and attitudes towards the many unknowns regarding its original performance practice. Situating the re-awakening of medieval music in the wider context of the early music revival and the ‘authentic’ (later, ‘historically-informed’) performance movements, we then move on to consider ‘medievalist’ music, especially in film, television, and video games with medieval settings.

The ecumenical synods of the Roman imperial period cannot be understood without understanding their forerunners, the Hellenistic artists’ associations. These were not organised on a pan-Mediterranean scale as the ecumenical synods were. Rather, they were regionally organised, reflecting the fragmented political world of the Hellenistic period. There were four major associations: the Athenian synod, the Isthmian-Nemean synod, mainly active on the Peloponnese and in Boeotia, the Ionian-Hellespontine synod in Asia Minor and the Egyptian synod connected to the Ptolemaic royal court. This chapter discusses their emergence in the third century bc and their involvement in festivals, politics and religion. In many respects their activities were a model for what would come later, for example their preoccupation with securing financial and honorific privileges for their members, their contribution to the organisation of festivals and their relations with political rulers such as Hellenistic kings and Roman generals.

This chapter bridges the gap between the disappearance of the Hellenistic artists’ associations in the first century bc and the emergence of the ecumenical synods at the end of that century. It begins with a discussion of the first attestations of the ecumenical synods. The ecumenical athletes’ association is first attested in a letter by Mark Antony from the 40s or 30s bc. The first clear evidence of the ecumenical synod of artists dates only from the reign of Claudius (AD 41-54), but there are indications that the artists were already banding together on a transregional scale in the 30s bc. Next, this chapter seeks to explain the emergence of the synods by looking at the broader context of Mediterranean integration. It argues that the synods’ emergence was connected to the development of an 'international' festival network, which was in turn made possible by the Roman unification of the Mediterranean. Moreover, it appears that the Roman takeover in the east created the right conditions for the establishment of associations that transcended the polis framework. Especially the province of Asia seems to have provided fertile soil for experimenting with new organisational forms.

This chapter investigates the development of the ecumenical synods in the first century ad, first discussing the xystic synod of athletes and then the thymelic synod of artists. After giving an overview of earlier scholarly opinions on their development, this chapter discusses the evidence from a new perspective. It argues, for instance, that there had been only one athletic synod all along, rather than two athletic synods that eventually merged. As for the thymelic synod of artists, it is clear that it was already fully formed and functional in the first century ad, which opposes the interpretation of some scholars who date its definitive formation about a century later. All in all, the sources indicate that the synods gradually strengthened and expanded their role in the festival world throughout the first century ad and that this evolution gained momentum in the reign of Claudius (AD 41–54).

The conclusion comes back to the main findings of the different chapters. Taken as a whole, this book rehabilitates the ecumenical synods of competitors as prominent actors in the Graeco-Roman society. They shaped its socio-cultural life, reconciled Greek traditions with Roman rule and contributed to the remarkable cultural unification of the Mediterranean in that period.