The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Poetic Tradition
Memory and Performance

Analyses the Bacchic gold tablets from Greek mystery cults as products of performance culture and early Greek poetry.

Mark McClay (Author)

9781108833783, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 25 May 2023

230 pages
23.5 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.47 kg

The Bacchic gold tablets are a remarkable collection of objects from the Ancient Greek world: inscribed with short verse texts and buried in graves of mystery initiates, they express extraordinary hopes for post-mortem salvation. Past approaches to these objects have sought to reconstruct their underlying belief system. This book is the first to examine them primarily within the context of early Greek poetry and performance culture. The patterns of thought and expression in the tablets find instructive poetic antecedents and analogies, including in non-canonical and inscribed genres that are not included in conventional descriptions of the poetic tradition. Applying a range of analytical approaches from the fields of epigraphy, anthropology, and religious studies, this book ultimately uses the tablets to cast more familiar literature in a new light.

Introduction: Bacchic verses: poetry and the gold leaves
1. Mapping memory: Bacchic cults and poetic models
2. The tomb of memory: epigrams and funerary context
3. Material genres: amulets and incantations
4. Gold in the grave: the metal of the tablets.

Subject Areas: History of religion [HRAX], Social & cultural history [HBTB], Classical history / classical civilisation [HBLA1], European history [HBJD]