Summary
Erwin Rohde: Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality in the Greeks
Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality in the Greeks is one of the classics of cultural and religious history. In it, Erwin Rohde presents the development of Greek beliefs about the soul and immortality from the Homeric era to Late Antiquity, based on extensive material and with philological thoroughness, pointing to the complex dynamics between local beliefs and general Hellenic literary and religious institutions, between Hellenism and foreign influences, as well as the idiosyncrasies of individual canonical writers. At the same time, Rohde manages to show what constitutes the specificity of Greek culture in this respect, without falling into the teleology of historical progress and the anachronistic Christianization of Greek views. Therefore, this book is a valuable contribution to the study of Greek culture to this day due to the comprehensiveness of its material and measured research.
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