Greek Praise Poetry and the Rhetoric of Divinity

The polar dichotomy between man and god, and the insurmountable gulf between them, are considered a fundamental principle of archaic and classical Greek religion. Surveying a large body of Greek (and occasionally Roman) literature, as well as material remains, this volume argues that poetry produced between the eighth and the fifth centuries BC does not present such a uniform view of the world. It demonstrates instead that particular genres of poetry may assess the distance between humans and gods differently and explores when, how, why, and to what effect humans are compared to gods in the poetry of archaic and classical Greece.