Worshipping Aphrodite: Art and Cult in Classical Athens

Rosenzweig offers innovative and compelling ways to interpret the material record by focusing her study on the major cult sites of Aphrodite in and around Athens. The author helps us to understand the development of the worship of this goddess by considering artistic, literary, and epigraphic evidence. Worshipping Aphrodite will interest classical archaeologists, specialists in the development of the Athenian polis, art historians, and those interested in the nature of Greek religion and cult practice. It provides a useful reexamination of scholarship on Aphrodite and enhances our understanding of her social and political importance in an Athenian context. Rachel Rosenzweig is Curatorial Assistant to the Departments of Egyptian and Near Eastern, Greek and Roman, and Medieval Art at Cleveland Museum of Art.