The Bacchic Gold Tablets and Poetic Tradition

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.

• Integrates the Bacchic gold tablets into current discussions about Greek poetry and song culture
• Opens the gold tablets and early Greek mystery religion to wider interdisciplinary study
• Uses the tablets to suggest new interpretations of familiar epic and lyric poetry and to bring greater focus to less visible poetic genres and performance venues