Cult, Polis, and Change in the Graeco-Roman World
The Mysteries of Artemis of Ephesos
This is a book about cultic change in context. It tells the story of one ancient mystery cult, based upon all of the surviving evidence. The story ends with the disappearance of the cult during the third century A.D. In the last chapter of this book I set out what I think are some of the wider implications of this study for our understanding of mystery cults, the Graeco-Roman polis, ancient polytheism, anthropological theories of initiation rituals, and the fields of evolutionary psychology and neuroscience. Both initiates and hierophants of these subjects should be interested in these implications.