Books
I have authored three books and co-edited five.
Two more are currently in production.
The stories are told with wit, imagination, and sparkle …
– Stephen Fry, The Trojan Horse and other stories
My first book, RETHINKING GREEK RELIGION, Cambridge University Press, 2012, widened our understanding of ancient Greek religion. It offers a sustained critical appreciation of the concept of polis religion and illustrates productive ways to move beyond it. The book has been described as ‘an important contribution’ to the field and as ‘essential reading for anyone interested in the current changes of direction in the understanding of Greek religion.’
My second book, REVISITING DELPHI. Religion and Storytelling in Ancient Greece, Cambridge University Press 2016, speaks to all admirers of Delphi and its famous prophecies, be they experts on ancient Greek religion, students of the ancient world, or just lovers of a good story. It invites readers to revisit the famous Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, along with Herodotus, Euripides, Socrates, Pausanias and Athenaeus, offering the first comparative and extended enquiry into the way these and other authors force us to move the link between religion and narrative centre stage. Their accounts of Delphi and its prophecies reflect a world in which the gods frequently remain baffling and elusive despite every human effort to make sense of the signs they give. The book has been lauded as ‘thought provoking’ and a ‘persuasive’ examination of Greek religious thought.
My third and most recent book, THE TROJAN HORSE AND OTHER STORIES: Ten Ancient Creatures that Make Us Human, Cambridge University Press, 2024, comes with a recommendation by Stephen Fry and won the 2024 Rhakotis prize ('book of the year'). In addition, it was a finalized of the 2025 PROSE award in Classics of the Association of American Publishers, shortlisted for the 2025 Runciman Award, and a Silver Winner of the Nautilus Book Awards 2025 (in the ‘Rising to the Moment’ category). It follows the trails of ten Greek and Roman creatures that cross from the ancient into the modern world and speaks to the question of 'what makes us human'. A Romanian translation of the book was published in 2025.
My co-edited books include the following:
Personal Religion in the Ancient Greek World. A Cultural History, Cambridge University Press, 2026
Much is known about the manifold ways in which ancient Greek religious beliefs and practices map onto the social and political structures of the ancient Greek polis. The way in which the individual served as the basic unit of ancient Greek religion, and the personal dimension of ancient Greek religion associated with it, is much less well understood. This book offers the first comprehensive study of ancient Greek personal religion since the major paradigm changes that affected the study of ancient Greek religion in recent years. An international cast of scholars explores ancient Greek personal religion in all its different facets. They do not treat the personal dimension of ancient Greek religion as an antipode of civic religion but rather as a complementary perspective that evolves within, alongside, and occasionally in opposition to the civic dimension of ancient Greek religion.
The Local Horizon of Ancient Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 2023. Jointly edited with Hans Beck
Which dimensions of the religious experience of the ancient Greeks become tangible only if we foreground its local horizons? This book explores the manifold ways in which Greek religious beliefs and practices are encoded in and communicate with various local environments. Its individual chapters explore 'the local' in its different forms and formulations. Besides the polis perspective, they include numerous other places and locations above and below the polis-level as well as those fully or largely independent of the city-state. Overall, the local emerges as a relational concept that changes together with our understanding of the general or universal forces as they shape ancient Greek religion. The unity and diversity of ancient Greek religion becomes tangible in the manifold ways in which localizing and generalizing forces interact with each other at different times and in different places across the ancient Greek world.
Animals in Ancient Greek Religion, Routledge, 2020.
This book provides the first systematic study of the role of animals in different areas of the ancient Greek religious experience, including in myth and ritual, the literary and the material evidence, the real and the imaginary.
An international team of renowned contributors shows that animals had a sustained presence not only in the traditionally well-researched cultural practice of blood sacrifice but across the full spectrum of ancient Greek religious beliefs and practices. Animals played a role in divination, epiphany, ritual healing, the setting up of dedications, the writing of binding spells, and the instigation of other ‘magical’ means. Taken together, the individual contributions to this book illustrate that ancient Greek religion constituted a triangular symbolic system encompassing not just gods and humans, but also animals as a third player and point of reference.
Theologies Ancient Greek Religion, Cambridge University Press, 2017. Jointly edited with Esther Eidinow and Robin Osborne.
This handbook offers both students and teachers of ancient Greek religion a comprehensive overview of the current state of scholarship on ancient Greek religion from the Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic periods. Each chapter provides not only key information about its subject but also reflection on the developments in the scholarship in that area, with a special focus on current problems and debates. The range of contributions emphasizes the diversity of relationships between mortals and the supernatural in all their manifestations, embracing both ‘religion’ and ‘magic’, from across, between, and beyond ancient Greek cultures. It draws attention to religious activities as dynamic, highlighting how they changed over time, place, and context. The general overview of topics is supplemented by tangible case studies, making this handbook an indispensable tool for further study.
Studied for many years by scholars with Christianising assumptions, Greek religion has often been said to be quite unlike Christianity: a matter of particular actions (orthopraxy), rather than particular beliefs (orthodoxies). This volume dares to think that, both in and through religious practices and in and through religious thought and literature, the ancient Greeks engaged in a sustained conversation about the nature of the gods and how to represent and worship them. It excavates the attitudes towards the gods implicit in cult practice and analyses the beliefs about the gods embedded in such diverse texts and contexts as comedy, tragedy, rhetoric, philosophy, ancient Greek blood sacrifice, myth and other forms of storytelling. The result is a richer picture of the supernatural in ancient Greece, and a whole series of fresh questions about how views of and relations to the gods changed over time.
The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Greek Religion, Oxford University Press, 2015. Jointly edited with Esther Eidinow.