The twenty papers presented here cover personification in Greek literature, art and religion from its pre-Homeric origins to the Byzantine period. Classical Athens features prominently, but other areas of both mainland Greece and the Greek East are well represented. The papers reflect the enormous range of contexts in which personification occurs, indicating the ubiquity of the phenomenon in the ancient Greek world.

Contents: Editors' introduction. Part I Origins and Varying Modes of Personification: Hesiod in context: abstractions and divinities in an Aegean-Eastern koiné, Walter Burkert; Disaster revisited: Ate and the Litai in Homer's Iliad, Naoko Yamagata; Brightness personified: light and divine image in ancient Greece, Eva Parisinou; The gender of Death, Diana Burton; The Greek heroes as a 'personification' of the past in the present, Kerasia Stratiki; Neo-platonic personification, Lucas Siorvanes. Part II Personification in Myth and Cult: Side: the personification of the pomegranate, Efthymios G. Lazongas; Personified abstractions in Laconia: suggestions on the origins of Phobos, Nicolas Richer; Situational aesthetics: the deification of Kairos, son of Hermes, Arlene Allan; Eros at the Panathenaea: personification of what?, Irina Kovaleva. Part III The Poet and his Work: The muses: creativity personified?, Penelope Murray; A lover of his art: the art-form as wife and mistress in Greek poetic imagery, Alan H. Sommerstein; Personification of the Iliad and Odyssey in Hellenistic and Roman art, Kristen Seaman. Part IV Looking at Personifications: Eunomia or 'make love not war'?: Meidian personifications reconsidered, Barbara E. Borg; From drunkenness to a hangover: maenads as personifications, Amy C. Smith; Personifications and paideia in Late Antique mosaics from the Greek East, Ruth Leader-Newby; Rivers of Roman Antioch, Janet Huskinson. Part V Images of Power, Time and Place: Poleos Erastes: the Greek city as the beloved, Yorgis Yatromanolakis; Personification in impersonal context: late Roman bureaucracy and the illustrated Notitia dignitatum, Iskra Gencheva-Mikami; Good luck and good fortune to the queen of cities: empresses and Tyches in Byzantium, Liz James; The labours of the twelve months in 12th-century Byzantium, Elizabeth Jeffreys. Consolidated bibliography; Indexes.