Mnemosyne, Supplements Ancient Necropolitics

Ancient Necropolitics approaches ancient Greek literature, history, and archaeology and their reception through the conceptual lens of necropolitics. It uncovers manifestations of necropower from Homer’s time to late antiquity, with novel interpretations of older and newer texts and archaeological evidence. This is the first collection of essays approaching aspects of Greek antiquity and its reception through ‘necropolitics’. It discovers traces of necropolitics in the unburied and maltreated corpses of the Homeric epics; it follows the manifestations of necropower in Greek tragedy, historiography, and biography; and it delves into torture, capital punishment, and non-normative burials in the ancient Greek world. It contributes to the debate - much of which is only available in modern Greek - on recent archaeological evidence, notably the iron-bound individuals discovered in the Athenian suburb of Phaleron, and includes a captivating exploration of necropolitics in Yorgos Lanthimos’s Greek-tragedy-inspired cinema.