/lit/ - Literature

>>22990449
Great thread! I have been reading The Harps that Once... by Thorkild Jacobsen, an anthology of Sumerian poetry. The Inanna/Dumuzi, Hymns and Myths sections especially will give you a ton of material to work with when it comes to gods and mythology, including a lot of stuff that has direct connections to Greece.
Walter Burkert is an important scholar of the Greeks who wrote a lot about their religion(s).
I also assume Frazer's The Golden Bough would have a lot of the sort of thing you're looking for. But I haven't read it, and I will listen for recs here too since I'm quite new to this topic but very interested.

>>22990449

Most of my studies focus on Roman religion in particular.

>Greek Religion by Walter Burkert
This is a difficult read, but it has more updated scholarship and goes into even more depth than Homeric Gods. It also has extensive notes that will be helpful if you want to focus even more on the Greeks. It's extremely helpful for understanding how religion would develop in Europe later, even including how Nicene Christianity arose and evolved.

>The Beginnings of Rome by Timothy Cornell
Best book covering what the title says; the prehistory and early history of Roman civilization. It's more archaeology than history since it's talking about such a great distance into the past. The downside is that this is a bit dull and long but it's comprehensive in scope.

>The Dancing Lares and the Serpent in the Garden by Harriet Flower
The previous book talks extensively about Roman religion. Flower talks in great detail about Late Republican religion in terms of what it meant for everyday Romans. This is such an underrated topic because a lot of people know more about the myths themselves than the people who cherished those myths and incorporated them into their lives.

>Intellectual Life in the Late Roman Republic by Elizabeth Rawson
Flower writes well about Roman feelings, Rawson writes well about Roman thinking. Flower will help you think more about the way Romans felt and Rawson is necessary to tie this into the various Roman contributions to science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. This volume might be harder to find, but it's worth reading it if you're interested.

>The Last Generation of the Roman Republic Erich S. Gruen
This one is wetter prose and its text is even moreso comprehensive. That's likely because the collapse of the Republic has much more surviving records and has been of greater interest to scholars across time and space. Gruen examines all of the nuances in-depth and you get a feel for the personalities that dominated in this time.

>>22990578

I know a few of the recs seem more like general history books but they do all include important information on religion in Antiquity. Plus history is inevitably moved and shaped by spiritual factors above all. If you want more general ancient religion outside of the Hellenic word, picrel has great reads on Bronze Age religion.

Guthrie, Orpheus and the Greek Religion
Allen, Genesis in Egypt
Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers
The Derveni papyrus

>>22990589
who are you
do you have a degree on ancients? Derveni Papyrus reference seems based as fuck.

>>22990449
>>22990550
Oh also I remembered Jacobsen has another book called The Treasures of Darkness that is entirely about religion, I think this would be a great pick.
What I've found with the Sumerians in particular is that while some of the origins of things are still obscure, it's a lot more coherent than some of what we see in the Greeks or the Bible which have been subject to either intentional revision or just telephone-game confusion, in the original versions there are more obvious symbolic connections between the myths and the things they're describing.

>>22990589
here a reward for you

https://archive.org/details/78_hymn-to-apollo_palestrina-choir-c-f-abdy-williams-theodore-reinach-nicola-a-mont_gbia0045262a

>>22990449
Fun book, hard to top. I suggest Eva Brann's Homeric Moments and pic rel

>>22990449
It's Virgil corelate is W. F. Jackson Knight's Roman Vergil