Fabrications of the Greek Past : Religion, Tradition, and the Making of Modern Identities

Taking seriously critiques of historiography produced in recent decades, Vaia Touna advocates for an alternative approach to the way the past is studied. From Euripides' tragedy 'Hippolytus', to the notion of voluntary associations in the Greco-Roman world, to the authenticity of traditional villages in Greece, 'Fabrications of the Greek Past' argues that meanings (and thus identities) do not transcend time and space, and neither do they hide deep in the core of material artifacts, awaiting to be discovered by the careful interpreter. Instead, this book demonstrates that meanings are always relative to their present-day context; they are historical products created by social actors through their ever-contemporary acts of identification.