JB Connelly, Portrait of a Priestess. Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece: [Review]

The book under review is the fifth printing of a work first published in 2007. By 2010, much acclaim and many awards had been bestowed on it: Portrait of a Priestess was nominated a New York Times Notable Book of 2007, won the 2007 Award for the Best Professional/Scholarly Book in Classics and Ancient History of the Association of American Publishers, and the 2009 J.R. Wiseman Book Award of the Archaeological Institute of America. The blurb contains quotations from praising reviews by leading experts, published by newspapers and scholarly journals. This praise is well-deserved. The author puts forward a clear idea: ancient Greek women played a significant public role as priestesses and other sacred officials as well as leading participants in numerous rites. Today, textbooks on Greek religion begin with the fact that a modern clear-cut division between the sacred and profane did not exist in Greek society. Participation in communal rituals, first and foremost in sacrifices, was the basis of social and political relatedness: polis religion was no less public than polis politics. Furthermore, these textbooks do not ignore the involvement of women in numerous rites. However, before Joan B. Connelly (henceforth C.) nobody insisted, in a comprehensive and convincing manner, on the corollary of these two assertions, namely, that Greek women were conspicuous in a public sphere of ultimate importance, that is, in religion