Kudos to Prof. Dolansky for her chapter “Belief and ideology” in A Cultural History of Youth in Antiquity. The volume, edited by C. Laes and V. Vuolanto was recently published by Bloomsbury and belongs to a series on the history of youth.

According to a press release on the volume from the University of Manchester:

Young women, sub-elite young people and cultures that are often overlooked in history books are given a platform, and it is the first book volume ever to examine congenital, intellectual disability in the ancient world. The contributions cover the ancient Near East, Egypt, the Graeco-Roman world, ancient China, the rabbinic tradition, Byzantium, the Islamic world and the Middle Ages in the Latin West. “For too long, the ancient world has been studied somewhat in isolation to other periods of history,” said Prof Dr Laes. “The engaging and thought-provoking chapters combine careful textual analysis with attention to the material evidence and comparative perspectives, not the least those offered by disability history for recent periods in history.”

Dolansky’s chapter offers a broad picture of young people’s independent and collective religious activities in the ancient Mediterranean world, concentrating in particular on male and female youth in Classical Greece and late Republican and Imperial Rome. She also draws on select examples from Judaism and late antique Christianity. Literary authors less commonly examined in studies of youth, such as the Augustan poet Grattius and the travel writer Pausanias, are integrated with more traditional sources such as Horace and Livy to capture ritual activity that took place in diverse locales involving a wide range of participants. Additionally, epigraphic evidence sheds light on individuals of both sexes who were lower on the socio-economic scale and actively engaged in religion both as individuals and in groups.