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his Universal Law and the several versions of his New Science and one will find, not a dry epistemologist or a philosopher of science, but a rhetorician, a jurist, and a philologist who was consumed by the dynamics of civil life and who progressively turned his vision into a general historical sociology.

Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences Volume 23, April 1987

Walter Burkert. Greek Religion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1985. 493 pp. $30.00 (cloth) (Reviewed by Richard Hamilton) The long-awaited translation of this important study, originally published in Ger-

man in 1977, will be of great benefit t o all students of Greek culture, for there is no doubt that Walter Burkert is, as stated on the dust jacket, “the most eminent living historian of ancient Greek religion.”

GR, as it will surely be known, follows the format of its predecessor, the first volume of Martin Nilsson’s Geschichte der griechischen Religion (hereafter referred to as GGR).’ Both books begin with an introduction about sources and method and a survey of MinoadMycenaean religion and address the general aspects of archaic and classical religion, often under the same headings (sacrifice, gift offerings, purification, the sanc- tuary, divination) and with the same topics (prayer, masks, sacred marriage, prophecy, dance, phalloi, first-fruit offerings, altar, cult image). The central section of both works is a description of the major gods, to which GR adds several short discussions (lesser gods, societies of gods, nature deities, foreign gods, daimon, Greek anthropomorphism) and a chapter on “The Dead, Heroes and Chthonic Gods” (covered earlier by GGR). The final chapters of both books discuss, under different rubrics, mystery cults and philosophical religion in contrast to state religion.

Yet the two works differ in detail: GGR was firmly wedded to numen and agricultural ritual, whereas GR embraces a much wider range of explanations (sociological, func- tional, structural, semiotic, ethological), though showing a particular fondness for Paleolithic hunting ritual. It is instructive to compare the treatment of a few topics by GR, GGR, and that old (1950) workhorse, W. K. C. Guthrie’s The Greeks and Their Gods (hereafter referred to as GAG) to highlight GR’s achievement.’ Prayer: GAG, as we might expect in a work that attempts to describe the essence and origin of the gods, has no entry for prayer in its index. GGR and GR devote about the same space to prayer even though GGR overall is twice as long; they both make many of the same points but GR gives more detail (especially on cries and gestures to gods). GR passes over GGR’s speculation about the Homeric areter being an older form of priest, whereas GGR’s connection of liturgical prayer (absent in Greece) with magic is phrased by GR in terms of Greek anthropomorphism.

Hermes: Half of the discussion in GAG concerns Chittenden’s theory of Hermes as pre-Greek (Minoan) “Master of Animals”; the rest, heavily dependent on GGR, tells us that Hermes means a “stone-heap,” whose use as a grave marker explains his chthonic aspect. Herms were also used as boundary markers and landmarks for travelers and so he became the god of travelers. His sudden appearances led to his becoming the patron of thieves. He is the god of simple people, especially shepherds, and his phallic nature marks fertility. GGR rejects Chittenden’s pre-Greek theory in a footnote, says the phallos

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does not signify fertility and derives the god’s thievery from his connection with herds- men. In addition, Hermes’ numerous incomprehensible epic epithets show he is an old god; he appears often in art but rarely in state festivals; this does not mean he was obscure (a full-page survey of testimonia is given) but that he had small, private, rural cults. Stone-heaps and simplicity are the god’s two key aspects. GR passes on much of this (page 158 reads almost like a summary of GGR) but packages it under the single idea of boundaries: “AS god of boundaries and of the transgression of boundaries, Hermes is therefore the patron of herdsmen, thieves, graves and heralds.” Phallic display is said to be territorial demarcation (an idea criticized by reviewers of Burkert’s Structure and History-one wonders how Burkert would analyze “flashing”). GR also updates GGR on epithets by pointing to the occurrence of the name on Linear B tablets (thereby eras- ing the pre-Greek/Greek dichotomy) and gives chronological perspective by pointing to the Attic development of the sculptural herm in the 520s from the “stone-heap’’ (GR probably offers more legitimate diachronic material than GGR). Finally, GR spends a long time on the epic presentation of Hermes in an ongoing effort to link myth and ritual), deriving the roles of both trickster and messenger of gods from narrative poetry while relating both to boundaries (“the trickster breaks the taboo”). If the trickster can be related to boundaries, almost anyone or anything can, and one must be on guard against such facile generalization since the unavoidable compression forced upon GR makes such theories sound authoritative.

The Anthesteria is a complex and confusing festival with three distinct parts: the opening of wine jars (“Pithoigia”) at sunset in the Dionysiac “Sanctuary the Marshes”; a drinking contest (“Choes”); and the offering of a vegetable stew for the dead in honor of Chthonic Hermes (“Chytroi”). The activities include painting doors with pitch, feasting at which nobody speaks and all eat at separate tables, giving children their first wine, shouting insults from wagons, the marriage of the archon’s wife to Dionysus in the “OX- herder’s Place,” the closing of all sanctuaries, and the arrival and dismissal of ghostly/ghastly guests called KeredKares. GAG describes the festival as a combination of “ancient licence” and “connexions with the spirits of the dead.” Dionysus is the bull god who consorts with the king’s wife but is also the “master of the souls.” GGR also finds two aspects: a spring festival to the vegetation god Dionysus containing a sacred marriage and an “Allsouls Festival” not at all connected to Dionysus. GR has a much fuller treatment, which, as with Hermes, unites apparently disparate points, here under his favorite paradox, animal sacrifice, “with its combination of blood guilt and com- munal meal.” As hunters gather the bones of their victims, so the drinkers place their wreaths on their pitchers and bring them to the sanctuary; as hunters display the animal’s skull on the temple, so the Lenaia vases “show women drawing wine, drinking and danc- ing before the most primitive Dionysos idol imaginable: a bearded mask - or two masks facing in opposite directions- hung on a column.” (Dionysos the wine god is also the mask god. The Keres were “masked mummers.”) As often, blood and red wine are in- timately and paradoxically connected in the festival’s mythic background: the first vint- ner Ikarios is murdered; Orestes despite his blood pollution is allowed to drink; and the wine god Dionysus is dismembered. Paradoxically, “this day of homely merriment is nonetheless a day of defilement. . . . Normal life is suspended amid doors gleaming with pitch, masked mummers, ghostly spirits, wild insults, and general drunkenness; the gods of the city are excluded, only Dionysos and Hermes are present. But participa- tions in the time of license creates community and gives the children in particular a new status.”

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It is quite a shock to move from this heady brew back to the actual evidence for the Anthesteria. There is no evidence at all for masks at the festival; the Lenaia vases seem to reflect an otherwise unknown Dionysiac festival involving only women (Burkert’s attempt to create a group of female celebrants at the Anthesteria is based on an un- likely, if common, interpretation of a passage in Demosthenes). We do not even know whether this festival took three days, as is commonly supposed, or two, or one (as the best sources, Thucydides and Aristophanes imply). Sources need to be sorted out carefully - the picture given in the contemporary Athenian sources such as Aristophanes’ Acharnians is quite different from that of the much later fragments of scholarly reconstruction found in the scholia. (The sad truth is that this often means discarding some of the evidence, rendering reconstruction even more difficult.) In addition, con- sideration needs to be given to the participants in each portion of the festival: Aristophanes’ Dicaeopolis is invited to the drinking party - does this mean everyone is? Did every Athenian bring his jar(s) to the Sanctuary in the Marshes?

GR has done exciting things with exiguous evidence, but there is the danger that one change in the evidence may destroy the entire edifice. For example, if Edward Kadletz3 and (independently?) Noel Robertson4 are correct in their reinterpretation of one word in Pausanias, there is no reason to connect the Athenian Arrephoria with Aphrodite, which is the basis of most modern interpretations of it, including that of GR.

Despite this carping, even the sternest cultural materialist will have to admire Burkert’s achievement. It is amazing that anyone was able to write such a book; its com- bination of detailed information, exhaustive bibliography, and bold insight make it a necessary purchase.

NOTES 1. Martin Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion, 3rd ed., vol. 1 (Munich: Beck, 1967). 2. W. K . C. Guthrie, The Greeks and Their Gods (Boston: Beacon Press, 1950). 3. Edward Kadletz, “Pausanias 1.27.3 and the Route o f the Arrephorso” American Journalof Archaeology

4. Noel Robertson, “The Riddle of the Arrhephoria at Athens,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 87 86 (1982): 445-446.

(1983): 241-288.

Journal of the History of rhe Behavioral Sciences Volume 23, April 1987

Fritz Heider, The Life of a Psychologist: An Autobiography. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1983. xii + 196 pp. $19.95 (cloth) (Reviewed by Mitchell G. Ash) The photograph on the dust jacket of this book shows Fritz Heider engaged in discus-

sion, and what is most striking is the disjunction between his gesture and gaze. Though his hands seem to be shaped to convey his message, his eyes look inward, absorbed in conceptualizing while talking. A similar tension between inner and outer worlds shapes this book, as it does Heider’s psychological thinking. Though the style is often teleological - some portions could have been titled “my road to balance theory”- Heider is too historically aware, and too curious about himself, to keep it as simple as that. His book requires, but amply repays, patient reading.

The story begins with a brief sketch of Heider’s milieu. Son of an architect in the provincial government in Graz, Austria, he belonged to the educated middle class of