Coping with the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology

Abstract

This book is based on the Sather Lectures that I gave at the University of California at Berkeley in spring 1999. These words evoke happy memories and feelings of gratitude that merit further clarification. Even given the exceptional quality of its faculty, its wealth of mate-rial scholarly amenities, the grandeur of its campus and the splen-dour of the Bay Area, it cannot be an unqualified pleasure to serve the university of California at Berkeley as a member of the Department of Classics. The annual advent of yet another fresh Sather professor, who, going by the panegyrical portrayal of the Sather chair in the let-ter of invitation, cannot be blamed for deeming herself the world’s top mastermind, is only the briefest summary of a wide array of arduous obligations. Regular participation in the time consuming (as I am told) explorations of the Sather committee, followed by the departmental disputes concerning the qualifications of a new candidate, not seldom ending up in a screaming row (as I am told), a moral commitment to attending six Sather lectures or at least some (or one) of them on a subject miles out of one’s own field of interest, cheerfully comply-ing with (as in my case) the request to mend the English of one or more lectures including the pronunciation, taking the genius out for lunch before one of his lectures or accommodating one of the recep-tions after it. All this prettied up with the bonus of having at least one certainty in life, namely, that a member of the department will never taste the glory of a Sather professorate. This bouquet of corollaries might easily deter scholars of a less noble and selfless disposition from joining the Berkeley Classics Department.