Chapter I. Prayer to the Moon

After more than three decades since the publication of Gwyn Griffiths’ 1975 commentary, which concentrated mainly on Egyptological aspects and represents an outdated, positivistic approach to the literary evidence on Isis, this new commentary presents a new and thorough assessment of Apuleius’ Isis Book, elucidating and interpreting the narrative in its literary, religious, archaeological and cultural context. Reflecting the recent innovative approach to the interaction of literature and religion (Literarisierung von Religion) and the important developments in the research on the Second Sophistic (e.g. ‘Self-fashioning’; Cultural Identity), the volume offers a new, detailed interpretation of the Isis Book in the easy-to-use form of a fully-fledged commentary, including Latin Text and monographic Introduction.