Now Online! | The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, by Margaret Alexiou


We are pleased to announce the publication of The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, by Margaret Alexiou, on the CHS website. The book is also available for purchase in print through Rowman and Littlefield, as part of the Greek Studies Series.

Margaret Alexiou’s The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, first published in 1974, has long since been established as a classic in several fields. Even in the wake of a large number of studies on Greek lament since then, Alexiou’s book remains what it was at its original publication […] the only generic and diachronic study of learned and popular lament and its socio-cultural contexts throughout Greek tradition in which a great diversity of sources—literary, archaeological, historical, and anthropological—are integrated to offer a comprehensive and penetrating synthesis. Its interdisciplinary orientation and broad scope have rendered The Ritual Lament an indispensable reference work for classicists, byzantinists, neohellenists, anthropologists, and folklorists.–Panagiotis Roilos and Dimitrios Yatromanolakis on the Second Edition

As part of its mission of bringing together a variety of research interests centered on Hellenic civilization and sharing them with a wider audience, the Center for Hellenic Studies offers free access to over 100 books and articles. If you have not done so already, we invite you to browse our online publications!