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In this essay, I distinguish between the ancient tales relating to the dismemberment or sparagmos of Dionysos and the modern fabrication which I call the "Zagreus myth." This myth is put together from several elements: 1) the dismemberment of Dionysos; 2) the punishment of the Titans; 3) the creation of mankind from the Titans; and 4) the inheritance humans receive from the first three parts - the burden of guilt from the Titans' crime and the divine spark from the remains of Dionysos. Building upon Linforth's critical review, I first examine the pieces of evidence out of which this Zagreus myth has been assembled, demonstrating that the few pieces of evidence used to construct the myth fail to support the existence of such a story before the modern era. While ancient sources provide testimony to the first three components of the myth, the final component-the resulting original sin-is an addition of modern scholars. I next show that, viewed without the framework of the Zagreus myth, the pieces of evidence provide testimony to a variety of tellings of the dismemberment myth, which was not the exclusive property of the "Orphics" but rather a well-known element in the Greek mythic tradition. I then explore the Christian models of religion within which the myth was mistakenly reconstructed, noting the role this reconstruction of Orphism played in the turn-of-the-century debates surrounding the nature of the early Church. Finally, I conclude that the gold tablets and their religious contexts have been misunderstood because these texts have been interpreted in terms of a modern fabrication dependent on Christian models, the Zagreus myth. The "Orphic" gold tablets themselves have nothing to do with the stories of sparagmos and anthropogony, but instead supply important evidence for the study of Greek eschatological beliefs.

The hedonic regression, estimation of an hedonic price function, is shown to be an approximation of a multifaceted consumption possibilities frontier in characteristics space. Consequently, a linear functional form is inappropriate, included characteristics must be restricted to those which pertain to the good itself, and the estimated intercept and qualitative characteristic coefficients are easily interpretable. Copyright American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.

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What did magic mean to the people of ancient Greece and Rome? How did Greeks and Romans not only imagine what magic could do, but also use it to try to influence the world around them? This book provides the most comprehensive account of the varieties of phenomena labeled as magic in classical antiquity. Exploring why certain practices, images, and ideas were labeled as “magic” and set apart from “normal” kinds of practices, the book gives insight into the shifting ideas of religion and the divine in the ancient past and in the later Western tradition. Using fresh approaches to the history of religions and the social contexts in which magic was exercised, the book delves into the archaeological record and classical literary traditions to examine images of witches, ghosts, and demons as well as the fantastic powers of metamorphosis, erotic attraction, and reversals of nature, such as the famous trick of drawing down the moon. From prayer and divination to astrology and alchemy, the book journeys through all manner of ancient magical rituals and paraphernalia. It considers the ways in which the Greco-Roman discourse of magic was formed amid the cultures of the ancient Mediterranean, including Egypt and the Near East.