Isis worship in second century Greece and Rome as portrayed in Apuleius' 'Metamorphoses'.

摘要

In Chapter 1, I introduce the history of Isis worship in Greece and Rome and the problems inherent in the cultural classification of the worship. I outline the three-way comparison between pre-Ptolemaic Isis worship in Egypt, Demeter worship at Eleusis in Greece, and Apuleius' account in order to attain an accurate cultural classification of Isis worship in the second century CE.;In Chapter 2 and 3, I explicate the worship of Isis in pre-Ptolemaic Egypt and the worship of Demeter at Eleusis in Greece in order to clarify the Greek cultural contributions to Isis worship in second century CE Greece and Rome. In Chapter 4, I narrate Apuleius' account of Isis worship and analyze Apuleius' description against the backdrop of the two earlier studies and thus elucidate the cultural composition of the worship. The thesis concludes that Isis worship was the Greco-Roman worship of an Egyptian goddess.