Includes bibliographical references and index.

Online resource; title from PDF title page (Wiley, viewed September 17, 2013).

The Gift in Antiquity; Copyright; Contents; Notes on Contributors; Series Editor's Preface; Preface; 1 Introduction; 2 Ceremonial Gift-Giving: The Lessons of Anthropology from Mauss and Beyond; Traditional Gift-giving: Mauss's Lesson; Clarifying the Concept: The Three Categories of Gift-Giving; Ceremonial Gift-Exchange Is Neither Economic Nor Moral or Legal; Ceremonial Gift-Giving as a Pact of Recognition; Conclusion; 3 Alms, Blessings, Offerings: The Repertoire of Christian Gifts in Early Byzantium; Origin and Ideals of the Christian "Blessing."

A Survey of Christian Gifts in Early Byzantine Greek HagiographyDisinterested Gifts in an Interested Discourse; 4 Gift-Giving and Power Relationships in Greek Social Praxis and Public Discourse; The Archaic Period; Classical Athens; The Hellenistic Period; Final Remarks; 5 Fictive Giftship and Fictive Friendship in Greco-Roman Society; Mauss's Gifting; Mauss in a Greco-Roman Setting; Searching for Clarity; Greco-Roman Model of Exchange; Gifting versus Patronage; Friendship versus Fictive Friendship; Conclusion; 6 Ovid Negotiates with His Mistress: Roman Reciprocity from Public to Private.

The Household: Society without GiftsOvid's Stingy Lover; Conclusions; 7 "Can't Buy Me Love": The Economy of Gifts in Amorous Relations; 8 Without Patronage: Fetishization, Representation, and the Circulation of Gift-Texts in the Late Roman Republic; Introduction; Fetishization: Hellenistic Libraries and Royal Theft; Representation: The Book and the Citizen; Without Patrons: Language, Display, and Dedication in Republican Gift-Books; 9 Roses and Violets for the Ancestors: Gifts to the Dead and Ancient Roman Forms of Social Exchange; Roman Death and Gifts to the Dead; Funerary Gifts.

Grave GoodsFood Offerings; Dedicated Objects; Rethinking the Grave Gift; The Dead as Rational Actors; Burial Rites and Afterlife Beliefs; Redefining the di manes; Leaving Mauss Behind; 10 Graffiti as Gift: Mortuary and Devotional Graffiti in the Late Ancient Levant; Methodology and Limitations; Graffiti as Gifts of Comfort; Graffiti as Gifts of Protection; Graffiti as Gifts of Provision; Conclusion: Gifts "Real," Metaphorical, and Imagined; 11 Marriage Gifts in Ancient Greece; Introduction; The Solonian Regulation of the phernaí; An Anthropological Approach.

The Meaning of the Solonian phernē: Some ThesesThe Value of Cloth: Patterns and Colors; Female Wedding Gifts; Conclusion; 12 Charity Wounds: Gifts to the Poor in Early Rabbinic Judaism; Introduction; The Gift in Early Rabbinic Literature; Problems with Giving a Gift as Charity; Rejecting the Gift; Conclusions; 13 Barter Deal or Friend-Making Gift? A Reconsideration of the Conditional Vow in the Hebrew Bible; 14 Neither Mauss, nor Veyne: Peter Brown's Interpretative Path to the Gift; In Pursuit of the Holy, A Pursuit of the Gift.

The Gift in Antiquity presents a collection of 14 original essays that apply French sociologist Marcel Mauss's notion of gift-giving to the study of antiquity. Covers such wide-ranging topics as vows in the Hebrew Bible; ancient Greek wedding gifts; Hellenistic civic practices; Latin literature; Roman and Jewish burial practices; and Jewish and Christian religious giftsOrganizes essays around theoretical concerns rather than chronologicallyTakes an explicitly cross-cultural approach to the study of ancient history.