Description

In ancient Sicily, Greek colonists did something remarkable—they deified the very excess they sought to control. This scholarly investigation examines Adephagia, the obscure goddess of gluttony known from a single reference in Aelian's "Various History," revealing how this marginal deity illuminates sophisticated Greek approaches to managing human appetite.

Through careful analysis of fragmentary evidence, archaeological contexts, and comparative religious practices, this book reconstructs the possible significance of a goddess who embodied excessive consumption. While acknowledging the speculative nature of such reconstruction, it demonstrates how personifying gluttony potentially served important psychological and social functions in Syracuse's agricultural abundance.

The book explores how Greek religious thought differed fundamentally from later approaches by incorporating potentially problematic human tendencies into divine frameworks rather than condemning them as mere vice. This paradoxical strategy—creating relationship with what requires control—offers intriguing parallels to contemporary psychological understanding about the effectiveness of acknowledging rather than denying powerful human drives.

From Sicilian agricultural contexts to philosophical debates on moderation, from ancient ritual practices to modern consumer challenges, this interdisciplinary study connects a nearly forgotten goddess to enduring questions about human relationship with consumption. In an age of environmental crisis driven by overconsumption, Adephagia's cult provides not answers but valuable perspective on our continuing struggle to manage appetite in worlds of finite resources.