The relation between humans and animals has undergone a recent paradigm shift. New technologies and especially ethical discourses have blurred the boundaries between human and animal. This causes much uncertainty which must be understood against the backdrop of a specific Western tradition rooted in Graeco-Roman antiquity. But how narrowly defined were the boundaries at that time? The present volume, the proceedings of an international conference held at Rostock University in 2005, explores ancient ideas of boundaries between humans and animals as well as their transgression from philological, philosophical, archaeological and historical points of view. In addition to Classical antiquity, Scythian and Egyptian civilizations are also considered. The papers investigate the conceptions that stand behind presumed natural features/characteristics of humans and animals. They do not focus on realia, but on the ideas that manifest themselves in language, text and image and that could become constitutive for reality. The volume's interdisciplinary approach allows for capturing the spectrum and complexity of the ancient imagination, in which strict dichotomies and definitions parallel gradual differentiation to the point of dissolving boundaries. The contributions include investigations of various models of the scala naturae in Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics; the use of animals as analogy or symbol in political discourse as well as in ritual contexts; hybridity and metamorphosis in visual (Greek vases, cult images, late antique mosaics) and literary traditions (Aristophanes, Ovid); hierarchies and taxonomies in society and religion, for instance in the context of hunt or sacrifice or at the edges of the world where other rules prevail. All testimonies share a conception of humans and animals that is based on an anthropomorphic approach already fixed, to some extent, in language. Although the transfer of hierarchies between humans and animals onto the relation between men and women or between culture and nature serves to reinforce oppositions, it proves at the same time that both parts are inextricably intertwined.The volume inlcudes papers in German, English, Italian and French. weiterlesen