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In Dangerous Voices Holst-Warhaft investigates the power and meaning of the ancient lament, especially women's mourning of the dead, and sets out to discover why legislation was introduced to curb these laments in antiquity. An investigation of laments ranging from New Guinea to Greece suggests that this essentially female art form gave women considerable power over the rituals of death. The threat they posed to the Greek state caused them to be appropriated by male writers including the tragedians. Holst-Warhaft argues that the loss of the traditional lament in Greece and other countries not only deprives women of their traditional control over the rituals of death but leaves all mourners impoverished.

Acknowledgements ...IX
A note on transliteration and translation ...X
Introduction ...1
Death, tears and ideas: lament in cross-cultural perspective ...14
The painful art: women's laments for the dead in rural Greece ...40
The politics of revenge in the laments of Inner Mani: duty, honour and poisoned eggs ...75
Mourning in a man's world: the epitaphios logos and the banning of laments in fifth-century Athens ...98
From the Erinyes to the Eumenides: tragedy and the taming of lament ...127
Epitaphs and photographs: laments in modern greek literature ...171
Notes ...195
Bibliography ...215
Index ...222