Animals, gods, and humans

"Ingvild Saelid Gilhus explores the transition from traditional Greek and Roman religion to Christianity in the Roman Empire and the effect of this change on how animals were regarded, illustrating the main factors in the creation of a Christian conception of animals." "A wide range of key texts are consulted, ranging from philosophical treatises to novels and poems on metamorphoses; from biographies of holy men such as Apollonius of Tyana and Antony, the Christian desert ascetic, to natural history; from the New Testament via Gnostic texts to the Church fathers; from pagan and Christian criticism of animal sacrifice to the acts of the martyrs. Both the pagan and the Christian conception of animals remained rich and multi-layered through the centuries, and this book presents the dominant themes and developments in the conception of animals without losing that complexity."--Jacket.