150 De novis libris iudicia Aston, E. Mixanthropoi. Animal-human Hybrid Deities in Greek Religion (Kernos Suppl. 25). Liège, Centre International d’Étude de la Religion Grecque Antique, 2011. 383 pp. Pr. €40.00. ISBN 9782960071788. According to common perception―ancient and modern alike―Greek antiq- uity knew no animal gods. And yet, Greek mythology and imagery is full of divine mixed creatures. In her book, originally a PhD thesis completed at the University of Exeter, Emma Aston (henceforth EA) sets out to understand how these contradictory strands of tradition go together. In line with more recent scholarship she places ‘oddities’ such as human-animal gods at the center of Greek religion and not in its periphery, be it chronological or spatial. And she does so by an ambitious agenda: “it is time to close the gap between myth, art and cult” (p. 12). The study is organized in three sections with three to four chapters each. EA presents a large corpus of evidence regarding the myths, cult (sites) and visual representations of the deities with textual sources prevailing. She relies particularly on Homer, Nonnos, mythographers such as Apollodorus and Antoninus Liberalis, and, most importantly, the travel writer Pausanias. The extensive introduction (pp. 11-51) touches upon many aspects of the theme, from historiography (pp. 11-2) and terminology (pp. 12-6), to animal-human interactions in ancient Greece (pp. 16-21), the different impact of Egyptian and Near Eastern traditions (pp. 21-7), images, texts, and objects of animal-human hybrids (pp. 27-43), and ancient views on mixanthropoi (pp. 43-9). Unlike mon- sters, which consist of different animal parts, mixanthropoi―a term EA borrows from late antique authors―combine human and animal bodies. Moreover, they are a form of representing the divine; almost all of the figures EA discusses received cult. Is mixanthropy related to the mythological and religious person- ality of the gods? Their anthropomorphic side inevitably connects them to the broader discourse on human―animal relationships, a variation on the theme of Greek self-definition, but which in myth mainly consist of combat, bestiality and metamorphosis (p. 19). The first section (pp. 53-148), devoted to “Cults and compositions of mix- anthropic deities”, presents the evidence on which EA bases her argument. It is mainly concerned with sources on the existence of cults and the mytho- logical personae of the respective deities. The three subchapters treat hybrid deities of the sea and rivers (Proteus, Thetis, Eurynome, the Sirenes, Glaukos, Acheloos; ch. 1, pp. 55-89), the earth (Cheiron, Demeter Melaina, Pan, Kek- rops, Dionysos; ch. 2, pp. 91-132) and “winged and horned gods” (Eos, Erinyes, Apollo Karneios, Zeus Ammon; ch. 3, pp. 133-43). The somewhat inconsistent © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���4 | doi �0.��63/�5685�5X-��34�590 De novis libris iudicia 151 division―winged and horned gods, if with a more theriomorphic body, appear also in chs. 1 and 2―reflects what EA states earlier: there is no coherent con- cept of mixanthropy in antiquity (p. 15). However, while each deity has his or her own particularities in myth, art and cult, there are some basic similarities and affinities. Shape-shifting, metamorphosis and/or masking form one of the threads, the connection to plenty, fertility, but also sexual assault and marriage another. Some of the mixanthropic deities act as cultural heroes, prophets or healers. Mixanthropes are also imagined as belonging to a much older genera- tion. Many of them live and are worshipped in extra-urban sites or, such as Kekrops or Pan at Athens, in sanctuaries, that albeit located in the city cen- ter evoke the countryside. Several mixanthropes are connected in inclusive or contrasting ways to related deities or mythological figures: Pan and Acheloos are often depicted and worshipped with nymphs, Hermes and other gods. The centaur Cheiron, on the other hand, stands out as a wise individual against the brutal and uncouth “group-centaurs” (p. 97). This unclear position of mixan- thropes between remote and present, rural and urban, plural and individual finds its counterpart in their ambiguous relation to a specific form of anthro- pomorphism: mortality. Despite of their divine status, some of them die. The main themes of this complicated web of relations are more fully explored in Section II on “Movement, absence and loss” (pp. 149-251). Here, EA focuses on ritual and the real and mythic landscape of cult settings (ch. 4, pp. 153-92). Central to her arguments are the river god Acheloos, and the ter- restrian mixanthropes Cheiron, Demeter Melaina and Pan. Many of them live and are worshipped in caves. The symbolic meaning of these “proto-houses” (p. 145) helps to define the deities as liminal: they stand in between unculti- vated primeval times and present civilization or life and death, the wild and the tamed. In all cases, the motif of absence and loss comes to the fore in vari- ous ways. Comparable to cults for dead heroes, sacred sites of mixanthropes are situated at the spot of their disappearance. The horse-headed Demeter Melaina hides in a cave after having been raped by Poseidon. The cult remem- bers her leaving the place to return to agriculture and thus reassuring life for humankind, liberating it from famine and impending cannibalism. But once her cult image is burnt, and ultimately destroyed, worship at the cave ceases. Cheiron is imagined as dead and gone from his cave. A god’s removal is not always self-inflicted (pp. 175-88). In a ritual parallel to that of expelling a phar- makos from the city, Pan’s cult image is flogged by hunters when the kill is poor. Sometimes, the expulsion results in burial of the deity. Unlike that of the scape-goat―a figure rejected because of its symbolical animality―, or that of a defeated monster, the mixanthrope’s absence, however, ultimately has a neg- ative effect on humans. The history of mixanthropy cannot be understood in mnemosyne 67 (�0�4) �50-�54.