The notion of competition has become crucial to our understanding of
Greek and Roman religion and is often invoked to explain religious
changes and to describe the relationship between various cults. This
volume seeks to raise our awareness of what the notion implies and to
test its use for the analysis of ancient religions. The papers range
from Classical Greece, Hellenistic Babylon, Rome and the Etruscans, to
Late Antiquity and the rise of Islam. They seek to determine how much
can be gained in each individual case by understanding religious
interaction in terms of rivalry and competition. In doing so, the volume
hopes to open a more explicit debate on the analytical tools with which
ancient religion is currently being studied.