ULF, Chr., — Das römische Lupercalienfest. Ein Modellfall für Methodenprobleme in der Altertumswissenschaft.

Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1982. IX,176p. Paperback. Front cover with small stain. Back cover vaguely stained. Series: Impulse der Forschung, Band 38. ‘To use a well-worn metaphor, the scholarship in the Roman festival called the Lupercalia has grown like an onion, with many concentric shells of speculation surrounding what we actually know about it. Ulf attacks these accretions of scholarship with matters, slicing through their argumentation to see what of it can really be supported by the evidence. The answer is: not much. (…) Having (…) peeled away the outer layers of the onion, Ulf goes ahead to propose his own interpretation of the Lupercalia. This is done, not within the ancient tradition (…) but through comparison with initiation-rituals of primitive peoples (…). The book is noteworthy for the self-awareness of its methodology and. Clear division into numbered sections and subsections. The argumentation is dense, but only rarely opaque. Typos and the like are very few. The book deserves serious attention.’ (EUGENE N. LANE in The Classical World, 1984, p.126).