ABSTRACT
The growth of the animal rights movement in the last quarter of the 20th century gave a new impetus to the human/animal engagement, suggesting a more focused approach informed by a clearer understanding of the range of possible human/animal relations. Other approaches are more synchronic, but may see the animal as anything from an instrument in human/divine communication to part of a symbolic language used in understanding the world. Healing cults comprise another area where gods use animals to approach human beings, but — even more than in divination — the animals appear to have something of the divine about them. Cognitive science is shaping up as a useful tool in our understanding of Greek religion, and one might expect it to inform more approaches to the religious role of animals. Perhaps the future will bring further ambitious, large-scale systems that one cannot yet imagine to bear on the study of Greek religion.
