ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an example of one thing in the world the wolf to show how this sort of thinking operated in ancient Greece. It examines a variety of contexts in which wolves appear. The chapter demonstrate how the complex reality of the wolf tended to be pared down in the tradition to a small number of characteristics which were good to think with, and how even writers of a scientific type were influenced by features of the wolf as depicted in myth. It presents the specific example of the werewolf to indicate how Greek wolves were good to think within one particular myth-and-ritual complex; and it makes some more general points about ways in which myth and ritual can be seen to complement and yet to contrast with each other. The chapter discusses the far from simple relationship obtaining between traditions about and empirical observation of the wolf in Greek antiquity.
