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Restless Dead
During the archaic and classical periods, Greek ideas about the dead evolved in response to changing social and cultural conditions—most notably changes associated with the development of the polis, such as funerary legislation, and changes due to increased contacts with cultures of the ancient Near East. In Restless Dead, Sarah Iles Johnston presents and interprets these changes, using them to build a complex picture of the way in which the society of the dead reflected that of the living, expressing and defusing its tensions, reiterating its values and eventually becoming a source of significant power for those who knew how to control it. She draws on both well-known sources, such as Ath...
Ancient Religions
Religious beliefs and practices, which permeated all aspects of life in antiquity, traveled well-worn routes throughout the Mediterranean. This collection of essays, drawn from the groundbreaking reference work Religions of the Ancient World, offers an expansive, comparative perspective on this complex spiritual world.
Envisioning Magic
This collection of twelve articles presents a selection of papers delivered in the course of a seminar 1994-95 and its concluding international symposium at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. The common theme is the interrelation between magic and religion, focussing particularly on the Mediterranean world in Antiquity - Egyptian, Graeco-Roman and Jewish beliefs and customs - but also treating the early modern period in Northern Europe (the Netherlands and Germany) as well as offering more general reflections on elements of magic in language and Jewish mysticism. The volume is characterized by an interdisciplinary approach and the use of varied methodologies, emphasizing the dyna...
Religions of the Ancient World
This groundbreaking, first basic reference work on ancient religious beliefs collects and organizes available information on ten ancient cultures and traditions, including Greece, Rome, and Mesopotamia, and offers an expansive, comparative perspective on each one.
My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity
Sortilege—the making of decisions by casting lots—was widely practiced in the Mediterranean world during the period known as late antiquity, between the third and eighth centuries CE. In My Lots are in Thy Hands: Sortilege and its Practitioners in Late Antiquity, AnneMarie Luijendijk and William Klingshirn have collected fourteen essays that examine late antique lot divination, especially but not exclusively through texts preserved in Greek, Latin, Coptic, and Syriac. Employing the overlapping perspectives of religious studies, classics, anthropology, economics, and history, contributors study a variety of topics, including the hermeneutics and operations of divinatory texts, the importance of diviners and their instruments, and the place of faith and doubt in the search for hidden order in a seemingly random world.
Divination and Knowledge in Greco-Roman Antiquity
Addressing the close connections between ancient divination and knowledge, this volume offers an interlinked and detailed set of case studies which examine the epistemic value and significance of divination in ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Focusing on diverse types of divination, including oracles, astrology, and the reading of omens and signs in the entrails of sacrificial animals, chance utterances and other earthly and celestial phenomena, this volume reveals that divination was conceived of as a significant path to the attainment of insight and understanding by the ancient Greeks and Romans. It also explores the connections between divination and other branches of knowledge in Greco-...
Canidia, Rome’s First Witch
Canidia is one of the most well-attested witches in Latin literature. She appears in no fewer than six of Horace's poems, three of which she has a prominent role in. Throughout Horace's Epodes and Satires she perpetrates acts of grave desecration, kidnapping, murder, magical torture and poisoning. She invades the gardens of Horace's literary patron Maecenas, rips apart a lamb with her teeth, starves a Roman child to death, and threatens to unnaturally prolong Horace's life to keep him in a state of perpetual torment. She can be seen as an anti-muse: Horace repeatedly sets her in opposition to his literary patron, casts her as the personification of his iambic poetry, and gives her the surpri...
The Social Worlds of Ancient Jews and Christians
This volume contains fifteen essays in honor of L. Michael White, whose work has been influential in exploring the social histories of ancient Jews and Christians within the Graeco-Roman world. Following an introduction that highlights some of White’s main scholarly contributions, the essays are grouped into three topic areas: Paul and his Legacy, Social Relations, and Material Culture. The essays are united by an interest in reconstructing the social worlds of ancient Jews and Christians through careful analysis of literary sources and material culture in their most precise ancient contexts.
Gods and Mortals
"A new and modern retelling of all the major myths of Ancient Greek mythology by one of the leading scholars of classical myth"--
Foreign But Familiar Gods
Where and why does Luke include references in Acts to Graeco-Roman gods and religious practices? How do these explicit and implicit mentions relate to other literature, inscriptions and artifacts from the same period? Through a close and informative reading of seven key texts in Acts, Kauppi analyses the appearances of Graeco-Roman.
