Mantike: Studies in Ancient Divination

Religions in the Graeco-Roman World

by Sarah Iles Johnston, Peter T. Struck (Editor)

This book thoroughly revisits divination as a central phenomenon in the lives of ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians. It collects studies from many periods in Graeco-Roman history, from the Archaic period to the late Roman, and touches on many different areas of this rich topic, including treatments of dice oracles, sortition in both pagan and Christian contexts, the overlap between divination and other interpretive practices in antiquity, the fortunes of independent diviners, the activity of Delphi in ordering relations with the dead, the role of Egyptian cult centers in divinatory practices, and the surreptitious survival of recipes for divination by corpses. It also reflects a ranges of methodologies, drawn from anthropology, history of religions, intellectual history, literary studies, and archaeology, epigraphy, and paleography. It will be of particular interest to scholars and student of ancient Mediterranean religions.

Genres: Nonfiction

328 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2005

About the author

Sarah Iles Johnston is the College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Religion and Professor of Classics and Comparative Studies at The Ohio State University.

Reviews

[Norita · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to include this book...I indexed it.

That said, it IS a really good book about a really interesting subject.