Mantikê : studies in ancient divination /
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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.
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1 online resource (322 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789047407966 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.
Hellenic religion and Christianization. c. 370-529 /
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This work discusses the decline of Greek religion and the christianization of town and countryside in the eastern Roman Empire between the death of Julian the Apostate and the laws of Justinian the Great against paganism, c. 370-529. It examines such questions as the effect of the laws against sacrifice and sorcery, temple conversions, the degradation of pagan gods into daimones , the christianization of rite, and the social, political and economic background of conversion to Christianity. Several local contexts are examined in great detail: Gaza, Athens, Alexandria, Aphrodisias, central Asia Minor, northern Syria, the Nile basin, and the province of Arabia. It lays particular emphasis on the criticism of epigraphy, legal evidence, and hagiographic texts, and traces the demographic growth of Christianity and the chronology of this process in select local contexts. It also seeks to understand the behavioral patterns of conversion.
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1 online resource (xvi, 344 pages) :
Includes bibliographical references and indexes. :
9789004276772 :
0927-7633 ; :
Available to subscribing member institutions only.