Worlds Full of Signs: Ancient Greek Divination in Context

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BRILL, 8 ago 2013 - 260 páginas
Worlds Full of Signs compares Greek divination to divinatory practices in Neo-Assyrian Mesopotamia and Republican Rome. It argues that the character of Greek divination differed fundamentally from that of the two comparanda. Ample attention is given to background and method at first. Subsequent chapters discuss the divinatory elements – sign, homo divinans, and text, relating divination to time and uncertainty. This book brings together sources originating from various times and places, questioning these to consider both generalities of ancient divination and specifics of Greek divination. Greek divination was inherently flexible on many levels: these findings should be connected to Greek views on time and the future as well as the relatively low level of divinatory institutionalization.
 

Índice

Introduction
1
Part One Introduction to Ancient Divination
7
Chapter One Historiography
9
Chapter Two Defining Divination
19
Chapter Three Comparison
43
Part Two Elements of Ancient Divination
53
Layman and Expert
55
Chapter Five Significance of Signs
107
Part Three Function of Ancient Divination
171
Chapter Seven Time and DivinationDivination and Time
173
Chapter Eight Dealing with Uncertainty
195
Conclusion
223
Select Bibliography
231
Index of Modern Authors
237
Index of Subjects
243
Página de créditos

Chapter Six Playing by the Book? Use of a Textual Framework
139

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