Worlds full of signs
Subtitle: ancient Greek divination in context
By: by Kim Beerden
Series: Religions in the Graeco-Roman world -- volume 176; Religions in the Graeco-Roman world -- v. 176.
Publisher: Brill
Published: 2013
Place of publication: Leiden; Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 248
ISBN-13: 9789004252394; 9789004256309
Subjects: Greek Oracles; Orakel; Divination; Wahrsagen
Description: 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. -- Publisher website.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 231-236) and indexes.
Table of contents: title: Preface --; title: List of abbreviations --; title: Introduction -- -- Part one. Introduction ot ancient divination; title: Historiography --; title: Defining divination --; title: Comparison -- -- Part two. Elements of ancient divination; title: The homo divinans : layman and expert --; title: Significance of signs --; title: Playing by the book? : use of a textual framework -- -- Part three. Funciton of ancient divination; title: Time and divination : divination and time --; title: Dealing with uncertainty --; title: Conclusion --; title: Select bibliography --; title: Index of modern authors --; title: Index of subjects.