Ancient Divination and Experience

Lindsay G. Driediger-Murphy is Associate Professor in Latin and Roman Social/Religious History at the University of Calgary, Canada. Her research interests include Roman divination, ancient and modern conceptualizations of religion, interactions between religions in antiquity, and Greek and Latin historiography. She has published in such journals as Phoenix, ZPE, and GRBS, as well as authoring a monograph published by Oxford University Press, Roman Republican Augury: Freedom and Control.Esther Eidinow is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research focuses on ancient Greek culture, especially religion and magic, and she is particularly interested in anthropological and cognitive approaches to these areas. She is the co-founder and co-editor in chief of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography. As well as numerous articles, her publications include Oracles, Curses, and Risk among the Ancient Greeks (OUP, 2007), Luck, Fate and Fortune: Antiquity and its Legacy (IB Tauris, 2010), and Envy, Poison, and Death: Women on Trial in Classical Athens (OUP, 2016).

• Frontmatter List of Figures List of Contributors 0: Lindsay G. Driediger-Murphy and Esther Eidinow: Introduction I. Expertise and Authority 1: Scott B. Noegel: Augur Anxieties in the Ancient Near East 2: Esther Eidinow: Testing the Oracle? On the Experience of (Multiple) Oracular Consultations 3: Hugh Bowden: Euxenippos at Oropos: Dreaming for Athens 4: Jason P. Davies: Whose Dream Is It Anyway? Navigating the Significance of Dreams in the Ancient World II. Signs and Control 5: Lisa Maurizio: A Reconsideration of the Pythia's Use of Lots: Constraints and Chance in Delphic Divination 6: Andrew Stiles: Making Sense of Chaos: Civil War, Dynasties, and Family Trees 7: Federico Santangelo: Prodigies in the Early Principate? 8: Lindsay G. Driediger-Murphy: Unsuccessful Sacrifice in Roman State Divination III. Divine Presence? 9: Michael A. Flower: Divination and the 'Real Presence' of the Divine in Ancient Greece 10: Quinton Deeley: The Pythia at Delphi: A Cognitive Reconstruction of Oracular Possession 11: Lisa Raphals: Which Gods if Any: Gods, Cosmologies, and their Implications for Chinese and Greek Divination Endmatter Index

Overall, the volume is an example of solid and original scholarship; it is valuable, beyond the potential relevance of each contribution for its specific field of inquiry, because it offers a different perspective on several aspects of ancient divination.