Sacred Words: Orality, Literacy and Religion

André P.M.H. Lardinois (Princeton Ph.D. 1995) is Professor of Greek Language and Literature at Radboud University Nijmegen in the Netherlands. His main interests center on Greek lyric poetry and Greek drama.

Josine H. Blok is Professor of Ancient History and Classical Culture at Utrecht University and has published widely on the cultural, political and social history of archaic and classical Greece and nineteenth-century classical scholarship.

Marc van der Poel is Professor of Latin Language and Literature at Radboud University Nijmegen. He has published on various aspects of the history of rhetoric from antiquity to the Renaissance, and on Latin literature, especially in the Renaissance.

Contributors: Crystal Addey, Mark Alonge, Vanessa Berger, Josine Blok, Bé Breij, Christopher Faraone, Franco Ferrari, Michael Gagarin, Sarah Hitch, Fiona Hobden, Vincent Hunink, Akio Ito, Andromache Karanika, André Lardinois, Elizabeth Minchin, James Morrison, Maria Pavlou, Marc van der Poel, Ana Rodriguez-Mayorgas, Ruth Scodel, Niall W. Slater, Roslaind Thomas and Evelyn van 't Wout.

All those interested in ancient religions and issues of orality and literacy, including ancient history, Greek and Roman literature, Greek law and Early Christian literature

Part I: GREEK LITERATURE

1. The Words of Gods: Divine Discourse in Homer's Iliad
Elizabeth Minchin
2. Enter the Divine: Sympotic Performance and Religious Experience
Fiona Hobden
3. Past and Present in Pindar’s Religious Poetry
Maria Pavlou
4. Euripides, the Derveni Papyrus, and the Smoke of Many Writings
Ruth Scodel

Part II: GREEK LAW

5. Writing Sacred Laws in Archaic and Classical Crete
Michael Gagarin
6. Embedded Speech in the Attic Leges Sacrae
Sarah Hitch
7. From Oath-swearing to Entrenchment Clause: the Introduction of atimia Terminology in Legal Inscriptions
Evelyn van ’t Wout
8. ‘And you, the demos, made an uproar’: Performance, Mass Audiences and Text in the Athenian Democracy
Rosalind Thomas

Part III: GREEK AND ROMAN RELIGIOUS TEXTS

9. Hexametrical Incantations as Oral and Written Phenomena
Christopher Faraone
10. Oral Bricolage and Ritual Context in the Golden Tablets
Franco Ferrari
11. Greek Hymns from Performance to Stone
Mark Alonge
12. Annales Maximi: Writing, Memory, and Religious Performance in the Roman Republic
Ana Rodriguez-Mayorgas
13. Homer the Prophet: Homeric Verses and Divination in the Homeromanteion
Andromache Karanika
14. Assuming the Mantle of the Gods: ‘Unknowable Names,’ Hieratic Formulae and Invocations in Late Antique Theurgic Ritual
Crystal Addey

Part IV: ROMAN LITERATURE

15. Plautus the Theologian
Niall W. Slater
16. Orality in Livy’s Representation of the Divine: The Construction of a Polyphonic Narrative
Vanessa Berger
17. Dilemmas of Pietas in Roman Declamation
Bé Breij

Part V: EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE

18. Paul the ‘Herald’ and the ‘Teacher’: Paul’s Self-Images within an Oral Milieu
Akio Ito
19. Divine Voice, Literary Models, and Human Authority: Peter and Paul in the Early Christian Church
James Morrison
20. Singing together in Church: Augustine’s Psalm against the Donatists
Vincent Hunink