Networks and narratives: a model for ancient Greek religion?

Polis religion has become the dominant model for the description of ritual activity in ancient Greek communities.Indeed,scholars have invoked polis religion to try to resolve the much-debated question of the definition of magic vs. religion, arguing that particular ‘magical’practices, and their practitioners, do not belong to‘collective polis religion.’ However,the relationship to polis religion of a‘magical’practice such as the writingof binding spells is surely moreambiguous, as well as of other cult activity relating (in various ways)to the worshipof Dionysos. Further examination suggests that defining whatit means for ritual activity to be integrated within the schema of polis religion becomes increasingly difficult as we examine the variety of cult organisations and the different levels and types of involvement by the polis. This paper argues that social network theory may beable to overcome these conceptual difficulties. This approach can offer an alternative, more fluid construction of ancientGreek religion, which allows us to take account ofcoexisting,sometimes overlapping,networks of ritual activities

Envy, Poison, and Death

At the heart of this book are some trials conducted in Athens in the fourth century BCE. In each case, the charges involved a combination of supernatural activities, including potion-brewing and cult activity; the defendants were all women. Because of the brevity of the ancient sources, and their lack of agreement, the precise charges are unclear; the reasons for taking these women to court, even condemning some of them to die, remain mysterious. This book takes the complexity and confusion of the evidence not as a riddle to be solved, but as revealing multiple social dynamics. It explores the changing factors—material, ideological, and psychological—that may have provoked these events. It focuses in particular on the dual role of envy (phthonos) and gossip as processes by which communities identified people and activities that were dangerous, and examines how and why those local, even individual, dynamics may have come to shape official civic decisions during a time of perceived hardship. At first sight so puzzling, these trials come to provide a vivid glimpse of the sociopolitical environment of Athens during the early to mid-fourth century BCE, including responses to changes in women’s status and behaviour, and attitudes to particular supernatural/religious activities within the city. This study reveals some of the characters, events, and local social processes that shaped an emergent concept of magic: it suggests that the legal boundary of acceptable behaviour was shifting, not only within the legal arena, but also with the active involvement of society beyond the courts

Consuming Narratives: The Politics of Cannibalism on Mt. Lykaion

This article examines a Classical reference to werewolves, a passing analogy made by Plato in the Republic, in his description of the development of a tyrant. In gen- eral, scholars of myth/ritual have largely downplayed or taken for granted the specific Platonic context; while philosophers have tended to overlook both Lyka i an cannibalism, and the intricacies of political alliances in the early fourth century BC. This paper brings together three areas of investigation: philosophy, religion and political history, situating the myth/ritual complex of Lykaon/Mt. Lykaion within the framework of (1) Plato’s Republic, where this myth/ritual is introduced analogically, and (2) fourth-century Peloponnesian politics, to which, it is argued, the Platonic werewolf analogy may be alluding, either in general or specific terms

Oracular consultation, fate and the concept of the individual

This chapter examines the significance of the conception of the self for our understanding of the ritual practice of oracular consultation in ancient Greece, focusing primarily on the evidence of the question tablets from the sanctuary at Dodona, augmented by related literary material for oracular consultation

Ancient Greco-Roman magic and the agency of victimhood

Scholarship on ancient Greco-Roman “magic,” over time and place, has largely focused on the role and identity of ritual practitioners, investigating the nature and source of their perceived expertise and often locating it in their linguistic skills. Less attention has been paid to those identified as the targets of magical rituals, who tend to be described as passive recipients of the ritual or the social power of another. In contrast, drawing on the theory of ritual form developed by Robert McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson, alongside the ritualization theories of Catherine Bell, this article argues that victims of magic were also agents of ritual. Focusing on an experience of hostile magic reported by the fourth-century C.E. orator Libanius, it explores how conceptions of magical power were co-created by spell-makers and their so-called victims and should be regarded as relational, that is, as emerging from the interactions of people and groups