Introduction: Seeds of Perfection In the course of the so-called Heroic Age, the Greeks mustered a fleet of a thousand ships and sailed to Troy in order to retrieve the radiant Helen, wife of the Spartan king, as well as to avenge the Trojan prince’s breach of the sacrosanct relationship between guest and host. [1] Thus it was, as Homer recounts, that… Read more
Prologue: An Afternoon Walk One fine afternoon in Athens, Cicero, together with his friends Marcus Piso and Titus Pomponius, his brother Quintus, and his first cousin Lucius Cicero, set off on foot through the imposing Dipylon Gate and beyond the city’s circuit wall. Their destination was the nearby Academy where they intended to take a relaxing stroll to unwind from a morning spent listening to the philosophical discourse of… Read more
In Memory of Hakapoua, Wes Mere, and Koha Hēdea Dōra Acknowledgments This book stems from a sense of lasting awe before the marvels of the natural world. It stems from walks in the woods, along the resounding sea, and through lushly planted gardens. It stems also from the wondrous painted landscapes in Roman houses and villas on the Bay of Naples, from Lucretius’ impassioned, often… Read more
Works Cited Acosta-Hughes, B., Kosmetatou, E., and Baumbach, M., eds. 2004. Labored in Papyrus Leaves: Perspectives on an Epigram Collection Attributed to Posidippus (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309). Cambridge, MA. Ajootian, A. 1996. “Praxiteles.” In Palagia 1996:91–129. ———. 2007. “Praxiteles and Fourth century Greek Portraiture.” In Schultz and von den Hoff 2007. Aland, B., Hahn, J.,… Read more
Epilogue. Practitioners of the Divine: A Task with Many Prospects Beate Dignas and Kai Trampedach Albert Henrichs warned us at the beginning of this volume. Did we even know what we were talking about when we invited scholars to a conference on Greek priests? To be sure, for practical reasons we were using the term priest in its broadest and most inclusive sense. The American anthropologist… Read more
10. Authority Disputed: The Seer in Homeric Epic* Kai Trampedach Michael Flower has already observed that we know a number of Greek seers of Archaic and Classical Greece by name. [1] When we compare this situation with priests, the transmission of seers’ names, at least for the historical context of the pre-Hellenistic period, is much richer. The reason… Read more
9. The Iamidae: A Mantic Family and Its Public Image Michael A. Flower Every student of Greek history knows that the Peloponnesian War was brought to an end when Lysander, the brilliant and ruthless Spartan admiral, captured the entire Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 405 BC. What is less well known, perhaps familiar only to a handful of scholars with an interest in Greek divination, is… Read more
8. An Egyptian Priest at Delphi: Calasiris as theios anēr in Heliodorus’ Aethiopica* Manuel Baumbach 1. The Discovery of the Priest in the Greek Novel When we consider the figure and role of the priest in the Greek romantic novel, there is a conspicuous discrepancy among the five extant novels. Whereas priests and priestesses do not appear at all within… Read more
7. Philosopher and Priest: The Image of the Intellectual and the Social Practice of the Elites in the Eastern Roman Empire (First–Third Centuries AD)* Matthias Haake 1. The Epicurean philosopher Lysias of Tarsus was something of a monster. At some point in the late Hellenistic or early Augustan period, [1] he was appointed stephanēphoros, that… Read more
6. Images and Prestige of Cult Personnel in Athens between the Sixth and First Centuries BC* Ralf von den Hoff In the poleis of ancient Greece, priests and priestesses rarely had permanent political, social, or economic power as a group and outside their sanctuaries. [1] On the other hand, everyone would agree that priests were an… Read more
