Divination and Prophecy in the Ancient Greek World

Roger D. Woodard is Andrew van Vranken Raymond Professor of Classics at the University of Buffalo (The State University of New York). He has held fellowships and visiting appointments at, among other institutions, the Center for Hellenic Studies of Harvard University, the American Academy in Rome, and the University of Oxford. Woodard is author or editor of numerous books, including; The Textualization of the Greek Alphabet (Cambridge University Press, 2014), Myth, Ritual, and the Warrior in Roman and Indo-European Antiquity (Cambridge University Press, 2013) and The Cambridge Companion to Greek Mythology (Cambridge University Press, 2007).  He is series editor of Cambridge's Elements of Greek and Roman Mythology.

General Introduction John J. Peradotto; 1. Greek divination as the transformation of an Indo-European process Roger D. Woodard; 2. On divinatory practices and La Raison Des Signes in Archaic Greece Claude Calame; 3. Oracle and client Robert Parker; 4. Disappointment, dissonance, and reconfiguration: Oracular failure in ancient Greek culture Esther Eidinow; 5. The dynamism of mouvance in the pronouncements of the delphic oracle Gregory Nagy; 6. Decentralising delphi: Predictive oracles, local knowledge, and social memory Maurizio Giangiulio; 7. Oracular tales before historiography Nino Luragi; 8. Omens and portents foretelling victory and defeat: Ontological, literary, and cognitive perspectives Michael A. Flower; 9. The use of divination by Macedonian kings Fred S. Naiden; 10. False prophets and fake prophecies in Lucian Dana Fields; 11. Afterword Roger D. Woodard; Abbreviations; Bibliography.