From binding spells and incantations to curse-writing rituals, magic pervaded the ancient Greek world. In Blood and Ashes provides the first historical study of the development and dissemination of ritualized curse practice from 750-250 BCE, documenting the cultural pressures that drove the use of curse tablets, charms, spells, and other private rites. This book expands our understanding of daily life in ancient communities, showing how individuals were
making sense of the world and coping with conflict, vulnerability, competition, anxiety, desire, and loss, all while conjuring the gods and powers of the Underworld. Bringing together epigraphic,
literary, archaeological, and material evidence, Jessica L. Lamont reads between traditional histories of Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic Greece, drawing out new voices and new narratives to consider: here are the cooks, tavern keepers, garland weavers, helmsmen, barbers, and other persons who often slip through the cracks of ancient history. The texts and objects presented here offer glimpses of public and private lives across many centuries, illuminating the interplay of ritual and
conflict-management strategies among citizens and slaves, men and women, pagans and Christians. Filled with new material and insights, Lamont's volume offers a groundbreaking perspective on ancient
Greek social history and religion, highlighting the role of ritual in negotiating life's uncertainties.
From binding spells and incantations to curse-writing rituals, magic pervaded the ancient Greek world. In Blood and Ashes provides the first historical study of the development and dissemination of ritualized curse practice from 750-250 BCE, documenting the cultural pressures that drove the use of curse tablets, charms, spells, and other private rites. This book expands our understanding of daily life in ancient communities, showing how individuals were
making sense of the world and coping with conflict, vulnerability, competition, anxiety, desire, and loss, all while conjuring the gods and powers of the Underworld. Bringing together epigraphic,
literary, archaeological, and material evidence, Jessica L. Lamont reads between traditional histories of Archaic, Classical, and early Hellenistic Greece, drawing out new voices and new narratives to consider: here are the cooks, tavern keepers, garland weavers, helmsmen, barbers, and other persons who often slip through the cracks of ancient history. The texts and objects presented here offer glimpses of public and private lives across many centuries, illuminating the interplay of ritual and
conflict-management strategies among citizens and slaves, men and women, pagans and Christians. Filled with new material and insights, Lamont's volume offers a groundbreaking perspective on ancient
Greek social history and religion, highlighting the role of ritual in negotiating life's uncertainties.
Preface
List of Figures and Credits
List of Maps
Abbreviations and Conventions
Epigraphic Conventions
Introduction
PART I: The Beginnings of Greek Curse-Writing Rituals
1. Chapter One: Sicilian Beginnings
2. Chapter Two: Why Western Sicily?
PART II: The Early Spread of Curse Technologies, 500-250 BCE
3. Chapter Three: The Spread and Diversification of Curse Practice:
Three Case Studies
4. Chapter Four: Athenian Curse Practice
PART III: Orality and Text: Curse Practice in the Realm of Binding
Spells and Arai
5. Chapter Five: In Blood and Ashes: Curse Tablets and Binding
Spells
6. Chapter Six: Public Imprecations and Private Curse-Writing
Conclusion
Bibliography
Jessica L. Lamont is Assistant Professor of Classics and History at Yale University.
Lamont is an extremely smart and original scholar, who marshals a
considerable array of historical, epigraphical, and archaeological
sources, and who is not afraid to wrestle with big questions or
take on established dogmas in the field of ancient magic. Her
eagerly anticipated In Blood and Ashes provides, for the first
time, a continuous history of curse-tablets from archaic to late
Hellenistic times, beginning in Sicily and Italy then moving
eastward to Attica, the Aegean, and beyond-contrary to modern
expectations that such ritual technologies generally moved from
East to West.
*Christopher A. Faraone, University of Chicago*
This engaging and wide ranging book represents the first historical
study of curse practices in the ancient Greek world. Lamont
thoroughly examines and contextualizes individual curse tablets,
provides new insight into their origins, early dissemination, and
diverse local characteristics, and demonstrates the importance of
these texts for our understanding of Greek religion, literacy and
orality, legal institutions, and social history. This impressive
and innovative book will be of interest to scholars of classical
literature, history, archaeology, and religious studies.
*Ivana Petrovic, University of Virginia*
An important study for collections supporting classical culture and
the history of religion.
*Choice*
Lamont's material-rich, thoroughly elaborated study advances
research on ancient magic, especially on the curse tablets, a good
deal of progress.
*Martin Dreher, Bryn Mawr Classical Review*
This monograph provides an extremely detailed and interesting
analysis of curses from 750 to 250 bce, is the first work to
explicitly focus on the 'development and dissemination of cursing',
and fills several gaps in previous scholarship. Throughout, there
is good use of illustrations, which are often difficult to come by
in many books on curse tablets. It is particularly valuable to have
images of the tablets alongside drawings. The inclusion of hitherto
unpublished translations of tablets is extremely important to the
continued development of the discipline. The translations are well
done and considered
*The Classical Review*
Apart from the significance of this book for the particular topic
of curse tablets, this is a great methodological contribution to
how to study the history of the peculiar unit of analysis that we
call the 'Greek world' and its changing history.
*Greece & Rome *
 |
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
