Greek Religious Texts

This paper takes another look at the two passages of Callimachus that are most cited with reference to Euhemerus—from Callimachus’ First Iamb and Hymn to Zeus—and asks what kind of issues are at stake here for this paradigmatic poet of early Ptolemaic Alexandria.

As a recent study of the intellectual history of the idea of the law of god states, “there is nothing self-evident about ‘divine law’” (Brague 2007, 11). Law, as one form of expression of the normative domain, and the divine, a concept which throughout history has often been assigned the power of exerting a normative function too, might be considered two cultural systems which compete for power. Yet in the societies of the ancient world, these two concepts related to each other in more complex and varying ways than any simple opposition might suggest.

This paper addresses the debated interpretation of Empedocles’ fr. 115 DK, proposing a new semantic reading of the fragment on the basis of linguistic and hermeneutical reflections.

Scholarship on Pausanias’ presentation of the rituals associated with the consultation of the oracle of Trophonius at Lebadeia (9.39.1-40.4) has mainly focused on cultic realia. Bonnechere (2003) elucidates elements of myth and cult related to the mantic hero/god, while Pirenne-Delforge (2008) undermines the interpretation of the consultation ritual as mystery cult initiation. This paper is less concerned with cultic realia, and more focused on relationship between religious experience and its rendering in Pausanias’ text (cf. Elsner 2001, Rüpke 2014).