Ancient Divination and Experience

How did people in the ancient world experience their attempts to communicate with divine powers? This volume seeks to re-examine divination in ancient Greek, Roman, Mesopotamian, and Chinese cultures and to identify and elucidate previously understudied aspects of ancient divinatory experience and practice.

Lindsay G. Driediger-Murphy is Associate Professor in Latin and Roman Social/Religious History at the University of Calgary, Canada. Her research interests include Roman divination, ancient and modern conceptualizations of religion, interactions between religions in antiquity, and Greek and Latin historiography. She has published in such journals as Phoenix, ZPE, and GRBS, as well as authoring a monograph published by Oxford University Press, Roman Republican Augury: Freedom and Control.
Esther Eidinow is Professor of Ancient History at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research focuses on ancient Greek culture, especially religion and magic, and she is particularly interested in anthropological and cognitive approaches to these areas. She is the co-founder and co-editor in chief of the Journal of Cognitive Historiography. As well as numerous articles, her publications include Oracles, Curses, and Risk among the Ancient Greeks (OUP, 2007), Luck, Fate and Fortune: Antiquity and its Legacy (IB Tauris, 2010), and Envy, Poison, and Death: Women on Trial in Classical Athens (OUP, 2016).