BMCR 2009.05.30: Brown on Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination. Blackwell Ancient Religions

Sarah Iles Johnston, Ancient Greek Divination. Blackwell Ancient
Religions.  Malden, MA/Oxford:  Wiley-Blackwell, 2008.  Pp. xiii, 193.
ISBN 9781405115728.  $89.95.

Reviewed by Amelia R. Brown, American School of Classical Studies at
Athens ([email protected])
Word count:  1559 words
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In this contribution to the Blackwell Ancient Religions series, Sarah
Iles Johnston explores the primary archaeological, literary, and
documentary sources for ancient Greek divination. The introduction
argues for the central significance of divination in Greek religion,
and it summarizes relevant ancient and modern scholarship. The
remaining four chapters are organized around the ancient evidence: two
consider "the divine experience" at specific oracles, and two
"freelance divination" professionals and their practices. Delphi,
Dodona, Claros and Didyma receive special attention, and are set in the
context of some other attested oracles. Johnston then explores the
societal role and techniques of the mantis, largely as presented in
ancient Greek literature. Finally, the last chapter focuses on the
evidence of the Greek magical papyri, the links between magic and
divination, and (at last) the evolution of ancient Greek religion
during the later Roman empire. Each chapter concludes with a three-page
bibliography of secondary scholarship; the book ends with indices of
primary sources and subjects.

Johnston has made a fine exposition and analysis of a wide variety of
ancient evidence, well-supported by current scholarship and her own
careful interpretations. It is wonderful to read a synthetic work by a
single author on a broad topic in ancient religion, rather than another
volume of disparate collected essays. Yet the high cost of this slim
book, its omission of Roman divination (on which more below), and its
frequent deployment of technical Greek terms could hinder its use as an
undergraduate textbook, or by "general readers" (p. 29). For the
scholar, whom Johnston also explicitly addresses (p. 29), an enormous
amount of regional and chronological variation is glossed over, while
the lack of footnotes places academic debates awkwardly into the text
alongside the frequent parenthetical citations. However, Johnston does
contribute actively and sensitively to these debates, making this book
an important contribution to the study of ancient Greek religion.

The first chapter is an expansion of the call-to-arms issued in the
introduction to her co-edited conference volume on ancient
divination.[[1]] "Divination" is defined as practices for obtaining
knowledge about the unknown, especially about the future. Since these
practices satisfy a universal human desire, they deserve attention as
an essential element of religion. To demonstrate the ubiquity of
divination, Johnston juxtaposes modern American use of tarot cards or
astrology with ancient practices, and she highlights the paradox of
active ancient scholarship on divination with its relative modern
neglect. Her overview of ancient scholarship focuses first on Cicero's
On Divination, its definitions and lost sources, and then on the Stoics
and authors from Hesiod to the Second Sophistic to St. Augustine.
Ancient scholars were keenly interested in defining the linkage between
the human and divine world, and thus they explored how "natural" and
"technical" divination worked at length. Though they were often
skeptical of the efficacy of certain techniques, divination itself was
always worthy of inquiry. Yet the profound interest in the rational of
post-Enlightenment scholarship on Greek religion largely has left
divination out of that field, while Ritualist or anthropological work
focuses instead on magic. Johnston thus well-demonstrates the need for
this book, then clarifies that she has replaced these ancient
categories with the modern ones of "institutional oracles" and
"independent diviners," following the evidence. She also, regrettably,
decides to leave aside Roman divination yet draws on Roman authors. By
"ancient Greek" she thus means a "culture" rather than an era, though
she leaves her own ideas on the evolution of this culture to the final
chapter and never really defines its scope. In such a slim book, I was
disappointed at this choice, since Roman imperial archaeology,
literature and papyri are used heavily, and since the list of
forthcoming books in this series does not fill this gap. It would be
nice to see the category of "Greco-Roman" revived for topical books
such as this one, particularly when aiming for a broad audience.

The two chapters on oracles begin with a few words on why they were
attached to particular places and what went on in them besides
divination, before moving on to "what sort of divine encounter each of
several oracles offered" (p. 36). Johnston privileges the process of
connection between the human and the divine at oracular sites
throughout their entire period of use, deploying texts from Homer to
the church fathers along with archaeology and epigraphy. She devotes
the first oracle-chapter to Delphi and Dodona, the most well-attested
oracles in peninsular Greece. She emphasizes the pre-eminent authority
of the Pythia and supports recent research arguing that ethylene
escaped from the ground under the Temple of Apollo. Delphi is portrayed
as a sort of societal safety valve, a place to engage with the divine,
which offered a range of services from low-status reply-by-lot to
high-status consultation of the Pythia herself. Johnston then helpfully
develops the pairing of Delphi and Dodona in myth to shed light on
Dodona's mix of lot-oracles and inspired prophecy, with oak, spring and
cauldrons integrated into a coherent whole.

Chapter three moves to Anatolia for a detailed look at the evidence for
two more enthusiastic oracles, Claros and Didyma. Shorter discussions
of other types of oracles follow, first those involving incubation,
most often for healing. The cults of Asclepius at Epidaurus and
Pergamum, the oracle at Daunia in Italy and the oracle of Amphiaraus at
Oropos are all offered as examples of divination by dreams available
only at specific sites.[[2]] Similarities of myth and iconography then
link in Trophonius, though sensibly what little is known about the
process for consulting this hero at Lebadea is linked to a discussion
of mystery cults. The undeniably chthonic cult of Trophonius also leads
Johnston to emphasize (not entirely convincingly) that both Greeks and
Romans always preferred to consult gods or heroes rather than the dead,
and "seldom or never practiced" necromancy (p. 97); she reiterates
these arguments in chapter five, responding to challenges to her
book.[[3]] She then collects evidence for oracles using fire, water,
mirrors or dice, and concludes with Lucian's famous expose/ of
Alexander of Abonuteichos and his oracular snake. Throughout these
oracular chapters, Johnston steers a middle course between the
skepticism of Lucian and most modern scholars, and total credulity. She
places the phenomenon of oracles in a culture of people eager to seek
divine advice at specific places through age-old methods, including the
consultation of people who were credited with communicating with the
gods.

She then devotes the last two chapters to the mantis or diviner who
could determine the will of the gods outside the oracular context.
Chapter four describes how one might become a mantis through a
combination of birth and/or training, where one might be called upon to
use that training, and the many techniques of divining available:
through organs, birds, chance, the stars, dreams, oracle texts or
personal daimones. In this chapter, the focus on Greek literature and
culture imposes some artificial limitations which might have been
avoided or at least indicated. Mythological and historical diviners are
treated together throughout, and though the distinction between them is
always made, the relation among Classical diviners, Classical literary
authors, and stories about Tiresias or Chalchas, is far less clear.
When Johnston explores battle and healing as specific situations
calling for a mantis, the Athenocentric and literary cast of the
evidence is clear. She does more broadly define the diviner as an
expert in communication with the hard-to-reach, a person to call on in
a crisis of any sort, but surely diviners also played a role in the
public life of Greek cities outside battle.[[4]] The rich connections
which each technique of divination has with Near Eastern and Roman
traditions are also largely unexplored, despite the use of the Greek
magical papyri from Egypt in the very next chapter or frequent
references to Cicero.

The final chapter contains an analysis of divination in the Greek
magical papyri (PGM), an overview of changes in ancient Greek religion,
and some conclusions on the close relationship between magic and
divination. Johnston helpfully draws out unique information on
divinatory circumstances, people and techniques from the PGM, and
demonstrates how difficult it is to draw distinctions among ancient
religion, divination and magic, though Christianity and scholarship
continue to try. The appearance of both Democritus and Pythagoras in
the PGM and the growth of Neo-Platonic theurgy contrast with the
mythical seers of chapter four; imperial Greeks privately seem to have
looked to philosophers, a wide range of gods and the dead for
information about the unknown.

Johnston then argues for three changes within the "strong tendency
toward continuity in all aspects of Greek religious practices and
belief" which she has largely assumed throughout the rest of the book
(p. 151). She argues convincingly for the changes, though limits
herself perhaps too much in confining them to circa 100-500 AD.
Certainly more foreign gods were adopted, personal "utopian" religions
became more popular, and Roman emperors took official action against
some forms of divination. Christian authorities were then even more
active in persecuting both divination and other aspects of traditional
Greco-Roman polytheism. Yet throughout this era the divinatory
professional shared with the magician the goal of accessing the
unknown, creativity, practicality and consistent demand for their
services across the Greek world. These informed conclusions and careful
handling of the evidence lead one to hope that Johnston will offer
further contributions to the study of Greek religion soon.[[5]]


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Notes:


1.   "Divining Divination" in S.I. Johnson and P.T. Struck (eds.),
Mantike^: Studies in Ancient Divination, Leiden 2005, 1-28, reviewed by
A. Nice in BMCR 2006.04.10.

2.   The book's single map of "the Greek world" is very limited. Only
the Greek peninsula and western Anatolia are shown in outline, and the
mere 8 labeled places include neither these sanctuaries, other than
Oropos, nor most of the other oracles Johnston goes on to discuss in
chapter three. The 12 black and white pictures do complement the text
well, though one misses a plan of either Dodona or Claros.

3.   S.I. Johnston, Restless Dead: Encounters between the Living and
the Dead in Ancient Greece, Berkeley 1999; D. Ogden, Greek and Roman
Necromancy, Princeton 2001. See now also D. Ogden, Night's Black
Agents: Witches, Wizards and the Dead in the Ancient World, London
2008.

4.   For the Mythical through Classical Greek diviner see now M.A.
Flower, The Seer in Ancient Greece, Berkeley 2008, and, for the overlap
between civic priest and diviner, see the articles collected in B.
Dignas and K. Trampedach (eds.), Practitioners of the Divine: Greek
Priests and Religious Officials from Homer to Heliodorus, Washington,
DC 2008.

5.   I noticed very few typos. On p. 94 and in the index Strabo 6.9.3
should be 6.3.9.