Description
Book SynopsisSurveys the places, performers, and techniques of necromancy as well as the reasons for turning to it. This book investigates the cave-based sites of oracles of the dead at Heracleia Pontica and Tainaron, as well as the oracles at the Acheron and Avernus, which probably consisted of lakeside precincts.
Trade Review"[A] substantial contribution... Ogden takes on ... Necromancy ... with a huge diachronic sweep and exhaustive trawling of evidence... [This] book will be indispensable to future scholars."--Peter Green, Times Literary Supplement "The thought of raising and consulting the dead runs throughout the history of antiquity... The dead who did come back were often in an angry and violent mood; a hero might be needed to vanquish them, or a potent magic to induce them to be gone... Ogden's [is an] admirably cool and scholarly discussion of necromancy."--Jasper Griffin, New York Review of Books "Ogden's book ... makes it easy for the reader to follow and enjoy the beauty (and sometimes strangeness) of the sources and the accounts of necromancy they provide."--Julia Kindt, International History Review "It is rare and refreshing to read a book of the high caliber of the one under review. The scope is breathtaking, the sources cited are thorough and wide-ranging, and the author's own biases are either nonexistent or kept completely under control. Furthermore, the subject matter is so provocative and the writer's style is so direct and fast paced that it is difficult to put the book down once begun... Whether one sits down to read the book cover to cover or comes to it as a resource tool, there will be no disappointment."--Elise P. Garrison, Religious Studies Review "For specialists, this is a treasure trove of the ancient evidence on necromancy and its related modern scholarship."--Choice
Table of ContentsList of Figures vii Preface ix Abbreviations xi Introduction xv PART I: PLACES 1 Chapter 1: Tombs and Battlefields 3 Chapter 2: Oracles of the Dead 17 Chapter 3: The Heracleia Pontica and Tainaron Nekuomanteia 29 Chapter 4: The Acheron Nekuomanteia 49 Chapter 5: The Avernus Nekuomanteia 61 Chapter 6: Incubation and Dreaming 75 PART II: PEOPLE 93 Chapter 7: Evocators, Sorcerers, and Ventriloquists 95 Chapter 8: Shamus, Pythagoreans, and Orphics 116 Chapter 9: Aliens and Witches 128 Chapter 10: Necromancy among the Romans 149 PART III: TECHNOLOGY 161 Chapter 11: Traditional Rites of Evocation 163 Chapter 12: From Bowl Divination to Boy-Sacrifice 191 Chapter 13: Reanimation and Talking heads 202 PART IV: THEORY 217 Chapter 14: Ghosts in Necromancy 219 Chapter 15: The Wisdom of the Dead 231 Chapter 16: Between Life and Death 251 CONCLUSION: Attitudes toward Necromancy 263 Bibliography 269 Index 303
