Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gxg78 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T16:49:14.707Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 7 - Epiphany and Divination Reconsidered

The Case Study of the Iamata from Imperial Pergamum

from Part II - Status, Role, and Functions of Human Intermediaries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2023

Elsa Giovanna Simonetti
Affiliation:
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium
Claire Hall
Affiliation:
University of Durham
Get access

Summary

In a recent article in the journal Kernos (2018, 31: 39–58), Julia Kindt compared ancient Greek epiphanic and oracular narratives and rightly argued that although both epiphany and divination explore analogous issues of limited human cognition at the face of the divine, recent studies of divine epiphany (Verity Platt, Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion, Cambridge University Press 2011, and Georgia Petridou, Divine Epiphany in Greek Literature and Culture, Oxford University Press 2015) tend to keep discussions of these religious phenomena separate. This chapter is an attempt to readdress this seeming imbalance by focusing more explicitly on complex self-conscious narratives pertaining to incubation (enkoimesis, kataklisis) in Imperial Pergamum, a religious practice that could be thought as offering an interesting intersection of divine epiphany and what Kindt calls ‘inspired divination’. More specifically, this paper focuses on the dynamics and problematics of diagnostic and therapeutic divination, as delineated in Aelius Aristides’ Sacred Discourses (Hieroi Logoi, Or. 47–52 Keil), Galen’s De curandi ratione per venae sectionem (4.23 = 11.314–315 K.), and contemporary epigraphic evidence from the temples of Asclepius in Pergamum and Epidaurus.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Albrecht, Janico, Degelmann, Christopher, Gasparini, Valentino et al. 2018. ‘Religion in the Making: The Lived Ancient Religion Approach’. Religion 48: 126.Google Scholar
Behr, Charles A. 1968. Aelius Aristides and the Sacred Tales. Amsterdam: A. M. Hakkert.Google Scholar
Downie, Janet. 2013. At the Limits of Art: A Literary Study of Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Edelstein, Emma J. and Edelstein, Ludwig. 1998. Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gasparini, Valentino. 2016. ‘Listening Stones: Cultural Appropriation, Resonance and Memory in the Isiac Cult’. In Gasparini, Valentino (ed.), Vestigia. Miscellanea di Studi Storico-Religiosi in Onore Di Filippo Coarelli Nel Suo 80° Anniversario, (Potsdamer Altertumswissenschaftliche Beiträge Band 55). Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, pp. 555–74.Google Scholar
Gasparini, Valentino, Patzelt, Maik, Raja, Rubina et al. (eds.) 2020. Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 237–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Girone, Maria. 1998. Iamata: guarigioni miracolose di Asclepio in testi epigrafici. Bari: Levante.Google Scholar
Goeken, Johann 2012. Aelius Aristide et la rhétorique de l’hymne en prose. Turnhout: Brepols.Google Scholar
Grant, Mark. 2000. Galen on Food and Diet. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Habicht, Christian. 1969. Die Inschriften des Asklepieions: Mit einem Beitrag von Michael Wörrle (Altertümer von Pergamon VIII.3). Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Israelowich, Ido. 2012. Society, Medicine and Religion in the Sacred Tales of Aelius Aristides. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Kindt, Julia. 2015. ‘Personal Religion: A Productive Category for the Study of Ancient Greek Religion?Journal of Hellenic Studies 135: 3550.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kindt, Julia. 2018. ‘Revelation, Narrative, and Cognition: Oracle Stories as Epiphanic Tales in Ancient Greece’. Kernos 31: 3958.Google Scholar
King, Helen. 1999. ‘Chronic Pain and the Creation of Narrative’. In Porter, James I. (ed.), Constructions of the Classical Body. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, pp. 269–86.Google Scholar
Müller, Helmut. 1987. ‘Ein Heilungsbericht aus dem Asklepieion von Pergamon’. Chiron 17: 193233.Google Scholar
Oberhelman, Steven M. 1983. ‘Galen, On Diagnosis from Dreams’. The Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 38: 3647.Google Scholar
Oberhelman, Steven M. 1993. Dreams in Greco-Roman Medicine. Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt II 37(1): 121–56.Google Scholar
Pernot, Laurent. 2006. ‘The Rhetoric of Religion’. Rhetorica 24: 235–54.Google Scholar
Petridou, Georgia. 2015a. Divine Epiphany in Ancient Greek Literature and Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Petridou, Georgia. 2015b. ‘Emplotting the Divine: Epiphanic Narratives as Means of Enhancing Agency’. Religion in the Roman Empire 1(3): 321–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petridou, Georgia. 2016. ‘Aelius Aristides as Informed Patient’. In Petridou, Georgia and Chiara, Thumiger (eds.), Homo Patiens: Approaches to Patient in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 451–70.Google Scholar
Petridou, Georgia. 2017. ‘Contesting Religious and Medical Expertise in the Hieroi Logoi: The Therapeutai of Pergamum as Religious and Medical Entrepreneurs’. In Gordon, Richard L., Petridou, Georgia and Rüpke, Jörg (eds.), Beyond Priesthood: Religious Entrepreneurs and Innovators in the Roman Empire. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 183208.Google Scholar
Petridou, Georgia. 2018.‘“One has to be so terribly religious to be an artist”: Divine Inspiration and Theophilia in Aelius Aristides’ Hieroi Logoi. Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 20(1): 253–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petridou, Georgia. 2019. ‘The Curious Case of Aelius Aristides: The Author as Sufferer and Illness as “Individualizing Motif”’. In Becker, Eve-Marie and Rüpke, Jörg (eds.), Autoren in religiösen literarischen Texten der späthellenistischen und der frühkaiserzeitlichen Welt: Zwölf Fallstudien. Heidelberg: Mohr Siebeck, pp. 199219.Google Scholar
Petridou, Georgia. 2020. ‘The “Lived” Body in Pain: Illness and Initiation in Lucian’s Podagra and Aelius Aristides’. In Gasparini, Valentino, Patzelt, Maik, Raja, Rubina et al. (eds.), Lived Religion in the Ancient Mediterranean World. Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 237–59.Google Scholar
Petridou, Georgia. 2021. ‘“There Is a Pain – So Utter – ”: Narrating Chronic Pain and Disability in Antiquity and Modernity’. In Adams, Ellen (ed.), The Forgotten Other: Disability Studies and the Classical Body. London: Routledge, pp. 6788.Google Scholar
Petsalis-Diomidis, Alexia. 2010. Truly Beyond Wonders. Aelius Aristides and the Cult of Asklepios. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pietrobelli, Antoine. 2013. ‘Galien agnostique: un texte caviardé par la tradition’. Revue des Études Grecques 126(1): 103–35.Google Scholar
Platt, Verity J. 2011. Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Plett, Heinrich F. 2012. Enargeia in Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age: The Aesthetics of Evidence. Leiden: Brill.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Prêtre, Clarisse and Charlier, Philippe. 2009. Maladies humaines, thérapies divines: Analyse épigraphique et paléographique de textes de guérison grecs. Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.Google Scholar
Raja, Rubina and Rüpke, Jörg (eds.). 2015. A Companion to the Archaeology of Religion in the Ancient World. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley Blackwell.Google Scholar
Renberg, Gil H. 2015. ‘The Role of Dream-Interpreters in Greek and Roman Religion’. In Gregor, Weber (ed.), Artemidor von Daldis und die antike Traumdeutung: Texte – Kontexte – Lektüren, (Colloquia Augustana 33). Berlin: De Gruyter, pp. 233–62.Google Scholar
Renberg, Gil H. 2017. Where Dreams May Come: Incubation Sanctuaries in the Greco-Roman World, Vol. 1. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar
Rüpke, Jörg. 2011. ‘Lived Ancient Religion: Questioning “Cults” and “Polis Religion”’. Mythos 5: 191204.Google Scholar
Rüpke, Jörg. 2016. On Roman Religion. Lived Religion and the Individual in Ancient Rome (Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 67). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Rüpke, Jörg. 2018. Pantheon: A New History of Roman Religion. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Steger, Florian. 2016. Asklepios. Medizin und Kult. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.Google Scholar
Steger, Florian. 2018. Asclepius: Medicine and Cult. Trans. Margot M. Saar. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.Google Scholar
van Schaik, Katherine D. 2015. ‘It May Not Cure You, It May Not Save Your Life, But It Will Help You’. In Petridou, Georgia and Thumiger, Chiara (eds.), Homo Patiens: Approaches to the Patient in the Ancient World. Leiden: Brill, pp. 471–96.Google Scholar
Várhelyi, Zsuzsanna. 2010. The Religion of Senators in the Roman Empire: Power and the Beyond. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×