Revisiting Delphi
Religion and Storytelling in Ancient Greece

An innovative reading of how different authors tell stories about the Delphic Oracle, focusing on the religious views thereby conveyed.

Julia Kindt (Author)

9781107151574, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 26 September 2016

228 pages, 1 b/w illus.
22.3 x 14.6 x 1.7 cm, 0.4 kg

'The book is a welcome contribution to increasingly networked reflection about the religious world view of the Greeks.' Historische Zeitschrift

Revisiting Delphi speaks to all admirers of Delphi and its famous prophecies, be they experts on ancient Greek religion, students of the ancient world, or just lovers of a good story. It invites readers to revisit the famous Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, along with Herodotus, Euripides, Socrates, Pausanias and Athenaeus, offering the first comparative and extended enquiry into the way these and other authors force us to move the link between religion and narrative centre stage. Their accounts of Delphi and its prophecies reflect a world in which the gods frequently remain baffling and elusive despite every human effort to make sense of the signs they give.

1. Introduction: revisiting Delphi
2. Herodotus: Delphi, oracles and storytelling in the Histories
3. Euripides: ironic readings of Apollo and his prophecies
4. Plato: Socrates, or invoking the Oracle as a witness
5. Pausanias: what's the stuff of divinity?
6. Athenaeus: encountering the divine in word and wood
7. Conclusion: religion and storytelling in ancient Greece
Appendix: Plutarch - a philosophical enquiry into an enigmatic sign.

Subject Areas: Religion: general [HRA], History [HB]