This book challenges the current view of the Homeric epics, according to which they reflect only the institutions and ideas of their own time, telling us nothing about the Mycenaean Age preceding it. Using a comparative analysis of evidence from the Near East and the Homeric corpus, Peter Karavites comes to the bold conclusion that the epics actually contain much that harks back to the Mycenaean Age, and that the two eras may not be completely discontinuous after all. Most contemporary scholars maintain that the mighty Mycenaean period was almost completely separated from the Dark Ages and that virtually no evidence of the former remains, with the exception of the archeological finds and the meager testimony of the Linear B tablets. However, the Near Eastern evidence about treaties and other forms of promising suggests that the Iliad and Odyssey may indeed provide historical pictures of the Mycenaean times featured in their narratives.

The oath was an institution of fundamental importance across a wide range of social interactions throughout the ancient Greek world, making a crucial contribution to social stability and harmony; yet there has been no comprehensive, dedicated scholarly study of the subject for over a century. This volume of a two-volume study explores the nature of oaths as Greeks perceived it, the ways in which they were used (and sometimes abused) in Greek life and literature, and their inherent binding power.

Oaths were ubiquitous rituals in ancient Athenian legal, commercial, civic and international spheres. Their importance is reflected by the fact that much of surviving Greek drama features a formal oath sworn before the audience. This is the first comprehensive study of that phenomenon. The book explores how the oath can mark or structure a dramatic plot, at times compelling characters like Euripides' Hippolytus to act contrary to their best interests. It demonstrates how dramatic oaths resonate with oath rituals familiar to the Athenian audiences. Aristophanes' Lysistrata and her accomplices, for example, swear an oath that blends protocols of international treaties with priestesses' vows of sexual abstinence. By employing the principles of speech act theory, this book examines how the performative power of the dramatic oath can mirror the status quo, but also disturb categories of gender, social status and civic identity in ways that redistribute and confound social authority.

In Jewish Ethnic Identity and Relations in Hellenistic Egypt, Stewart Moore investigates the foundations of common assumptions about ethnicity. To maintain one’s identity in a strange land, was it always necessary to band tightly together with one’s coethnics? Sociologists and anthropologists who study ethnicity have given us a much wider view of the possible strategies of ethnic maintenance and interaction. The most important facet of Jewish ethnicity in Egypt which emerges from this study is the interaction over the Jewish-Egyptian boundary. Previous scholarship has assumed that this border was a Siegfried Line marked by mutual contempt. Yet Jews, Egyptians and also Greeks interacted in complicated ways in Ptolemaic Egypt, with positive relationships being at least as numerous as negative ones.

Oaths, vows, promises, curses - all share family resemblances. They are performatives, carrying illocutionary force. Oaths have rightly been termed, "conditional self-curses", promises have been argued to be but a more developed form of vows, and oaths and vows are often used interchangeably. This book focuses on private vows and oaths including those publically proclaimed. Through analysis of legal, liturgical, mythical and literary works, it seeks to uncover a phenomenology of oaths and vows. Viewing oaths and vows as the human creative force par excellence, it surveys their role in circumscribing and directing both erotic desire and aggression; and so - in their performative function - as standing at the foundation of society and sociability. As acts of trust which establish new obligations understandings of the role of oaths and vows are compared in the Jewish and Christian contexts, in terms of the importance of intentionality in vow making and oath taking, as well as the nature of the obligations ensuing from such locutionary acts. Analysis of the comic and tragic consequences of the violation of marriage oaths as presented in European literature from the 12th to 19th centuries reveals their perception as "habituating" Eros.

This study analyzes the religious mentality, commercial practices, and social composition of Roman trade society at the celebrated Hellenistic Greek, Roman Republican emporium of Delos, 166-87 B.C. The remains of this site date largely to the late second and early first centuries B.C., when Delos was the nerve center of the trans-Mediterranean luxury and slave trade of Roman Italy. Repeated military assaults be-tween 87 and 69 B.C. de-stroyed the community and its trade importance declined. But as an archaeological site it offers the earliest and most detailed remains of a Roman trade community to survive anywhere in the Mediterranean world, including the city of Rome itself. This study marks the first re-assessment and interpretation of these remains from the vantage point of Roman trade in more than seventy years. Among the subjects discussed are the religious character of the remains of Delian marketplaces and their likely commercial function; the role of oaths and, more particularly, of the gods, Mercury and Hercules, in Roman commerce; the tendency of Roman traders to organize themselves according to religious fraternities and the manner in which this enhanced trade activities such as finance; the social status of these traders in wider Roman society as reflected by their house remains; and, finally the identity of the mysterious Agora of the Italians.