The intriguing title of this work shares some of the riddling and ambiguous characteristics often attributed to oracles in antiquity. While it seems doubtful that any ancient Greek would have referred to an oracular consultation or ritual as ‘making the gods speak’, S.'s clever title evokes alternate meanings. As F. Graf has observed (‘Rolling the Dice for an Answer’ in S.I. Johnston and P. Struck, Mantiké. Studies in Ancient Divination [2005], p. 51), scholars in the past have generally exhibited a remarkable reluctance to address divination. In the twentieth century one of the only works to appear in English on the topic was Halliday's Greek Divination (1913), with the honourable exception of monographs about Delphi and similar sites, where archaeology and history are central concerns as opposed to the phenomenon of divination per se. Even outside of the Anglophone world, Vernant's Divination et rationalité (1974) is an isolated exception. Fortunately, in the early twenty-first century a plethora of works on oracles and other forms of divination have improved this situation, including Eidinow's Oracles, Curses and Risk among the Ancient Greeks (2007), Johnston's Ancient Greek Divination (2008), Flower's The Seer in Ancient Greece (2008) and the wide-ranging papers in Johnston and Struck (op. cit.), to cite but a few representative examples. Yet much research in this important area remains to be undertaken and this work should therefore be welcomed. One can only hope that its broad scope is a sign of things to come rather than another honourable exception.
As befits a well-known authority on Alexander, S. opens the volume with an exploration of the roles of oracles in the Alexander Romance, as well as Sophocles' Oedipus the King. One of the major strengths of this work is S.'s incisive handling of literary, philosophical and historical evidence, which he combines effortlessly in order to offer a comprehensive introduction to oracles in the ancient world. S. deserves praise for the broad scope of the work, both in chronological and geographical terms. Chronologically, S. covers the archaic period through to late antiquity, including an exploration of early Christian attitudes towards oracles. Geographically, the work examines the oracles of Asia Minor in great detail (Chapters 6 and 8, the latter of which focusses on the fascinating dice oracles), an area often overlooked in studies of Greek divination. It also briefly explores oracles in Egypt (in connection with the foundation myths about the oracle at Dodona, pp. 58–60). Numerous cross-cultural examples are included, such as the Assyrian oracles of Ishtar and Near Eastern divination (pp. 109–12) and Hebrew attitudes towards divination (pp. 112–14). While previous studies often focus on Delphi almost exclusively (particularly in the classical period), S. examines the oracular sanctuaries of Dodona, Claros and Didyma, as well as many minor or local oracles and sanctuaries. Furthermore, several important areas of oracular practice which have generally been examined separately or elided and overlooked altogether as marginal phenomena in modern accounts are included here, such as the ‘oracles of the dead’ and oracles dedicated to heroes such as Trophonius, the use of dream incubation and oracles obtained through dream divination, the use of dice oracles and cleromancy, and the Sibylline Oracles. These chapters are broad and comprehensive, although the omission of dream incubation practices in the sanctuaries of Isis in the chapter on dream divination (Chapter 7) is noticeable.
As well as the broad chronological and geographical scope, S.'s inclusion of philosophical material, including an examination of ancient philosophical debates about fate, foreknowledge and the use of divination, an exploration of ancient scepticism and fraudulence, and a survey of the roles of oracles within Platonism in late antiquity, offers a rounded and well-balanced view of the ubiquity of oracles in the ancient world. However, this wide remit does mean that much of the text has an introductory tone and ‘survey’ style, which will be invaluable for undergraduate students and newcomers to the topic but is less useful for specialists. For example, in ‘New Questions for the Oracles: Platonism and Theology’, S. includes various scholarly views long since questioned or dismissed by specialists, such as the claim (surmised from an unclear and uncertain passage of Eunapius' Lives) that Porphyry's Philosophy from Oracles was an early work of the philosopher (p. 185). This view, which is based on J. Bidez's influential analysis of Porphyry's intellectual evolution (Vie de Porphyre [1913]) and has significant implications for Porphyry's views of oracles and religious practices, has been challenged or dismissed as too simplistic and almost entirely unsubstantiated (for a sample of such recent reassessments see G. Fowden, ‘Late Antique Paganism Reasoned and Revealed’, JRS 71 [1981], 180; R.L Wilken in W.R. Schoedel and R.L. Wilken [edd.], Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition [1974], pp. 117–34).
Yet in a broader sense S. does make some important points about the use of oracles in antiquity and includes much recent research. Particularly noteworthy is the inclusion of debates concerning the vital role of interpretation in deciphering the meaning of oracles received by clients (pp. 49–52) and the respective roles of the Pythia and priests at Delphi (pp. 35–9). L. Maurizio's convincing argument is cited in relation to the latter, and S. makes the excellent point concerning the Pythia's abilities that ‘studies of oral poetry have shown that this is just the kind of person who does easily compose oral verses’ (p. 38). Yet in the same chapter, it is startling to see S. claim that Delphi had a ‘unique style of divining’ and was ‘strongly atypical in its method of divination. Of the hundreds of oracles in ancient Greece, Delphi is the only one explicitly associated with spirit-possession’ (p. 26). This claim is surprising given the wealth of literary evidence attesting to the central role of spirit possession and divine inspiration in oracular praxis. Plato's Phaedrus (244a–d and 256b), for example, contrasts the divine madness experienced by the priestesses of Delphi and Dodona with inductive modes of divination. Presumably S. wanted to contrast full and ‘explicit’ references to spirit-possession with accounts which merely imply or hint that spirit-possession was part of the oracular process, given that a few pages later he cites Pausanias' description of the oracle of Apollo at Larissa which states that the ‘the god possesses her [i.e. the priestess]’ (2.24.1; pp. 28–9). Yet given the range of extant evidence for spirit-possession in oracular contexts, Delphi was clearly not so exceptional in this respect.
The volume includes numerous illustrations and maps of mainland Greece, western Asia Minor, south-eastern Asia Minor and the Levant, and of the dice oracles of Lycia and neighbouring regions. There is an extensive bibliography and index. This wide-ranging and engaging volume is a welcome addition to the scholarly literature on oracles in antiquity. Although of somewhat limited value to specialists, it will provide an invaluable teaching aid and will be especially useful for undergraduate students in the fields of classics, ancient history, archaeology and religious studies (as well as appealing to students of anthropology and ancient philosophy) and for scholars who primarily conduct research in other fields but who want to know about ancient divination. The clear and accessible nature of the text will also appeal to the growing number of general readers who are interested in ideas and uses of oracles and other types of divination in the ancient world.
