The Seer and the City: Religion, Politics, and Colonial Ideology in Ancient GreeceSeers featured prominently in ancient Greek culture, but they rarely appear in archaic and classical colonial discourse. Margaret Foster exposes the ideological motivations behind this discrepancy and reveals how colonial discourse privileged the city’s founder and his dependence on Delphi, the colonial oracle par excellence, at the expense of the independent seer. Investigating a sequence of literary texts, Foster explores the tactics the Greeks devised both to leverage and suppress the extraordinary cultural capital of seers. The first cultural history of the seer, The Seer and the City illuminates the contests between religious and political powers in archaic and classical Greece. |
Contents
Delphic Consultations | 3 |
The Disappearance of Melampous in Bacchylides Ode | 11 |
Mantic Authority and Colonial Ideology | 108 |
Amphiaraos Alkmaion and Delphis Oracular Monopoly | 136 |
| 193 | |
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Common terms and phrases
Aitna Alkmaion Alkmeonis Alpheios Amphiaraos Amphiaraos's Amphiareion Amphilochos ancient Ancient Greece Apollodorus archaic and classical Argos argues Aristeas Athenian Athens athletic authority Bacchylides chapter colonial discourse colonial narratives connection context crown victor cult cultural Deinomenid Delphi Diodorus divination Dougherty 1993 epic Epigonoi epinikian epiphany Eriphyle figure Flower foundation Greece Hagesias Hagesias's Hegesistratos hero Herodotus Herodotus's Hesiod Hieron Homeric Iamidai Iamos ideological inscription Ithaka kōmos Kowalzig Kroisos Kroisos's Kroton kudos Kurke Malkin mantis Melampous Metapontion myth mythic portion Nemean Nicholson 2016 Odysseus Odysseus’s oikist Olympian oracle oracular Ortygia Oxford Pausanias Peloponnese Pindar poem polis political Proitids Proitos Psophis Pythian religious role sanctuary seer seer and oikist seer's seercraft Spartans story suitors sunoikistēr Syracuse talismanic power Teisamenos Teisamenos's Telemachos Theban Thebes Theoklymenos and Odysseus Thucydides tion Tiryns tradition Zeus γὰρ δὲ εἰς ἐν ἐς καὶ μὲν οἱ τε τὴν τῆς τὸ τὸν τοῦ τῷ τῶν