Dreams and Divination in the Greco-Roman Epigraphical Record

FAIN: FA-54881-09

Gil Haviv Renberg
Washington University (St. Louis, MO 63130-4862)

This book project, entitled Commanded by the Gods: Dreams and Divination in the Greco-Roman Epigraphical Record, involves producing the first comprehensive study of the more than 1,300 Greek and Latin religious dedications that bear inscriptions recording that a worshiper acted in compliance with a divine communication received through a dream or some other medium. Such inscriptions provide an important but largely untapped source of information for the religious beliefs and practices of the Greeks and Romans, and in the case of those attesting to god-sent dreams or waking visions provide unparalleled testimony to the spiritual lives of ordinary individuals (i.e., the people usually overlooked by our literary sources). Since such phenomena are also evident in the Ancient Near East, Pharaonic Egypt, and early Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, this work will have relevance to scholars of religion in a number of fields beyond Classics, and thus is intended for a broad scholarly audience.