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Magic and Divination in the Ancient World. Edited by LEDA CIRAOLO and JONATHAN SEIDEL. Ancient Magic and Divination, vol. 2. Leiden: STYX-BRILL, 2002. Pp. xii + 151. $69.
This modest volume presents the rather heterogeneous proceedings of a conference on magic and divination in the ancient world, convened at the University of California, Berkeley, in February 1994. Nine essays treat various aspects of communication between man and the para-human sphere (gods and the dead) in early civilizations from Egypt through the Hellenistic world. A tenth paper is an outlier: in "The Poet as Conjurer: Magic and Literary Theory in Late Antiquity," Peter T. Struck traces the semantic development of the term symbolism in ancient Greek literary theory.
Three contributors discuss interaction with the dead. Joann Scurlock ("Soul...