The Seer in Ancient Greece
The Seer in Ancient Greece

Author: Michael Flower

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2008-01-07

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 9780520934009

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The seer (mantis), an expert in the art of divination, operated in ancient Greek society through a combination of charismatic inspiration and diverse skills ranging from examining the livers of sacrificed animals to spirit possession. Unlike the palm readers and mediums who exist on the fringe of modern society, many seers were highly paid, well respected, educated members of the elite who played an essential role in the conduct of daily life, political decisions, and military campaigns. Armies, for example, never went anywhere without one. This engaging book, the only comprehensive study of this fascinating figure, enters into the socioreligious world of ancient Greece to explore what seers did, why they were so widely employed, and how their craft served as a viable and useful social practice.

To Be Sung Underwater
To Be Sung Underwater

Author: Tom McNeal

Publisher: Little, Brown

Published: 2011-06-02

Total Pages: 324

ISBN-13: 0316175447

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Judith Whitman always believed in the kind of love that "picks you up in Akron and sets you down in Rio." Long ago, she once experienced that love. Willy Blunt was a carpenter with a dry wit and a steadfast sense of honor. Marrying him seemed like a natural thing to promise. But Willy Blunt was not a person you could pick up in Nebraska and transport to Stanford. When Judith left home, she didn't look back. Twenty years later, Judith's marriage is hazy with secrets. In her hand is what may be the phone number for the man who believed she meant it when she said she loved him. If she called, what would he say? To Be Sung Underwater is the epic love story of a woman trying to remember, and the man who could not even begin to forget.

Chief of Seers
Chief of Seers

Author: Elizabeth Goring

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 1997

Total Pages: 334

ISBN-13: 0710304498

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First Published in 1997. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Seers and Judges
Seers and Judges

Author: Christine Dunn Henderson

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2002

Total Pages: 192

ISBN-13: 9780739103197

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Alexis de Tocqueville asserted that America had no truly great literature, and that American writers merely mimicked the British and European traditions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This new edited collection masterfully refutes Tocqueville's monocultural myopia and reveals the distinctive role American poetry and prose have played in reflecting and passing judgment upon the core values of American democracy. The essays, profiling the work of Mark Twain, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Updike, Edith Wharton, Walt Whitman, Henry James, Willa Cather, Walker Percy, and Tom Wolfe, reveal how America's greatest writers have acted as society's most ardent cheerleaders and its most penetrating critics. Christine Dunn Henderson's exciting new work offers literature as a portal through which to view the philosophical principles that animate America's political order and the mores which either reinforce or undermine them.

The Seer in Ancient Greece
The Seer in Ancient Greece

Author: Michael Flower

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2008

Total Pages: 326

ISBN-13: 0520259939

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"Surveying all kinds of evidence—historiographical, literary, dramatic, and visual—Flower provides a comprehensive, readable, and engaging account of the operations of 'seers' during the Classical period."—Mark Griffith, editor of Prometheus Bound and Antigone "In a page-turning tour de force of anthropological reconstruction, classicist Michael Flower revisits hundreds of ancient texts to tease out his case for the absolutely central role of seercraft at all levels of ancient Greek society. Thanks to Flower's invitingly-woven tapestry of their mesmerizing stories and anecdotes, we can now savor, and comprehend through his lucid and persuasive interpretations."—Peter Nabokov, author of Where the Lightning Strikes: American Indian Ways of History