Klappentext

The edited volume presents the first comprehensive corpus of performative adjuration formulae collated from Greek and Latin epigraphical sources. The original texts-for the most part artefacts connected with magico-religious beliefs and practices of their users-are all translated into English and accompanied by a philological and socio-religious commentary. The international team of four three specialists adopts a synoptic approach that tracks various classes of epigraphic documents to analyse permutations and developments in the syntactic structure of the adjuration formula, its pragmatic function, and its relation to literary sources. This major study of the adjuration formula in Antiquity and its continued tradition in the Middle Ages will be of interest not only to the scholars of these linguistic traditions, but also to researchers working in the fields of Religious Studies, Ancient History, Theology, and Archaeology.