In Greek Epigraphy and Religion Emily Mackil and Nikolaos Papazarkadas bring together a series of papers first presented at a special session of the Second North American Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy (Berkeley 2016). That session was dedicated to the memory of Sara B. Aleshire, one of the leading Greek epigraphists of the twentieth century. The volume at hand includes a combination of previously unpublished inscriptions, overlooked epigraphical documents, and well known inscribed texts that are reexamined with fresh eyes and approaches. The relevant documents cover a wide geographical range, including Athens and Attica, the Peloponnese, Epirus, Thessaly, the Aegean islands, and Egypt. This collection ultimately explores the insights provided by epigraphical texts into the religious beliefs and practices of the ancient Greeks, but also revisits critically some entrenched doctrines in the field of Greek religion.

The ancient Greeks attributed great importance to the sacred during war and campaigning, as demonstrated from their earliest texts. Among the first four lines of the Iliad, for example, is a declaration that Apollo began the feud between Achilles and Agamemnon and sent a plague upon the Greek army because its leader, Agamemnon, had mistreated Apollo's priest. In this first in-depth study of the attitude of military commanders towards holy ground, Sonya Nevin addresses the customs and conduct of these leaders in relation to sanctuaries, precincts, shrines, temples and sacral objects. Focusing on a variety of Greek kings and captains, the author shows how military leaders were expected to react to the sacred sites of their foes. She further explores how they were likely to respond, and how their responses shaped the way such generals were viewed by their communities, by their troops, by their enemies and also by those like Herodotus, Thucydides and Xenophon who were writing their lives. This is a groundbreaking study of the significance of the sacred in warfare and the wider culture of antiquity.

Applying the latest narratological theory and focusing on the use of anachrony (or 'chronological deviation'), this book explores how Statius competes - successfully - for a place within an established literary canon. Given the tremendous pressure on poets to render familiar stories in unfamiliar and novel ways, how did he achieve this? When Statius elected to sing of the quarrelsome sons of Oedipus he was acutely aware that this was a well-trod road, one frequently reproduced in a variety of genres - epic, drama and lyric poetry. Despite this highly varied corpus against which he sought to contend, he boasts that his epic has novelty and proudly declares that he is now counted among the 'prisca nomina', or ancient names, that sang of Thebes. And indeed precisely the fact that there were so many story-versions (a greater number survive for comparison than for any other work from antiquity, rivaling even the popularity of the Trojan legend) means that the story is conveniently positioned to offer a unique exploration into how Statius creates a compelling story despite working within a saturated and overly familiar mythic tradition. This book argues that it is chiefly through the use of narrative anachrony, or non-chronological modes of narration, that Statius manipulates states of anticipation, suspense, and even surprise in his audience.