that sacrifice was killing to eat. All have merits, but are ultimately too reductive in their
treatment of this polyvalent ritual at the center of Greek society. The significance
that, above all, should not be omitted from our understanding of the institution
is that which the Greeks themselves gave to it: communication with the gods. In
origin, it seems, the Greeks had imagined the gods to be literally sharing in the post-
sacrificial banquet with them. Their explicit remarks and implicit indications make it
clear that for them sacrifice served the tripartite purpose of honoring the gods,
expressing gratitude to them, and appealing to them for things needed. The myths
of Prometheus and Deucalion show that for the Greeks sacrifice ordered the correct
relationship between man and his gods.
Pierre Bonnechere(Chapter 9) investigates the complex subject of divination. He
sets the practice against the context of the pervasive contact and communication the
Greeks felt that they had with the gods in all aspects of their lives. It cannot be
doubted that the Greeks did in general believe in the power of their oracles, but they
had three obstacles to contend with. The first was ambiguity: oracles had to be held to
be ambiguous to bridge the gap between the assumption of divine infallibility and
ostensible errors made. An interesting outgrowth of oracular ambiguity was the
refinement of indirect forms of question by the consulters in order to parry it. The
second obstacle was the problem of charlatanism: where did the credibility of
the form of divination one happened to be employing lie, on the scale that stretched
from the great oracle of Delphi to the unimpressive and hucksterish itinerant diviners?
And the third was the vigorous manufacture of false, largelypost eventumoracles,
which, however, remain interesting for us for what they can tell us about the way in
which the oracular sanctuaries were projected. The major distinction between ‘‘in-
ductive divination’’ and ‘‘inspired divination’’ is explained. In inductive divination,
properly the preserve of the mantis, messages from the gods are read out of
the world around, in the form of such things as prodigies, celestial phenomena, the
behavior of birds, the involuntary spasms of the human body, double entendres, and
the inspection of sacrificial innards. In inspired divination the gods speak directly to or
through individuals, and this type of divination is principally associated with the
sanctuaries and prophets. Much inspirational divination took the form of dreams,
whether spontaneous or sought out in an incubation sanctuary, such as that of a
healing hero. It could also take the form of ‘‘enthusiasm,’’ in which a medium or
sometimes the consulter himself gained access to the god through a modified state of
consciousness, to which he had been helped by some preliminary ordeals. The
inspiration-led sanctuaries included Delphi, Dodona, Claros, Didyma, and that of
Trophonius, and we know quite a lot about the elaborate consultation rituals used at
some of these.
The next group of chapters (Part IV) charts the continuum from sacred space to
sacred time, moving from fixed sanctuaries and the more mobile notion of pollution
through to the festivals that were defined by space and time, and on to the sacred
significance of time itself.Beate Dignas(Chapter 10) recreates a day in the life of a
Greek sanctuary, a surprisingly difficult task, since sanctuaries were generally more
interested in recording regulations for special festival days rather than for the daily
routine. Many smaller sanctuaries will have been closed most of the year, or at any
rate will seldom have had their priest on site, a local caretaker supervising them at
other times and, as appropriate, making arrangements for occasional visitors to pray,
6 Daniel Ogden