Agrapha Dogmata. Orality and Doctrinal Transmission in Gnostic Contexts: A Comparison with Pythagoreanism and Platonism
This paper examines the strategies for transmitting doctrines developed in Late Antique Gnostic contexts. Careful consideration of the relationship between orality and writing makes it possible to fully appreciate the meaning and scope of Gnostic "esotericism," while prompting a rereading of the sources and a reassessment of certain historiographical models. A comparison with the evidence concerning Pythagoreanism and Platonism proves particularly fruitful.
Andrea Annese is Associate Professor of History of Christianity and the Churches at the University of Bologna. His research focuses mainly on early Christianity, the Nag Hammadi texts, and the various Gnostic currents and their contexts. His publications include Il Vangelo di Tommaso. Introduzione storico-critica (Rome, 2019) and I codici di Nag Hammadi. Prima traduzione italiana integrale, edited by A. Annese, F. Berno and D. Tripaldi (Rome, 2024).
Religious Experience and Processes of Textualization between Judaism and Proto-Christianity: Apocalypses and First-Person Divine Encounters
This paper explores the relationship between religious experience and processes of textualization in Jewish and proto-Christian apocalyptic traditions. Rather than treating visionary texts as straightforward records of extraordinary experiences, it investigates how first-person encounters with the divine were shaped, narrated, and transmitted through literary forms. The Hellenistic-Roman world provided a rich cultural environment for such processes, in which religious experiences circulated through oral performances, written texts, ritual practices, and communal acts of interpretation. Recent developments in the study of lived religion, ritual theory, and neurohistory have drawn renewed attention to experience as a fundamental mode of symbolic communication. Experiences are no longer understood merely as the enactment of textual scripts; rather, texts themselves can be seen as cultural technologies that organize, modulate, and give meaning to embodied forms of perception and cognition. From this perspective, apocalypses and revelatory narratives occupy a privileged position, since they place first-person experiences of divine contact at the center of their literary construction. The paper examines how visionary texts transform experiences of revelation into authoritative narratives. Through journeys to heavenly realms, encounters with angels, auditions of divine speech, and disclosures of hidden knowledge, apocalyptic literature creates textual spaces in which experiences become communicable and socially meaningful. Such narratives do not simply reflect prior experiences; they actively reshape them, providing models through which readers and listeners may imagine, interpret, and reproduce encounters with the divine. By focusing on the interplay between experience and textualization, the paper argues that Jewish and proto-Christian apocalypses functioned as powerful mediating devices between individual experience and collective religious memory. Their first-person discourse not only claims access to transcendent realities but also contributes to the construction, transmission, and remodulation of religious experience within the broader cultural horizon of the Hellenistic-Roman world.
Luca Arcari (b. 1977) is Full Professor of History of Christianity at the Department of Humanities of Federico II University in Naples, where he has been teaching since 2013. He studied Classics and Ancient History at the University of Naples "Federico II" (1996–2000) and he received his Ph.D. in Second Temple Judaism and Early Christianity at the Department of History "Ettore Lepore", University of Naples Federico II (2001). He also studied at the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome (Biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, Coptic and Syriac; 2002-03) and he received scholarships from the Italian Academy of Lincei in Rome (2010-11) and the "Michele Pellegrino" Foundation (University of Turin, 2011-13). His research interests lie mainly in the field of Jewish (and proto-Christian) visionary texts, Jewish-Hellenistic literature, New Testament and Early Christian Apocrypha and/or Pseudepigrapha. He is also interested in reception studies, mainly in the reception of ancient Jewish and Early Christian texts in European historiography between the 19th and the 20th cent.; in theories for the study of Religion/s; and in methodologies for the analysis of ancient religious groups in the Hellenistic-Roman cities. Prominent among his publications are the monographs "Una donna avvolta nel sole..." (Apoc 12,1). Le raffigurazioni femminili nell'Apocalisse di Giovanni alla luce della letteratura apocalittica giudaica (EMP: Padova, 2008); Visioni del figlio dell'uomo nel Libro delle Parabole e nell'Apocalisse (ANT 19; Morcelliana: Brescia, 2012); the recent Vedere Dio. Le apocalissi giudaiche e protocristiane (sec. IV a.C.-sec. II d.C.) (Frecce 291; Carocci, Roma 2020); and the edited book Beyond Conflicts. Religious and Cultural Cohabitations in Alexandria and Egypt between the 1st and the 6th cent. CE (STAC 103; J.C.B. Mohr Siebeck: Tübingen, 2013). Luca Arcari has also co-edited, with Alessandro Saggioro, the book Sciamanesimo e sciamanesimi. Un problema storiografico (Sapienza sciamanica 3; Bulzoni: Roma, 2012) and the proceedings of the international conference Signs of Cohabitations in the Urban Spaces of the Roman Near East (1st-6th cent. CE), Monographic section in La parola del passato 71/1-2, 2016. Luca Arcari is member of scholarly societies and institutions, such as the Enoch Seminar, the European Association for the Study of Religion, the Italian Group for the Study of Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition (GIROTA), the Italian Society for the History of Religions (SISR). Between 2013 and 2016 he was appointed by the Italian Ministry of the University and the Scientific Research as the general coordinator of the FIRB Project - Future in Research 2012 on "The Construction of Space and Time in the Transmission of Collective Identities. Religious Cohabitations and/or Polarizations in Ancient World (1st-6th cent. CE)". Luca Arcari is part of the scientific committee of the Annual Meetings on Christian Origins (Italian Centre for Advanced Studies on Religions [CISSR]) and he is member of the executive board of the journal Annali di storia dell'esegesi (EDB). At this time, Luca Arcari is also Senior Fellow in the following international projects: "Jenseits des Kanons: Heterotopien religiöser Autorität im spätantiken Christentum", DFG-Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe (FOR 2770), Universität Regensburg; "Religion and Urbanity: Reciprocal Formations" - Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies/Kolleg-Forschungsgruppe (KFG) (FOR 2779), Max-Weber-Kolleg, Universität Erfurt.
The Resilient Persistence of Orphic Terminology over Time
A distinctive feature of Orphic terminology is its persistence over time, which reveals the existence of a religious movement that, while undoubtedly undergoing evolutions and changes, displays certain highly evident and remarkably constant traits of its own. This is the case, to cite a very clear example, of some ritual terms that appear with very little variation in the Gurob Papyrus (3rd century BCE) and in Clement of Alexandria (2nd–3rd century CE). The paper will present a number of terms as highly revealing examples of this phenomenon, tracing a brief history of each and noting their points of convergence and divergence with respect to non-Orphic religious languages.
Alberto Bernabé is Professor Emeritus of Greek Philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He has led various research projects on Greek religion, particularly Orphism and the cult of Dionysus. He has delivered lectures and given courses at institutions in Spain, Europe and the Americas, and is the author of over 450 publications, including Poetae epici Graeci, testimonia et fragmenta Pars I, Leipzig 1987; Pars II Orphicorum fragmenta (3 vols., München-Leipzig-Berlin-New York 2004–2007); Himnos homéricos, Madrid 2017; Poemas de Orfeo, Madrid 2026; Orphic Collection, Cambridge (MA), Loeb Classical Library 2016; with A. Jiménez, Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets, Leiden–New York 2008; with M. Herrero de Jáuregui, A. I. Jiménez San Cristóbal and M. A. Santamaría (eds.), Dioniso y lo dionisíaco en la literatura griega arcaica y clásica, Madrid 2025; and with V. Piano, El Papiro de Derveni, comentario filosófico de un poema atribuido a Orfeo. Edición, traducción y comentario, Madrid 2026.
Knowing, Understanding, and Experiencing in the Greek Bible
In Exodus, God grants Bezalel the gift of his Spirit with “wisdom, understanding, and knowledge in every kind of craftsmanship” so that he may serve as a craftsman for the sacred objects of the sanctuary (Exod 31:3). The passage refers to three Hebrew roots describing knowledge (chokmah, tabuwn, and da‘ath), which the translators of the Septuagint rendered into Greek as σοφία, σύνεσις, and ἐπιστήμη. This paper aims to present some work in progress on the semantics of these roots pertaining to knowledge and understanding in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, with emphasis on how they relate to each other in the text and how they are adapted to a religious context.
After a degree in Greek Philology at the University of Bologna, Laura Bigoni obtained a PhD in History of Religions from the University of Strasbourg in 2024. Following a period of research at the University of Bologna as part of the PRIN project "Resilient Septuagint", she is now assistant professor at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, where she teaches Biblical Hebrew. She collaborates on various projects promoted by the Fondazione per le scienze religiose (Bologna/Palermo) and co-directs a Master's programme titled "Jewish and Christian Scriptures: History, Exegesis, Reception". Her research interests focus primarily on Greek lexicography and the tradition and reception of the Septuagint.
Communicating the Divine in the Septuagint Between Tradition and Innovation
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the challenges faced by the translators of the Septuagint Bible with regard to the language of the divine, in light of the Greek-Hellenistic cultural and linguistic context. In particular, the terminology and concepts used to delineate the boundary between the divine and the human spheres will be examined, as well as certain titles attributed to the God of Israel. Particular attention will also be devoted to specific innovations introduced by the translators, whose implications extend to the narrative, exegetical, and theological levels. In some cases, these choices contribute to delineating a contrast between the Lord of heaven and earthly rulers, thereby actualizing the message of the Hebrew-Aramaic text.
(to be received)
Communication and Oracular Deities: Shared Formulas and Practices between Asclepius and Sarapis in the Hellenistic Period
The study of Isiac cults on Delos reveals two expressions particularly associated with these contexts: kata prostagma and therapeia. These elements are also attested in relation to the cults of Syrian deities on the island. The same features subsequently appear in connection with Isiac cults throughout the Greek world, where they are also associated with other cults, particularly that of Asclepius. Can the presence of these textual elements in the evidence for Isiac cults and the cult of Asclepius point to a shared cultic language between the two religious contexts? Could such a possible linguistic commonality imply similar ritual practices? The oracular dimension, fundamental to both cults, plays a central role in the use of the formula kata prostagma, but does the use of the same formula also imply a comparable cultic practice? The same question may be raised regarding the therapeutai, who appear as individual worshippers in some sanctuaries and as organized groups (koina) in others, yet are consistently united by the same designation, which, although not exclusive, is closely associated with both Isiac cults and the cult of Asclepius. Investigating these aspects may contribute to a broader reflection on the relationship between language, cult, and ritual, a relationship that may take forms of causality or reciprocity depending on the specific contexts.
I graduated at the University of Bologna (Alma Mater Studiorum). During my master's I studied History of Ancient Religions, with a thesis on Dionysiac religion in Ptolemaic Egypt. I am now in my second year of the PhD programme and my research project focuses on the diffusion and establishment of Isiac cults in Hellenistic Rhodes and Delos, beginning with the prosopographical analysis of the worshippers and the study of cultic practice. I am part of the LARES project, helping with the XML digitisation of the lemmatic records.</
Speaking with Authority: Female Voice, Moral Discourse, and the Construction of Philosophical Identity in the Pythagorean Epistolary Tradition
The letters and treatises attributed to female Pythagorean philosophers — Theano, Perictione, Melissa — constitute a remarkable and paradoxical discursive phenomenon: texts in which women speak of silence, subordination, and self-restraint, yet in doing so produce philosophical authority, transmit knowledge, and occupy a recognizable enunciative position within the broader Pythagorean tradition. This paper proposes a lexical and pragmatic analysis of the semantic field constructed around key terms — sophrosyne, harmonia, kosmos, sige — examining how this vocabulary functions not merely as a reflection of gender norms, but as a deliberate discursive strategy through which a specifically female philosophical identity is shaped and legitimized. Drawing on the philological tradition and on theories of discursive authority, the paper argues that these texts stage a productive tension between normative constraint and enunciative agency — a tension that renders them unexpectedly resonant with contemporary debates on gender, voice, and the politics of discourse.
Ida Brancaccio, PhD, is Chair of Classical Studies and Professor of Philosophy and Religions of Classical Antiquity at the Sant’Anna Institute (Sorrento, Italy). She received her PhD in History from the University of Naples Federico II. Her research focuses on Greek historiography, myth and political culture, gender studies, and the cultural anthropology of the ancient Mediterranean. She has published extensively on Greek myth, Pythagorean traditions, women in antiquity, and the reception of classical thought in modern scholarship. Among her recent publications is the co-edited volume Lo sguardo non convenzionale di Nicole Loraux fra antico e contemporaneo (2024). She also serves as a contributing editor for the International Bibliography of Historical Sciences. Her current research explores the intersections of myth, memory, gender, and civic identity in the ancient Greek world, with particular attention to the role of narratives in the construction of social and political communities.
Greek Religion and the Culture of Song: Attic Tragedy between Heroic Narrative and Ritual
In classical Greece, the discursive practices that address the deities of the pantheon by staging them, and which we place under the heading of religion, take on a poetic form. They correspond to ritual performances. This is the case with Attic tragedy, performed on the occasion of a ritual competition honoring Dionysos Eleuthereus. Following the example of the Eumenides composed by the poet Aeschylus, the aim will be to show that, particularly through the choral songs, ritually danced, the tragic dramatization of a heroic action within the framework of a sanctuary-theatre is an act that is as much religious as it is political.
Director of Studies at EHESS in Paris, Claude Calame has taught at the Universities of Urbino, Lausanne and Yale, focusing his work on a historical anthropology of Greek poetic forms. Among his books: L'Éros dans la Grèce antique (Belin, 3rd ed. 2009); Mythe et histoire dans l'Antiquité grecque (Les Belles Lettres, 2nd ed. 2011); Qu'est-ce que la mythologie grecque? (Gallimard, 2015); La tragédie chorale. Poésie grecque et rituel musical (Les Belles Lettres, 2017); Thésée et l'imaginaire athénien. Légende et culte en Grèce antique (La Découverte, 3rd ed. 2018).
Celsus and Origen: The Body and the Horizon of Salvation
Celsus and Origen (II-III centuries A.D.) can be assumed, on the basis of their works, as witnesses of two opposing worldviews. The former excludes any active intervention by God in the world, hypostatizing the existing state of things, while rigorously focusing on the necessary care of the soul by the human being. It also rejects the possibility that humankind may rely on the body — or the flesh — in order to attain the goal towards which it must strive, and mocks belief in both the incarnation and the resurrection as irrational and blasphemous. By contrast, the latter worldview is multifaceted. On the one hand, the body is seen as a burden, to the extent that rational beings may fall into a soma as a consequence of the original infringement that the exercise of free will led them to; while on the other hand, the body is also a result of the divine creation, as such pre-ordained to produce good. However, from the beginning the Son has pervaded the world in its material consistency, until the crucial event of the incarnation intervenes; at the end of times, resurrection will undoubtedly occur, in virtue of which the body (or in any case a body) once again takes centre stage, because creaturely existence may not be dissociated from bodily endowment. Starting from this complex and at least partially aporetic picture, a tendency emerges — within the second worldview, considered here from the point of view of Origen — to solve any persistent problems by denying that matter is the cause of evil and claiming on behalf of this body born of the Virgin the capacity to save humankind.
Giorgio Camassa (Rome, 1951) was for many years Full Professor of Greek History at the University of Udine, where he also taught History of Ancient Religions. His most recent work, Statuto del corpo e annuncio di salvezza (The Status of the Body and the Proclamation of Salvation), was published by «L'Erma» di Bretschneider in two volumes (I–II, 2022–2025).
Onomastic Attributes of Mars and the Ideology of Victory in Constantinian Coinage
This paper examines the role of the god Mars in Constantine's imperial propaganda between AD 307 and 310, with particular attention to the coinage issued by the mints of London, Lyon, and Trier. It analyses the onomastic attributes applied to the god—Pater, Propugnator, Victor, and Pacifer—to demonstrate how they articulated Mars' military agency and served to legitimize Constantine's earliest victories, especially his campaign against the Franks in AD 307.
Gianmarco Chiari is a PhD candidate in Roman History at the University of Naples Federico II and the University of Cantabria in Santander. His research project examines divine favour in warfare under the Constantinian dynasty, in light of political communication and religious competition in the late antique Roman Empire. He previously studied Classics at the University of Pavia and Classical Philology at the University of Bologna, where he graduated with a thesis on the concept of "war against God" in the works of Eusebius of Caesarea. His scholarly interests lie in the political and religious history of the fourth century CE and in late antique historiography.
Folk Etymologies and Cult Tradition: The Lost Myth of Helike
This paper aims to analyse the role of linguistic, onomastic, and para-etymological associations in the construction and transmission of the religious traditions surrounding Helike and the local cult of Poseidon between the Archaic age and the Imperial period. Through a joint examination of Homeric, Hesiodic, Hellenistic, and Late Antique sources (Aratus, Hyginus, Strabo, Pausanias), the paper will show how the mythical heritage of northern Achaea takes shape as the result of a continuous layering and re-semanticization of different traditions, mediated by discursive practices grounded in homonymy, folk etymology, and antiquarian reinterpretation. The analysis will make it possible to hypothesize the existence of an ancient foundation myth linking the cities of Olenus, Aigai, and Helike, perhaps also connected to the origin of the famous sanctuary of Poseidon, later marginalized by the emergence of new pan-Achaean traditions. Through phenomena of linguistic overlap and para-etymological association, this narrative core would then have flowed into astronomical tales concerning the nurses of Zeus and the catasterism of the Bears. The case of Helike thus shows how linguistic practices are not merely a tool for transmitting myth, but one of the principal mechanisms through which ancient communities reorganized cultic memories, territorial identities, and competing religious traditions.
Alessio Ciarini graduated from the University of Bologna in "Anthropology, Religions and Oriental Civilizations" and in "Historical and Oriental Studies." He is currently a PhD candidate in "Anthropology of the Ancient World" at the University of Siena, working on a thesis on Dorian ethnogenesis.
The Word Against the Rival: Magical Discourse and Economic Competition in Greek and Latin Defixiones
Defixiones in which commercial, artisanal, or professional rivalry constitutes the motive behind the curse offer an otherwise hardly accessible window into dynamics of social conflict that ancient literary sources rarely record. This paper aims to examine how the vocabulary of economic competition, including terms such as quaestum and lucrum, as well as the professional designations of the cursed individuals, enters into forms of magical and religious discourse and is, in turn, transformed by them, without producing a substantially distinct formulaic pattern from that found in other categories of curses. Through the analysis of a selection of Greek and Latin texts, it will be shown how these lead curse tablets reveal a world of artisans, small-scale merchants, innkeepers, and prostitutes, subordinate social groups for whom the use of the cursing word represented a significant weapon against their rivals. Within the framework of the communicative processes and experiential contexts that this conference seeks to explore, these discursive practices, situated at the margins of official religious practice, emerge as spaces of semantic negotiation in which the language of the sacred and that of the marketplace intertwine, creating forms of remarkable anthropological density.
Associate Professor of Roman History at the University of Bologna since 2014. He graduated in History (Ancient track) from the University of Bologna in 1986 and earned his PhD in Ancient History from the University of Rome "La Sapienza" in 1992. He has taught at the Universities of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Calabria, and Bologna, where he currently teaches Roman History, Rome and the Universal, Social History of the Ancient World, and History of the Roman Empire. His research interests range from the social history of the Roman world, with particular attention to the history of labour and professional associations, to new digital tools applied to teaching and historical research, as well as comparisons and contacts between the Roman Empire and the ancient Chinese Empire. Author of numerous publications, particularly in the field of the social history of the Roman world based on epigraphic evidence, he has taken part in national and international research projects and held various institutional roles at the University of Bologna, including the presidency of the Joint Committee (Commissione Paritetica) of the School of Arts and Cultural Heritage.
The Prayer of Protest in Euripidean Tragedy
Prayer is a discursive form that is extensively attested in fifth-century BCE Attic tragedy. The prayer of protest, a category identified by F. Chapot and B. Laurot in the Corpus de prières grecques et romaines (2001), is already found in Homeric epic, particularly in the Iliad, but is by no means absent from tragedy. Taking Euripides' Heracles 339–347 as a case study, this paper compares the passage with other tragic, epic, and lyric texts in order to assess its dramaturgical function within the specific context of the play and to reconstruct the audience's possible responses.
After completing his studies at the University of Padua, where he received his degree in 2004, he earned his PhD in 2008 and subsequently held two postdoctoral research fellowships (2009–2013). He later served as Rtd-A at the University of Padua from 2017 to 2021. Following a brief appointment as Rtd-B in Classical Philology at the University of Turin (2021–2022), he joined the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna, first as Rtd-B (2022–2024) and, since 2024, as Associate Professor of Greek Language and Literature. His main research interests include ancient drama, especially the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander, as well as the reception of ancient Greek civilization in modern and contemporary literature and theatre.
Religious Carmina from the Prytaneion of Ephesus: Some Remarks on SGO 02/03/37 and 02/03/38
In the Greek tradition, the sacred hearth, housed in the prytaneion and central to the cult of Hestia, stood as a symbol of civic life. Although the political prerogatives of the prytanis — whose primary duty was the perpetual tending of Hestia’s fire — were progressively eroded over the centuries, the civic prytaneion retained a prominent role both as an official representative building and, above all, as a religious space. The new prytaneion of Ephesus, constructed in the Augustan period and repeatedly refurbished in the early imperial centuries, was no exception. The building has yielded evidence for the worship of several deities, most notably Hestia and Artemis. Among the many inscriptions left on its walls by prytaneis in commemoration of their tenure, some verse inscriptions are particularly noteworthy, attributable to two prytaneis of the first to second century CE. Claudia Trophime had two carmina in elegiac couplets, hymnic in character, inscribed on the walls (SGO 02/03/37); Tullia, for her part, is responsible for two prayers addressed to the gods of the prytaneion — Hestia, Zeus, and Artemis — one composed in elegiac couplets and hexameters, the other in iambic trimeters (SGO 02/03/38). Following a brief survey of the epigraphic record of the building and of the material, historical, and religious context in which these poems are embedded, the discussion will turn to the poetic texts themselves, with particular attention to three aspects: (1) their formal and lexical character — these carmina adopt the register of hymns and aretalogies and show clear points of contact with distinguished models of Greek religious poetry, including the Homeric Hymns (5.21–32; 24 and 29), the Orphic Hymns (84), and other examples of hymnic verse inscribed on stone, while drawing at the same time on the tradition of the votive epigram for their metres and for their function as a tangible act of homage to the deity; (2) the specific role of these texts within their cultic setting and their possible bearing on the reinterpretation of worship at the prytaneion; (3) the local references that firmly root these verses in the topographical and urban landscape of the Ionian city, as well as in the institutional and religious particularities of the prytany at Ephesus in the imperial period.
Vittoria Dozza received her PhD in Humanities from the University of Messina (2024). She held a research fellowship at the University of Bologna within the PRIN2022 project "WInGS – Women Intellectuals in Greek Society" and, at the same university, holds a research grant linked to updating the Année Philologique database. Her research interests include the Greek epigram, both literary and epigraphic, technopaegnia, and female education in antiquity.
Religious Carmina from the Prytaneion of Ephesus: Some Remarks on SGO 02/03/37 and 02/03/38
In the Greek tradition, the sacred hearth, housed in the prytaneion and central to the cult of Hestia, stood as a symbol of civic life. Although the political prerogatives of the prytanis — whose primary duty was the perpetual tending of Hestia’s fire — were progressively eroded over the centuries, the civic prytaneion retained a prominent role both as an official representative building and, above all, as a religious space. The new prytaneion of Ephesus, constructed in the Augustan period and repeatedly refurbished in the early imperial centuries, was no exception. The building has yielded evidence for the worship of several deities, most notably Hestia and Artemis. Among the many inscriptions left on its walls by prytaneis in commemoration of their tenure, some verse inscriptions are particularly noteworthy, attributable to two prytaneis of the first to second century CE. Claudia Trophime had two carmina in elegiac couplets, hymnic in character, inscribed on the walls (SGO 02/03/37); Tullia, for her part, is responsible for two prayers addressed to the gods of the prytaneion — Hestia, Zeus, and Artemis — one composed in elegiac couplets and hexameters, the other in iambic trimeters (SGO 02/03/38). Following a brief survey of the epigraphic record of the building and of the material, historical, and religious context in which these poems are embedded, the discussion will turn to the poetic texts themselves, with particular attention to three aspects: (1) their formal and lexical character — these carmina adopt the register of hymns and aretalogies and show clear points of contact with distinguished models of Greek religious poetry, including the Homeric Hymns (5.21–32; 24 and 29), the Orphic Hymns (84), and other examples of hymnic verse inscribed on stone, while drawing at the same time on the tradition of the votive epigram for their metres and for their function as a tangible act of homage to the deity; (2) the specific role of these texts within their cultic setting and their possible bearing on the reinterpretation of worship at the prytaneion; (3) the local references that firmly root these verses in the topographical and urban landscape of the Ionian city, as well as in the institutional and religious particularities of the prytany at Ephesus in the imperial period.
Vittoria Dozza received her PhD in Humanities from the University of Messina (2024). She held a research fellowship at the University of Bologna within the PRIN2022 project "WInGS – Women Intellectuals in Greek Society" and, at the same university, holds a research grant linked to updating the Année Philologique database. Her research interests include the Greek epigram, both literary and epigraphic, technopaegnia, and female education in antiquity.
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From “Sibyl” to “Sibylline” Books: Prophetic Language, Canon Formation, and Discourses of Authority
This paper explores the transformation of Sibylline prophecy from inspired utterance into authoritative textual corpus, focusing on the passage from the figure of the Sibyl to the institutional status of the Libri Sibyllini. Rather than treating this transition merely as a change in medium—from oral prophecy to written book—the paper interprets it as a process of the formation of a new canon and as the construction of a discourse of religious and cultural authority. In this perspective, the Sibylline Books were not a repository of ancient prophetic wisdom (like oracula sibyllina), but a controlled textual instrument through which Roman elites could define, authorize, and reorganize religious knowledge.
Andrzej Gillmeister is a historian of ancient Rome at the University of Zielona Góra. His research focuses on Roman religion, ritual language, the Sibyl and the Sibylline Books, as well as on Latin sacrificial terminology. He is currently working on a lexicon of Latin sacrificial vocabulary.
Origins of Dogmatic Theology: The Cherem-Anathema of the Minim-Heretics between the Second and Fifth Centuries
Based on the analysis of the evolution of the Hebrew and Greek concepts huqqat-threskeia, pistis-emunah, kherem-anatema, we will look at the consequences they had on the consolidation of the Judeo-Christian conceptual category of heresy, along with the resulting condemnation of the minim-haereses by the dogmatic theology that took over the theopoetry of the religions of Antiquity.
I regularly teach History of Religions of the Mediterranean in the final year of the Bachelor's Degree in Geography and History at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide, Seville, as well as courses such as Judaism and Christianity within the Interuniversity Master's Degree in Religious Studies, coordinated by the same university. I have published the following volumes: Che cos'è l'ebraismo (2022), Storia delle religioni del Mediterraneo (2022), Qumrán e le radici del pensiero politico giudeocristiano (2013), and La "Storia della Salvezza", un'antica fonte giudeocristiana. Traduzione e commento di Recognitiones I 27–42,2 (2007), as well as numerous articles published in academic journals, also available on my Academia.edu profile.
The Agon as an Instrument of Religious Dialogue in the Roman Empire
Attention will be given to the Augustan and Tiberian period, when the reconfiguration of Roman religion formed part of a broader project of cultural renewal. The transfer, selection, and preservation of prophetic texts under Augustus and Tiberius may be understood as an attempt to domesticate inspired speech by placing it within a new institutional, archival, and interpretative framework.
Rocío Gordillo Hervás is a lecturer in the Department of Ancient History at the Universidad Pablo de Olavide. She is currently coordinator of the Master's Degree in Religious Studies at the same university and co-principal investigator of the project "Discursos del Imperio Romano en Acción: La Construcción del Orbe Romano".
Water, Wine and Milk in the Ritual Formulas of the Mystery Cults: Text and Context
This study examines various ritual formulas in which water, wine, and milk take on a specific meaning for worshippers, who were required to recite them in ritual and funerary contexts to demonstrate their status as initiates.
Professor of Greek Philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Touching and Being Touched by the Divine: Forms and Languages of Physical Sensory Mediation between Humans and Gods in the Ancient World
This contribution examines physical contact between humans and gods and their manifestations in myths and historical sources from antiquity (e.g. Zeus Ephaptor; the healing touch of the deity; contact — supplicatory or hostile — with cult statues). The topic is investigated through literary, epigraphic, and visual examples, with particular attention to the typology and terminology of the descriptions of contact.
Mika Kajava has been Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the University of Helsinki since 2005. Previously, he was Professor of Ancient Languages and Culture at the University of Turku and Director of the Finnish Institute in Rome. He has published extensively in the fields of ancient epigraphy, religion, and onomastics. Over the last two decades, his research has focused especially on various aspects of Greek and Latin sacred dedications.
Religious Carmina from the Prytaneion of Ephesus: Some Remarks on SGO 02/03/37 and 02/03/38
In the Greek tradition, the sacred hearth, housed in the prytaneion and central to the cult of Hestia, stood as a symbol of civic life. Although the political prerogatives of the prytanis — whose primary duty was the perpetual tending of Hestia’s fire — were progressively eroded over the centuries, the civic prytaneion retained a prominent role both as an official representative building and, above all, as a religious space. The new prytaneion of Ephesus, constructed in the Augustan period and repeatedly refurbished in the early imperial centuries, was no exception. The building has yielded evidence for the worship of several deities, most notably Hestia and Artemis. Among the many inscriptions left on its walls by prytaneis in commemoration of their tenure, some verse inscriptions are particularly noteworthy, attributable to two prytaneis of the first to second century CE. Claudia Trophime had two carmina in elegiac couplets, hymnic in character, inscribed on the walls (SGO 02/03/37); Tullia, for her part, is responsible for two prayers addressed to the gods of the prytaneion — Hestia, Zeus, and Artemis — one composed in elegiac couplets and hexameters, the other in iambic trimeters (SGO 02/03/38). Following a brief survey of the epigraphic record of the building and of the material, historical, and religious context in which these poems are embedded, the discussion will turn to the poetic texts themselves, with particular attention to three aspects: (1) their formal and lexical character — these carmina adopt the register of hymns and aretalogies and show clear points of contact with distinguished models of Greek religious poetry, including the Homeric Hymns (5.21–32; 24 and 29), the Orphic Hymns (84), and other examples of hymnic verse inscribed on stone, while drawing at the same time on the tradition of the votive epigram for their metres and for their function as a tangible act of homage to the deity; (2) the specific role of these texts within their cultic setting and their possible bearing on the reinterpretation of worship at the prytaneion; (3) the local references that firmly root these verses in the topographical and urban landscape of the Ionian city, as well as in the institutional and religious particularities of the prytany at Ephesus in the imperial period.
Flavia Licciardello earned her PhD in Classical Philology from the Humboldt Universität zu Berlin in 2018. Since 2019 she has continued her research at the University of Bologna, where, since 2025, she has coordinated the activities of the Italian Centre of the Année Philologique. Her research interests include Greek epigraphic poetry, the Greek epigram, and women's poetry in antiquity.
Communicating the Divine in the Septuagint Between Tradition and Innovation
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the challenges faced by the translators of the Septuagint Bible with regard to the language of the divine, in light of the Greek-Hellenistic cultural and linguistic context. In particular, the terminology and concepts used to delineate the boundary between the divine and the human spheres will be examined, as well as certain titles attributed to the God of Israel. Particular attention will also be devoted to specific innovations introduced by the translators, whose implications extend to the narrative, exegetical, and theological levels. In some cases, these choices contribute to delineating a contrast between the Lord of heaven and earthly rulers, thereby actualizing the message of the Hebrew-Aramaic text.
Anna Mambelli is Assistant Professor in Ancient Christian Literature at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia and an Affiliated Researcher at FSCIRE, Bologna. She teaches "Digital Humanities for Religious Studies" at the University of Bologna. She is the Scientific Coordinator of the Historical and Theological Lexicon of the Septuagint (Mohr Siebeck, 2020–), Deputy Editor of the journal Annali di Storia dell'Esegesi (EDB), and the author of the monograph Vedere sogni. Esegesi di Daniele 2 e 4 Old Greek (Marietti1820, 2025).
In Search of Shared Solutions. Questions and Answers, Insights into the Past and Guidance for the Future in Ancient Greek ‘Oracular Tales’.
Oracle responses, particularly those from Delphi, are ubiquitous in Greek literary sources (mainly in historiography). Starting from the premise that, as M. Giangiulio has observed, “oracles and oracular tales were a crucial aspect of the way the Greeks conceived of the past and preserved its memory”, that is, of the way they organised their historical memory, this work focuses on how, within that memory, the interaction between the human and the divine—which precedes and prepares crucial decisions and important initiatives at both the public and privat levels —is represented in ‘oracular tales’. ‘Oracle tales’ in literary sources, as well as some significant epigraphic evidence, present oracular consultation as a useful (or necessary) intermediate stage in decision-making processes. In some cases, this stage involves seeking authoritative confirmation of decisions already taken; in others, suggestively, the consultation of the oracle involves a genuine ‘negotiation’ between men and the divine; in yet other cases, the consultation of the oracle serves as a means of managing private disputes and conflicts and, where possible, reaching a shared solution. The language of the oracle – seemingly enigmatic – was in fact perceived as a lofty and complex form of logic: its very complexity stimulates man to draw upon a higher knowledge, and in particular to read the future starting from a deep (and rational) understanding of the past and the present.
Manuela Mari teaches Greek History, Hellenistic History, and Ancient Economic History at the University of Bologna. She has previously taught at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio and at the University of Bari "Aldo Moro". Her research interests include the history and institutions of Macedonia from the Archaic to the Roman period; the political and cultural history of the Hellenistic world; Greek colonization; Classical and Hellenistic historiography; and the relationship between religion and politics in ancient Greece and in related historiographical narratives.
Hybridisations and Languages in Pherecydes of Syros. Some Methodological Reflections
Not knowing the context in which the work of Pherecydes of Syros must have circulated and been transmitted represents an unfortunately not insignificant obstacle. One thus arrives at a crossroads, before which the choice of a precise investigative direction is not always self-evident: the path of Mythos would proceed toward identifying a ritual core, to which theogony and cosmogony offered an (also) aetiological backdrop; the path of Logos, on the other hand, highlights the speculative traits of the Pherecydean text, discerning in it a pivotal point of the fateful leap that allegedly allowed the Greeks to arrive at philosophy. Needless to say, such approaches are by now dated, yet even faced with the need to restore Pherecydes of Syros to an inverse perspective, from Logos to Mythos, it is difficult (perhaps impossible) to determine the reasons behind the composition of this theological (theogonic-cosmogonic) discourse. Speaking of a “language” of Pherecydes of Syros proves rather misleading, since the Pherecydean “language” is in truth the language, or languages, of those who chose to hand Pherecydes down. Faced with a tradition as complex as that of the Syrian (that is, for the most part indirect, sine verbis and allusive), his profile, as an author of the sixth century BCE, inevitably appears hybridized by the different philosophical and exegetical languages of the authors who, from the Academy to the Peripatos, down to the Stoics and the (Neo)Platonists, sought to interpret him. Three testimonies, in particular, have in fact contributed significantly to the vulgate of Pherecydean hybridism (that is, as a “mixture” between myth and philosophy): Arist. Metaph. 1091b 8–12, Theopomp. Hist. FGrHist 115 F 71, and finally Dam. Pr. 124 bis. The problem is that these traces of Logos, which seek to make Pherecydes of Syros the pivot of a turn from myth to philosophy, are highly equivocal. Without denying Pherecydes' actual contributions, nor the elements of novelty that in any case saved him, if only partially, from oblivion, the testimonies cited cannot serve as proof of a speculative nature for Pherecydes' treatise: Aristotle, in the Metaphysics (loc. cit.), is rather clear, and refers here to the primordial eternity of Zas, to his role in the very creation of the world — whether as ποιητής of the φᾶρος (P. Bodl. and Clem. Al. Strom. VI 9,3–4), or as Eros-demiurge (Procl. In Plat. Tim. 32c) — and not to the production of the elements from the seed of Chronos. Theopompus' testimony (πρῶτον περὶ φύσεως καὶ θεῶν Ἕλλησι γράψαι) cannot at all be related to the passage of the Metaphysics: for Aristotle, and for the Peripatos in general, such a statement would probably have been inconceivable, given the rigid distinction between those who write περὶ θεῶν and those who write περὶ φύσεως, a distinction of which traces remain even in the doxography (Theophrastus, on the one hand, and Eudemus, on the other). In the case of Damascius (Pr. 124 bis) the need for an analytical Quellenforschung (G. W. Most) proves even more evident. This is in fact a testimony of at least third hand, and, although the Eudemian citation in Pr. 124 (ἡ δὲ παρὰ τῷ περιπατητικῷ Εὐδήμῳ ἀναγεγραμμένη) is explicit, it is equally unclear what Eudemus' source might have been (though extreme caution is warranted regarding the possibility that this source might be Hippias of Elis). Although it is quite plausible that the three elements (πῦρ, πνεῦμα, ὕδωρ) were named in the Peripatetic text — or it would at least be difficult, at present, to demonstrate the contrary — it is nonetheless possible to admit a case of hybridism; in this case, however, of an original theogonic discourse that, in Damascius, appears adulterated.
A graduate in Classical Philology, Literature and Tradition from the University of Bologna, he is currently a PhD candidate in History of Religions (SAR: History, Anthropology, Religions) at Sapienza University of Rome.
Trusting Gods (or Not): pistos and apistos
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Access Denied! Ritual Spaces and the Vocabulary of Prohibitions in Ancient Greek Sanctuaries
A number of words in Ancient Greek vocabulary denote sacred spaces, sanctuaries and special areas inside them: oikos, naos, temenos, hieron, abaton, adyton, sekos, etc. Among these, two terms, abaton and adyton, are verbal nouns that derive their semantic load from the notion of action being denied. This action refers to entering, moving inside and, ultimately, to the crossing of boundaries between the outside and inside of cultic spaces, with a gradation of allowable access. This paper will discuss the role of prohibitions in the creation of cultic, or ritual, spaces in ancient Greek religion. Although a wider set of evidence could be brought into the discussion, including ritual norms that deploy ου φορα or μη + verb formulae, I will be interested in exploring specifically the denial of access encoded in such terms as abaton and adyton. The questions I aim to pursue are whether denial of access encoded in them conveys a certain degree of sacrality (for example, by comparison with the Judeo-Christian concept of the ‘holy of holies’), or whether another shade of meaning is in play, since sacrality was most explicitly conveyed by another word designating sanctuary — hieron. I will also investigate the apparent synonymity of adyton and abaton, looking into their respective histories of usage in literary and epigraphic sources. The existence of unenterable spaces in sanctuaries may seem as a paradox in Greek religion where sanctuaries are generally conceived of as meeting places between humans and gods, places of communion and interaction. At the same time, our textual sources indicate that despite the literal meaning of the terms abaton and adyton, they could actually designate spaces that were entered under special circumstances (e.g. the abaton at the Epidaurian sanctuary of Asklepios), thus pointing to a wider semantic field of the two terms, accommodating an apparent spectrum from the literal, grammatical sense implied by the negative prefix a- all the way to its opposite. When and why these terms acquired and then seemingly lost their literal meaning as religious spaces that prohibited entry will be the focus of my inquiry.
Irene Polinskaya is Professor of Ancient Greek History and Culture at King's College London. Her research interests lie in Greek epigraphy, social and cultural history of Greece, local religious systems and Greek religious vocabulary, and more recently, in human-environment interaction on the dry and thirsty islands of the Aegean sea.
Planning the Year, Managing the Sacrifices: Sacred Calendars and Their Excerpts in the Greek World
Among the documents that the recent corpus of Greek Ritual Norms includes, as many as 37 qualify as sacred calendars or excerpts from sacred calendars. This category of texts, which spans most of the Greek world between the beginning of the sixth century BCE (Greek Ritual Norms 1, from Corinth) and the late Hellenistic period, still lacks a comprehensive and up-to-date study. In this paper, I present the dossier of documents from a diachronic perspective, highlighting its changes and evolution over the centuries. Furthermore, taking as a starting point the parallel that the record of the festival for Antiochus III at Teos offers in the city's hiera byblos (Ma, Antiochos 18, ll. 28–29), I examine the relationship between official calendars on perishable media (wood, papyrus) and their monumental version on stone, focusing on the reasons behind the proliferation of sacred calendars inscribed on stone. From this perspective, I devote particular attention to the fragmentary sacred calendars from the major Greek cities. Finally, I pay particular attention to excerpts of sacred calendars, which occur frequently in the Dorian islands of the Aegean and especially on Rhodes (ca. 15 cases), seeking to identify the reasons that led to the decision to publish these texts separately.
Emilio Rosamilia is Associate Professor of Greek History at the Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna. He previously held a fixed-term junior assistant professorship at the University of Perugia, and served as Italian Fellow in Classics at the American Academy in Rome and as a Fellow at the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, DC, in addition to holding several postdoctoral research fellowships at various Italian universities. An alumnus of the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Emilio specializes in Greek history and epigraphy, with particular attention to Greek colonization in Libya and the West, and to the study of the institutions, society, religions, and economy of the ancient Greek world.
Formulas of Congratulations in Greek Mystery and Wedding Rites: From Ritual to Literature
This presentation examines various formulas known as makarismoi ("Blessed art thou, because..."), used in mystery rites and at weddings to congratulate participants on the new and joyful experience they have undergone during the rite, which will transform their religious or social status by making them initiates or spouses. The similarities between these two types of formula are striking and suggest a mutual influence. Similar expressions such as ‘escaping from evil’ or ‘reaching a safe harbour’ will also be examined; these are recorded by authors across different literary genres and appear to have their origins in mystery cults and weddings.
Professor of Greek Philology at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid.
Communicating the Divine in the Septuagint Between Tradition and Innovation
The aim of this paper is to illustrate the challenges faced by the translators of the Septuagint Bible with regard to the language of the divine, in light of the Greek-Hellenistic cultural and linguistic context. In particular, the terminology and concepts used to delineate the boundary between the divine and the human spheres will be examined, as well as certain titles attributed to the God of Israel. Particular attention will also be devoted to specific innovations introduced by the translators, whose implications extend to the narrative, exegetical, and theological levels. In some cases, these choices contribute to delineating a contrast between the Lord of heaven and earthly rulers, thereby actualizing the message of the Hebrew-Aramaic text.
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Self-Representation and Belonging in Religious Inscriptions by Italians in Sicily
Sicily’s proximity to the Italian peninsula fostered a lively movement of people and communities long before the Roman conquest. Already well established before the conquest itself, the Italian presence grew more intense once the new province became a lucrative source of profit: hence the image, preserved in the literary sources, of these Italians as rapacious profiteers. The religious inscriptions tell a different story, in which the Italians’ choice of deities (and of their epithets) becomes a way of negotiating belonging and identity between the Romano-Italic world and the local one. I will focus on two case studies: a Latin dedication by the cives Frentani to Hercules Noritanus (an epithet that may point to Nora, in Sardinia), and a Greek list of the prostatai in the cult of Demeter, a central deity in Sicily.
Alfredo is completing his doctoral dissertation on the suburbanitas of Roman Sicily, the tension between the island's provincial status and its proximity to the Italian peninsula, in cotutelle between the Universities of Bologna and Heidelberg. His work reframes the island not as a mere provincial periphery but as a contested space of interaction among Romans, local communities, and Italians overseas. His research interests include epigraphy in both its traditional and digital forms, the Italians in the provinces, and economic history. He collaborates with the I.Sicily and Epigraphic Database Roma projects.
A Matter of Honour… and of Substance: Translating and Reconstructing Religious Imaginaries in Late Antique Egypt in Light of the Apocalypse of Peter (NHC VII,3).
This paper aims to illustrate the complex interplay between Greek, Coptic, and modern languages, as well as between ‘classical’ philology and ‘New Philology’ that forms the basis – or should, as far as possible, form the basis – for any attempt at a diachronic reconstruction of the linguistic, literary, and religious universe of Late Antique Egypt (3rd–5th centuries CE). To this end, two extremely dense and interesting passages from the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (NHC VII,3 71,3-15 and 71,33-72,2) will be analyzed and translated.
Daniele Tripaldi, 2003 MA University of Pisa; 2004 Diploma Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa; 2007 PhD University of Bologna; 2016-2019 Senior Assistant Professor (RTD-b) at the University of Bologna; since 2019 Associate Professor of "New Testament Exegesis and Ancient Christian Literature" at the Department of Classical Philology and Italian Studies, University of Bologna. My current research focuses on three main areas: John's Revelation and ancient Jewish visionary texts; heresiology as a source for reconstructing marginalized figure and writings in the early Christ movement; the Nag Hammadi library and Coptic literature.