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BRYN MAWR CLASSICAL REVIEW / This item has been <abridged>.

Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Volume 2 Number 2
April 1991


Experimental e-distribution of *Bryn Mawr Classical Review*
continues with, I hope, a few improvements.  The following notes on
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updated.

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E-distribution is still experimental and advice and comments to
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                        Table of Contents

Beard, M. and North, J., *Pagan Priests:  Religion and Power
     in the Ancient World*
  (T. Corey Brennan, Gregory W. Dickerson, Mabel L. Lang)
Bertrand-Dagenbach, C., *Alexandre Severe et l'Histoire Auguste*
  (David Potter)
Bischoff, B., *Latin Paleography:  Antiquity and the Middle Ages*
  (James W. Halporn)
Canfora, L., *The Vanished Library:  A Wonder of the Ancient World*
  (Julia Haig Gaisser)
Cole, T., *The Origins of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece*
  (James J. O'Donnell)
Edwards, M.W., *Homer:  Poet of the Iliad*
     and
Gentili, B., *Poetry and Its Public in Ancient Greece*
  (S. Douglas Olson)
Euben, J.P., *The Tragedy of Political Theory*
  (James W. Halporn)
Foley, J.M., *Traditional Oral Epic:  The Odyssey, Beowulf, and the
     Serbo-Croatian Return Song*
  (William C. Scott)
Kagan, D., *Pericles of Athens and the Birth of Democracy*
  (David Potter)
Lissarrague, F., *The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet:  Images of
     Wine and Ritual*
  (Richard Hamilton)
McAuslan, I. and Walcot, P. (edd.), *Virgil*
     and
Harrison, S.J. (ed.), *Oxford Readings in Vergil's Aeneid*
  (Joseph Farrell)
Nesselrath, H.-G., *Die attische mittlere Komoedie*
  (Jeffrey S. Rusten)
Nicolai, W., *Euripides' Dramen mit rettendem Deus ex machina*
  (Michael R. Halleran
Slater, N.W., *Reading Petronius*
  (Catherine Connors)
Slavitt, D., *Eclogues & Georgics of Vergil*
  (James J. Clauss)
Vallance, J.T., *The Lost Theory of Asclepiades of Bithynia*
  (Lee T. Pearcy

ALSO SEEN (palaeographical)




*Pagan Priests.  Religion and Power in the Ancient World*.  Edited
by Mary Beard and John North.  Duckworth 1990.  Pp. x, 266.  ISBN
0-7156-2206-4.

  Five of the nine essays in this volume concern the Roman Republic
and Empire.  Pagan Priests opens with Mary Beard's "Priesthood in
the Roman Republic", followed by John North's "Diviners and
Divination in Rome" (also Republican in focus).  Three pieces by
Richard Gordon on Roman Imperial religion close the work:  "From
Republic to Principate: Priesthood, Religion and Ideology"; "The
Veil of Power:  Emperors, Sacrificers and Benefactors"; and
"Religion in the Roman Empire:  The Civic Compromise and its
Limits".  Classical Athens, Ptolemaic Memphis, the Babylonian
priesthood and Mycenaean Pylos each receive one chapter, sandwiched
between the Roman bits.  (Several of these chapters are reviewed by
my colleagues below.)  The editors have written a programmatic
Introduction to the volume as well as short prefaces to each essay.
The strong emphasis on Rome in Pagan Priests is explained in part
by the nature of our sources (cf. p. 18), but surely also by the
interests of the editors, who have established (or are
establishing) solid reputations in the field of Roman religion.
The views of John North on Roman Republican religion can be read in
Cambridge Ancient History{2} VII Part 2 (1989), those of Mary Beard
in CAH{2} IX (forthcoming).  Soon there will be a Beard, North and
Simon Price co-production entitled Roman Religion (to be published
by Cambridge University Press).

  The editors state that these papers do not pretend to offer a
complete general theory of "pagan" priesthood, but rather
constitute "an attempt to seek out common characteristics of
priests in [various societies in the ancient Mediterranean and Near
Eastern worlds] and so to gain a better understanding of the nature
of pagan priesthood as a whole" (p. 1).  In this Pagan Priests
succeeds to a large ex-tent.  The essays amply demonstrate that
"pagan" religious duties, though highly specialized, were not
normally assigned to professional full-time practitioners; and that
in these societies there was a substantial overlap between the
spheres of religion and politics.  Priests and politicians often
shared offices, and their respective areas of authority are not
readily apparent.  One must at times search hard to find what is it
that priests do within an ancient society that makes them priests;
and that is what Beard, North et al. mainly do in this volume.

  It is useful to have a book which draws together such diverse and
difficult material and then tries to make sense of it.  But Pagan
Priests is not without its failings.  I am not happy with the
editors' principle of selection, which is enunciated in their
title.  It is of course wildly anachronistic to categorize
civilizations such as the Mycenaeans by the Christian concept
"pagan".  "Pagan" is a teleological term, and (to my mind) not a
valid way of deciding which societies previous to the rise of
Christianity should be included or excluded in what is essentially
a comparative work on ancient priest-systems.  Jewish priests get
only one and a half pages of attention in this book (pp. 244f).
The editors, notwithstanding their excusatio (p. 14), by failing to
include a chapter on Judaism have taken the Jewish priesthood out
of its actual context and (by implication) have placed it into a
context to which it does not belong, making their book poorer in
the process.

  This is just the beginning.  Despite a substantial Introduction
and nine pref-aces, it is difficult to ascertain what audience this
book intends to reach (the editors do not tell us).  One would
think a general audience, to judge from the inclusion in the book
of two clear charts, Beard's "Simplified Guide to Roman Republican
priests" (pp. 20-21), and Gordon's "Roman Calendar" (pp. 186-187).
But even with these aids, those with little or no knowledge of the
complexities of Roman political and religious life will find Pagan
Priests tough going.  Although Greek is transliterated and Greek
and Latin are translated, technical terms are explained, and much
recourse is made to "comparative" material (especially in the three
Gordon chapters), the Roman portions of  Pagan Priests are far too
impressionistic and unsystematic to serve as a genuine introduction
to that culture's "priests".  On the other hand, the specialist in
Roman history (not to mention Roman religion) will find the essays
of Beard and Gordon irritating for their not infrequent disregard
of akribeia, especially in cases when an effective "rhetorical"
point might be made.  This feature should clearly emerge from my
comments below.

  The most provocative Roman essay in Pagan Priests is probably
Mary B[eard]'s "Priesthood in the Roman Republic", and to this I
shall devote most of my attention.  B. seeks to demonstrate that
there was a complex diffusion of "priestly" responsibility in Rome,
which mirrored the wide diffusion of power in the political system.
Religious authority was spread within the remarkably diverse
priestly organization as a whole; and (as is well known) the Roman
magis-trates, the People, and the Senate all had their powers in
the sphere of religion.  Priests such as the pontifices and augures
had the requisite specialist knowledge, but in relation to the
Senate (which made all the final decisions, in issues sacred and
profane) were not perceived as powerful:  religious authority had
been diffused as widely as possible among the various priesthoods.
The Senate's supremacy in religious matters thus could not be
challenged by the priestly organization, and was never challenged
by the People or the magistrates:  "individual magistrates lacked
the authoritative religious control of the Senate and also its
permanent status:  holding office for just one year at a time, they
found a permanence of religious authority only through their shared
membership of the Senate."  Only with Augustus was official
religious power clearly defined and located.

  I am not entirely convinced by B.'s general picture, particularly
as regards her hypothesis of the priests' lack of real power.  It
is true that Republican priests had no decision-making powers.  In
Livy, however, there are numerous instances of a group of priests
advising such-and-such, and their advice obviously was implemented,
with no mention of a senatus consultum:  that a SC would be passed
in accordance with their findings is taken for granted by Livy (or
his source) (e.g. XXXI 12.9; XXXIV 55.3; XXXVI 37.4-6, etc.).  (I
should note that the Senate's disregard of the augurs' opinion
regarding the leges Iuliae in 57 B.C.--Cic. Dom. 40 and discussed
by North in pp. 52f. of this volume--was quite antithetical to the
practice of the classical res publica.)  The "diversity" of
Republican priesthoods increased, rather than diminished, the power
of Republican priests.

  I am still less impressed by some of the particulars of B.'s
argument.  For example, B. (on pp. 24-25) makes much of the
restrictions imposed on the flamen Dialis which "made a concurrent
political career practically impossible."  She concludes "how, for
example, could he fulfil the military obligations traditionally
expected of a Roman magistrate, when the taboos of his priesthood
prevented him from even seeing a force under arms?"  But Beard
neglects to mention that our best-known flamen Dialis, C. Valerius
Flaccus, as praetor in 183 was al-lotted the provincia peregrina,
and was as such a potential military commander (she certainly knows
of this man--cf. p. 23).  On the next page we are told that the
salii "were allowed (but not forced) to give up their office if
they obtained a major magistracy" (p. 24).  Not so in the Republic:
the point of the piece of ev-idence adduced by Beard for this
statement (Val. Max. I 1.9) is simply that the magistrate in
question had a vacatio from the duty (officium) of carrying the
ancilia in procession by virtue of his praetorship.  (That he did
not have a vacatio from the priesthood is confirmed by Polybius XXI
13.12.)

  Emphasis is placed throughout B.'s chapter on "the uncertainty
of the group-ing and hierarchizing of priesthoods" (p. 47; cf. her
discussion at 44f.).  I agree that this is a real problem, and
ancient views on priestly hierarchy must be treated with a great
deal of caution (see E. Badian's remarks in PBSR 52 (1984) 57f.).
Yet it does seem that we have a few promising pieces of evidence,
for example Festus s.v. ordo sacerdotum (198 L), which at least
shows the ancient and ceremonial ordo, if not the hierarchy of
actual priestly power, and the wellknown conflicts between the
pontifex maximus and individual flamines recorded for the years
242, 189 and 131 (the principal sources being Livy XXXVII 51.1-2
and Cic. Phil. 11.18).  It is unfortunate that none of these
passages receives a mention in Pagan Priests.  And I am puzzled why
B. would assert that with Augustus (pontifex maximus starting in 12
B.C.) "for the first time priestly knowledge had been brought
together with executive power" (p. 48).  It might be inferred from
this statement that in the Republic e.g. no pontifex maximus had
ever reached the consulship (there were six such cases in the
period 218-49).  In particular, one might adduce M. Aemilius
Lepidus, who while pontifex maximus was elected censor for 179,
cos. II for 175, and was princeps senatus from 179 on.  (For the
extraordinary cumulation of political and religious power by the
Aemilii in the middle Republic, see Muenzer, Roemische
Adelsparteien, esp. pp. 170ff.)

  B. is not at all convincing in her lengthy discussion of
"mediation" between gods and men in Rome (pp. 28-34).  Wissowa, in
his Religion und Kultus der Roemer{2} (1912), had shown
conclusively that Roman priests did not act as the representatives
of the gods on earth and were not defined as "mediators".  B.  uses
Wissowa's finding as a point of departure for her own view:  the
Senate was "the body which formed the focus of communication
between gods and men" (p. 33); "the Senate, not the `priests',
largely fulfilled that mediating function commonly regarded as
distinctively priestly" (p. 34).

  Here we see B. unfortunately imposing a modern concept on an
ancient society which did not share all our categories.  The
business of priests in Republican Rome was to give advice on
religious matters (especially to magistrates and the Senate); the
business of the Republican Senate was to make decisions; the
business of a higher magistrate was to implement those decisions si
ei e republica fideque sua videretur (FIRA{2} 32), thereby giving
them the force of law.  The Senate was not competent to judge on
the facts of religious matters:  how then can it be said to
"mediate" between men and gods?  B. (inter alia) argues that the
Senate demonstrated its "control in defining the correct relations
between gods and men" when it judged the validity of Clodius'
dedication and consecration of Cicero's house in 57 B.C. (p. 32,
esp. n. 38).  In one of the passages B. cites (but does not quote)
for her view, M. Lucullus (cos. 73 and a pontifex) is asked in the
Senate whether Cicero's house could be restored to him, and he
replies religionis iudices pontifices fuisse, legis [es]se senatum;
se et collegas suos de religione statuisse, in senatu de lege
staturos cum senatu (Cic. ad Att. 4.2.4).  Jerzy Linderski has in
fact given us a masterly exposition of this passage in his crucial
article "The Augural Law":  "the collegium pontificum had just
passed the decree that Clodius' dedication and consecration of
Cicero's house was invalid from the point of view of the pontifical
law, and that the house might be restored to Cicero without
sacrilege (sine religione).  Whether the house should be restored
to Cicero was an altogether different question.  It was a question
of the law, and not of the religio.  It was to be decided by the
Senate, the judge of the law" (ANRW II 16.3 (1986) 2161f).  This
passage (and Linderski's interpretation) must be faced squarely if
one is going to talk about the Senate as a "mediating" body.
Though several interesting problems are raised in B.'s other
arguments for senatorial "mediation", particularly the irrelevancy
of the taking of auspices for its meetings, her explanations do not
convince.  For B., the fact that the Senate did not meet auspicato
suggests that the Senate "could not be seen as in an improper
relationship with the gods" (pp. 32f.).  Perhaps in one of B.'s
forthcoming works we will get a more systematic approach to this
problem.

  In a more satisfying essay, "Diviners and Divination at Rome",
John N[orth] argues that in the Republic, priestly groups were
always more concerned with the question of ritual action (as a
means of averting danger) than the question of prophecy.  N.
complements B.'s arguments by focussing on the diversity of
divinatory rituals in the Roman Republic, and emphasizes that these
were widely disseminated amongst a number of priesthoods: the
augures, the XVviri sacris faciundis and two separate groups both
known as haruspices each had its own specialized fields of
expertise.   N. rightly stresses that Republican priestly bodies
acted only in an advisory capacity to magistrates and the Senate.
N. concludes in a most perceptive passage (p. 70) that "Roman
divination...is the expression in the religious sphere of some of
the dominant characteristics of Roman republicanism:  there is an
avoidance of the concentration of too much power in any individual;
a tendency for decisions and actions to operate through groups or
through changing individuals; a reluctance to recognize the special
or charismatic qualities of special human beings."  This is a
generalization worth remembering.

  On to the Empire.  The first of Richard G[ordon]'s three essays,
"From Republic to Principate", is his least satisfactory.  Here G.
argues (if I understand him correctly) that the numerous epigraphic
calendars surviving from the late Republic and early Empire are
evidence for a social change.  These calendars are not "due to a
new interest in practical information" (p. 185),  but rather should
be seen as part of a conscious attempt by the ruling elite to
institutionalize unin-telligibility, "one which transformed an
originally common cognitive project into an essentially arbitrary
set of rules whose primary effect was to perpetu-ate elite control
over the system" (p.191).  There is a simpler explanation:
starting with Sulla (the ludi victoriae Sullanae) and continuing
with Caesar and Augustus, new holidays were foisted upon the
calendar, and hence new calendars were needed.  Moreover, it is
entirely unclear what period of Roman history G. is thinking of
when he speaks of "the development of literacy among the political
elite of Rome" and "the growing significance of writing in Roman
religion" (p. 191).  If G. envisions this development occurring in
the time of the Tarquins, I might be inclined to agree with him;
but if he means the first century B.C. (as he seems to), his
argument must be rejected out of hand.

  Equally disappointing is the sub-chapter which follows the
calendar section, "Religion and ideology".   Here G. argues that
following the Hannibalic War, the Romans' "uncontrolled
imperialism" [sic] led to the development of "ideological
representations whose function was to sublimate the interests of
the dominant land-owning elite (above all as organized
institutionally in the senate) into a justificatory set of ideals"
(p. 192).  (As evidence for this "ideological pro-duction" in the
middle Republic G. points toward the late evidence of Horace's
Roman Odes and Aeneid VIII!)  G. also states that concomitant with
the elites' drawing an ideological "veil" over their imperialism
was a new insistence on their fixing (even in minute detail) the
forms of religious practice.  (I personally do not see in the
preservation of priestly carmina, etc. much more than the simple
force of tradition at work here.)  In this chapter there are a few
simple yet consequential mistakes which should have caught the eye
of the editors.  Two examples:  imperium is defined simply as
"formal magisterial power" (p. 182; that is in fact a definition
more appropriate to potestas); and "elections for priesthoods from
17 of the tribes under the Lex Labiena of 63 B.C. probably
continued under Augustus" (p. 220; surely "by 17 of the tribes").

  I am less competent to judge G.'s other two pieces in this
volume, which treat aspects of Imperial religion, and thus I shall
offer only short summaries.  In his essay, "The Veil of Power", it
is argued that in the Empire there was a fusion of the religious
system with the socio-political system, best seen in the person of
the emperor himself.  G. is particularly impressed by the
predominance of the Roman emperor in iconographic representations
of sacrifice (examples are adduced from Augustus to Galerius).  On
the basis of these historical reliefs, G. contends that the
emperor's role as sacrificer and his role as euergetes provided a
model for the elite more generally, both in Rome and in the
provinces.  The em-peror's euergetism was copied by local elite
throughout the empire, and when exercised by these provincials
served to naturalize the inequalities of the social system in each
of their communities:  their gifts served to objectify the power
relations between them and their own social subordinates.  G.'s
third and last essay, "Religion in the Roman Empire", is concerned
with the problems the Romans faced in attempting to impose on the
varied communities of the empire their own religious organization.
There is some tentative exploration of opposi-tion or alternatives
to the dominant religious system.  G. claims that refusal of
sacrifice (seen in Mithraic asceticism as well as Christianity) was
the most uncompromising possible rejection of the Roman model of
religion.

  A few last points about Pagan Priests.  I was amused by B. and
G.'s use of the figura etymologica:  "the pontifices provided
precisely that link, a bridge between the central power of the
senate and the individual citizens as they lived their lives." (B.,
p. 39); later we read that the pontiffs provide a "crucial bridge
between the public world and the private world through their
supervision of funerary and tomb law" (G., p. 181).  I am glad that
neither of these statements is actually offered as an etymology for
pontifex (literally,"bridge builder").  I think that the Romans'
original reason for the designation (whatever it was) cannot have
been to denote a builder of a metaphorical bridge.  Pagan Priests
has an Index, but it is haphazard.  Most--but not all--Roman names
are listed (unfortunately) by cognomina; and there are more
references in the text to e.g. C. Iulius Caesar than the Index
would reveal.  There are thirty-odd photos and illustrations,
mostly good.

T. Corey Brennan
Bryn Mawr College


*Pagan Priests*:  Chapter 3: "Priests and Power in Classical
Athens," by Robert Garland.
  The concerns of this brief (seventeen pages) chapter are much
broader and more general than its title suggests.  Those expecting
detailed analysis of the role of the **hiereus/-eia** in Athenian
life (hardly an unreasonable expectation in consulting a book
titled Pagan Priests)  will be disappointed to discover a scant
four pages devoted to this topic, necessarily providing scope for
no more than a cursory summary of the most conspicuous basic
features of the Greek priesthood ("gentile"/clan-determined
side-by-side with "democratic"/lot-determined offices, life-time
side-by-side with annual tenures, limitation of hieratic status to
specific cult site, combination of liturgical with administrative
responsibilities) and familiar points of contrast with modern
concepts of clergyman (lack  of spiritual, "pastoral" and basic
rites de passage [birth, marriage, death] responsibilities.)  The
exclusive focus on priests of public cult in this initial
subsection, understandable, perhaps, given the brevity of the
treatment, leaves unstated one of the most distinctive features of
the Greek priesthood, i.e., that any Greek with a knife and
suitable victim at hand could could assume de facto hieratic status
at will in rituals of private sacrifice.

  G., in fact, as he makes clear at the start of the chapter, and
in the "Power" element of his title, is primarily concerned not
with the cultic activities of Athe-nian priests and the other
familiar functionaries in the world of Greek religion (exegetai,
chresmologoi/manteis and oracles), for the basic roles of which he
proceeds to give equally brief and basic summaries in the sections
of the chap-ter which follow, but rather with questions of the
degree of authority exercised by each category in addressing issues
arising in the religious life of Classical Athens:  1) Who spoke
most decisively on issues involving state religion?  2) Who
controlled the religious life of the individual?  3)  Who was
empowered to introduce innovations in public cults?  4)  What was
the force of interventions by seers and oracles in the life of the
community?  5) What were the channels of mediation between gods and
men?  Generally cautious and unsurprising answers to these
questions are provided  at the conclusion of each of the chapter's
subsections.  A priest was more than "purely routine state
official" in his role as mediator with the divine but had no
spiritual authority of the kinds exercized by mod-ern "pastors".
(p. 81)  The exegetai  had a significant role as "an advisory
body," but possessed no "powers of enforcement" in public or
private spheres.  (p. 82)  The influence of Chresmologoi / manteis
"was evidently considerable in both the public and private
domains," as shown by the career of the famous Lampon and the plays
of Aristophanes.  (p. 85)  Oracles clearly had an important role in
advising the states which consulted them on religious matters and
in ratifying contemplated cult innovations, but their authority on
these issues was any-thing but supreme, being 1) diffused among a
number of competing oracular shrines; 2) exercised, except on rare
occasions, only by invitation, and 3) generally limited to simple
consent to action, "leaving complex, technical details to the state
concerned." (p. 90)

  It is this overriding concern with the issue of religious
authority, the "politics," as it were, of Athenian religion, which
differentiates G.'s effort to instruct us in matters of Greek
religion from those, e.g., of Burkert in the relevant subsections
of his Greek Religion and of Parke, Flaceliere and Fontenrose in
their much more extensive discussions of Greek oracles.  Thus we
find a subsection on the demos included among those devoted to the
specifically "religious" institutions already mentioned.  Here the
inapplicability of the modern "church vs. state" dichotomy to
Classical Athens is clearly demonstrated by listing three clear
examples of state control of cultic matters: 1) the necessity for
the ekklesia to approve by vote the introduction of new public
cults; 2) the "overriding authority" of the demos in all matters
involving the finances of state cults; and 3) the state's appointed
role to prosecute "most crimes of a religious nature." (pp. 85-6)
These functions, coupled with the familiar ritual preliminaries to
political assemblies at Athens (purification and prayer), lead G.
to present the demos as "a focus of communication between men and
gods."  (p. 87)  Whether this sense of religious mission was in
fact shared by the Athenians convened by conspicuously secular
political officials to determine largely political, military, and
financial matters would appear to be dubious in the extreme.
Certainly no one would suggest that the genuflections to religious
tradition conventionally made by the legislative assemblies of our
own country constitute reliable proof that the participants share
a sense of mediating with the divine in carrying out their work.

  In sum, G.'s chapter has nothing new to offer on the subject of
the nature and function of Greek priests per se.  The reasonable
but hardly startling conclusion to which the argument of his
chapter leads is that religious authority in Classical Athens was
"shared out among a number of of groups comprising ama-teurs as
well as experts, priests as well as `laity'." (p. 90)  The
hypothesis finally proposed on the basis of this conclusion--that
"the diffusion of religious authority in Classical Athens mirrors
the diffusion of political authority in the same period" (p.
91)--will undoubtedly be of interest to students of Athenian
constitutional history, but its relevance to the titular focus of
this collection of essays on "pagan priests" seems peripheral at
best.  The equally uncertain relevance of the chapter's three
illustrations (woman with oinochoe and incense burner at private
altar, presentation of peplos on the Parthenon frieze, and two
maenads [?] honoring image of Dionysus)  is oddly twice
acknowledged by the author himself in the captions provided:  "On
the left, a woman, perhaps a priestess..." (frieze, Fig. 8, p.79);
"The woman is playing, in our terms, a priestly role, although
there is no way of knowing whether she is technically a
priestess..." (altar scene, Fig. 7, p. 76).  Certainly  less
equivocal representations of priests in action are readily at hand
in the rich repertory of sacrificial scenes surviving from the
works of Greek vase painters.  (Figure 1 in the English edition of
Burkert's Homo Necans provides an excellent example.)

Gregory W. Dickerson
Bryn Mawr College


*Pagan Priests*:  Chapter 6: "Cult-personnel in the Linear B Texts
from Pylos," by James Hooker.

  Three types of texts are examined (with 11 sample tablets
reproduced in the Appendix): (1) offerings to named deities (Tn316,
Es644, -646, -650, -703, Un718); (2) commodities for religious
functions (Un219, Fn187); and (3) miscellaneous cult-personnel
(Ae303, Ep539, -704).

  (1) Though given pride of place, the calendar of offerings
(Tn316) says noth-ing of cult-personnel except in so far as the men
and women offered are to serve as such rather than as victims.
Less uncertain as cult-personnel are the three entities in the Es
tablets who are paralleled with Poseidon but are given far smaller
amounts of seed-wheat.  That those making the offering, however,
are of a lower social position than the recipients, as Hooker
asserts, is doubtful, since neither group has more than one e-qe-ta
(comes or count).

  Poseidon provides the context also for offerings of comestibles
by individuals and groups to or for the mysterious o-wi-de-tai
(sheep-flayer?) who as cultpersonnel may use them personally or in
Poseidon's worship.  Un6 might have been included here since in
addition to its offering to Poseidon (lost) and an offer-ing of
cows, ewes, boars and sows to one of the goddesses listed on Tn316
(pe-re-*82), it has obvious cult-personnel  on its reverse: a
priestess (i-je-re-ja) and a key-bearer  (ka-ra-wi-po-ro).

  (2)  Neither of the two tablets cited as listing commodities for
religious functions is very enlightening about cult-personnel:
Un219's unknown commodities and mixture of human titles with divine
names, both in the dative case, is matched by Fn187's list of
dative divine names or human titles and allative place-names, each
with amount of barley and sometimes figs or flour.  What is one to
make of it when the "cult-attendants of Poseidon"
(po-si-da-i-je-u-si) all together get the same amount of barley as
each of the four heralds (ka-ru-ke) get separately, while the
Potnia of Hupo (u-po-jo-po-ti-ni-ja) gets almost four times as much
and figs as well?

  Omitted from this group, because no cult-personnel are mentioned,
are the Fr tablets dispensing oil to various divinities.  But two
ceremonies (re-ke-e-toro-te-ri-jo and to-no-e-ke-te-ri-jo,
couch-spreading and throne-holding) for which oil is supplied must
have involved officiants.  And if the double dative construction
may be so interpreted, ministrants of various sorts do appear:
(Fr1219) wano-so-i po-se-da-o-ne -- to the two queens for Poseidon;
(Fr1220) di-pi-si-jo-i wa-na-ka-te -- to "the thirsty ones" for the
king.

  3.  Miscellaneous texts include two of those that mention
individual priests, two priestesses, one keybearer and slaves
either of the god or of a priestess.  Most of these are involved in
land-holding where they play a major part, on one occasion being at
odds with the civil authorities.  Missing here are the Aq tablets,
of which 218 lists two priests and 64's heading has been plausibly
read as [i-je]-re-wi-jo-te (serving as priests).  Mentioned only in
passing is Ed317 where a priestess and a man identified elsewhere
as a priest bracket the keybearer and a count (e-qe-ta), thus
suggesting the possible cult connections of both middle terms.

  The chapter provides a very useful introduction to a subject
which could have benefited from more extensive treatment.  Minor
points: only two of the names on Es644 are in the genitive case (p.
161); the addition of the fourteenth name on Es650 is not
inexplicable (p. 162; see Myc. Stud. 1964, 37-51).

Mabel L. Lang
Bryn Mawr College

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... <abridged>