LEARNING OUTCOMES

Being able to interpret religious phenomena of Ancient Age by analyzing specific issues on a
theological, ritual, mythic and cultural level, according to modern hermeneutics

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course is intended:

1. to offer students an advanced knowledge of the long-date debate around the history of religions in the frame of the modern social sciences.
2. To instruct students in critical analysis of current research on the ancient religions.
3. To provide the principal theoretical approaches and the essential specific disciplinary language.
4. To encourage a strong comparative approach to the subject by encompassing the related fields, like ancient history, Greek and Latin philology, archaeology, sociology, psychology of history.
5. To present and discuss the key issues of Greek and Roman religion, though a careful reading of both ancient and modern sources.
6. To engage students with the autonomous understanding of some emblematic cases of study (e.g. the relation between religion and power and the historical and social meaning of private and public oath).

On successful completion of this course a student should:

• Have an overview of the historical, philosophical, and academic debate which led to the study of religion as an autonomous subject.

• Be familiar with the key interpretative frameworks for the study of ancient religions.

• Understand the patterns, the rituals and the identifying features of ancient Greek and Roman religions.

• Use a specific language.

• be able to compare patterns and understand the historical, political, and cultural meaning of the single religious events under analysis.

• Have a detailed historical knowledge of the institution of the oath in the Greek and Roman world, read as a speech act, a juridical form, a religious custom, and a political guarantee.

PREREQUISITES

 A particularly good knowledge of Greek and Roman history, literature and language is required, as well as an acquired mastery of reading, understanding, and translating Greek and Latin different samples of documents.

TEACHING METHODS

The course is taught through daily seminars of two hours (40 hours in the first semester). During lectures, ancient and modern texts will be fully presented and discussed by the teacher. Seminars may have weekly essential readings, which students will be expected to have done, following guidance, in order to be able fully to follow and to contribute actively to discussions.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

First general part:

1. Introduction to key issues of the subject.
2. Religion, religions, between disciplinary boundaries and academic fights.
3. The methods and the instruments of the research.
4. The pivotal features of Greek religion and the Roman mirror.
5. The characters of ancient polytheism
6. Polis and civitas as frameworks of classical religions.
7. The sacred space for the ancients.
8. Religions without theologies.
9. The ritual and the festivals in Greece.
10. Sanctuaries and power.
11. Religious and social values of sacrifice.
12. The words of religion. Comparisons between Greek and Latin tradition.

Monographic part:

1. Sacred and political space in the eyes of ancient historians: analysis of some crucial passages by Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Polybius, Livy.
2. The ancient oath as “speech act”: the consequences of a definition.
3. The Greek oath in the literary and historical tradition.
4. The Roman tradition: the oath between law and literary mirror.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

- Ph. BORGEAUD, F. PRESCENDI, Religioni antiche: un'introduzione comparata, edizione italiana a cura di D. Bonanno e Gabriella Pironti, Carocci, Roma 2011.

-M. BETTINI, Dei e uomini nella città. Antropologia, religione e cultura nella Roma antica, Carocci, Roma 2015.

- A. SOMMERSTEIN, J. FLETCHER, Horkos. The Oath in Greek Society, Bristol-Phoenix 2007, pp. 1-90.

G. AGAMBEN, il sacramento del linguaggio. Archeologia del giuramento, Laterza, Bari-Roma 2008.

-P. SCHIRRIPA, Il tempio, il rituale, il giuramento. Spazi del sacro in Tucidide, Carocci, Roma 2015.

- Notes and assigned individual or groups readings.

Non-attendings students will read also:

- P. Schirripa, Religione e società nella Grecia antica, Carocci, Roma, 2010.