Magika Hiera: Ancient Greek Magic and Religion

Magika Hiera, Ancient Greek Magic and Religion, edited by Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink and published by Oxford University Press in New York in 1991, is a foundational edited scholarly volume in the modern academic study of ancient Greek magic, including Faraone's own influential typology of binding spells and Hendrik Versnel's argument for prayers for justice as a distinct category of curse. Its authority rests on standard academic peer review at a major university press and its status as a work later scholarship in the field regularly builds on or responds to. Its limit is that, as with any edited volume from 1991, individual chapters' specific classifications have since been refined, extended or in places contested by later specialists, so a very particular typological claim is worth checking against the more recent literature that has grown up around this volume's own framework.