ANOTHERPERI TECHNESLITERATURE: INQUIRIES ABOUT ONE'S CRAFT AT DODONA

Abstract

Elite, Athenian, male – all three adjectives usually apply to our sources on the ancient world, and the study of ancient ethics (including even so-called ‘popular morality’) is no different in this respect. There are, however, a few exceptional sources that provide a window into a more diverse population and their hopes, desires, values, and insecurities. In the following, I wish to highlight one of these – the corpus of oracularlamellaefrom Dodona – and demonstrate how this body of evidence can shed new light on an old question. Specifically, I will consider what we can learn abouttechne(art, craft, profession) from these tablets; but in addition I hope readers with an interest in ancient ethics will see how promising this source is for further study on other topics. As I will show, alongside the better knownperi technesliterature – a group of texts from the fifth and fourth centuriesbcethat discuss medicine and other crafts from a theoretical standpoint – there is a small corpus of texts from Dodona that uses this same phrase and discusses the crafts from a far more practical perspective. The object of this article will be to show how these two corpora are mutually enlightening.